He’d already lined the arrow up on the Windows Media Player PLAY key. I begrudgingly tapped the touchpad.
Within a moment, the video for Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” blared out from his computer’s shitty little speakers, still audible over his forced laughter.
“You like Rick Astley?” he asked. “Super gay.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m super gay for Rick Astley. So gay that I ripped his video to a laptop before the Apocalypse even happened. So I could own it. Oh wait, this is your laptop.”
He stopped laughing long enough to say, “Shut up, fag. You’re the one who pushed play!”
“Guilty. You totally got me,” I said. “And now that I’m so pwn’d, could you do me a favor? Could you tell me where to find Quiffmonster42?”
“What makes you think Quiffmonster42 will see you?”
“We had a chat a month ago. I’m Gladstone. I’m looking for the Internet.”
His face lit up. “Oh, I remember you! I’m Sergeant Turd!” he said. “I stole your jacket and hat.”
He stretched out his hand for a shake without a trace of embarrassment. Unfortunately, the death of the Internet had not given rise to the concept of shame.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “So any idea where I might find him?”
“Sorry, Gladstone. He hasn’t been here for weeks. Or any of the bigwigs. We think the Feds picked them up.”
“Wait, seriously? How do you know?”
“Know? I don’t know. Just what I heard. What proof were you looking for? A Wikipedia page?”
Just then, black-suited troops crashed through the doors with weapons drawn.
“Everybody listen up!” the lead soldier screamed. “I want all former members of the 4Chan /b/forums on the floor!”
A few guys hit the decks, but one guy with an Elvis half mask raised his hand. “I’ve visited 4Chan, but I never went in the /b/boards. Can I leave?”
“Shut up,” one of the Guy Fawkes guys screamed from the back. “Rule number one: don’t mention the /b/boards!”
“That’s just during raids, newfag,” another Guy Fawkes guy corrected.
“This is a fucking raid, you idiot,” came the reply just before the two descended on each other in an absurd slap fight that sent tables and chairs flying—mostly by the crowd that gathered to root and cheer.
In the confusion, I ran for the back room Quiff had shown me last time. I didn’t turn to see if anyone noticed, but I could hear the sounds of marching boots and strict military orders: “on the floor,” “no one move,” “hold still, /b/tards!” Even in my fear, I had to smile when someone taunted, “You mad, bro?”
I made it to the back room. The same shitty couch and closet I’d remembered from before, but the room was empty. No 4Chan royalty. No assistance to be found. And the soldiers were still coming.
The closet opened, revealing that same middle-aged fat man in a Nixon mask from the time before. Once again, naked, but this time not covered in hentai porn and ejaculate.
“Gladstone, get in here,” he said.
“Um, Glendoria was it?”
“Glendoria4, yeah. They’re coming. Get in. I can hide you.”
“Um…”
“Trust me, Gladstone. Getting felt up by a perv is the least of your worries now.”
It wasn’t that I trusted Glendoria4, but I had nowhere else to go. The boots were only getting louder. I got in the closet.
“Listen, Gladstone. Before they took Quiff, he readied this closet. There’s a false wall that leads out to a crawl space. Follow the space until it drops down to the boiler room and then take the emergency exit out to the alley.”
I could hear the soldiers tearing up the place.
“Go now,” Glendoria4 said. “I’ll distract them.”
I worked my way to the back of the closet and felt for an edge. Glendoria4 was right. Half the back wall was just sliced drywall held in place with a duct tape seam. Not quite Batcave stuff, but, again, not sure what I was expecting.
“I saw him come in here,” one of the soldiers said.
I exited just as I heard someone say “check the closet,” and listened from the other side of the false wall as I smoothed another piece of duct tape from the other side. That’s when I heard the surprise and disgust that could have only been born by Glendoria4 doing his patented falling-out-of-the-closet-while-masturbating move. You really couldn’t ask for a better distraction. I made my way down the crawl space, down to the boiler room, and out the emergency exit, all like Glendoria4 had said. Somehow, I had escaped the soldiers even if I had nowhere else to go. Even if I was still completely offline and alone.
