by Mark Doten
The transpacific cable from San Francisco to Manila is completed on July 4, 1903. From his home near Oyster Bay on Long Island, President Theodore Roosevelt initiates a telegram to Governor Taft in Manila at 10:50 p.m. EST.
Governor Taft’s reply is received by Roosevelt at 11:19 p.m.
At 11:23 p.m., Roosevelt initiates the world’s first around-the-world telegram. The message leaves Oyster Bay and goes from New York to San Francisco, and on to Honolulu, Midway, Guam, Manila, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Penang, Madras, Bombay, Aden, Suez, Alexandria, Malta, Gibraltar, Lisbon, the Azores, and back to Oyster Bay, where it is read by Clarence Mackay, head of the Commercial Pacific Cable Company, at 11:35.
Clarence Mackay’s reply makes the same stops in the opposite direction, going eastward across the Atlantic and Europe and on to Asia. It beats Roosevelt’s, taking nine and a half minutes to make the trip, to Roosevelt’s twelve.
As the message circles the globe it is passing not only through space but through time: night and day shimmer and lost some part of their hold on the world. Information has made an excursion from today into yesterday and arrived back at New York within an hour of the time it started.
Newspapers take pains to explain this—the strange new quality of time—but their explanations are not quite up to the task.
We have connected the world, and in so doing, time has been broken, somehow.
On November 22, 1977, a delivery van sent packets that went from San Francisco to Menlo Park to Boston, then Norway and then London, into space, and then to West Virginia and back to California. Three separate networks—wireless packet radio, a satellite hookup bridging the Atlantic, and the ARPANET, all bridged with TCP/IP. And the internet, the network of networks, is born.
All those smart men working on something, knowing not to what end. They had their tasks, connect this to that. Connect all you can, multiply the connections, increase the bandwidth, if you build it they will come. Licklider and Baran and Kahn and Cerf. Andreessen and Wales and dear Jon Postel. They made it. All of them together, somehow. They made it, and we did, we all did, to the end of the world.
Then one day her eyes went wide and she made little gasping squeaks. It sounded like a mouse was caught in her throat. Squeak squeak squeak. Galloway pressed the button to call for the nurse. She drew in quick panicked breaths. Her eyes locked on him, and she said a word he could barely understand.
She said it again: Resist!
He could not fully credit his impression, but he thought that her lips curled into a palsied sneer, and that the word, even in her semiconscious state, was thick with irony and venom.
And she vomited a thin liquid, and choked and squeaked.
Her eyes locked on his, and for a second or two, before the next choking fit, she watched with an enraged and bitter irony, eyes like talons.
For the next days, Galloway is kept in his room. The general has forgotten him, it seems, then at last Galloway is brought back to his office.
She’s doing better, the general says, but still faces a considerable amount of rehab.
The general says, The thing is, Tom, it’s been decided that we should keep you two apart—keep the information streams separate, you know. Her memories are very fragile, and we don’t want her access to those memories to be contaminated. She was told the password—or at least she says she was—but she can’t remember it, and says the recorders didn’t pick it up. So we’re having her write up almost everything in the hope that that will bring the password to the surface.
So what do I do? Just wait here and do nothing?
No, I’m afraid that won’t work. You understand there’s a security issue—not that we worry about you, but it’s a policy, we just can’t have a civilian wandering around a military base. And I’m afraid that the powers that be, with what you know about so many things, they don’t want you mixing back into a civilian group either. Which is just as well. Things are getting dicey, and we don’t want anything to happen to you. So, I’m quite embarrassed to say this, but, ah, until we get this Rachel business squared away, we’re going to have to confine you. Basically, put you in prison. In solitary. I’m afraid you’ll have to have a bit of a sense of humor. Listen, this is temporary.
What about the story you were pitching me, Galloway says coldly—foreign powers, but also the traitor within?
Tom, I am still in love with that idea, and I think that it still could happen, but I have to tell you, there have been some shifts. Some destabilizations, it feels like the magazine needs to be pushed back a bit. It’s hard to get the messaging figured out when things outside are so … in flux. I think what we do is hold on to the stories we’ve locked in, the evergreen ones, and pretty soon we’ll figure out the Birdcrash thing and if and how we tell it. And whenever we do, I would love for you to be a part of it.
His time in solitary in a gray prison uniform was a maddening blur. He was there, he was distressed, he wished he’d killed himself while he could have.
He thought obsessively about The Subversive, whole pages appeared before his eyes in the dark.
On 1/28, the first commercial telephone exchange is established in New Haven, Connecticut, and a locomotive passing through Panamanian jungle links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
On 1/28, a fifteen-inch snowflake falls on Fort Keogh, Montana.
