“Because I’m not interested in book sales right now. We’re spreading the word. Just like the Gladstone masks. Slim profit margin there too.”
“What word?” I asked. “The Messiah Movement’s or the movie?”
Margo scanned the buttons inside the elevator, pushing the uppermost floor, and then turned to me. In her heels, we were eye to eye. “If you’re going to save the world, Aaron, you better make it profitable. Unlike handguns and cigarettes, justice doesn’t have a lobby.”
We had to give credentials to a receptionist and then take another elevator to the roof. I could see all of Sydney, including what I immediately considered their version of our Space Needle, although I learned later theirs was almost twice the size.
“Why the hell did he want to meet us on the roof?” I said, but Margo just pointed to the sky.
A black helicopter approached, not too different from the one in the Hollywood-sign video or the descriptions Romaya’s neighbors had given, and I stood in front of Margo as a reflex.
“Thanks for the wind blocking, Aaron,” she said, “but Reggie’s expecting to see me, so I better stand in front.”
The helicopter set down and a sixtysomething bearded man with longish, graying hair poked out his head. It was Reginald Stanton, piloting the helicopter solo, wearing some sort of 1980s Airwolf jumpsuit.
“G’day, mates!” he shouted. “Hop aboard!”
“They really say that shit, down here, don’t they?” I said to Margo.
“They really do,” she said. “There’s probably a crocodile riding shotgun in that thing.”
* * *
I’m not sure if she’d been in a helicopter before, but Margo certainly knew how to sit in one. She strapped in and crossed her legs, completely at home riding with a billionaire in the sky while I held on to my hat and tried to get a read on this man who apparently had everything he wanted. I wondered if he thought he could add Margo to that collection.
“So, Ms. Zmena, who’s your plus-one?” he asked once he got his bearings. We were flying to his estate on Manly Beach.
“Mr. Stanton, let me introduce you to Former Special Agent Aaron Rowsdower.”
“Fuck me,” he said, turning his head to look at me. “From the book?”
“One and the same,” Margo said with a two-hand presentation.
“Bloody great,” he said, taking a closer look. “But, um, I can’t—”
“I’ve had extensive reconstructive dental surgery,” I said, cutting him off.
“Well, that explains it. Sit tight, mates. We’ll be home in a moment.”
I tried to talk to Stanton about ICANN and the latest Internet blackout, but I didn’t get much from him. He was too busy making more turns and dives than you would have thought necessary for a straight shot to Manly. Still, I kept pressing.
“I thought you were a former agent,” he said at one point. Another time he corrected me when I said cyberattacks had shut the Net down. “Cyberattacks have made the Net vulnerable and unreliable,” he said. “But your president has shut the Net down. He’s switched it off at the hubs again.”
With all the traveling and spotty Internet, I hadn’t followed the news in the last thirty-six hours. I wasn’t sure if that was public knowledge or if Stanton had inside information or if it was just his pet theory. But I knew it would be a mistake to push harder without gaining his trust, so I sat back and watched the bluest water I’d ever seen get closer and closer as he brought Margo and me to Manly.
Stanton said he wanted to take us to one of his nearby homes because he hated doing business at the office, and when we landed he was like a new man. No longer the manic pilot, he was now the manic host, telling us where to sit, pointing out the massaging gadgets in all his reclining chairs and playing bartender, all while answering periodic calls from his bar phone and conducting business. This was definitely a man who cut million-dollar deals while taking a shit.
“First off,” Stanton said as we settled into his leopard-skin recliners that overlooked the ocean through a huge plate-glass window, “I love, love, love that Internet Apocalypse book! Really speaks to what’s going on in the world right now.”
“I think so,” Margo said, taking a sip of Stanton’s creation, a drink he called a “Koala Fucker.” He’d poured one for each of us even though I’d requested a Johnnie Walker on the rocks. I was figuring this guy had blue label.
“I really think you’re onto something, and I want on board,” he said. “But before we reach out to production companies and studios, I wanted to know if you’ve thought about making changes.”
