One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (18 page)

The tasks grew more demanding. He was to kill a monster, find a hoard of treasure. Both of them might be concealed among the cliffs. Attractive castles could be surrounded by vampires, the plains around them transformed into enchanted battlefields.

Eventually it became impossible to complete the tasks alone. He had to cooperate with others,
join a guild. The guild members had to have qualities that complemented each other. The strongest had to fight in the front line. The warriors and paladins had to draw the attention of the enemy so the more vulnerable, the mages and priests who had the power of healing, were not hurt.

There was an element of obligation too. If you didn’t show up, if you weren’t there, you let everybody down and
the guild risked losing.

*   *   *

He gave himself the name
Andersnordic
. His gender was male and his race was human. His class was that of mage.

Andersnordic
was tall and powerful, with a menacing, greyish face. His big body was dressed in a knight’s outfit with precious stones sewn onto the chest and huge epaulettes on the shoulders. On his head he wore a tall, shining staff.

He relaxed
his shoulders.

And pressed the keys.

The game drew him in and calmed him down. The system was easy to understand. There were no awkward categories like cool versus uncool. If you were clever enough, you were good enough. Absolutely anyone could be a success, all you had to do was be dedicated and logged in. Your reward came with time and experience, not like the volatile stock market, not like
the risky chat-up scene.

Anders was good at collecting points and moved swiftly up the levels. The gamers played wearing headsets and communicated as they went along. The exchanges were largely about raids, allocation of roles and fighting tactics. They knew each other only as characters in the game – avatars – and not as their everyday selves.

Anders initially slotted into the newcomer role
and was unassuming and quiet, not very active in discussions. As he rose through the hierarchy, he gradually changed. He became more affable, more talkative. As time went by he became known for his cheerfulness, as someone who could inspire others to contribute. Quite simply, he was well liked. ‘A tonic to depression,’ one of his fellow players called him.

*   *   *

Anders’s mother was frustrated.
This was not what she had expected of her son. Whenever she went into his room he just got annoyed and chased her out again. He scarcely had time to eat, was as quick as possible in the loo and the shower, hurried back to his room, shut the door and slept late. Life took on a routine determined by the game; his offline breaks were few.

He had stopped answering when anybody rang him on his mobile.
He asked his mother to say he was out if any friends turned up at the door.

Thus he passed his early days at 18 Hoffsveien. It was a mild, sunny autumn. On the solitary birch outside his window the leaves turned first yellow, then brown, and then fell to the ground. The rain set in. The leaves lying in a circle round the tree were soon slimy and decaying. He, meanwhile, took a comfortable seat
in the deep office chair each day and let his fingers do battle with the keyboard as the days darkened.

Christmas came again, and he was playing full-time. There were periods when he spent sixteen or seventeen hours a day at the computer. On New Year’s Eve he spent the whole night logged on. Red-letter days were observed within the game. There were decorated trees at Christmas and fireworks at
New Year.

These celebrations were yet another way for the game’s manufacturer to replace real life and keep people logged on. In
World of Warcraft
, Blizzard had devised a game with no end.

It took Anders a little over six months of full-time playing to become the leader of the
Virtue
guild, which did its raiding on the European server Nordrasil.

Anders had been awarded the title
Justitiarius
. It was a title that took a long time and a lot of killing to achieve.

When Anders was on a raid, he was not to be disturbed on any account.
Virtue
had decided to mount its raids and conquests between seven and eleven o’clock in the evenings. Everyone was expected to take part. Most members of the guild played for around twelve hours a day, and a raid required a great deal of planning. They had
to lay in provisions and make sure they had enough ammunition and weaponry. The better equipped they were, the greater their chances of beating other guilds in the battle to find the treasure or kill the vampires.

Andersnordic
was good at motivating others and often got his fellow players to carry on performing even when they were getting tired and fed up. A bit longer, just a bit longer; he
was known for never giving up.

‘We’ve just got to finish this off, then we can get to bed,’ he would say.

*   *   *

Sometimes the game came into conflict with real life, or the other way round.

One February morning in 2007, a letter came for him. He had been admitted to the First Degree of the St John Lodge and was invited to his first meeting at the Freemasons’ headquarters. His mother was
delighted.

The sponsor question had been solved. Wenche’s second cousin would be his main sponsor, with primary responsibility for making a good Freemason of the boy. A secretary from the Pillars Lodge had undertaken to be his second sponsor.

Anders hadn’t got time. He really hadn’t got time.

It seemed so long ago. The admission interview in the vaults beneath the Armigeral Hall a year earlier
was merely a faint memory.

But he couldn’t say no to this. Good heavens, he’d been accepted as a Freemason!

Had it just been a question of logging off for a few hours and attending the meeting … But no, he had to kit himself out in full evening dress with a black waistcoat. That was the dress code for the initiation ceremony. He had to arrange all that and make an effort with his appearance
before he could go out among people.

It was usual for the sponsor to come and collect the new member to take him to the solemn occasion, and the evening after his twenty-eighth birthday, which he had celebrated in
World of Warcraft,
Anders was called for by his mother’s second cousin.

Anders got into the car.
Andersnordic
had made his excuses for the evening.

On the way to the Freemasons’ headquarters,
Anders started talking about the investitures of knights, about guilds and fraternities.

His relative was rather taken aback. Freemasonry was all about perfecting your own qualities, he explained.

Anders went quiet.

