Agents of the Internet Apocalypse

by Wayne Gladstone

  “Well then,” I said with a smile, “I must have really loved her.”

  But my mother didn’t say any of the things Kreigsman said. She just sat there, very still, before finally speaking in a whisper.

  “You can’t fill someone’s cup when there’s a hole in it,” she said.

  I was defensive. Too quick to respond. “Maybe my cup has a hole in it.”

  “I’m sure it does,” she said. “So?”

  I wanted to say something about love being more like puzzle pieces, or if not puzzle pieces then maybe love was putting one cup inside another without lining up the holes, so the two cups plugged each other, but then I realized that would only hold enough water for one. So I didn’t say anything. I just stayed quiet and stared a little longer. And when visiting hours were over, I felt it in her hug. The knowledge that our visit had made her no stronger. She was still carrying the weight of my hollow.

  I tried to put that out of my mind for the next few days, mostly unsuccessfully. But then I caught a break to save me from contemplation. Kreigsman busted into my room with an energy I’d not seen from him before.

  “It’s your big day, Wayne,” he said.

  “You proposing?”

  “Even better. I think you’re ready to leave this joint.”

  “You’re discharging me?”

  “Yep.”

  Dr. Kreigsman handed me his clipboard, showing the order and everything.

  “But I thought you were too afraid I was gonna run around being an Internet Messiah instead of doing the work that needed to be done on myself.”

  “I’ll be honest: That remains a bit of a concern. But you’ve made great strides. Also, they want you out. Not all mental patients actually have an apartment to go home to.”

  I could visualize the period at the end of his sentence, but I also felt something more coming.

  “Oh,” he said, taking back his clipboard, “also there’s this.”

  He dropped the New York Times on my lap. It had a banner headline: “THE INTERNET RETURNS!”

  “It’s back?”

  “Seems so. An uninterrupted signal, at least in America, for almost two days now. Some sites still down. Sites with information housed overseas still hit or miss, but yeah, since the government took over the hubs, it’s back.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes, wow. So, y’know, investigation over, and time for you to work on you.”

  I jumped out of bed, grabbing my books and journal off my nightstand and shoving them into the backpack that had lived beside me for two months. It took me more time to put my shoes on than it did to pack, and that’s including unzipping my Jansport to double-check that my letter to Romaya was still safely lodged in my journal.

  “Doctor,” I said, extending my hand. “Thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome. And remember, your work’s just starting. Stay on your prescription, and I expect to see you in two weeks. I can refer you elsewhere, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep seeing you for a bit.”

  I liked Dr. Kreigsman, but it was very important to me that I not say anything more than thank you. Really, what more was there to say? He was the best, but only on the sliding scale of incompetence representing the psychiatric profession. He hadn’t fixed me. Weeks of being fed, sober, and safe fixed me. Quiet reflection on what I’d discovered on my journey fixed me. I fixed me.

  “Sure,” I said, putting my backpack on both shoulders, positioning my grandfather’s fedora, and heading for the door.

  “It’s late October,” he said. “You’ll be cold.”

  I looked down at my hospital scrubs, pretending to make note of the need for warmer clothing, but that’s not what I was thinking at all. I was headed someplace warm.

  2.

  I was too afraid to go home after the release because shutting that apartment door in Brooklyn could mean never leaving again. But it wasn’t just the fear. There was nothing for me in New York. I’d hidden so completely for the last two years that the place had forgotten me. Any chance of a future was out west. I would crash with Tobey in L.A. until I got my head together. After all, it was the least he could do for me after I’d been so hospitable, even if his visit occurred only in my mind. Good friends overlooked such things.

