We sat in the rowboat at six a.m., probably the same boat he and my mother had argued in a decade earlier, but this time the only Styrofoam on the lake was sitting next to him, filled with mud and worms. He showed me how to tie a hook to my line with his thick fingers threading the loop almost like a magic trick, and I followed.
“Good,” he said, and pulled back the plastic from his bait. He was born and raised in the Bronx, not the bayou, so I can’t imagine he’d done this too many times before, but he found his worm without flinching, even when it curled around his finger. Even when he pierced it three separate times on his hook. And especially when whatever part of a worm that’s supposed to be on the inside leaked out.
“It doesn’t feel it,” he said. “You want me to do yours?” I knew it wasn’t a question.
“No. I’ll do it,” I said, and plucked a worm, thinking my father’s resolve must be living somewhere inside me too. I didn’t flinch when the worm suddenly twisted around my finger or when I first pierced it through my hook either. Trapped at one end, the worm suddenly wrapped the rest of its body around the hook for me, and I thought perhaps I was done. After all, my bait was a much neater-looking package than the three-time-speared mess on my father’s hook.
“If you leave it like that,” he said, “he’ll get away as soon as he hits the water.”
The worm stayed tight and twisted and I hoped my father would change his mind, but then it dropped and dangled.
“I got it,” my father said, and pierced the other end through my hook again, sparing me the job.
We sat and fished. Sometimes I caught him looking at me when he thought I wasn’t, and I noticed him relax more and more with each moment that passed. Looking back, I understand it now. He’d created another fatherly moment. Build a snowman, go fishing, change a tire. These milestones brought relief, not because they were chores that were finally finished but because he’d gotten the chance to do them. He saw the moments enter me, and each one was proof he was still my father, and always would be. Occasionally, he’d sip from his cold coffee, relishing every sip.
“Is there anything you wanted to tell me, Dad?” I asked.
“Are you having fun?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, but that was the wrong word. It wasn’t fun; it was good. It was my pure thing.
I felt a tug and heard a terrible clicking on my line until I could fight it back to my starting position.
“Reel him in,” my dad said. “But not too fast.”
This was definitely a bite and not a patch of seaweed or sticks. The fish pulled and changed direction, and I saw my father watch me and let me struggle myself, fighting every instinct he had to grab the pole.
“You can do this, Aaron,” he said, and when the line went slack for a moment, I gained more than I lost.
“Good!” he shouted, so loud that I was lucky there was a fish on my hook because every single other one in the lake was now scared off. “Lift!”
I pulled back on my pole and my dad scooped the sunny with a net he’d brought. The fish flopped and bucked, slapping its body in the rusty boat’s floor water until my dad trapped it with his foot. I looked for the hook in its mouth, but it wasn’t there, and when I pulled the line his whole body moved.
“He swallowed the hook,” my father said, grabbing his knife from the tackle box.
“How do we get it out?” I asked, imagining everything inside the fish coming out along with the hook if we pulled.
“We don’t,” my father said, and drove his knife right into the top of the fish’s head. Its body fell instantly still. Its suffering was over.
My father put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s official,” he said. “You caught a fish.”
The fish, dirty and still, seemed somehow smaller.
“Well,” my father said. “I think that’s enough for our first day. You want to row back to the cabin or should I?”
I didn’t answer. I just took the oars and brought us home as surely and steadily as I could while I watched my dad finish his coffee and smile about another thing his boy had learned to do.
* * *
Margo finished the story so convincingly it was hard to believe she wasn’t one of those three small girls, and when she was done, others were affected too. The sound of shifting rubber and plastic bounced around the corners of the room as some of the /b/tards adjusted their masks to wipe their tears. And of course, there was also a die-hard contingent of assholes who coughed out “gay” or “lame” while burying anything good in corrosive snickers. Fawkes’s reaction was harder to read because he excelled at stillness. I could be still too.
“So,” I said, as dispassionately as possible, “as you say, Anonymous is not any one thing. If possible, we’d like to meet with you in private. We have a mission from Gladstone.”
Fawkes took us into the shitty backstage “green room” we’d known from Gladstone’s journal. We sat in folding chairs while Fawkes sat on a torn leather couch with Converse sneakers sticking out from beneath his robe. And now that we were closer, I could tell from his hands and the tiny bit of revealed skin behind the Guy Fawkes eyehole, this member of Anonymous was black.
I had interrogated countless suspects in my twenty years. It’s what I did better than anyone. My information panned out. My confessions stuck. Good interrogating was all about striking a balance that came easy to me. When I was a little boy, my father told me there’d be hell to pay if he ever heard I started a fight or ran away from one. That set me on a narrow path to never be a bully or a victim. And I walked it even when interrogating suspects. But in those cases, there was a crime. I had facts. I had puzzles to solve. All I had in front of me now was a man in a mask and no authority to remove it. And the only information I was trying to gather was could this man be trusted? I wasn’t sure how to do that.