“Well, of course, in bringing something to the screen there’s always going to be liberties you take to convey the story, coupled with the fact that Gladstone’s life and this Internet Apocalypse story is still a work in progress.”
“Totally,” Stanton said, and took two big pulls of Koala Fucker through a Krazy Straw. “I was thinking, what if we told Gladstone’s story via a bunch of twentysomethings in San Francisco?”
“I can see the demographic appeal of that,” Margo said with the poker face of a champ, “but I think it’s important to all those people who are buying the book to see Gladstone’s story. That’s why I bought the rights. That’s the story I want to tell.”
“Well, OK,” Stanton said. “But Gladstone’s such a sook. Like, have a cry, mate. We get it. You gonna follow a bloke like that around?” He sat on a high stool behind his bar and looked down at us.
“Well,” Margo began, “I don’t really see him like that.…”
“OK, well, you’ve met him,” Stanton said. “You tell me. What’s your mate about?”
“That’s not easy to put simply. I mean, you read his book, but I can tell you from meeting him, Gladstone believes in pure things.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Stanton said, and Margo went into her pitch about the father at the dollar store.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Stanton interrupted. “I’ve heard that one already, love.”
“Burke?” she asked.
“Yeah, your next president is spewing that one all over his town hall meetings while blaming Obama for corrupting the Net. If that’s the best ya got on Gladstone, I’m still leaning toward San Franciscan twentysomethings.”
The phone rang, freeing Margo from maintaining her frozen smile. It wasn’t good news. “When?” Stanton barked into the phone. “How?” He kept asking questions as he slammed things around behind the bar. Cursing. “I’ll be there Wednesday. No, not Tuesday. I’m in Australia. It’s already Tuesday here. I own an airline, not a time machine, you fuckwit. Jesus fucking Christ.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, but all his anger didn’t end with the call. He moved behind the bar like he was trapped in his own home, sweeping shattered glass into a garbage can with his bare hands and shooting furtive glances at Margo and me. Mostly me.
“My friend Michiko was just murdered,” he said, and stepped out from behind the bar, wiping his hands together to flick the shards of glass away like dust.
“I’m sorry,” Margo said.
“Thank you,” he said. “So I’m afraid I’m going to have cut our discussion short. ICANN’s called for an emergency conference in California to address.”
“Was your friend part of ICANN?” I asked.
“She was a crypto officer,” Margo explained on Stanton’s behalf. I’m guessing Margo had a manila folder of clippings about her somewhere too.
“Michiko Nagasoto was more than just a crypto officer,” Stanton said. “Michiko was brilliant. A programmer, a businesswoman. And beautiful. The point is, she’s carked it. Fucking shot dead in Tokyo. Right through her apartment window.”
I straightened up my recliner and put my cocktail glass down on the table to my side. Partly because I felt like I was on a case again, and partly because Stanton was making me nervous as he got closer. Something wasn’t right.
“Are there any leads?” I asked as he kept pacing.
“Leads? What kind
of leads do you mean, Former Special Agent Rowsdower?”
I looked at Margo, who shared my confusion, but I could tell from the way her eyes stayed fixed over my shoulder that Stanton had stopped pacing. He was behind me.
“Y’know, clues?” I asked, turning in my chair, but Stanton rushed up behind me and wrapped his left arm around my neck before I got all the way around. I just barely caught a glimpse of him lifting what looked like a nine-inch blade over his head.
“Are you in danger, Margo?” Stanton asked, but before she had a chance to answer, I grabbed my glass off the table and threw it back over my head and into his face. I heard the thud of what I imagined was Stanton’s forehead, and in the moment he flinched I reached back to grab a fistful of his hair with my left hand, pulling him forward over my right shoulder as I stood. He wasn’t a small man, but I tend to have extra resolve when someone’s trying to murder me. I kept pulling more of his torso over my shoulder, until I had enough leverage to throw the rest of him over and away. His feet hit the high-top stools at the bar before he landed on his back. Somehow he kept hold of the knife, and I stepped on his wrist before he had a chance to use it. That’s when the fucker started biting. He rolled to his right and latched on to my right leg, sinking his teeth in hard.