  Aside from the brown, low-top Doc Martens I was currently wearing, I left the rest of my clothes—still carrying the taint of the Hudson River—in my backpack, and opted for the style of hospital-issue, doctor-like scrubs. A sane person would have called for a ride, or at least someone to bring them clothes, but a sane person would also want to get out of a mental institution as quickly as possible. I left the hospital and took the A to JFK without a second thought. Then I bought a ticket at the airport counter just like in the movies. Disability payments had been aggregating for two months with no expenses, and still by direct deposit. It turned out to be cheaper for banks and providers to work out some system of faxing debits and credits than going back to mailing checks. Or maybe it wasn’t cheaper, but the people demanded it. Also, I hadn’t been paying rent. I wondered if I even had an apartment to go back to. Two months probably wasn’t enough to lose the place, but I’d worry about that later. Maybe it was four months. I couldn’t remember if I mailed checks during the investigation.

  I wondered if the counter lady thought I was a doctor, and then I wondered what they called airport counter ladies. Cashiers? CAIRshiers? Two months earlier I would have tweeted that or hopefully let it die in my drafts folder, and that’s when I realized that even though the Internet was allegedly working again, I’d made it all the way to JFK without even thinking about it. My thoughts were on Romaya, and I was proud of myself. I was calm. All the panic that had kept me indoors, kept me high, kept me manifesting delusions for company, was gone. I was outside and alone and that was okay. Although it always helped to be in transit.

  The cairshier was fiddling with something below the counter instead of taking down my information.

  “So,” I said. “The Internet really back?”

  “You haven’t checked?” she asked, hurrying her iPhone into her pocket like a child busted for sneaking cookies. I tried not to notice. “Yeah, I mean, it’s still all jacked,” she said, “but I got on my Gmail, and BuzzFeed had some new stuff today.”

  “‘10 Things 90s Kids Masturbated To During The Internet Apocalypse?’”

  “You saw that?” she asked.

  “Just a lucky guess.”

  She didn’t believe me and it didn’t matter because apparently our interaction was over. Everywhere I looked people were on their phones and laptops, but not with their typical ease. Each hit of the return button was like the pull of a slot-machine handle. Would this site work? Is there anything new? Did the e-mail fail to refresh or do I really have no messages? There were some phones for sale at an airport kiosk and if I bought one, I could get online too. I could surf the Web for the first time in two months. I could be just like everyone else. Part of them. But then I’d be here. In this airport for real. There’d be data pinning me to a place and time, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to be here. I was headed west for Romaya.

  I sat on the plane, grateful for the window seat, and waited for takeoff. My companions readied their laptops and smart phones in anticipation. It would take a special kind of bastard to pride himself for not giving in to the urge to be online when only months earlier he’d been lost in years of addiction—safe, sad, and alone. But as it turns out, I was that bastard. I cracked open my New York Times and read about the government takeover of the hubs. Although the article didn’t draw the conclusion explicitly, it seemed to me the government wasn’t the culprit in the Apocalypse if removing its control from the private sector could fix the problem. But I was smart enough to know I probably didn’t understand anything about the world.

  My study was disturbed by the crackle of our captain over the PA, “Ladies and gentlemen, JetBlue is proud to announce that this is its first WiFi flight since the Internet Apocal
ypse!”

  The crowd erupted into the kind of applause typically reserved for winning sports teams, and I hated myself with every fiber of my body for shaking my head with a quick laugh, like I was above such things. I forced myself to look out the window as I floated above New York and out into something undefined and blue, but really, I was counting down until the next announcement. Then it came:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, JetBlue now welcomes you to use your approved electronic devices.”

  The laptops and phones came out from under the seats and pockets with ordered cacophony like kids taking out books from grade school desks. I watched the man next to me, a forty-something with glasses so nice you’d mistake him for a visiting European, pay his WiFi fee and get on Google. He searched “puppies” as a test run. It worked. Then, on to his Gmail. No new messages. I raised the op-ed page to obscure my spying, and he sent a test e-mail to himself, labeling it “test.” (He had limited creativity.) It went through, and he made a face like a suburban dad, proud of the sauce he’d just sampled off his backyard BBQ ribs. I needed more than a newspaper to distract me from the Internet so I ordered a movie. Some high-concept comedy to hide my need.

