Just one chapter today, and not all that long. I'll make it up to you later in the week, but this one stands alone whereas the later ones need companionship.
The question of identity has become of major importance in our contemporary world. Each of us is required to carry with us the baggage of our pasts, and woe betide he (or she, of course) who fails to trot out that baggage for inspection on command. Anonymity is both culturally and even legally suspect, and in many contexts is flatly prohibited. An unidentified person may not do much of anything in modern America or many other places. Of course, this obsession about identification has created the modern crime of "identity theft," whereby one person pretends to be another for what is meant to be profitable purposes. I wonder how long it'll be before children are required by law to be tattooed with evidence of their identities, à la the concentration camp tattoos of Nazi infamy. Yes, I know that's a bit of a dire prediction, but can't you see an invasive government selling it as "for your own protection?" Or something like it; perhaps instead we'll all wind up microchipped like our pets.