Agents of the Internet Apocalypse

by Wayne Gladstone

  “I’d like to give you this bottle of Jameson if you let me stand here with you.”

  The dude, let’s call him Phillip because I never learned his name, looked down at the Jameson and back up to me.

  “Danny!” he said, and I passed him the bottle, patting him on the arm like an old friend.

  “Sally,” I said, turning to Romaya, “you know Phillip.”

  “Sure do!” she replied. “I never would have made it through calculus without him!”

  And that’s how we ended up securing maybe the most perfect spot to watch the movie. A perfectly executed deceit getting us something we didn’t deserve. Better yet, the only people aware of our unfair placement were those responsible for giving it to us. Maybe I was just running a scam, but I remembered Hamilton Burke and thought he’d be proud of me for such tightly effectuated self-interest. Romaya loved it too.

  We lay in the grass and ate our sandwiches. She knocked the vodka back straight from the bottle, and got a tipsy buzz within moments. She could do that. Get happy drunk almost instantly, and then drink more with no further effect. I could never keep up with her, but knowing I had to drive, I didn’t have to.

  Some people brought pizzas. Other couples came with lawn chairs and legit china in strong wicker baskets. Some had blankets. Some just sat in the grass like Romaya and me. We listened to the music and waited for the world to get dark enough to showcase the images revealed by light. Everyone was different and no one fought. And in this feeling of community, my act of cutting not only became more shameful, but more absurd. Almost unnecessary. “Oh, you got here late, dude? Sure, just step in. I think you need this more than I do.”

  Romaya kept changing position trying to get comfortable, and I was brave.

  “Here,” I said, and lay down behind her, placing my side against the small of her back. I patted my stomach while she contemplated the dangers of using her ex-husband as a pillow.

  “Come on,” I said. “I’ve been softening it up for you the last couple of years.”

  She laughed and settled into me, seeming comfortable for maybe the first time the entire night. I stroked her hair gently, at first. Really as more of a service to get it out of her face so she could see the movie. But as the first images flickered, I left my hand at the back of her head, holding the tiny curve of her skull, and I kept it there for all of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. My fingertips extending to her graceful dancer’s neck while my thumb absentmindedly stroked her hair until she was sleeping. I wanted to wake her for Chaplin’s speech, but she seemed content, and I wondered what she was dreaming as he said:

  We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little.

  She rolled over, still in a dream. Maybe a dream that took her back five years and asked, “Did you say something, babe?”

  “No, nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men—cries out for universal brotherhood—for the unity of us all.

  * * *

  The movie ended and for a few moments, I lay there, pretending I was trying to wake Romaya, but really I was just stroking the darkness into her hair and remembering what it felt like not to be alone.

  “Oh my God. Did I sleep through the whole thing?”

  “Nearly. Let’s get you home.”

  * * *

  Romaya fell asleep again as we hit the road, or maybe just pretended to. I thought she might have been trying to perpetuate the moment safely. To exist further in the dream and that was all right with me. I pulled up to her place and she groaned as if waking up were too much to ask.

  “Sleepy baby,” I said and walked around to her side, opening her door.

  She floated her hands out limply to me with half-closed eyes, like some kind of adorable zombie, and I planted myself firmly, taking her by the wrists to pull her from her seat with no sudden yank. She popped up, falling into me and running her hands down my back before settling on my waist. And when she opened her eyes she looked almost scared by arousal. The moon lit her in blue, and I remembered her on my law school dorm rooftop the night we picked that locked window and stared down at the luxury apartments across the way. We were still new. Just children spying on others’ adult lives, oblivious to the hurt that would come.

  But now maybe time had not only healed the wounds, but made us smart enough not to pick at scabs. I held Romaya under the same moon, but on a new coast, and she let me. More than that, she was holding me back. I wanted to say, “I still love you,” but I didn’t. I just kissed her, and she pulled me into her before standing up straight and backing me into the open passenger-side door. I placed a ghost of a left hand over the side of her right breast, before running it behind her back. I got scared when she moved, but she didn’t pull away. She was getting her keys.

  “Let’s get you inside,” she said,

  I was thirty-seven years old and already getting hard just at the thought of having sex with my ex-wife. She opened her door and led me to her unmade bed, the mess exposed by the moonlight creeping through blinds. She turned before we reached the mattress, and I kissed her like before. Then I picked her up and threw her back onto the bed. She landed with a bounce and laughed, taking off her T-shirt and undoing her jeans. I pulled down from the ankles and she did that always-graceful two-second butt jump, allowing me to yank them off while she was in midair. I dropped my pants like a clumsy college kid and she lay back, waiting for me, half naked in broken light. And then it was just me and Romaya.

  I climbed on top, straddling her waist and throwing off my jacket. Then my shirt. She started grinding from below, getting frustrated, and I liked that. I lowered myself close to her face and held her down by the wrists as I slid myself between her legs, teasing and working my body into hers. She wrapped her legs and we tormented each other with friction until she said something very dirty for Romaya: “Fuck me.” And suddenly I thought of Oz and all the sex I thought I had and never did. I grabbed Romaya tighter, making sure she was real, making sure I was here. I kissed her too hard. I held her too tight. I leaned in further and she rubbed back at me.