I headed to the hotel as slowly and secretly as I knew how. It was late and I was so tired. But still, from the alley across the street, I watched people go in and out of the hotel for over an hour. When even a hipster douchebag with a fedora didn’t get stopped, I was pretty confident there was no surveillance going on. I made my way inside and up to my room, but I listened at the door before entering. I wasn’t sure if Oz and Tobey were inside and, if they were, if they could be trusted. I couldn’t hear anything. I opened the door slowly to peek.
Oz was alone and upset. Her hand against the window, looking down at the street below. She looked up. Her ghostly reflection stared back at me from the glass. She’d been crying.
“You left me,” she said.
* * *
I remember coming home early one night to check on Romaya. It had been a few days since the third miscarriage and she still hadn’t gone back to her copywriting job. I wanted to tell her all the things she’d already heard, all the things I’d already told her. That we would have a child. That someday the setbacks would be far away. But even I felt something dark growing.
The first baby had been an accident and it left almost as quickly as it came. Had Romaya gone another week without pissing on that stick, she wouldn’t have even known she was pregnant. But these were different. We were married now. We were in love and a child seemed absolutely necessary. Not because it was expected or because we loved kids. It was more about how much we loved each other. She couldn’t let me sleep, and I’d follow her around everywhere when I was awake. That’s what the cool people who mock breeders don’t understand: that there can be a love bigger than two people. And it swells and spills when you’re together. We wanted a baby to share it because not having a child seemed wasteful.
But when a baby wouldn’t grow, it made us doubt everything. Our logic was a poor defense against the crazy without shape or order. So I came home, hoping to surprise Romaya with something to make her smile. I didn’t have much of a plan. I could hear Peter Gabriel’s “I Grieve” coming from the living room as I opened our apartment door, and I stared around the corridor to see her still in her white silk nightgown dancing in our living room. Swaying and spinning like a ballerina angel, the soft fabric of her gown flowing behind, following her motions. Quick and sudden. Erratic, if not so graceful. And though her body moved in long fluid glides, I was struck by her arms, which stayed folded at her chest. I expected exaggerated sweeps and points, but she held them tight.
And then I realized she was holding our baby. Our baby that was never born, but in the still of her arms, it could not have been more real, and she spun and spun and swayed and never let it go. And no matter how tightly she held her arms, the emptiness could not contain all the love that poured out from her.
* * *
I must have passed out before even arguing with Oz because I woke up a few hours later on the floor. Oz was no longer crying, and now Tobey was here too.
“I’m not your enemy,” she said. “You ass.”
“Me either, G-Balls. We’re just trying to figure this shit out, y’know?”
I sat up in bed, my head hurting in a way I wasn’t used to.
“I overreacted, maybe,” I said. “But still. Fuck you, y’know?”
Tobey spoke for both of them. “I get it,” he said. “And you’re rig
ht. Fuck the government. All governments. We’ll find it for us.”
I nodded my head because I was too tired to speak. Also because I knew this wasn’t right. It wasn’t real. Something had been broken, and it wouldn’t fully heal without a lot of work and time. Work I couldn’t do. Time I didn’t have.
“We can hit the streets first thing in the morning,” Tobey said.
“Yeah, well about that. It might be hard to do without interruption. Y’know, the Messiah business and all.”
“What’s the problem?” Tobey asked. “Jeeves has got the zombies uptown, the Christians are fractured, and no one knows what the Messiah looks like.”
“Well, in addition to your foreign government shenanigans, I may or may not have been shooting my mouth off tonight about being the Internet Messiah.”
“You didn’t,” Oz said.
“Yeah, I totally did. And then I went to 4Chan, and it coincidentally got raided, so y’know, tomorrow’s adventures in New York could be a bit dicey.”
Tobey stood. He had that look he got before thinking of a new humorous way to describe how much he wanted to fuck Demi Moore.
