“Ooh, nice velo binding,” Tobey said. “Really classes it up.”
“That, I take it,” Chris said, “is the Internet Messiah’s purported journal that’s been spread around in the last couple of weeks?”
“It is, indeed. And if you thumb your way through this filthy manifesto, you’ll see it is very clearly the message of someone leading a revolution.”
“Huh,” Tobey said. “And here I thought your journal had too much whacking off to be a proper manifesto.”
The anchor said pretty much the same thing in gentler prose. “And what is that message, Senator? Because I have to tell you, I did read it, and I didn’t see much in the way of politics. Some call it a love story.”
Senator Bramson snorted, and I wondered if the surgeon who had built her nose anticipated such duress to the nasal cavity.
“Did you read it, Senator?” he followed up, showing an unusual amount of backbone for an anchor.
“Enough of it,” she said. “You don’t need to actually go down in the sewer to know it stinks. But the real question, Chris, is why has this administration done nothing to find him? This administration that can kill by drone strike, that can suspend constitutional rights under the NET Recovery Act, can’t locate one smut peddler?”
“Didn’t you sign the NET Recovery Act despite public outcry against its constitutional abuses?”
“Sure did. And if it wasn’t to round up filth like this, then what was the point?”
“But round him up for what, Senator Bramson?”
“I don’t know, Chris. That’s the point. We haven’t questioned him. Don’t blame me for not being able to answer your questions when this administration’s fallen asleep at that the wheel.”
Just then the channel switched over to the Game Show Network. Some neck-bearded hipster without an appropriate amount of self-awareness and self-hatred had changed the channel from the comfort of his massaging reclining chair.
“Aww, too bad,” Tobey whispered to me. “I’m sure she was just about to warm up to you too.” Then he called out to the guy in the chair. “Buddy, any chance you could put that channel back for a minute?”
Captain Indifference turned to us, lowering his head and looking over the top of his plastic-framed glasses. “If it’s important to you.…” he said.
I turned to Tobey. “And you call me a hipster douchebag.”
The anchor had finished with Bramson, and he turned to the camera again.
“Joining us now with a further perspective on the so-called Internet Messiah is Special Agent Aaron Rowsdower of the NET Recovery Act’s Special Task Force.”
“Wait. Is that the Rowsdower?” Tobey asked.
The man on the screen was in his mid-forties, too thin, and too serious, but I wasn’t sure it was the Rowsdower I remembered. Still, how many could there be?
“So Special Agent Rowsdower,” Chris continued. “You’ve heard the Senator. What do you say to the allegations that this administration has fallen asleep at the wheel regarding the Internet Messiah investigation?”
“Well, first of all, I’m not here to give sound bites on behalf of this administration. I can speak only to the task force efforts to investigate the disappearance of the Internet, including our inquiries regarding so-called Internet Messiahs.”
“Messiahs?”
“Yes. It puzzles me that Senator Bramson seems to think that only one person can proclaim themselves a messiah. Certainly the notion of multiple false prophets can’t be unfamiliar to someone in politics.”
“With all due respect,” Senator Bramson said, “that’s a dodge. I’m not interested in every crackpot. This so-called messiah has written a book. That’s the one we’re talking about.”
“No, that’s the one you’re talking about, Senator, for some reason I can’t understand. I’ve met this person you’re referring to, and trust me: if he or any other person is behind the disappearance of the Internet or holds keys to its retrieval, we’ll see him again.”
“What can you tell us about this man?” Chris asked.
“Well, nothing. Speaking would be grossly irresponsible. But, y’know, do you need me to tell you anything? I mean, I know the senator isn’t interested in reading the book despite her allegations, but it’s all right there.”
“Does that mean you endorse the book?”
“Endorse it? Who am I? To me, it’s evidence. To the senator it’s a basis for loose talk. I don’t know what it means to you, Chris, but seems to me if someone hands you a diary, it’s silly to ask questions about who they are.”
The segment closed out and the Google recliner guy changed the channel. It was a commercial for the new iPhone, dubbed the iPhone Infinity—the first smart phone release of the Apocalypse. A woman’s elegant hand handled it against an all-white backdrop. It looked just like the last iPhone, but with the sideways “8” infinity symbol in the Apple icon. The dude brought his recliner forward, taking an interest.
“No one knows when the Internet’s coming back,” a woman’s voice said, “but when it does, won’t you want the most powerful iPhone ever made?”
“So smart!” recliner guy said. “So fucking smart!”
I stepped out of the ball pit. “You think people will buy something that doesn’t yet work?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “And better yet, there’ll be no shitty tech blogger dumping all over it the next day.”
“And I guess,” I said, “Mac fanboys can proclaim it as the best, fastest, most powerful phone and there’d be no way to prove they were wrong until the Net came back.”
“Yep,” he replied. “And that’s when they’d introduce a new phone anyway.”
“The Infinity Plus One,” Tobey added, and the recliner dude laughed.
“Yeah, marketing in the Apocalypse is a whole new world,” he said.
Tobey emerged from the ball pit. “Yeah,” he said. “Whatcha working on?”