On 1/28, Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor, curses the known and unknown worlds he’s left unconquered, and his dumb ass croaks and becomes a ghost.
On 1/28, Canuplin is born.
On 1/28, Jon Postel will reset the system.
One day the general came to visit.
Tom, listen, you’ll be out of here soon. Rachel is up, and she’s been writing, writing, writing! We’ve made a little deal with her. She’s writing a full report on everything—everything pertaining to Birdcrash and Sebastian de Rosales but she says she’s withholding the last piece of information until we actually take her to Prospect Park. Birdcrash’s password for the last Pastebin post. And we thought that if you were there it might be a bit of extra inducement. I have to say, I don’t 100 percent trust that she knows this password, and I don’t trust that even if she does, she’ll give it to us.
I trust Rachel. I don’t think you need to involve me. My sense is, she just really, really wants to get to Prospect Park. Then she’ll tell you anything you need to know.
That’s good of you to say, Tom. But we can’t escape the feeling that we don’t know that we’ll know everything we need to know. We are under great pressure to present as full a report as possible. Birdcrash is dead by Rachel’s hand. Poor Sebastian is dead—just after her visit. Not her fault, but still, you see what I’m saying. The optics. But you are a resource. Rachel is a resource.
I just want to get back to my work. Whatever you need to clear things and satisfy any doubts so that I can get back to that.
Tom, I believe you, the general said. There are others who may feel differently, but I do believe you. I think you’re a team player. As a journalist you’re independent, but on the team. Let us be clear. Rachel may have information of extreme importance. She’s had holes drilled into her head. She’s had acid poured into the holes. There’s a lot of trauma. It’s lucky for her, in a sense, because thirty-seven soldiers died in there, saving her. The powers that be don’t like that kind of loss. They want to blame someone. And Rachel was under suspicion. So I think you and I are on the same page. You’re our Rachel-whisperer. Do this, and I’ll get you set back up with your magazine. And all this will be behind you.
Their lights were crashing through so much snow coming down. Headlights. Galloway wondered if they were called headlights on a helicopter. The pilot and a soldier sat up front, and back here, facing Rachel and Galloway, there was the general, expression blank, and a soldier beside him with a rifle in his lap. Rachel breathed heaving little breaths, bent over her knees, little shocks of breath cascading through her, and the vibrations of the helicopter, the lights slic
ing through the snowfall in the dark, picking out a chaos of snowflakes outside.
The general raised his voice over the din of the helicopter, Rachel, the way that this will work is that we will put the helicopter down near the gravesite. You will give us the password, and then you will be permitted to leave the helicopter and spend five minutes out there. We believe that the area is clear from enemies, but it won’t be for long.
Galloway says, Rachel.
He thinks: If she is dead, then I am too. He watches her breathe, doubled over and the two men with rifles and the helicopter passing over land. They brought her back from a coma, and what was the point? To visit a grave? They should have left her in it, they should have let her die, it was all empty and terrible and too much work.
They are over Prospect Park, the copter is setting down in the thick snow.
This is it, the soldier says.
He remembers Jack. He remembers Jack for himself: he will not share it with Rachel, no matter what. He can keep it alive if he keeps it just for himself: that boat, the smile, the beach towel, opening up the motor in the bay as that Mariah Carey song blasted on Christmas morning, the way the wheel felt, the spray in their faces, and the smile, Jack standing beside him, cold and leaning in and pulling the beach towel around himself, pulling away from Galloway and opening the huge pink and white beach towel and wrapping them both up.
Rachel says to Galloway, Do you think this is the place?
She has to shout. The snow is coming down heavily, and the helicopter is idling.
Open the door, Rachel says.
The general nods.
Galloway looks out. A great field in Prospect Park, fires somewhere off in the distance lending a glow to the field and the ruins of Prospect Park West, the ruined mansions and apartments of Prospect Park like jagged teeth in the distance. He looks around, and even though he can’t see much, and she’s not looking at him, he finds himself glancing at the white and the glow and the cutting lights of the helicopter in a few directions, quickly, appraising. Yes, I think it is. I think this is the place.
The general repeats himself: Now for that password.
Rachel says, Our deal is, I get out, pay my respects, then the password.
The general says, I hope I’m not being made a fool of, Rachel! Then he turns to Galloway. He says, Go with her.
Galloway is trying to feel out the moment. He sees nothing in the general’s eyes, nothing he can hold on to.
Rachel steps out. She tells Galloway to stay in the helicopter, but the general is waving him out and smiling.
So he goes out after her, she is walking ahead into the snow.
Two soldiers step out behind them. Not too far, one shouts.
And Galloway is thinking, Do we stay with them, or do we run? What is the big picture here? Do we get killed no matter what we do?
Galloway doesn’t think Rachel has any password. He wants to ask her, but also, he doesn’t.