  But when the film was over, I let myself look at his laptop again. It had 25% battery life.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Any chance I could use your laptop to check my e-mail? I promise I’ll be off in literally two minutes.”

  He adjusted his glasses, running his thumb and forefinger along the arm almost all the way to his ear.

  “You can watch me,” I said as he considered the request. “I don’t care. I just want to check.”

  “Just a couple of minutes,” he said. “I have to do some more things before the battery dies.”

  I accepted this as true even though I’d already watched him refresh his Facebook three times. He turned the laptop to face me, keeping it on his fold down table. I leaned forward to sign in to my Gmail account, and he kept watch, not even pretending to hide his view of my password. I’m not sure what I was hoping to find, but I had no new messages. The last e-mails from Tobey were long since read. That’s when I realized I didn’t have his address. His IM light wasn’t lit. No one’s was. I searched my mail, looking for one with his address, and found it within twenty seconds. With that kind of efficiency, sometimes it seemed letting Google take over the world wouldn’t be a bad thing. They certainly work better than the government or I.

  “Almost done,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I was done, but I wanted more playtime, and I clicked my spam folder. In it were all the typical things from Nigerian princes and black market Viagra salesmen, but there was more. There were e-mails from Romaya. E-mails from after the divorce. And they were from a normal account, which meant that if they ended up in spam it was because I’d had them automatically forwarded there to be ignored. Google helped me pretend my wife was dead instead of living without me. Apparently, there was an app for that.

  I felt a tightness in my chest and it didn’t come from my neighbor’s oversight of my activities; it was the blackness of her unread messages waiting for me. The panic was back. I clicked the most recent e-mail. It was from several months before the Apocalypse. It was as bad as I feared. Even my neighbor, who saw everything, tried to spare me the indignity by taking off his glasses and looking away: “I understand you don’t want to see me, but do me a favor and don’t leave obnoxious comments on my Instagram pics. Thanks.”

  I signed out and thanked him, turning the laptop back in his direction.

  “My ex-wife,” I said, hoping that was somehow less incriminating than whatever he’d imagined.

  The sky over the middle of America was just like the sky in New York and I knew it would be the same in the West. It didn’t matter how quickly I traveled through it, I was reachable in a way I hadn’t been in the subways. No longer safe. I closed the window shade and worked the Times crossword puzzle until we landed, another hour or so later. I couldn’t finish it, and that felt like a bad omen for my new life. I carried those feelings with me out into LAX, looking for a sign, and short of that, a bar. I found both.

  Right there in the airport, in big bold letters, was Gladstone’s LAX—a seafood restaurant and bar. My journey had been preordained even if my appearance spoke equal parts doctor and mental patient. I decided I didn’t want L.A. to think of me as either, so I turned my back on Gladstone’s and even the alcohol inside because I needed clothes. I had some options in an airport as large as LAX, but I walked into the first store I saw.

  First, I got some sandals. That seemed an obvious enough choice. My DMs weren’t right for California and the sandals went just fine with the scrubs. Even made them look almost deliberately casual. I was pleased. I’d gotten really used to the comfort of scrubs and the thought of going back to real clothes wasn’t particularly pleasant. I wondered if there were some other article of clothing I could get to dress them up—somehow make them more legit. That’s when I saw a light, white cotton blazer, not unlike Don Johnson’s old Miami Vice jacket. I slipped it on and it almost worked. I was getting there. The remnants of my illness mixed with L.A. airport fashion to create something new. Wasn’t the way this ensemble was coming together a sign as sure as “Gladstone’s”?

  If I had any doubt, it soon lifted when I saw a white fedora for sale. Lighter than the somewhat traumatized fabric one I had in my hand and the perfect complement to the jacket. I walked to the store’s one full-length mirror, wanting to bear witness to my own coronation as I applied the fedora. I was in white, and I felt new and clean. I took the love letter from my journal and tucked it safely into my breast pocket.