Chair dude made a face indicating such a question was clearly off-limits, or maybe he was just remembering that time he had a nonmicrobrewed beer. Either way, he said, “Come on. This is Google. We’re not all ball pits and Segways.”
“Sorry, it’s just that our friend is interviewing here,” I said. “She’s a pharmaceutical copywriter so we were just curious.”
“Well, sorry, I’m in analytics.…”
“Oh, is that why you’re so not busy?” Tobey asked.
“I’m plenty busy,” he replied, cranking up the vibration on his chair. “But you don’t expect me to craft Apocalypse-busting code without my three o’clock vibrating massage, do you?”
* * *
The five-hour drive home felt like three. Maybe it’s because the road’s always shorter when you know the way, but probably because Romaya was happy. There was an energy from the moment Suzie returned her to us, but she didn’t say a word until we were all back in the car.
“That went great,” she said, mixing the hopeful prayers of the recently unemployed with a fourth-grade girl getting a gold star. “I think they liked me.”
“I’m sure they did,” I said. “That’s great.”
Tobey was all business. “Did they say why they’re hiring in an Apocalypse?”
“Not really. One guy talked about setting up, like, Google stores where you could go online with other Google stores. Like a Google network connected to itself.”
“Can you do that?” Tobey asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, that’s no different than everyone in the same office or offices being linked on one network, right? See, if they think that’s feasible, that tells me the problem is only at the hubs—the points where all the individual networks are attached to each other.”
“So Google’s gonna make its own mini-network?” Tobey asked.
“I dunno,” Romaya said, turning around to face me. “Only one dude said that, and offhandedly. It wasn’t about their plans. It was about me. I talked about myself for three hours. You should do an interview there. You’d l
ove it.”
“Let’s try this another way,” Tobey said. “What was it about you they were so interested in?”
Romaya turned around to face front. “Mostly the copy I wrote for drugs that had gone generic.”
Tobey didn’t understand.
“After a while, drugs lose their patent and other companies can make generic versions,” she explained. “Cheaper versions. Like how you can buy ibuprofen, but some people still pay more for Advil, right?”
“Who does that?”
“Lots of people. You still see Advil in stores. And Pfizer still runs ads for it—something generic manufacturers can’t afford to do.”
“So they were interested in your ads where you sell the more expensive version of things.…” I said, feeling that must be important.
“Yeah. So how did your investigation go?” Romaya asked, turning to face me again.
“Not so great. Still working with the Internet phone book as our main lead.”
“What’s that?”
I began to reply, but Tobey cut me off.
“I’m sorry, Romaya,” Tobey said, “but we simply can’t divulge that information until we know you’re part of our team. Whaddya say?”
“I’m not part of your team,” she replied.
“Oh, well then I’m sorry, but—”
This time I cut Tobey off. “It’s a list of names of the power brokers of the Internet. Those with the most control. We’re looking for the latest edition because Anonymous tells us each edition gets smaller, so it decreases our number of suspects.”
“Anonymous told you?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
I tried to be proud, but I knew that “wow” was merely acknowledging the approval of others.
“Well, don’t be too impressed,” I continued. “We have nothing exciting to report. Turns out I might not actually be the Messiah.”
“Well, not that kind, right?”
“What kind?”
“The James Bond kind. Gathering data, going on missions. That’s not your thing, is it?”
“I don’t know. What’s my thing?”
“I don’t know. Ask your groupies.”
“Please, Romaya. We call them disciples,” Tobey corrected.
“Ask them what?” I pressed. “What my thing is? What kind of Messiah I’m supposed to be?”
“No, I meant you’re an idea man. Ask them to do the James Bond stuff for you.”
6.
The biggest difference between the real Tobey and the one in my journal was that the real Tobey believed in things. His failure to deliberate wasn’t so much a sign of apathy as much as evidence that he simply wasn’t plagued by doubt. But even if he didn’t sweat the small stuff, he had a core. A belief system. And aside from the mere prospect of getting laid assisted by his pseudo celebrity, he truly believed in the Internet Messiah. That’s not the same as saying he believed in me. More like he thought the Messiah was important, and he was happy to know the guy anointed to play him. So the next morning, he pushed for us to effectuate Romaya’s plan: getting the disciples to do the James Bond stuff for us by sending them out to spy at Google, Facebook, or any Silicon Valley destination we could think of.
“We should hold a meeting at The Hash Tag,” he said, sparking his bowl of shwag. (He was motivated, but not to the exclusion of weed.)
“Okay,” I said. “What did you think of Romaya?”
“She’s a very nice lady,” he said. “So I’ll reach out to Jynx and set it up? Get you in front of your people?”
“Do you need your car today?” I asked.
“Not especially.”
“I want to see Romaya. Maybe take her to that cemetery movie theater place you went to.”
“Hollywood Forever? Yeah, you’re in luck, they’re doing movies every night now, but, um…”
“What?”
“You realize she’s your ex-wife, dude,” Tobey said.
“Yeah, but she’s why I came out here.”
“Sure, but keep in mind you’re just about to get a tremendous amount of Internet Apocalypse tail.”
