Agents of the Internet Apocalypse

by Wayne Gladstone

  “Right,” she agreed.

  “You wanted to fuck the actual fictitious character.”

  She smiled and straightened the brim of my hat. “Well, my first thought would be to ask you why you’d call a diary ‘fiction,’ but yeah, I guess that’s true.”

  I stared at her not knowing what to say.

  “Besides,” she said, “you’re not that Gladstone.”

  “No?”

  “Nah,” she said. “You’re softer.”

  “Oh.”

  “And stronger,” she added, and grabbed me just below the shoulders, running her tight grip down my arms.

  “Well, thank you for the vote of confidence.” I kissed her forehead and headed for the door.

  “Oh, and Gladstone,” she said. “There’s a mailbox by the pay phone. Do you think you could mail that envelope? Keep forgetting.”

  * * *

  I headed to what I hoped was Melrose, taking comfort in the fact that for once I had every excuse to get lost. It turned out not to matter. Nearly the moment I hit the street, a parked car flipped on its headlights and crept closer. The limo pulled up beside me, and the back window rolled down to reveal a man in a black robe and a rubber clown mask like the one Heath Ledger wore during the bank heist in The Dark Knight.

  “Need a ride?” he asked.

  “Do I know you?”

  “We’re acquainted,” he said. “Join me.” His chauffeur, wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, exited the car and opened the door.

  “Quiffmonster42?” I asked, and the clown nodded. I studied his mask and his robe. His stillness. “How do I know it’s you?” I asked.

  He raised a gloved hand to his brow and shook his head. “You’re still not getting the whole Anonymous thing, huh?”

  That sounded like something Quiff would say. I stepped inside and shut the door.

  “Why’d you change your mask?” I asked, and he raised the partition separating the driver from us.

  “Guy Fawkes is old hat, Gladstone,” he whispered. “Just because there’s no Net doesn’t mean time stands still. It’s not 2007.”

  “But—”

  “I know, I know,” he said, gesturing slightly to the driver. “Not everyone got the memo. So. Can I get you a drink?” He presented his 1970s-style limo wet bar. Quiff’s regal manner seemed to match these surroundings far more than the Bowery Poetry Club where we’d met before.

  “I’ll pass,” I said and he paused.

  “Good for you, Gladstone. A little slap and tickle bring back the old confidence?”

  I didn’t like the question and I didn’t answer.

  “I apologize. That was coarse,” he said, “and unimportant. What I really care about is your investigation.”

  I remembered the night we met. I stood on a chair and announced to 4Chan that I was looking for the Internet. It hurt to remember, because now he was one more person I’d have to disappoint. One more person to tell a story too long to explain. I stared at the hem of his robe and realized it was the first time I’d put my head down since I came to L.A.

  “Quiff,” I said. “I may have oversold myself.”

  “Chin up, Gladstone. I read all about it,” he said, and patted yet another photocopy of my journal on the seat beside him.

  “You read that?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Quick question: Why did you spell my handle, ‘Q-U-I-F-F?’ Queef is spelled ‘Q-U-E-E-F’”

  “Pretty sure Urban Dictionary spells it Q-U-I-F-F.”

  “No, it does no such thing. The preferred spelling is with the double “e.” If you spell it with an ‘i,’ then it only takes one ‘f.’”

  “Oh,” I said, forgiving myself for not double-checking the spelling during the Apocalypse. “I hope you weren’t too offended by my misspelling your vagina-fart name. That must have been so embarrassing.”

  “I’ll say,” Quiff said, with a tiny laugh. “Especially because everyone’s reading it. Really taking off.”

  “Tobey said it’s going ‘paper viral.’”

  “The real Tobey?” Quiff asked.

  “Yeah. The real one,” The light caught the shine of the silkier material around his hem.

  “Anyway, don’t beat yourself up about the investigation too much,” Quiff said. “After all, you’ve gotten this far. Anointed by Jeeves, a paper viral sensation, and…”

  “And?”