The Freemasons’ headquarters was right by the parliament building. Inside the doors they were received by a Master of Ceremonies in a formal hat and white gloves, with a big sword
hanging at his hip. In his hand he held a large staff, blue and black with a silver tip at each end.

Anders was the only one being admitted to the lodge that evening. Quite a number of brothers had come along to attend the ceremony. They greeted each other in accordance with the rituals they had all had to learn. Some wore rings to indicate which degree they belonged to, while others wore chains
and crosses round their necks.

He was taken into a big room and the ceremony began. First, the Master of Ceremonies turned to Anders’s two sponsors:
My brethren. On behalf of the lodge I am to convey to you its thanks for bringing this stranger to us, and accompanying him to the door of the lodge.

Anders had to sign a document stating that he professed himself to the Christian faith and would
never reveal the secrets of Freemasonry. Then he had a strip of cloth wound round his head. Now blindfolded, he had to repeat after the Master of Ceremonies:

Should I act against this my given Promise

I agree that my head be struck from my shoulders.

My heart expelled, my Tongue and Intestines torn out,

and all be thrown into the Depths of the Sea,

that my Body be burnt,

and its ashes scattered to the Air.

He was led round the room until he lost his sense of direction, then along corridors and down some steps. A door was opened and he was asked to sit down. The blindfold was removed, and he found himself alone in a tiny room that was painted black. In front of him was a table with a skull and crossbones on it. He was left there alone until someone came in and asked him several questions.
Then he was blindfolded again and taken back to the big room, where he went through the rest of the initiation rituals.

He was a Brother of the First Degree.

Inside, but on the bottom rung.

All he wanted was to go home.

By the time he was dropped off at Hoffsveien, he was too late to join the raid. But there was still time to log on.

His mother’s cousin had told him that the Pillars met every
Wednesday and he would be happy to give him a lift. A sponsor had to make sure that the new member he had invited in attended meetings and study groups and took on guard duties.

Anders nodded. But he only attended one ordinary meeting in the course of the spring, and there he did nothing but crow. After the meeting, he remarked on a newcomer’s behaviour and how poorly the initiate fitted in.
And it had all been going so slowly, he moaned.

Jan Behring eventually stopped ringing Anders, even though Wenche asked him to persevere.

‘He never goes out, just sits in his room on that internet thing,’ she complained.

*   *   *

The goal for the spring was to be the top guild on the server, to lead the guild that succeeded in killing every monster the game could generate.

The guild members
were located all over Europe and they played in English. As guild leader, Anders had a lot of responsibility. He had to make sure the players had the equipment they needed: provisions, swords, axes and shields. He had to make tactical choices and come up with battle strategies, but he also had to listen and be responsive to the other players’ ideas.

In the course of that spring,
Andersnordic
grew less tolerant. He didn’t care if he hurt people’s feelings. When the game did not go his way, he was churlish. He would push, harry and nag.

This occasionally led to open dissent. One player thought he was taking the law into his own hands, calling him a bully and a control freak. Anders removed the player from the forum.

Some left of their own accord because he was too hardcore. He couldn’t
bear slackers, he said, and had no scruples about ejecting players if he didn’t like them or thought they didn’t work within the team. A player who dropped in on a Friday night with a glass of wine beside the keyboard and accidentally went down the wrong hill was not anyone he would want to take along on a raid.

Andersnordic
preferred to throw people out late at night when the others were offline
and could not protest. When the outcast logged back in, access to
Virtue
would be denied. Sometimes the other players would speak up for those who had been ousted, but the guild leader was implacable: this was serious, you couldn’t just drop in for fun now and then. Players who had been involved since way before
Andersnordic
first logged in suddenly found themselves abandoned.

Slackers were generally
people who had a life outside the game. A life that sometimes imposed its own demands, even obliging them to log out for long periods. The norm was to play for a few hours in the evening, after work. Most people couldn’t sit up all night. As for Anders, he was living on his savings and his mother’s food.

*   *   *

World of Warcraft
is one of the most addictive games ever created, precisely because
it is constructed on social lines. Players develop bonds with each other through their avatars, and the sense of solidarity can be strong. Every minute you spend away from the game means setting the others back slightly.

It allows you to enter a system that seems easy to grasp. If you can think strategically, success is achieved. You can measure your achievement in the minutest detail. Your goals
are concrete. You get a virtual pat on the shoulder every time you log in, and your status is gradually enhanced as a result of time spent there. Everyone can succeed. Such is the online world.

Anders, who had wanted to be part of the power elite, was now one of the soldiers of
World of Warcraft
. From having been excited by the Freemasons’ stately props, he was now fascinated by computer-generated
suits of armour. From having been obsessed with making money, he was now a collector of
WoW
gold. From having been concerned with his appearance, he now lurked in his room, grubby and unkempt.

Anders, once so keen to build networks, no longer needed anybody but himself.

*   *   *

Then he was struck by hubris. Again. He changed server. To fight with the best.

He joined the guild known as
Unit
on the
Silvermoon
server. His guild was made up of newcomers, but on the official forums
Andersnordic
boasted that his crew would take over the server. They were simply the best.

‘Who’s that megalomaniac?’ the Swedish player
Braxynglet
, ranked second on the server, asked his online peers.

At
Silvermoon
, Anders was a misfit from the start. They made fun of his style. They made fun of his name.
It was odd that he used his real name – Anders – and that he hinted at his background – nordic. It was against the norm. They laughed at him, both behind his back and directly at him. He never seemed to catch it. He always responded nicely and in a friendly way, whatever they wrote.