You had to know Tobey. He said things like that knowing they sounded shallow and hedonistic, but his words had a distinct level of sarcasm. Not to say he didn’t think this was a golden opportunity for sex. He did. And not to say he didn’t fully intend to welcome that sex with open arms, but he knew it sounded fratty. His deliberately coarse speech was really more of an admission, even a confession, than some bro’s bragging pep talk. And I liked him for it because almost every man I’ve ever met has run to the offer of easy sex, but most make a big show of being above it. They talk about misogyny and keep their sex egalitarian and polite. They shake their heads at the sexually brazen. And most of them are scared liars who will one day corner their platonic girlfriends with uncomfortable jokes and guilt trips, trying to up the ante into a sexual relationship with something that started merely as safe and respectful. Most will turn angry, spouting “friend-zoned” attacks while whining about the dangers of being a “nice guy.” But Tobey was a nice guy. Every woman was safe and his dirty talk merely held up a sign of who he was for anyone interested in knowing more.
And while I respected all of that, it didn’t change why I couldn’t heed his advice.
“Yeah, I get it, Tobey,” I said. “But I love Romaya.”
While my sights were still set on a night with Romaya, we did spend all day focused on finding the Net.
“Let’s put that phone book to work for us,” he said as we drove through the area I’d come to know as Brentwood. “Give me some names from the book.”
“But they’re just names,” I said, flipping pages. “Andreas Gibian of Dallas. Know him?”
“Nope.”
“How about Claudette Dubois of Paris?”
“Maybe,” Tobey said. “Does it say anything about her changing her name to Megan and tending bar at The Dirty Saddle on the Sunset Strip?”
“Sadly, the book is silent on that issue,” I replied.
“Well, we’ll just mark it down as a ‘maybe’ then,” he said, and we drove on. The book was in alphabetical order, with names from all over the world. It was hard to pick out somebody good only a day-drive away. But then I had an idea.
I flipped to the Ls and then spoke with great confidence. “Drive to Westwood Village.”
“Who’s there?” Tobey asked.
“Professor Kevin Leonards, the UCLA professor who helped develop the Internet.”
“Hey, I thought Al Gore inv—”
“Don’t say it, Tobey.”
“Aww, I’m just fucking with you. So why this guy?”
“Well, I learned about Leonards during my research at the hospital. I already knew about him. So I used his name to reverse engineer my search—basically, starting with the individual and then cross-referencing his name with the other listings in the Internet phone book.”
“Don’t you mean, you used the phone book just to look up the address of some dude you already read about?”
“Basically.” I laughed. “But, y’know, father of the Internet. What more to do you want?”
“Works for me.”
“Good,” I replied. “We need to get to Thayer Avenue. Got a map?”
“Sure. Check the glove compartment. It’s probably next to my axle grease and buggy whip.”
We headed to Westwood, which reminded me a lot of where the kids went trick-or-treating in E.T. Maybe it was. That was exactly the kind of worthless thing I’d Google if I still could.
There was a long line of college kids running down the entire block preceding an Apple store. They were waiting for the iPhone Infinity.
“Neat,” Tobey said. “Hey, maybe we can ask these fuckwads where Thayer is.”
One of the kids had already secured his phone and was showing it off to his friends, who took turns holding it. “Oh man, this is gonna be awesome,” one of them said.
“Yeah, I hope the Internet c
omes back right now just so I can taunt you for the next hour until you get yours,” the proud owner replied.
I looked at Tobey. “Hard to believe there are bigger assholes in this world than you,” I said.
“It’s a little breathtaking,” he agreed. “Hey, guys,” he called out. “Any of you know where Thayer Avenue is?”
Consensus placed it at about ten blocks away and we took their word for it, but not before one of the kids said, “More like Gayer Avenue, am I right?”
“You think they were being faux-homophobic?” I asked Tobey as we drove away.
“Probably,” he said. “Unless they were talking about your hat.”
* * *
There was no reason to believe Professor Leonards was alive, still at this address, or willing to talk to us, but no one could say we weren’t trying, and we felt our chances were best showing up at his doorstep instead of finding a pay phone to announce our visit. We were much more charming in person. Or at least less frightening.
“What are we gonna do after this doesn’t work?” Tobey asked, walking up to the house.
“I have a good feeling,” I said, ringing the doorbell.
“Just a second,” a wonderful voice replied, old and crispy, with both joy and bite like Jimmy Stewart’s, but mixed with a touch of Jew. I heard the noises of movement inside, and I thought about how “Touch of Jew” would be a good name for my signature fragrance. My mind wanders like that sometimes. Even when I have all of it.
A tall, thin man opened the door. The kind of old man you dream of becoming: gray hair, balding just right up in the corners, but still with a tuft to comb up top. He was wearing a cardigan and corduroy pants, and I liked him instantly.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” I said, “but would you happen to be Professor Leonards?”
“Yes, can I help you?”
“My name’s Wayne Gladstone and this is my friend Brendan Tobey. We’re hoping you could help us with our investigation into the Internet Apocalypse.”
He wasn’t pleased at the intrusion, and it was hard to blame him.
“Y’know, I do still keep some posted office hours at the university. This is my home,” he said, closing the door.
Agents of the Internet Apocalypse Page 9