“Maybe we don’t need to be in New York. Why not try Staten Island!”
“Because we’re looking for the Internet, not Italians.”
Tobey frowned at my quip. I’d never seen him so serious. “Didn’t Quiffmonster42 say Anonymous believed the Internet signals might be coming from Staten Island?”
“Yeah, but if we leave New York, we won’t be able to get back,” I said.
“But the odds of continuing our search in New York without being spotted are getting slimmer anyway,” Tobey said. “Even if you’re not the Messiah, everyone’s acting like it. Might as well play the part. So whaddya think? Is the Internet in Staten Island?”
I didn’t know. I had no intuition. No divine voice leading me. I looked to Oz.
“I don’t care,” she said. “Just don’t ever leave me again. It took me so long to find you.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise.”
“Promise,” I said.
* * *
In the morning, we gathered everything we had, knowing we’d never be coming back. “Maybe we should ditch some of this stuff,” I said. “I kinda feel like all these supplies just bog us down.”
“We will do no such thing,” Tobey said. “We bought this stuff for a reason and we’re keeping it.”
I couldn’t imagine a scenario where we’d need our absurd Kmart camping supplies, but I deferred to the certainty of Tobey’s conviction.
“But, maybe you should lose the fedora,” he said. “I mean, you’re wearing it in that police sketch.”
“Yeah, but the sketch is shit, and also if I wear it I can pull it down to obscure the rest of my face anyway.”
“True,” Tobey said, “but if you take it off, you won’t look like a hipster douchebag.”
“I’m keeping the hat, Tobes.”
Tobey decided to cut his losses arguing with me and turned to the locked bathroom door. “Well, at least you’re working the rack today, right Oz?” he called.
Oz emerged from the bathroom in a t-shirt, jeans, and plain brown walking shoes.
“What the fuck is that? Are we going to Staten Island or an Ani DiFranco concert?”
“Sorry, Tobes,” she said, “but today’s about functionality. I’m not flashing tits on a ferry.”
We checked the news before leaving, just to see if there was any last minute information that could affect our journey. The now familiar buzz of NY1 would have been comforting, except it was pretty clear things had gotten worse—a live press conference from City Hall with all the trappings: a podium, suits, and flashing cameras. But most of all, Jeeves.
Apparently, he was now also a person of interest and helping the government in their search. He stood to the side of the podium, visibly uncomfortable by the company he was keeping and the ill-fitting suit he’d been persuaded to wear. It was a gray double-breasted affair, and with his face cleanly shaven and the remnants of his hair pulled tightly back, he looked like Kingpin’s weasely kid brother.
I didn’t hate him. I didn’t feel betrayed or lied to. I knew they had gotten to him. Maybe it was family or a loved one. I wasn’t sure, but I felt he’d succumbed to a threat and not a bribe, and I just hoped he was still on my side as much as he could be. My bigger concern was now at the podium. Agent Rowsdower was back, looking leaner than I’d remembered, his skin pulled taut like the yellowed plastic of a laminated skull.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he said, taking an extra moment to savor the room’s collective anticipation. “With the assistance of Mr. Dan B. McCall here, and based on information obtained from the government’s own investigations, we believe we have uncovered the identity of the so-called Internet Messiah.”
Everything in my body tightened and suddenly seemed to serve its biological purpose. I could feel the tendons in my arms holding muscle to bone. My veins were filled and flowing. Even the convolutions of my brain quivered like some twisted creature curled up for warmth.
“We believe the Internet Messiah is still in New York and goes by the name Gladstone. He has been declared a person of interest under the NET Recovery Act. The government seeks your assistance in locating him.”
I lifted my backpack and headed for the door. “We have to leave now. They’ll trace my credit card to the room if they haven’t already.”
“Easy,” Tobey said. “There’s no Internet. The hotel has to submit carbons to get paid.”
“No, wait.” Oz said. “There was still electronic credit card clearance before the Internet.”
“Was there?”
“Yeah. Remember in Say Anything? The dad’s credit card gets turned down at the luggage store. And that was like 1989.”
