I kept my gaze fixed on the front entrance of my building and walked as fast as I could. And even though my focus was directed home, I couldn’t help noticing something wrong about the way a group of guys were forming a circle around something across the street. I shut the lobby door behind me, almost silencing the sounds of a cat being made to do things it didn’t want to do.
2.
DAY 21. ACCEPTANCE, ZOMBIES, AND TOBEY
Three weeks now. We know it’s not coming back. Clergymen, sociologists, and other really boring people take to the airwaves to talk about the return of a simpler time. A time of truer human connection. They think losing the Internet is like leaving your favorite sweater on a train. It’s not. And while it might be overdramatic to compare it to the removal of an internal organ, it’s certainly fair to say the Internet had fused with our body chemistry. Information and instant messages came and went with a rhythm as constant and involuntary as breathing.
Dr. Gracchus had told me that losing a spouse could cause a period of extreme disorientation. That two people’s minds join after a time, each handling certain tasks for mutual benefit. And I guess it’s a bit like that. But the point is, the talking heads are wrong. The loss won’t bring back a simpler time. Only a search for something new to fill the void.
Romaya used to look for reminders of Northern California in Central Park. Especially if it were a wet day when the rain hung in the air instead of falling. She’d stare up at the leaves and branches, remembering the redwoods where she searched for Ewoks as a girl. Then she’d scratch at my scruff and tell me I smelled like a teddy bear. I was the home she had found. If I knew she were coming, I once told her, I never would have wasted all that time with people who weren’t her.
“Me too,” she said, running her hands around me. “It would have been nice to know I had a friend waiting in New York.”
* * *
I know what was going on in that circle the other week. I’ve seen the bands of shuffling Internet junkies aimlessly roaming the streets from my window. Wide, sad eyes seeking out any trace of what they have lost. They devour anything they think can provide the fix they crave. The media calls them zombies because zombies are aimless and hungry and because the media is bad at its job.
But I’ve seen enough to know I’m better off inside. It’s all over TV. After years of getting entertainment and information online, television feels strange. The commercials. The lack of interaction. It’s big and bright, and even the more somber and sophisticated programming carries the brash 1980s taint of neon and synth. Like trading your iPod in for a jukebox. It’s only good for destroying the silence.
Not everyone has fallen into zombiehood, of course. The world goes on. People find a way. But enough. Enough former members of society who will just never be right. After a time, the like-minded form circles. Different Internet rings meant to re-create the experiences of their favorite lost websites. Sexually frustrated libertarians meet up with one another, and soon they are entwined in a Digg circle. Each participant takes a turn in the center, sharing the latest news he has heard. Sometimes, it’s something about a government conspiracy. Other times it’s just some terrible cartoon they’ve found. The data is scrutinized instantly by the group who, if sufficiently displeased, will bury the bearer. There are conflicting reports about what that means. Most say it’s just an expression, but some disagree, and the bands do keep seeking new locations in a ravenous search for more news and members.
The zombies I saw last week were part of a YouTube circle. Without a replay button or a link to similar entertainment, they demand hours and hours of mindless joy from whatever is unfortunate enough to be trapped inside their view. So many innocent cats have been worked to death, forced to do tricks for zombie-amusement without food, water, or chance of escape.
Although I hadn’t heard any reports about Internet zombies breaking into people’s apartments (or even looking at people who didn’t remind them of the Internet), I decided to board up my windows. Just felt right. I didn’t get very far, because at no time in the last ten years did it occur to me to stock my apartment with stacks of plywood. I contemplated the seemingly bizarre availability of substantial amounts of finished lumber in zombie movies and wondered if I could order some by phone. I’d need to go downstairs and ask the super.
The dead bolt snapped back with a force that echoed on the other side of my fire-prevention door. The door chain came next, but I didn’t turn the handle, which struck me as odd because I was positive I wanted to. That’s when I heard a knock.
It was Tobey. Bloody, sweating, and out of breath, but still Tobey. You could tell by his NO ONE IS UGLY AFTER SIX BEERS baseball hat—worn ironically, of course.
“Can I come in?” he asked after entering.
“Tobey? What happened … and why aren’t you in L.A.?”
This was only the second time I’d spoken to Tobey in person. The other time was on a business trip to a Risk Management seminar in L.A. I’d crashed at his apartment and we stayed up until 3:00 A.M., drinking and playing Six Degrees of Stanley Tucci. (Bacon was too easy.) But other than that inexplicably entertaining night, ours had remained an online relationship. And more specifically, an instant message relationship. Even those IM exchanges were punctuated by long unexplained pauses, which I assumed were caused by the responsibilities of his online job. But apparently that had nothing to do with it because even in real life, Tobey left my question about what he was doing here unanswered, and headed off to the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” I said, trailing behind.
“The Internet, Gladstone. Haven’t you heard?”
“Yeah, of course I’ve heard, but why are you in my apartment?”
“Because,” he said, holding the nearly empty bottle of Yuengling against his bruised cheek, “someone still has it.”
“What?”