“Goddammit!” I screamed, kicking him in the head with my left foot. “Get off my leg you fucking … dingo!”
Margo rushed to the floor and managed to pry the knife from his hands.
“Stop biting me,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Stanton finally relented when Margo was standing over him with the knife, and I took my foot off his wrist. “What the fuck was that about?”
“Sorry,” he said, getting to his feet and holding his fingers to the blood dripping from where my glass hit his head. “Something’s not right, and you’re a stranger in my home.”
“I’m here because you flew me here, you biting asshole.”
He laughed. “Good on ya, mate. I deserved that.”
“You’re not getting this. If I had my gun, you’d be dead now. You strangled and pulled a knife on your guest, not an intruder. I would have been in my rights. Even in Australia I assume.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m not used to things being taken from me. Michiko was more than just my friend.”
He sat down on the floor and pushed his hands through his hair, streaking blood across the gray. He couldn’t be bothered applying pressure. He just sat for a moment with his head down. Occassionally, blood dripped on his fingers tightly gripped in front of him in a vengeful prayer. Margo sat down next to him and put her hand on his shoulder but did not speak. After another minute, I sat down too, directly across from him.
“Reginald,” I said. “Please look at me.”
He lifted his head. “She was such a light sleeper,” he said. “Not like me. Every morning, I’d wake, and if she were even there at all she’d be dressed, or working out something on her laptop. I missed so many waking hours of her life while I snored away like a mad cunt. But a couple of times, not often, but a couple of times, I woke for some stupid reason, and she’d be sleeping. I’d lie as still as I could so I could watch her, but she’d always wake up seconds later. But in those few moments she was so peaceful. So … small.”
He lost it again, and Margo moved her hand to the back of his neck.
“Not that we were going to get married,” he said. “People like us aren’t built for that. She had some wog in France, and I’m always off banging models like a…”
“Mad cunt?” Margo offered.
“Something like that,” Stanton said. “But I always thought I’d have a morning where I’d wake first. Just one morning for me to tell her I’d watched her sleep, small and beautiful, for hours.”
I gave Stanton my handkerchief and he pressed it to his forehead.
“Sorry about the biting, mate,” he said.
“And the attempted murder?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s been a hard day.”
“I know you heard the story about the dollar store,” I said. “Even if it was from Hamilton Burke’s lips, but let me tell you something else about Gladstone. Something that might be hard for you to understand with all your homes, money, and power. Your loss today—even though it’s awful and I’m sorry—only scratches the surface of his. Gladstone lost his wife. First in divorce and then again when she was murdered right in front of him. He lost his job, which believe me, does something to you. For a while Gladstone lost his mind, and when he got it back he lost his freedom, detained for crimes he did not commit under the bullshit NET Recovery Act. Now he’s lost his country, and he’s on the run and hiding somewhere, and I can’t find him.”
“So he’s a loser? Is that the point?”
“Oh man, you’re a prick,” I said. “No, the point is, if you took that many things away from most men, there’d be nothing left. What are you, Reggie, without your airline, stores, and companies? What are you without the people you love? Gladstone lost everything, and there was still too much of a person left over for the remains to be blown away in the wind. He didn’t put a bullet in his brain. He didn’t pull a knife on anyone else. He told people that pure things still existed. That they mattered and people mattered. And he may have done it like some rambling, drunken asshole, but now there are people all over the world holding up signs, spraying logos, and they’re doing it because they believe it’s possible that if you stick it out long enough, everything that’s been destroyed can be returned.”
By this point, I realized I was standing and ready to go. Even if I didn’t know where I was going. Even if Margo was crying. Reginald stood too.
“I believe the people who killed your friend, killed his wife,” I said. “I believe this all has something to do with the Internet, and I’m going to keep looking for Gladstone until I figure out where he is. And then I’m going to help him, because it feels like work, and work makes me feel like who I’m supposed to be, and that’s all I know. That’s everything I know.”