“Yeah, but how? Oh, wait, did it work through the phone lines?”
“I don’t care!” I screamed. “Staten Island Ferry. Now!”
No soldiers were waiting for us in the lobby, so we walked north looking for signs of trouble. By the time we got to the turnstiles at Fourteenth Street, we found it: troops spot-checking commuters.
“Quick, take off the fedora,” Tobey said.
“Fuck off, Tobey.”
“No, I mean, we’ll swap hats and I’ll wear your sports jacket.”
I stopped for a second and tried to consider the possibility of Tobey having a good idea. He did. And it had nothing to do with conning barely legal chicks into flashing their tits. I was impressed, and donned his baseball cap with a smile.
“Maybe I’ll even create a diversion. Make them think I’m you,” he said, slipping into my sports jacket and limping toward the entrance.
Oz laughed.
“What the hell is that? I don’t limp.”
“Shush. You’re interfering with my process.”
Oz scratched at the scruff under my chin the way Romaya used to. “It’s okay, Babe,” she said. “Let Tobey work his magic.”
Then she walked off behind him, still mustering a whole lot of sexuality out of a simple t-shirt and jeans. Two troops instantly asked Tobey to step to the side while a third turned his full supervisory prowess onto Oz’s ass. I headed through the turnstiles without a glance and watched them from the platform. One of the troops held the artist’s rendering of me next to Tobey and instantly saw that his gene pool was clearly restricted. My friends joined me just in time to catch the train to South Ferry.
South Ferry terminal sprawled out before us, all steel and glass against a clear June sky, and I realized this was the happiest I’d been since the Net died. Longer. The terminal’s big majestic letters were more suited to an amusement park ride than a mode of transportation, but that was just as well because the ferry was always the epitome of New York’s “no-money-fun.” When we were in college, Romaya and I rode the Ferry almost weekly, getting a mini-cruise with a view of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty all for the accommodating price of n
othing.
“I want to go inside,” she said.
“One day we will. When we have money and time.”
One day we did have those things, but it still didn’t happen. And then she was gone. And the statue closed. And now, in this Apocalypse, nothing goes to this tiny island.
We found our seats out on the deck beside a man buried in his New York Times. Oz closed her eyes to concentrate on the mist hitting her face, and I tried not to stare too hard or to let her see Romaya reflected in my eyes. Tobey seemed happy to have his baseball cap back, and the two of them flanked me on each side, protecting me from the world that wanted more than I could give. A twenty-four-year-old Aussie webcam girl, a twenty-nine-year-old pop-culture blogger, and a thirty-seven-year-old office cog on disability sitting in a row. It was one of those incongruous New York moments that made perfect sense, like seeing a dreadlocked dude in the subway playing the theme from The Godfather on a steel drum.
“Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Gladstone, but your government requires your assistance.”
It was Rowsdower, and his smile showed every one of his impossibly tiny teeth. He stood in front of me, perfectly still. The sky moved behind him.
Maybe it was because I was feeling closer to Romaya than I had in years. Or maybe it was because I had nowhere to run. But I suddenly felt a calm I’d never known, and I put it on like a cotton robe at the end of a long but now distant day. I wasn’t worried at all. Just disappointed that I wouldn’t have an unobstructed view of the Statue of Liberty.
“Rowsdower. Don’t you have something better to do than harassing civilians?” I asked.
“You’re coming with me, Gladstone,” he said, and pulled back his black sports jacket to reveal a badge and gun.
“Who is this dude, and why is he acting all butthurt?” Tobey asked.
“Ooh, don’t talk all 4Chan, Tobes,” I said. “You’re better than that.”
Oz wasn’t confused. “It’s the douchebag from the press conference.”
Tobey started unzipping his backpack, and Rowsdower unbuttoned the holster to his gun.
“Easy there, tiger. I’m just here for Gladstone. Government business. No one needs to get hurt.”
Notes From the Internet Apocalypse Page 14