  “What did you say?” I asked, deep and warm in her ear, my scruff scratching at her neck.

  “I said fuck me,” she groaned, crushing me with her legs in frustration.

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked and slapped her face quick and firm, the way I slapped Oz. I wanted to make her gasp twice—once from surprise and again when I was inside, but it didn’t work out that way. She stopped on a dime, dropping her legs to the bed.

  “What the fuck was that?” she asked.

  I let go of her wrists and sat up. I didn’t know what to say. Everything was broken.

  “Is that how you’ve been fucking?” she asked, assuming, I guess, that only whores like to be slapped and only assholes slap them.

  “I’m sorry. I got carried away,” I said.

  She considered me, watching me above her, deciding if everything had been ruined or if there were any way back.

  “Come here,” she whispered and I leaned in. Then she slapped me hard across the face. A good one. Much harder than the one I’d just given her, and I fell down laughing, holding my hand to my face, warm and throbbing. A ringing in my ears. She flipped me over on my back and got on top of me.

  “Holy shit,” I said still laughing. “Do you know how hard you just smacked me?”

  “Oooh, yeah. Whips and chains, baby,” she said bouncing on me playfully. “Soooo hot.”

  I let Romaya take control and watched the parallel lines of moonlight rise up and down her body, but this wasn’t the reunion I wanted. She was too far away. I sat up, wrapping my arms around her, but that wasn’t right either. Even with my face in her breast, it didn’t feel like home.

  “Lay back,” I said, and su
pported her as she lowered back to the bed and I followed with her, but it still wasn’t right. Even when I ran my arms under her back and wrapped my fingers up and around her shoulders. Even when she hooked her feet behind my knees, and I kissed her and kissed her. Even when the tension built until the release of love and pain. She tried to catch her breath and I fell to her side, my heart pounding. But even when I threw my arm over her like she was something I could never lose again, I knew I’d only had sex with Romaya instead of making love to my wife.

  * * *

  Tobey and I arrived at The Hash Tag at seven, greeted by a crowd that exceeded my expectations. Despite our meeting, the typical Hash Tag festivities had not been canceled, and that helped fill seats. Not everyone was here for me, but there were definitely some journals in the audience. Some in blue. Others in their original dog-eared white. And even better, there was cosplay happening. A handful of people were dressed as Internet Apocalypse “characters.”

  “Wow,” I said. “It’s you, me, and Oz!”

  “Yeah,” Tobey replied. “I bet you want to fuck two thirds of this audience.”

  I laughed, but Tobey had reminded me of the morning after with Romaya. I’d been holding it out of my line of sight for the last few days. Or, maybe more accurately, in my jacket pocket. Romaya woke before I did, just like she used to, but she didn’t kiss my cheek or whisper in my ear. There was no attempt to wake her early morning playmate. She just got dressed, quietly, while I kept sleeping the way you do when you think you’re being watched in safety. I had no idea I was dreaming alone while Romaya was changing into yoga pants and neon wristbands. It was the zip of her gym bag that woke me.

  “Wow,” I said. “And you give me shit for how I dress.”

  “It’s for dance class,” she said. “And I’m late. You can sleep, but please just lock the door behind you.”

  “You should have woken me,” I said.

  “You looked like you needed the rest.”

  “Yeah, but when are you coming back?”

  She looked nervous, like my childhood memories of adults.

  “I have to do a bunch of stuff. I’m going to get a new tire after the gym. I’m driving there on a donut.”

  I sat up in bed, and she put her gym bag on her shoulder.

  “I put your clothes on the foot of the bed,” she said, pointing to a neat little pile.

  “One sec, I’ll walk out with you,” I said, grabbing my T-shirt.

  “It’s okay. Sleep.”

  I hopped into my jeans. “That’s stupid. I don’t want to be here without you.”

  She moved to the doorway, but waited for me, realizing she couldn’t leave when I was seconds away from getting dressed. I put on my Miami Vice jacket, and something about that made her uncomfortable. She headed to the door of her apartment and I followed, stepping into my sandals along the way. She turned back to look at me before leaving.

  “Careful with that jacket,” she said. “I gave you back the letter.”

  I pulled it out and there it was. Again not where it belonged. I didn’t understand.

  “Well, what did you expect?” she asked. “You thought you could just sneak it into my Google shit and everything would be all right?”

  I certainly couldn’t argue with that, but I didn’t have to. I had something better.

  “But last night…”

  She took a step outside so we were no longer in the same space.

  “I had a really nice time,” she said, “but…”

  I walked outside and shut the door behind me, jiggling the handle to make sure it was locked.

  “But?” I asked.

  “I had a really nice time,” she said again, and got into her car, and it didn’t make me feel one bit better that she lowered her window and kept waving good-bye until she was completely out of sight.

  * * *

  Tobey found his tatted waitress friend Jynx and she sat us over at a reserved small side table, giving us a couple of Anchor Steams on the house. That was our reward for helping to fill the place with people. After about twenty minutes, she took one of the two mics set up on straight stands.