  “And you’re in my car. Look around. Not just anyone rides with me.”

  “But none of that has anything to do with finding the Internet,” I said. “You read the book. I wasn’t looking for the Internet. I used the Net as a distraction when my life fell apart, and when it left, I made my investigation the new distraction.”

  I’d created silence with speech and I thought about the possibility of having proved a point, but Quiff took it away.

  “Very eloquent. Did Dr. Kreigsman have you memorize all that?”

  “You know about him?”

  “We are Anonymous. We know things. The Internet was one way of finding and sharing information, but even without it, information exists. It can be acquired. We acquire it and we want to help you.”

  I wondered what kind of help could come from an angry clown.

  “I have a present for you,” Quiff said.

  He picked up my journal to reveal a fairly thin book beneath it, about the size of a fashion magazine.

  “Take a look,” he said, handing it over. “Do you know what you’re looking at?”

  I flipped the pages. It looked a lot like a phone book.

  “I think I read about this,” I said.

  “Shh. I’m going to tell you anyway,” Quiff said, adjusting his mask and sitting up straight. “When the Internet began, they called it the ARPANET.” He sounded like a children’s librarian, explanatorily animated. “It was a U.S. project designed simply to link computers. To create networks. The ARPANET formed a connection between the military’s defense researchers, either within the military itself or at ARPA-funded universities. Military and academia. They were the first to get online.”

  “Right. I read all about this in the hospital.”

  “Quiet,” Quiff reprimanded. “By 1980, the number of people who had access to the ARPANET was growing. A few thousand now had e-mail addresses.”

  I got excited. “Right, so this is like the first Internet phone book,” I said, interrupting again.

  “Yes. It has names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and even postal addresses,” Quiff confirmed.

  I ran my hands over the cover. Still soft like a magazine, but of slightly heavier paper stock. Just enough effort to look more than completely forgettable. But it wasn’t its appearance that made it special; it was its purpose. A phone book for the Internet, proving that people need to take the infinite and unknowable and quantify it in a form they can comprehend. It was like the Bible.

  “So that’s your first clue,” he said.

  I didn’t understand. “What can I do with this?”

  “This is where it starts.”

  “Yeah, but it grows into nothing,” I insisted. “More and more people got online, ARPANET grew into the Internet, and this book grew to the point of absurdity until it ceased to exist.”

  “Incorrect.”

  “Incorrect?”

  “Incorrect.”

  “What do you mean, incorrect?” I asked.

  “Yes, the ARPANET continued to grow and moved into the private sector with the help of Senator Gore’s bill.”

  I interrupted Quiff again. “I know. He did take the initiative in bringing the Net to the private sector. And that’s all he ever said.”

  “The election’s over, Gladstone, but, yeah, they really fucked him with that ‘invented the Internet’ bullshit. Anyway, more and more people got online, but the book did not grow.”

  Quiff pulled the flow of his black robe off the seat to his right, and there, on the dark leather was another phone book. He handed it to me.

  “Take a look, Gladstone.”
/>   The new book was similar, but approximately 25 percent thinner.

  “This is the phone book from 1988,” he said.

  “It’s smaller,” I said.

  “Now he’s getting it,” Quiff said, knowing he had me. I listened even more intently to get him to continue, and, somehow, I could tell he was smiling behind the mask.

  “But more and more people got online,” I said. “Why would it shrink?”

  “Well, fairer to say it changed. The book is still maintained, even now, but it no longer documents who’s online. As you say, that’s millions. Now it records the power brokers, the robber barons of the Net. Those who maintain real control.”

  I took the decanter of Scotch from the wet bar and poured myself two fingers, neat. Quiff made some sort of guttural sound from behind the mask.

  “What? You offered,” I said.

  “No. Nothing. I was going to invite you to have some Glenlivet. Not sure what’s in that old thing, but it’s fine.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Not picky,” realizing I had no right to be an arbiter of fine taste in this company.