  Now it was time to find Tobey. He lived in Santa Monica on Lincoln Boulevard. I thought about renting a car with GPS, but I wasn’t sure GPS would be working now. I didn’t want to chance it, and even with it, I didn’t want to drive. At this hour, with this traffic, taking a cab seemed like a perfectly acceptable way of asking for help.

  This place clearly wasn’t New York, and not just because my cabbie was Mexican, but because he was spiritually reconciled with being in traffic. That was just the deal here. But there was a bigger difference: there was no city. The 405 didn’t lead to some majestic skyline that awakened possibility. It was no road to the Emerald City. It just sprawled out ahead, with only its traffic and functionality to keep it company. And as I watched the nothing go by, I thought about a story I once heard Madonna tell about when she was a fame-hungry little girl from Michigan. The day she got to New York, she asked her cabbie to take her to the middle of everything. He drove her to Times Square, and she got out amid the lights and noise and people. But that’s not really a request you can make in Los Angeles. You’d need to give the driver more information, and even if you knew the location, once you got there, you’d have to be invited in. If Times Square bustles with the energy and excitement of a crowded chat room or lively comment thread, L.A. highways are the infrastructure of the Net itself: discrete passages to unremarkable locations, carrying anonymous packets of cargo.

  The ride took forty-five minutes, and there was enough light left when I got there to make sure I was in the right place. I caught the complex door from a twenty-something lady walking her dog out of the building, and made my way to Tobey’s apartment. It was then I realized I probably should have dropped Tobey a heads up e-mail when I was on the plane, but we’d almost never e-mailed. Ours was an IM relationship and he wasn’t online when I’d checked. I needlessly consulted the address I’d scribbled on my scrap of the New York Times again before approaching number 19. The black plastic doorbell just below his peephole did a pretty good job of producing the sonic equivalent of a mechanical queef so I wasn’t surprised when there was no answer. I knocked. Then again, but louder.

  After the third knock, a voice barked out, “Come back later. Masturbating!”

  The voice was definitely Tobey’s.

  “Jerk off on your own time,” I called. “You have company.”

  “Who i
s it?” he asked, like there was a right and wrong answer to the question.

  “Wayne.”

  “Gladstone?!”

  “Yes!”

  There was a pause, and then, “Come back later. Masturbating.”

  I heard a rustle behind the door before I could respond, and Tobey greeted me seconds later, extending his right hand for a shake.

  “That’s okay, tiger,” I said pulling back. “I don’t think you had time to wash up.”

  “Huh? Oh. Don’t be stupid, I was joking.” He grabbed my hand, shaking it vigorously and pulling me in for a hug. “Come in!”

  Tobey’s apartment was a lot like I’d remembered it from that one prior visit. A small perfunctory bedroom down the hall with an even smaller bathroom next to it. The main space was a living/dining room adjacent to a kitchen that was seemingly installed only to comply with a technicality in the lease. The focal point was Tobey’s abused fabric couch. In front of it was a tiny glass coffee table with a laptop. A flat-screen TV hung on the opposing wall.

  “Enjoy,” Tobey said, placing his hand on my shoulder and gesturing to the greatness of the accommodations. “I’m having a pool put in next week.”

  “You’re on the third floor.”

  “Yeah, not a big one, but deeeep.”

  I sat on Tobey’s couch. Even my backpack was heavy enough to sink deep into its cushion. His Internet was indeed working. Also, porn was up on the screen.

  “I thought you said you were joking?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Tobey said. “The Net’s back. I hadn’t jerked off to Internet porn in four months!”

  I looked down at my hand.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t finish.”

  I gingerly refreshed the page just to test the connection.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked.

  “Three gallons of Purell?” I replied.

  The page refreshed and new girls filled the video players along the side, getting sodomized in silence. And then they froze. I refreshed again and that circle just kept turning.