Love,
Margo
Letter to Margo from Parker
Dear Margo,
I keep thinking about the weeks we played house. Me going off to work, you turning my little apartment into a home while I was away. It was the happiest I’ve been in a long time, but I have to confess, I totally fucked up all your Feng Shui in these last few weeks. I pulled the mattress off the bed and dragged it into the living room. It looks terrible, but it helps me not miss you. When I slept in the bedroom, all I could see was you not being there.
During those first sleepless nights I missed the Net like I haven’t for months, because I hoped it could bridge the distance. I could Skype you and watch you sleep, or you could watch over me as I slept. But even if the Net were back, it wouldn’t work. Not with the time difference. I’m up when you’re down. I’m at work while you’re sleeping, and I don’t know what to do because I’m not so sure I can live without you as easily as shaving cream or various beverages. (I know, the sweetest, right?)
Did I ever tell you that I think of you as an older woman? I mean older than I am. But before you get annoyed, you should know that in my mind, I’m still about twenty-five so you’re still your age. Anyway, I don’t know what it is, but you look like my childhood memories of grown women. The ladies in magazine ads or the cover of board games. I’d stare at those women and wonder who they were. The words they’d say if they were real and could speak. And now I think I know. You are my child’s conception of a grown-up dynamite lady.
And this is all my way of saying, I know it’s a big trip, but can I see you again? Can you come back before I destroy this apartment further? I don’t want to end up sleeping in the tub.
I miss you.
Love,
Parker
Letter to Parker from Margo
Dear Parker,
Playing house was so much fun. And I realize now I didn’t say something I should have before. I know you’re not at your best now, but you are stronger than you know.
That’s all for now, Parker, because I’m on my way to the airport.
Love,
Margo
P.S. I’m on my way to see some dumb boy in Australia.
Report 3
After that first meeting with Margo, something changed. She wasn’t like Oz. Back in Australia, it made no difference that I didn’t have a badge. Oz crumbled under questioning like any frightened civilian, but Margo kept her fear double-wrapped and out of view. That was fine. I didn’t want her to be afraid, but I wasn’t prepared for how she looked at me. I thought she saw a man without a job. I felt ashamed and out of place, and when I returned to my case file it no longer seemed like a collection of reports. Just a pathetic way to pretend I still had a foot in my old life. But in time, I saw things more clearly. In the shadows of the Formosa Cafe, Margo’s eyes seemed brown at first glance, but flecks of green emerged if you looked closer. After a few days, I realized the shame I saw was only my reflection. If I stared through that sheen there was a trace of curiosity. And why not? She was seeing something uncommon. A free man.
These reports were not just an excuse but part of a story I wanted to tell. Sure, twenty years in the FBI had trained the way I write and think, but this wasn’t just business or pretend business. I had to admit I wanted this to be read, and in that way I was far worse than Gladstone. He just recorded his journal full of fractured thoughts in real time and let it reach the world by accident when his gossip-blogging cohort Brendan Tobey spread photocopies without his involvement. But I wanted to be heard. So Gladstone held the status of noble poet fuck-up and I was just an asshole trying too hard.
But once I admitted what I was doing, I started revising the reports. Moved things around a bit to help me tell the story. I need the help. I’m not like Gladstone. All my life I’ve stared at the finish line, and let the running take care of itself. Others wallowed in the moment, but maybe in that wallowing they noticed things I had not.
* * *
When you have no new leads, you go back to the old ones and turn them over to see if anything’s grown during your time away. That’s why I went back to Professor Kevin Leonards. I’d met him briefly in my final days wearing the badge, based on information I got from Tobey, who was behind bars with a psychic named Jeeves. They were awaiting trial for allegedly helping Gladstone blow up the Hollywood sign. I didn’t believe that charge any more than I believed Gladstone had shot his ex, but while I had Tobey in custody, I tried to get some information. But for a slacker stoner, he had a pretty impressive resolve, keeping his answers terse while living inside a quiet calm He hadn’t broken yet, and it wasn’t my place to break him. Not just because I thought he was innocent but because I was on a different case. I knew the men who had jailed him would soon be coming for me. They’d be coming for anyone who asked too many questions or knew too much. Anyone who’d spent too much time with Gladstone. The best thing I could do for Tobey was to find them first. But every question I asked, he twisted into something sexual and stupid. It’s not worth repeating what he said after I made the mistake of saying I wasn’t going to be too hard on him. You get the idea.
So aside from taking some potshots at Gladstone, whom he still blamed for his predicament, all he told me was that they’d gone to visit Professor Leonards of UCLA shortly before things got messy. Some called Leonards the father of the Internet, but every successful child has more than one father. I went to him, but I was still a member of the bureau at the time, still a reminder of the NET Recovery Act, and he’d disliked me instantly.
“Oh, Special Agent Rowsdower,” he said, repeating my title with more disdain than I thought justified. “Are you here to detain me indefinitely under your NET Recovery Act?” he asked, and offered his wrists right there in the doorway of his home on Thayer Avenue. Ordinarily, I would have said something like “I hope that won’t be necessary,” but there was nothing to be gained from that here. Bullying would only push him further into the position of dissident activist, and I could tell it was a role he’d enjoy too much. “I’m not here in my official capacity, sir,” I said. “I don’t have a warrant or anything.”