“It’s true. I heard it in a Reddit circle just outside your apartment. How do you think I got these bruises? Man, those dudes did not like my defense of Corporate America.”
I was slow to respond, and not just because Tobey was now eating from my jar of peanut butter, assisted only by his finger, but because nothing about this made sense. Online, Tobey was a name. A green dot. A series of sarcastic, meta-humorous messages that broke the monotony of my day. But in my kitchen, he was a twenty-nine-year-old man-child who blinked a little too often and moved with more energy than was required to accomplish any task.
“Tobey, seriously. Sit the fuck down. You’re getting me nuts.”
Tobey pulled a chair from the kitchen table and sat down. I handed him a napkin and another beer.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, but then I got distracted by another question. “What do zombies do in a Reddit circle anyway?”
“Mostly talk about how much Digg circles suck,” Tobey said. “But occasionally, you hear a good rumor. Even zombified Redditors know their conspiracies.”
“And you heard someone in New York still has the Internet? How?”
“How do you think, G-Sauce? They stole it.”
“What does that even mean? It’s not the Pink Panther diamond, it’s, I don’t know, it’s the Internet.”
“Hey, I’m just telling you what I heard. You don’t like it, take it up with the zombie Redditors, but I don’t know. It just feels right.”
“It does?”
Tobey moved with the ease of a man without a job. His limbs conserved no energy for reports to be written. His mind eagerly soaked up anything in the ether without fear of losing more important details. It was a freedom that made him so light he couldn’t even sit still in his chair. He went over to the sink, washing his bruises and stains before drying off on the towel hanging from my stove. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. Even as a grown-up, he still had a few freckles dotted across the bridge of his nose.
“The Internet lives, Gladstone,” he said with a smile. “And it’s here. In New York.”
Suddenly
a vague disconnect bubbled up the way it used to when I’d detect a fraudulent claim at the bureau. Little things you’d think people wouldn’t bother to try. Blaming a preexisting left arm injury on a right arm incident. Or sustaining injuries in a workplace ladder fall and presenting with day-old black-and-blue bruising only minutes later.
“Wait a second,” I said. “You only just heard this rumor. But you were already in New York. Why?”
Tobey picked at the decal of his Mr. Bubble t-shirt. “Well, y’know, the site’s been down three weeks. I got nothing coming in.…”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well, I was down to my last thousand bucks.”
“So you used it to come here and live off me? Why not save it or use it to pay your bills until you get a new job?”
“What bills? I do all my banking online.”
“They’ll just send them to your home.”
“But see, that’s the beauty of the plan. I don’t live there anymore. I’m off the grid, baby!”
Off the grid. The phrase caught me more than I expected, and Tobey could tell he was on to something.
“Let’s find the Internet, Gladstone. Someone’s got it.”
“It’s not so easy, Tobes. Unlike you, I don’t just crack jokes online. I have a real job to think about.”
Tobey took a step closer. “First of all,” he said, “I resent the implication that making up funny one-liners about how fat Jennifer Love Hewitt has gotten is not a real job. But more important, are you serious? Being a desk jockey for the Workers’ Compensation Board? That’s a real job? Judging from the amount of beer in your fridge and the fact that you’re wearing jeans on a Tuesday, I’m guessing you haven’t been there for a while.”
“I’m working remotely,” I lied.
“Working remotely or not even remotely working?” He smiled.
“Wow. That’s a good one.”
Tobey really was the best two-paragraph blogger there ever was.
“I know. I just wrote that. And now it makes no sense because there’s no Internet.” He paused for a moment. “Also,” he said, “considering there’s no Internet, that was the worst lie ever.”
I wasn’t sure why I was fighting Tobey. After Romaya, and maybe even before, my life had devolved into a fluorescent haze of desktop Outlook/Internet Explorer/Excel screens by day followed by laptop Chrome/Facebook/Netflix nights. Two equally useless existences separated only by the F train.
“Holy shit, I was gone for two minutes,” Romaya had said, probably having pissed on yet another pregnancy test, “and you’re back on that fucking laptop. You’re gonna turn into some sort of cyborg.”
“I was just Googling fertility stuff,” I’d said.
“Right.”
“Seriously, I saw something about more pregnancies going to term when the mom gives lots and lots of blowjobs.”
“Do they have to be you?”
“Of course not. I’ll just watch you service the whole third floor. I mean, how else am I gonna get an erection?”
She had laughed, but she hadn’t wanted to. “Y’know, you take every important or hard thing in your life and turn it into a dirty joke. You know that, right?”
There was nothing keeping me. And in the back of my mind, I remembered Dr. Gracchus owed me a favor for clearing a certain questionable workplace injury in his office. It wouldn’t be hard to have him verify my depression-based disability and get me out of that office. But it was something else that Tobey said that really sealed the deal.
“It’s a whole new world, Gladstone. We can be anything we want to be.”
I was standing in front of the hallway closet now, remembering the things I’d need.
“What’s the weather like outside?” I asked.
“I don’t know. May? It’s May out.”