  I took a sip and felt the sting of smoke far too strong to ignore. I almost coughed fire like a cartoon, but then it gave way to the comfort of moss and dirt. In another moment, I’d have the warm comfort of scorched earth.

  “Fuck. Whatever that is, it’s certainly something, Quiff.”

  “High praise indeed,” he said.

  “I don’t know about this book stuff, though,” I said.

  “You don’t have to know. We know. The book exists. Do you think the world’s omnipotent would let the most important invention of the twenty-first century exist freely? Do you really think they wouldn’t find a way to integrate themselves deeper and deeper into the process?”

  “No, I can believe that,” I said. “But why paper?”

  “These are old soldiers, Gladstone. The most distrustful of the technology they helped make a reality. There is no trace of this online. E-data is forever, but paper burns.”

  I could see the deep black of Quiff’s shoes even in the darkness of the limo. They stood out, polished with something deeper than shadows. He recrossed his legs and adjusted his robe.

  “Let me simplify this for you. You don’t have to tackle the whole World Wide Web. Find the latest book. If you do that, you limit our search for those few who had the power to take it away.”

  “I’m just some guy. Why don’t you look for it?”

  “You don’t think we’ve looked for it?” he said, clearly annoyed. “You think Anonymous was sitting around waiting for some jackass from New York to save the day?” Quiff straightened his mask. “No offense.”

  “Well, no, I didn’t think that. So, yeah, why me?”

  “Look, we’ve tried, Gladstone. We’re still trying, but it’s time to put it in the hands of someone new. And besides, you have friends. Better than friends—fans. They’ll want to help you. To join you.”

  “That sounds parasitic,” I said.

  “It’s not parasitic. You’re offering them a chance to be part of something. It’s a lot better than sticking your Kickstarter account in someone’s face. Or are you just afraid of a little hard work?”

  I had told myself my contempt for returning to work was not laziness. That I simply could no longer get it up for labor that meant nothing. Now I was presented with something of significance. What possible reason for refusal could I give without simultaneously admitting that all I wanted was to do nothing?

  “Can I count on you for assistance?” I asked.

  “We will be there, Gladstone. Are you ready to gather the troops?”

  I finished the rest of the Scotch in my crystal and waited for twenty-five smoky years of wooden gestation to settle and warm my resolve from the inside out.

  “Troops? This is an investigation,” I said. “I don’t want war.”

  Quiff pulled back on the rubber of his mask until his eyes were firmly in line with the holes. “That doesn’t matter, he said. “If you lead a good investigation, Gladstone,” the war will want you.”

  Part II

  5.

  I sat completely still in the darkness of Tobey’s apartment. Almost no one in the world knew where I was, and even those hip to my whereabouts couldn’t find me here. Not if I didn’t move. And in the comfortable quiet of invisibility I thought about becoming a new man. The one people were asking me to be.

  “What do you make of this messiah business?” Dr. Kreigsman had asked, back at the hospital.

  Back then, he had me convinced Jeeves never anointed me. That I’d heard the Internet Messiah story on the news, maybe even seen Jeeves in Central Park, but then just mentally assumed the identity of that mystery man in my memories. Still, I remembered the park. I could see Jeeves stammering and gesturing from my point of view and I knew, if I really thought about it, that it was true even then.

  “What? You don’t like it? Ask Jeeves,” I said.

  “How old are you, now?” Kreigsman asked.

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “Have you achieved what you’ve wanted in life?”

  Dr. Kreigsman had to know that was a betrayal I couldn’t forgive.

  “You know I haven’t,” I said. “You don’t have to be cruel.”

  He took off his glasses.

  “Well, let’s talk about that,” he said, polishing the lenses. “Why is it cruel? Why is it cruel for you to be just another man?”

  I hesitated.

  “Don’t worry about sounding arrogant,” he said. “I won’t judge you.”

  “Because,” I said, still embarrassed, “I think I’m smart.”