“Warrant?” He laughed. “You know as well as I do that your NET Recovery Act requires no warrant for persons of interest, isn’t that right, Special Agent Rowsdower?”
I had insisted that Gladstone address me by my full title, but on Leonard’s lips the words felt degrading. “I wish everyone would stop calling it my NET Recovery Act,” I said. “It’s not mine.”
“Just following orders, huh?”
He’d gone too far. I wasn’t a scholar of Internet culture, but even I knew once you brought up Nazis, you’d lost. “Professor, I have no desire to threaten you, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stop trying to goad me into doing so. I’m here because of Gladstone. May I come in?”
“Wait a second,” he said, remembering something. “Rowsdower. Aren’t you the guy from Gladstone’s journal?”
“Goddammit,” I said. “Is there anyone in this city who hasn’t read that piece-of-crap diary?”
“He was kind of rough on you,” Leonards said. “Your teeth look normal to me.”
“I know, right? And a yellow laminated skull? What’d I do to him?”
“You mean besides hold him for questioning with zero Constitutional mandate?”
“Well, yeah.”
I laughed at myself, and that bought me some credit with Leonards. He took a step back to size me up again. Much of the contempt had waned, but not nearly enough trust or interest had taken its place.
“I’m sorry, but it seems being old has made me brave. If you want in, you’re gonna have to be the bad guy you insist you’re not,” he said, and closed the door.
Based on that encounter, there was little reason to believe he’d be happier to see me several months later, but I had something else going for me now. I was unemployed, and that was a good thing, because in my time away it seemed he’d become even further entrenched. He now had a
placard on his front lawn of Gladstone’s Wi-Fi symbol, along with the message I’d seen before: THE INTERNET IS PEOPLE. AND WE’RE STILL HERE. It seemed the bombings couldn’t damage this message that was too incongruous to the violence.
He came to the door with even more confidence and composure than he had in the months before.
“Special Agent Rowsdower,” he said. “What brings you here this fine June morning?” I began to speak, but he interrupted me. “You got a new hat?” he asked. “Or actually a much older one?”
“You’re very observant. It’s Gladstone’s.”
“Why are you wearing his hat?”
“I’d like to talk to you about that,” I said.
“So you’re ready to be that bad man and take me in?” he asked. “I mean, I have that Messiah Movement placard on my lawn. Isn’t that enough for the NSA these days?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir. It seems neither the NSA nor the FBI need my services any longer. I’m not here in any official capacity.”
Leonards tried to see me differently and failed. “Are you sure?”
“Want me to show you the badge I don’t have as evidence?” I asked, and he laughed.
“You can take the boy out of the bureau, I guess…” he said, and stood back from the doorway as he had before, but this time he stepped to the side and offered his home, which was both beautiful and modest. We stood in his living room, and he looked around, hesitating before offering me a seat.
“Y’know what?” he said. “Let’s go out to the yard.” He gestured through a sliding glass door to an expansive wooden deck that had a palm tree growing right through the middle of it. A bench had been built around the tree, creating a lovely place to sit, but part of me felt I still wasn’t something the professor wanted in his home.
He must have come in from the deck to answer the door because there was an old TV still playing, and he went to shut it off before I asked him not to. It was a story about Hamilton Burke.
“Oh, you didn’t hear the news?” he asked.
“No.”
“He’s running for president. They’re replaying his announcement.”
I watched the crackle and fuzz from Leonards’s old TV with its seemingly tech-boosted antennae fully extended and pointed at some local news station. Burke was at Federal Hall in downtown New York, beside Washington’s statue, where the very first oath of office was taken—just two blocks from his namesake Alexander Hamilton’s grave at Trinity Church, and across the street from the shrapnel that can still be seen in the granite of JP Morgan. Burke was right in the heart of where Gladstone claimed to have met him a year earlier.
“America,” he said, “has been very good to me. When I was a young man, America made a promise of great success in exchange for hard work. And let me tell you, I worked very, very hard in the service of that promise. And America did not disappoint. I’ve received very much for very long, and I deserve everything I’ve ever earned. I kept my side of the bargain and America kept hers. But those days are over. Today, for far too many hardworking families, America still asks for your labor, your industry, your entrepreneurship, but no longer rewards you with the kind of success I’ve had. Today, the reward for running full-speed is standing still. Just getting by.
“Now, I’m a businessman. I know you can’t get the best out of your people if they’re only willing to work hard enough to keep from getting fired. No great company has ever been built on that model, and no nation can remain great with that kind of thinking. We need to restore the promise of America to its people, and that’s why today I’m announcing my candidacy for president!”