I wiped some dust from the handle and opened the door. Hanging there was my tan corduroy sports jacket from years ago. On the shelf above was a flask Romaya had bought me for our first anniversary and my grandfather’s fedora hat from the forties. I took them all.
“Okay, Tobes. I’m ready.”
“You’re not serious. A fedora? You’ll look like one of those insufferable Williamsburg hipster douchebags.”
“Says the guy with a chain on his wallet containing no money. Fuck you. This was my grandfather’s. And what do I care? It’s not like someone’s gonna take a picture of me and put it up on FAIL Blog.”
“Ooh, speaking of that! I got something for this journey.” Tobey reached into his backpack and pulled out one of those Polaroid cameras from my childhood. “To document the trip. Who needs the Internet, huh?”
“Tobes, y’know, you don’t actually need the Internet to take pictures, right? Digital cameras still work and download directly to computers and, y’know…”
But he wasn’t paying attention. “What’s in your pocket?” he asked. “Your jacket’s puffy.”
I reached inside, removing my flask. “You mean this?”
“I guess…”
“Let me fill it, and then we can go.”
3.
DAY 22. RUMORS
On the second day of our investigation, we left the apartment early. I was determined this not be another day wasted, like yesterday afternoon when Tobey and I gathered nothing but rumors. We had taken the F train into the city to look for the Internet, and the only thing stupider than writing that was actually doing it. Tobey said we should start at Washington Square Park because he heard there was good intelligence to be had, but it turned out he just wanted to score some weed. Poor thing. My offers of flask whiskey weren’t cutting it. Not surprisingly, the loss of the Net had little effect on weed dealings, and after a handshake, Tobey was on his way. So we walked around and talked and eavesdropped and mostly just made asses of ourselves while Tobey floated on his skank bud and I sipped too frequently from my flask.
Most of the day was spent debating trivia. What year certain movies came out. Who starred in sitcoms from our childhood. And each dispute ended with “agree to disagree” or “I’m telling you, I’m positive” or “shut up, you’re such a fucking idiot.” But without Google or IMDB at our fingertips, nothing was resolved. Nevertheless, Tobey can fuck off because Jason Bateman totally played the bad kid in Silver Spoons.
We got tired around dinner time and went back to my apartment. Not exactly the On the Road experience I’d been hoping for.
“Not exactly the On the Road experience I was hoping for,” I shouted to Tobey from my bedroom before passing out.
“Is that a movie?” he called from the couch.
“A book! Jack Kerouac.”
There was a pause. Then: “Christ, how old are you?”
Despite our early start, today wasn’t looking much better. Some people were claiming the government had shut off the Internet to stop the groundswell of free speech and democracy. I didn’t find that particularly compelling in a world where the Right was already kicking ass and taking names in the online public influence wars.
“Who said it was the Right?” Tobey asked.
That was a good point, and I pondered it while taking swigs of Scotch and wandering Manhattan. I suppose the Left was equally capable of such things, if such things were even possible, but I couldn’t see liberals living without the Net. We love Daily Kos and viral videos too much. And you can’t hoard the Internet like Gollum and his precious ring. Cutting the Internet off from the suppliers of content made it useless for entertainment and information purposes, leaving it mainly as a communications tool.
“That’s pretty smart,” Tobey said, exhaling a cloud of weed.
“This isn’t L.A., Tobes. You can’t just go all Rasta in the middle of New York.”
“You gonna narc me out, G-man?”
I stopped walking and waited for Tobes to stop too.
“Was that an abbreviation for Government man or Gladstone?”
“Not sure. Really high,” Tobey said, holding in his smoke.
“Anyway,
yeah, that’s not bad,” I said. “I’ll make a note about the communications thing.”
It wasn’t hard to find more conspiracies. A bunch of people were laying blame on Corporate America—specifically, “fucking Corporate America, man.” But none of the rhetoric was particularly compelling because, let’s face it, “the Man sucks” will only get you so far. Still, it was the most popular refrain as we went from parks to bars to coffee shops.
“Are you keeping track of suspects?” Tobey asked. “Write down ‘Corporate America.’”
“I’m not writing down ‘Corporate America’ until someone actually articulates a theory. People are throwing that phrase around like some racial slur. As if it held some talismanic power to create liability without proof.”
This time it was Tobey who broke stride.
“Yes?” I asked.
“You understand that I’m, like, really high, right?”
“I’ll keep it simple. You find me someone who can actually explain why ‘Corporate America’ would steal the Internet, and I’ll put them in my journal as a suspect.”
“Deal,” Tobey said. “To Starbucks!”
“Is that a big Reddit hangout now?”
“Maybe, but I need like six espressos if we’re gonna do this. I’m pretty much tripping balls right now.”
We hit the Starbucks in Union Square in the hopes of sobering up, but that’s also where we met Sean. He was a self-proclaimed Redditor, but clearly not yet zombified. Just agitated and holed up with a grande and stacks of papers. He must have opened the place, because he’d managed to score the corner cushy couch for one. His tiny table was filled with mountains of notebooks stuffed with highlighted clippings. I bet he would have rocked the microfiche back in the day.
Notes From the Internet Apocalypse Page 2