“That was beautiful, mate,” Stanton said. Then he turned to Margo. “See? There’s your leading man.”
Report 8
Stanton was good enough to fly us back to Sydney before he went off to California. I thought about following him out there, but Margo wasn’t ready to leave.
“We’re in another Apocalypse,” I said. “A member of ICANN has been murdered, and they’re holding a meeting right now.”
“I understand that,” she replied. “Let them have their meetings. You won’t learn anything more until they happen. Besides, you deserve a vacation.”
Margo clearly didn’t know how lazy I’d been the preceding month, but I agreed to stay back a few days and reconnect after the ICANN meetings. Stanton gave us the number of his L.A. landline so we could reach him.
We had dinner that night at some fusion place Margo was excited to try. She and the server had a long talk about tomatoes. Afterward we got rooms at a hotel for one night, and agreed we’d figure out longer-term plans in the morning. That night, I heard the phone ring in Margo’s room. I did a good job of not listening. I didn’t want to hear her speaking to her boyfriend. So I distracted myself, reading the pamphlets in my room about local attractions, and when that wasn’t enough, I grinded my leg into a bag of ice on the bed, rubbing the cubes where a batshit Australian billionaire had devoured my calf only hours before.
The next morning, Margo was in good spirits and had decided we should be proper tourists. “Let’s take the ferry to Manly,” she said.
“What’s there besides Stanton’s place?” I asked.
“Who cares?” she said. “We’re gonna take the ferry back once we get there anyway, but it passes right by the Sydney Opera House.”
* * *
I’m not sure if there’s much diversity in ferry design but the boat we got on looked just like the one in New York that takes you to Staten Island. Or, at least that’s my memory. I hadn’t taken it in years, and I certainly
didn’t try to accost Gladstone on it the way he imagined in his journal. The only difference I could see between the Staten Island Ferry and this one was Aussies had no problem leaving tripping hazards around because, I guess, no one sues here. I stumbled over some rope left on the deck, catching myself on the railing.
“You all right?” Margo asked.
“Fine,” I said, even though the bite marks in my calf were flaring up.
Margo was happy, and why not? This Australian “winter” felt to be a lovely seventy degrees and the sky and water were having a fuck-you contest to see who could be more blue. I’d seen a bubbling giddiness in Margo that made her move in tiny hops when she let it, but today she was also keeping watch, not completely at ease.
“Grab us a seat on the left side,” she said. “Opera House side. I have to find a bathroom.”
I sat on a bench along the outside of the ferry and tried to pretend I was on vacation. After all, this was how I’d probably dress if I ever took one. I was wearing some comfortable brown shoes, jeans, a button-down shirt, and a sports jacket. Maybe I’d lose the sports jacket, but it made me feel more like me. I wasn’t ready for Hawaiian shirts yet.
The Harbour Bridge reminded me of New York too, but it was different, and not just because it was newer than anything back home. I knew it connected the business district with North Sydney, but it didn’t look like something to use for business commuting. Maybe it was the sun, graciously shielded by Gladstone’s hat, but it glimmered in a blue sky like some sort of leisure bridge, only to be traveled for a good time. Maybe it was because I could see where the bridge came from and where it was going and both places looked shiny. I wasn’t sure, but that’s when I realized Margo had made a mistake. If I was staring at the bridge, then the Opera House had to be on the other side.
I considered waiting, but I figured Margo would appreciate it if I got us a seat on the right side before the boat filled up. Besides, she was no frail thing. If she came back from the bathroom, finding me gone, I knew it would only take her a moment to realize what was going on, so I worked my way to the right side of the ship, this time keeping watch for tripping hazards. I was pleased when I caught sight of the Opera House. After the last few weeks, it felt good to be right about something, although my concerns about seats filling up were unwarranted. Commuter rush was over and the ferry was nearly empty. I was also wrong about something else. Margo was already on this side, unless there was another five-ten woman in Australia wearing the same thin, black buttoned sweater thing and jeans. I knew it was Margo even with her back to me.
Reports on the Internet Apocalypse Page 10