I told him Gladstone was alive but not where to find him (especially since I didn’t know). I told him I believed Gladstone was falsely accused of any involvement regarding the destruction of the Hollywood sign or the murder of his wife, but that could hardly be news to Anonymous. Only Senator Bramson used Gladstone as a talking point anymore, and her Republican campaign for president was desperate for any coverage as Burke hogged the media spotlight. The collective of Democratic senators and governors slowly entering the race one by one barely mentioned the Net for fear of seeming traitorous to the current administration. A former NSA head, Marvin Tandry (someone I never even dealt with during my time on the task force), was trying to build a campaign on his ability to “rout out cyberterrorism,” but with zero name recognition, he was hardly making headlines. And the government was decidedly silent about Gladstone, content to let the world forget he existed. After all, they already had two people in jail for the Hollywood-sign terrorism act that had produced no fatalities, and his wife’s murder was not national news. Indeed, the most incriminating piece of evidence against Gladstone was the fact he’d run away.
Fawkes didn’t say a word, but I liked how he listened to me. He listened like an innocent man. When I paused to consider my next step, he spoke: “Are you trying to ask for our help, Mr. Rowsdower?”
“Yes, but I don’t know if you’re trustworthy.”
“Well, in these times, the man in a mask is the only one you can trust.”
“That’s a cute line for a Batman movie,” I said, “but I used to be a fed. Know who wears masks? Criminals.”
“What’s the assignment?” he asked.
There were no facts. Only what born-agains call faith and I call gut, but I trusted him, and I told him that there might be a way to get recorded proof of the Hollywood-sign bombing and that this proof would, according to Gladstone, show Tobey and Jeeves played no role in it.
“You want our hackers on it?” he said.
“I guess I do.”
“I think I’ll be able to find more than a few people interested in that assignment when the Net returns tomorrow, Agent Rowsdower.”
“I’m not an agent
anymore. Remember?”
“Sure you are,” he said. “Now you’re an agent of Anonymous.”
Report 6
We rode the train back to Bayside. Margo was happy, but I didn’t feel like talking. I’d lost control again, untethered to a job, I might as well have been splashing in my floaty as I went from L.A. to New York to London and back again. Worse yet, I was taking orders from Gladstone and waiting on another letter to find out where to go next.
In the beginning it had been about self-preservation. Gladstone had gotten a raw deal and so had I. I assumed the two were linked and both involved the Apocalypse. And while I still believed that, after months of looking for him, we were pen pals at best.
“Do you think I could crash at your place one more night?” Margo asked. “I’m catching a plane in the morning.”
The conductor was coming, and I took out my ticket, realizing that even months after being fired, I was still paying for my monthly mail and ride.
“Where are you going?” I asked Margo. She wasn’t quick to answer, but then I remembered her crush Down Under. “Oh, Australia,” I said. “Well, have fun jumping your miner.”
Margo let the conductor punch her ticket and move on before speaking. “Thanks,” she said. “Now the train guy thinks I’m fucking minors.”
I tried to smile even though I didn’t feel like it. Part of me was angry because I thought Margo was being frivolous taking an Australian vacation in the middle of an investigation. Another part was jealous, and that was getting harder to conceal.
“Sure thing,” I said. “Will you need a ride to the airport?”
* * *
The next morning, I watched C-SPAN while Margo showered. Hamilton Burke was having a town hall meeting in Iowa. He’d lost the suit and the vest, and now was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, along with his red tie and leather suspenders.
“Good people of Iowa,” he said. “Thank you for joining me here today, as we continue our efforts to make America work.”
The crowd was enthusiastic, but slightly more tempered than in New York. Burke would need to do more than change clothes to gain their respect. He continued on with a modified version of his Federal Hall speech about the promise of America and people working too hard for too little. It resonated, particularly the part when he described America as a broken business no true businessman would stand for. But when it came to discussing the Internet, it was different. Not only because there were no potshots taken at Gladstone, or even a mention of him, but because the Net was about to return.
“And now my friends, speaking of what’s broken, let’s turn to the Internet. It’s been nearly one year in this Apocalypse. The most important resource of the twenty-first century has been kept out of the hands of the people for twelve months. And I wish I could tell you it was just this administration’s incompetence. It’s not—although there’s surely plenty of incompetence.”
There were some knowing chuckles, and Burke found where they were coming from. “That’s right. It is laughable,” he said, pointing to some of his new friends. “Remember their health-care website? Ridiculous. I’ve had to set up lots of websites for my various businesses and enterprises, and let me tell you, when I hire someone to do something, it gets done.
“But there are bigger problems. It seems very curious to me that the government can only return the Net to us, to the people … once they get their hands on it. And now, wouldn’t you know it? Once the government has gotten involved, it comes with extra charges. Of course it does.”
Burke surveyed the room, making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. They were.
“And who says it ends there?” Burke asked. “This fee. This government control. I tell you right now, this is just the starting point. You watch. Suddenly, sites critical to the administration won’t load as fast. More blackouts will occur when the government feels communications need to be cut. But don’t despair, because this administration, indeed no administration, can truly take away our Internet, and do you know why?”
He kept scanning the room, seeing more and more and more pleased voters.
“The government can’t take the Internet from the people because the Internet is people. The Internet is you and me. All of us. And we’re still here!”