  She was enthusiastic. “Welcome to The Hash Tag and the first official meeting for fans of Notes from the Internet Apocalypse!”

  There was a giggle, and a twenty-something with those horrific ear plug things booed.

  “Boo?” Jynx asked, unaccustomed to negativity.

  “Just Notes,” he said correcting. “It’s cleaner.”

  “Oh, is that what we’re calling it now?” Jynx asked, and looked over at Tobey and me. We shrugged. “Fair enough,” she said. “So let me introduce one of your two hosts for the night—but before I do, I just want to remind you we got our liquor license back, so in addition to the flavored tobacco and beer, we’re also selling booze! And now without further ado … Tobey!”

  Tobey took over Jynx’s mic, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “Before I bring up the man you might know as Gladstone or the Internet Messiah let me just say a few words … Butterfly. Earring. Frogurt.”

  The room was silent. I was silent. Then I got the joke. He had said a few words. Then some people in the audience got it too, but still, no one laughed. You couldn’t have asked for a more awkward, moment-killing introduction. I stood up and straightened my white fedora. Tobey took the lifeline.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the Internet Messiah!”

  About fifteen to twenty people in the crowd of fifty clapped enthusiastically, and I noticed a woman with cartoonishly long lashes, a short skirt, and horizontal striped stockings applauding with the kind of girlish fun that doesn’t always accompany women with a bohemian fashion sense.

  “Hello,” I said and paused, unsure how to give my name. Back at the hospital, I’d learned to be a whole person again. More than a screen name. But I also knew that nothing about recovery required me to give everything of myself to strangers. And even though this was the real world, it was still very much like an online experience. Here was a group of like-minded strangers congregated around something they didn’t fully understand. Something they had very little desire to fully understand, but something they wanted to be part of. Raised on the Internet, they were less trusting of television. Anderson Cooper couldn’t tell them what the next thing was. It was the congregated buzz that told them I was it. They wanted to see it, be part of it, and it had to be a group decision. They wanted to be part of that herd.

  “I’m Gladstone,” I said, “and I’m looking for the Internet.”

  It wasn’t until after the crowd applauded that I realized I’d just quoted myself from the book. But whereas 4Chan met that assertion with derision, these folks welcomed the possibility. Their applause faded with my smile and then there was nothing except the waiting for more good news. But I had nothing for this group of twenty-somethings yet except the Internet phone book in my backpack over at my table. And that was too important to divulge freely. Not everything is meant to be a tweet or Facebook post. Some details deserve private messages.

  “So,” I said. “I have some things to share, but I’d really like to get to know you all a bit first so—”

  “Question,” said the guy with the plugs. He raised his hand, keeping his arm straight and rigid while the rest of his body slumped in his chair, seemingly ashamed of that appendage’s effort.

  “Yes?”

  “I read your book, journal, diary, whatever.”

  “And?”

  “So, like, is it true?”

  That was the obvious question and yet not the one I was expecting. “Well, it was the truth I knew at the time. I wasn’t well,” I said.

  “Right, so no disrespect dude, but what part of being batshit makes you qualified to find the Internet?”

  “That’s the ‘no disrespect’ version?” Tobey asked. “What’s the rude one? Same thing, but with more anal fisting?”

  The crowd liked that. It was the Tobey they knew.

  “I don’t
know,” I said, talking directly to the kid, without anger. “I can’t explain that to you. I just know that I’ve been in contact with Anonymous and gotten Jeeves’ blessing. Tobey and I have been up to Google and UCLA recently. We’re investigating, but we need help. If you believe in the cause, we’d like that help to come from you. I have nothing to sell.”

  A woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties was sitting off to the corner alone. Maybe it was her glass of white wine or her stylish glasses, but she seemed impossibly intelligent. “I have a bigger problem,” she said, not quite raising her hand. It was more of a point.

  “First of all, I’m sorry about your marriage and isolation and all that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But there’s something no one’s talking about. Why do you even want to find the Internet?”

  I didn’t understand the question.

  “I mean now,” she clarified. “Why are you looking for it now? You’re still the same guy who dumped all over the Internet in your journal, right? Just a way for millions of sad people to be alone together? You focused on every single negative, disgusting, dirty part of the Net, and now you’re trying to bring it back?”

  It was an interesting point, but interrupted by a pudgy kid at the front of the room who called out, “Hey, Tobey has black hair,” he said pointing to the shag escaping Tobey’s baseball hat.

  “Yeah, I got that wrong in the book,” I said.

  “You don’t even know your own friend’s hair color?” he asked.

  “Wait a second,” a college girl two tables away interjected. “I thought Tobey was fake. Y’know, made up.”

  “No, that was Oz,” pudge said.

  “Listen,” I said, with arms raised. “This isn’t a book-club discussion. I need recruits. People to help with the investigation.”

  “I’m all for that,” plugs said. “But why you? Just because you thought of it first?”

  “FIRST!” another college kid shouted, raising his beer bottle with the label half off and flapping.

  “Yeah, so why?” said plugs.

  I didn’t have an answer, but more importantly. I didn’t want to give one. I didn’t want to prove myself. I was me. I was here. Like jokes and love, my worth would be ruined if it had to be explained.