  “I think so too. Exceptionally so.” Kreigsman put his glasses back on and focused on me. “You’d have to be to write multiple identities in real time. And there’s more.”

  I waited for the more.

  “You’re not a kid anymore. You’re smarter than ever. Even an average man will start to have it all figured out by the time they’re pushing forty. Except, for most, the trajectory of their lives is already set by the time they acquire that kind of wisdom.”

  “I don’t understand where you’re going with this,” I said. “Also, you missed a spot on your right lens.”

  He took his glasses off and dropped them in the chest pocket of his lab coat.

  “When you’re talented and unrecognized, that starts to feel a lot like persecution. And if you’re particularly talented—well, that might start to feel like persecution on a biblical level.”

  I didn’t say anything. Kreigsman came closer and placed his hands on my shoulders. “You’re a very bright guy,” he said. “But you don’t need to be the Messiah.”

  Just then Tobey opened his door and slapped on the lights in one drunken motion. “Holy shit,” he said, finding me instantly revealed in the fluorescent glow. “You have got to be the Messiah.”

  “Why?”

  “That girl practically devoured me. She had a friend too. And all because I’m in your book. This shit is blowing up.”

  “Mazel tov, Tobes. You’ve really made a compelling case for me assuming the mantle of savior against unknown agents of the Apocalypse.”

  “Did I mention there was butt stuff?” he said.

  I flipped Tobey the phone book Quiff had given me.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “A clue.”

  I explained to Tobey everything there was to know about the Internet phone book. About how Quiff had given us a starting place—a way to find who stole the Internet by understanding who could steal it. He did an excellent job of feigning interest while presumably fantasizing about cruising the West Coast and tagging groupies who would continue to spread his legend. We agreed we would be a team. We would take that New York panic attack masquerading as an investigation and make it real on the West Coast. We would assume a job title we didn’t understand. Not systems analyst or subrogation claims manager, but Internet Messiah. And assistant.

  “Assistant?”
Tobey asked.

  “You’d prefer disciple?”

  “Fuck that,” Tobey said. “I want to be co-Messiah.”

  “Yeah, sorry, I’m the anointed one, but since all you care about is getting laid, may I offer that you don’t need to be the Messiah? You don’t have to be the lead singer. The drummer gets all the chicks.”

  “Good point,” Tobey agreed. “I’ll just be the Tobey.”

  “There you go.”

  “So I don’t work Wednesdays. We can start this shit tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow’s Tuesday?”

  “Yeah, I know, I’ll call in sick so I can have a two-day midweek weekend, duh.”

  We would have slept ‘til noon, but the 7:45 knocking wouldn’t allow it, and I opened Tobey’s door more concerned with removing one half of the percussion equation than seeing who was on the other side. It was Romaya. Her hair was tied back, and she was wearing a blouse and business suit, but something was wrong. She had been crying, or almost crying. She had that tiny shake in her voice.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I have an interview at Google at two o’clock today.”

  “Wow, that’s great, Babe. Congrats.”

  “No it’s not,” she said. “Google’s in Palo Alto, five, six hours away.”

  “Oh … so?”

  “Do you think you could drive me?”

  “Drive your car?”

  “No. My car’s out of commission. Does Tobey have a car? He must, right? Everyone has a car here.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  Romaya looked over my shoulder in vague alarm, but before I could turn around I heard, “Yes, you can borrow my car, strange MILF-y lady.” Tobey was wearing a T-shirt and boxers.

  “She’s not a MILF,” I said. “She’s my wife. My ex-wife.” I took a breath and held up one finger. Then I started again. “Tobey, this is Romaya.”

  “Oh, shit,” Tobey said. “Hi.”

  “Romaya,” I said, “Tobey.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said, but her eyes lost focus before finishing. She was remembering her disdain for Tobey and what she thought was his frat fuck site. She never believed there was more to him, which bothered me, considering I had shared her dislike for frat fucks. My belief should have counted for something.