The crowd erupted into applause, and Burke undid the button on his coal-gray suit, as if the paunch that made his crimson tie curve could receive and repurpose the crowd’s energy. “Now, you’re going to hear some people say, ‘Oh, Hamilton Burke, he’s a businessman, what does he know about running this country?’ First off, do you know who’s going to say that? Politicians. Is that what this country needs more of? I might just be a businessman, but in my world of business you need to show results or get out. So no, I will not be sold short by any man or woman in politician’s clothing. And I will never hide from what I am: a man who went into banking, into investments, into real estate, into entertainment, and into technology and figured out how to make things work and how to make money. And that is exactly what America needs now!”
Again, Burke was interrupted by the crowd’s enthusiastic ferocity. But there was diversity in the din of approval. There was hope and anger and aggression. All the battling aspirations of the audience were colliding into applause.
“And lastly, let me say that under a Burke White House, not only will this country work, not only will its people work, but the Internet will work!”
Suddenly a different energy erupted. A younger, more fiery passion that rang with glee and longing.
“I condemn the disgraceful, mindless bombing campaigns of Gladstone, the so-called Internet Messiah, but I understand his appeal. The people deserve the Internet. We will get it working—not to appease the terrorist tactics of a madman and his misguided followers but because you, the American people, deserve it.”
For the first time, Hamilton lost the crowd. He noticed. While Gladstone’s book continued to grow in popularity, and the symbol of his movement had appeared near bombings, the government had not yet made that express association, and no one had taken credit for the attacks.
“So help me, my friends. Help me return the promise of America for all who deserve it. An America where everyone and everything works! Thank you!”
The crowd returned with all their prior enthusiasm, and the old Carly Simon hit from the ’80s, “Let the River Run,” blasted out of unseen speakers. Burke left in triumph, disappearing into Federal Hall near a banner emblazoned with his name and THE WORKING PARTY as Carly sang of dreamers waking the nation and the rising silver cities of a new Jerusalem.
“Well, fuck,” I said.
“First independent candidate I can see winning,” Leonards said. I sat down on his palm-tree-surrounding bench, and he sat opposite me in a folding garden chair. “So. What can I tell you about the Internet?” he asked.
“Actually, that’s not why I came here,” I said, and Leonards laughed again.
“Of course not!” He took out a little barrel-shaped root-beer hard candy. “Why would anyone want to talk with me about the Internet during an Internet Apocalypse? I only helped invent the thing!”
“Gladstone didn’t ask you about the loss either?” I asked, trying to shift the subject back to my target.
“No, he didn’t, but that’s not my point,” he said. “No one in the government has come to talk to me about the loss. Don’t you find that odd?”
I considered his point.
“You think I’m being arrogant,” he continued. “I mean, sure there are other people to speak with, but not even a consult during a crisis? During Y2K, they flew me to Washington for a briefing.”
Seemed the government had no use for either of us, and even though it wasn’t my immediate mission statement I decided to explore that. “What would it take for the government to be behind this Apocalypse?”
My stock instantly plummeted in the professor’s eyes. I hadn’t educated myself about the Internet as I should have, choosing instead to chase and interrogate more knowledgeable men for their alleged misdeeds.
“The government already controls all the hubs,” Leonards said with some level of distaste. Fortunately his trust in me seemed to grow as his respect diminished. As a man of science he probably believed stupid people weren’t a threat.
“I’m sorry, professor,” I said. “This isn’t my background. I won’t pretend to know what I don’t.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Agent Rowsdower. That’s just about the smartest thing anyone can say.”
He offered me a root-beer candy that I declined and then explained the basic plumbing of the Internet. And in many ways it was l
ike plumbing. The Net was just a bunch of global villages tied together at shockingly few points across the world. There was cable under the ocean, literally tying the world together in a very real way rather than some nebulous cloud abstraction. After the Apocalypse happened, the government had taken over the connections, or hubs, in America and restored the Net for a couple of days before going dark again. So yes, my question was naïve. Once the government controlled all those connectors like giant power strips, it was easier to comprehend turning the thing off and on.
“OK,” I said. “The government has the means.”
“And the opportunity,” Leonards continued. “But let’s not talk about it like a crime, because it’s all perfectly legal. Legal since before the Internet even existed.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning the Communications Act of 1934 empowers the president to direct communication as he deems essential to national defense,” Leonards said. “Right?”
“The gig didn’t come with a history primer,” I said with too much conviction. “I was a New York fed before being tapped for the NSA, but I saw nothing about the government moving by some legislative decree in the news.”
“It’s not good copy,” Leonards said. “And besides, where would you see it? Daily Kos was down with the Net. But I imagine if you went looking, you’d see the administration moved with some conjunction of that law and the Telecommunications Act of ’96. That’s the one that lets the White House coordinate the activities of its partners in the private sector to eliminate vulnerabilities to cyberattack.”
“‘Partners’?” I asked.
“Sure, the Internet has always been partnered between government and the private sector. I told that to Gladstone too, although he didn’t seem to care either. It’s more than just Gore’s bill getting businessmen to lay cable. The private sector even controls, or I should say controlled, certain maintenance and security functions.”
Years of teaching had served Leonards well. He knew when a student wasn’t getting it. “ICANN?” he asked, but rather than triggering an understanding, it was just one more thing I didn’t know.
Reports on the Internet Apocalypse Page 3