There it was again. The phrase that had been spray-painted on the wall of the Veterans’ Affairs Building under Gladstone’s Wi-Fi symbol the day I was fired. One of the Messiah Movement’s many graffiti slogans had been co-opted by a billionaire running for president, and the crowd loved it, erupting into guttural roars that increasingly grounded the higher-pitched cheers.
“It doesn’t matter what’s done to us,” Burke continued. “We the people can take anything. We the people find a way.”
He turned reflective and soft for a moment. “Y’know,” he said, “about twenty years ago, I was in upstate New York, surveying a mall for purchase, and I saw something I’ll never forget. It was a young father. He couldn’t have been more than thirty, but he had three daughters, maybe ten, eight, and six years old, and they were all heading to a dollar store. He didn’t have fancy clothes or a fancy haircut. There was paint splattered on his ripped jeans, but as they got to the entrance, all three little girls stopped and looked back at their dad, awaiting his permission. They had respect, y’see, and this father threw up his hands like a king and said, ‘OK, girls, you can have anything you want!’
“And as I watched these girls shriek and run into the store like little princesses, I realized this man was a hero. With so little to give, he made his girls feel spoiled, because people can do that. We can do that. We can wade through all the garbage and lies that comes out of DC, all the filth that creeps into our daily lives, and make something pure. Something pure for ourselves and those we love. My name is Hamilton Burke, and I want you to help me do just that. For all of us in this country. God bless you, and God bless America!”
Burke had stolen Gladstone’s pure thing. The story I had now heard Margo twice tell. Had Gladstone told him? Had Margo? There was too much I didn’t know and it made me angry. Back on the job, incidents came with facts, and then there was forensics, there were witnesses. I was tired with this puzzle. No databases, no interrogation rooms, and no gun.
I went to the guest room. Margo was still in the shower, and I could hear the water running. Her luggage was open on the bed, and I paused for a moment. This was a violation, but I had grilled Gladstone, Oz, Tobey, Jeeves, Leonards, and Neville. I even questioned Anonymous as best I could, but what had I asked of Margo? She told me only what I knew and dug as much as she revealed. Worse yet, I’d let her get away with it like some rookie cop with a crush. And in return, she’d delivered marching orders from Gladstone, made sure I did my duty, and then flew back to some asshole in Australia.
I went through her luggage looking for something to hold on to. At first, I saw a few pairs of underwear and pushed them out of the way without pausing or really looking, because I was an asshole not a pervert. And then I found something. Letters. Some originals on paper and some photocopies, to and from her Australian lover-boy miner. Some prick named Parker. I listened to make sure the water was still running and then I read them, telling myself it was necessary for the investigation. But it wasn’t, because they weren’t clues. They were love letters. And not mere sexts moved to paper or invitations to a good time. I wasn’t so angry that I couldn’t recognize love, and I was old enough to remember what it looked like on paper. The originals were his and, for some reason, she must have photocopied her replies before sending them off.
It was an instant and obvious love. It didn’t grow over the course of the letters; they just revealed more and more of it to each other.
Dear Margo,
You left just hours ago and I already miss you. I want to say I’m not sure how I ever lived without you, but I’m doing that now. And I’m alive. But living’s harder now that I know you exist. I wish I could describe my love in a way that doesn’t s
ound like pain and need, because that’s not love and it’s not why I love you.
I love your tiny face in my hands, and your long arms around me. I love how your shoes fall off because your feet are too skinny. I didn’t know you were what I was looking for. “Oh, OK, 5' 10" chicks with long legs and short dirty-blond hair is your type.” I know that’s stupid. I know you’d be you even if you were 5' 5" and brunette, but part of me says, “OK, that! You love that!” as if all of you is wrapped up in one package. I just think that’s my stupid brain’s way of saying I love all of you, unconditionally.
I can’t wait to see you again. I love everything you do for me and the only thing better would be being able to do for you.
Love,
Parker
P.S. I have not taken off the David Bowie The Man Who Fell to Earth fedora for more than a few minutes since you gave it to me. I know, you said you had all sorts of movie memorabilia from your Marty days, but of all the things to have, this is just the greatest gift you could give. Better than a lightsaber.
Oh Parker,
I’m glad you like the hat. It suits you. And I’m happy you like it better than a lightsaber, because that’s one thing I definitely can’t get for you. I might have a line on Lou Ferrigno’s codpiece from Hercules? Does that do anything for you?
Also, you do a lot more for me than you know. Before you, I was living in a world of diminished expectations. And now I think maybe I made it to my mid-thirties without ever knowing anyone. I stayed an arm’s length away because closeness brought disappointment. But I gobble you up, and I can’t get close enough to you.
I will come see you again soon, but maybe we should talk about things. I know you just started a new job, but I don’t think me setting up Prague Rock Productions in Bumblefuck, Australia, makes sense, and with all the stuff I’m doing to make my movie work, I can’t buy Aus plane tickets indefinitely. I love you. I can’t stop saying it. I love you. See you soon.
Reports on the Internet Apocalypse Page 7