If this is a question of life and death, Galloway thinks, how ridiculous am I allowed to make myself look? How much a coward?
This, here, she says. They’re buried here somewhere.
Yes, Galloway says.
The snow is cutting down in sheets that shock up solid and swirl away like nothing—but then a bulk of snow again, a whole wagon of it, so the helicopter is mostly gone beyond the white.
Uncle, we shall rest.
And he doesn’t know if he’s going with her, or letting her go. He waits to see what she’ll do.
She takes his hand and says, Do you remember this meme, it was a dog, it would say so scare …
It’s a Shiba Inu, she says, I don’t know how to pronounce it—it’s doge, and she says it first as dog, then with a long o, then a long o and soft g, then a long o and French soft g.
And she laughs, but she doesn’t move, she doesn’t let go of his hand, her hand sits there in his own hand, clutching, disconnected from the laughter.
And he wants to tell her something, but he can’t think of what it is.
This world was beautiful, she says. Good but … it was really dumb.
The snow is striking her face. He feels the snow cutting against his eyes, the sharp wind hitting where the snowflakes melt on his face, and a shiver that grips his whole torso and squeezes.
She says, I think I was supposed to do something else. I think we were. I shouldn’t have brought us here.
He wants to say, Rachel, why don’t you just run, it’s okay with me, you should just go ahead and run.
She smiles at him—is it a smile? His eyes are stung and the snow is turning between them, and there’s something in her eyes and mouth that he admires, and he would like to match—something that seems to resist, and what has he done, Galloway, except yield? And he tries to match her smile—he can’t quite see it in the snow, but he thinks it’s an ambiguous smile, a model’s smile, and the turning of the snow over it is a part of the effect, and he tries to match it and think of what to say, something with some wit, about how she’s getting them killed, some little stinger that is warm and witty and sums it up, puts a button on it, something about fate and the password and all the swirling white, but a wind is clutching his voice. The shiver hits his torso again, and he feels he’s about to double over with it, lose his footing, when a voice tears out through his throat and says, Run!
Then he’s holding her hand—he’s flung their hands out in front of them—and he’s waiting for what the soldiers will do in the snow—the noise of guns if there are going to be guns, and how it would feel, to die that way.
But there’s nothing, not yet. He’s waiting—they both are, in that instant—hand in hand—and he’s shouting it again, Run! and the word is tearing through him, it’s being torn out of his body like it’s everything inside of him, all the parts, all coming out at once, and finally it’s really true, he’s running—they both are—into the white.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Fiona McCrae and Steve Woodward for their extraordinary and transformative editorial work; to Paul Nadal for his love and support and for his many insights into the history and literature of the Philippines; to Bill Clegg and Marion Duvert for finding beautiful homes for Trump Sky Alpha; and to Kimberly King Parsons and Binnie Kirshenbaum for their early reads. I owe a great debt to my brother, Chris Doten, for his many hours of consultation and brainstorming on online security issues, and I am likewise grateful to Josh Archambault for his ideas and expertise. Thanks to the entire Graywolf team, including Marisa Atkinson, Katie Dublinski, Casey O’Neil, Ethan Nosowsky, Caroline Nitz, Yana Makuwa, and Karen Gu. Thanks to Ben Marcus, Sam Lipsyte, Dennis Cooper, Stephanie Burt, Rivka Galchen, and Virginia Seewaldt; and to my parents and sister.
Alexander R. Galloway’s Protocol helped set me on the path of Trump Sky Alpha. Other important books include Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate; Under Three Flags by Benedict Anderson; Tubes by Andrew Blum; Who Controls the Internet? by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu; The Geopolitical Aesthetic by Fredric Jameson; Ruling the Root by Milton Mueller; Kill All Normies by Angela Nagle; Protocol Politics and The Global War for Internet Governance by Laura DeNardis; and From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner.
“Town” by Oklahoma Scramble appeared on the Birdcrash compilation cassette (K Records, 1988). Oklahoma Scramble were Jennifer Seymore (Jenny Montgomery), Argon Steel, and Marianne Kawaguchi; all lyrics by Jennifer Seymore (Jenny Montgomery).
The screenplay to Vanya on 42nd Street was written by Andre Gregory, based on Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, adapted by David Mamet.
Mark Doten is the author of the novel The Infernal. In 2017 he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. He wrote the libretto for the oratorio The Source, which had its world premiere at BAM’s Next Wave Festival in October 2014 and was called a “21st-century masterpiece” by the New York Times. He is the literary fiction editor at Soho Press and teaches at Princeton University and Columbia University. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
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The text of Trump Sky Alpha is set in Chaparral Pro. Book design by Ann Sudmeier. Composition by Bookmobile Design and Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.
