Agents of the Internet Apocalypse

by Wayne Gladstone

  “What’s choking you up, Gladstone?” Quiff asked, but I didn’t answer. How could I explain to him what I’d seen? How could I tell him about a father who had nothing, but found a way to create a moment of unbridled joy for his children? Were there words to describe the hope, or at least the possibility, of this man patching together enough tiny moments so that by the time his girls realized how desperately poor they were, they’d already have had a happy childhood? Or could I explain what this father must have felt knowing that, in a world trying to crush him with everything he didn’t have, for this moment, he was a hero? How could I explain any of that to a man who didn’t believe in pure things?

  “I don’t think I can explain it to you, Quiff,” I said. “I believe in pure things.”

  “I know you do, Gladstone. You’re a true believer, and that’s why going on TV isn’t enough. After you do that, you’ll have a choice to make. You’ll have to stop your investigation and go away, or raise a real army and shut this whole thing down. You find the latest Internet phone book, narrow your lists of suspects, and I’ll help you raise forces for attack.”

  “Wait a second,” Tobey said. “If you think the government can just turn the Net back on, doesn’t that also mean you think the government shut it off? I thought we didn’t know who was responsible. I thought that was the point of finding the newest Internet phone book: to limit the list of suspects to just a few.”

  Quiff paused for a second. “Yes, good point, but everything is connected always. No one can sustain anything without some form of collaboration. Now it’s time to gather your forces. It’s a matter of survival.”

  “I don’t want an army. I don’t want to fight anyone.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to explain. I want to teach. I want to sit with even a man like you, steeped in pragmatism, and explain that pure things exist.”

  “You’ll be sitting a long time, Gladstone.”

  “Well, then I want to go home. Take me home. I have no idea where you’ve taken me.”

  “You are home,” Quiff said, unlocking the doors. I looked out the windows for the first time to see we were right outside Tobey’s apartment. “We were just circling while we talked.”

  I got up to leave without saying good-bye.

  “Gladstone,” Quiff said, handing me a blank business card with a handwritten phone number. “Promise to call me when you need that army?”

  Part III

  9.

  I never believed I was anointed. Not really. But sometimes, if I didn’t think too much about it, I did feel watched over. Even as a child. I guess it’s just a form of narcissism to believe the world puts things in a certain order for your eventual success. It’s like the people who say everything happens for a reason. If I examine that thought, I find it both absurd and repellent. But if I don’t think about it at all, then yes, that time you run late because you’ve misplaced your keys, then miss your plane that crashes … sure, it’s hard to not feel like someone is trying to tell you something.

  Leaving Quiff’s car, however, I felt none of that. I felt like I was on my own and nothing short of more work than I was capable of would change my future. Even with Tobey walking beside me, I felt alone. Even worse, I felt my heart and lungs and ribs existing in my body. The physical signs of a panic attack. Dr. Kreigsman had taught me to recognize them. They say knowing is half the battle, but they don’t tell you there is no second half, and fifty percent of anything is never a solution.

  So it was with as much comfort as surprise that we found Jeeves sitting in Tobey’s doorway reading Fangoria magazine. (The Apocalypse had been so good to print.)

  “Jeeves, what the…”

  He got to his feet with a bit of effort and held out his arms for a hug. I put my head on his shoulder and hugged him tight and squishy.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “It seems you need me,” he said.

  “Yeah, but this all just happened. How could you get here so fast?”

  “Came yesterday. Felt it coming.”

  Tobey interrupted. “Um, Sylvia Browne, if you knew it was coming, how about calling in a tip?”

  “No, prick, I didn’t know about the trolley. Just that Gladstone might need me.”

  Nothing good ever happened in Tobey’s apartment, and I didn’t want to go inside. I had a better chance of avoiding the panic if we kept moving, so I suggested we get into Tobey’s Matrix and take a drive. Tobey picked Mulholland Drive, and Jeeves and I clung to our door handles as Tobey took turns with too much confidence, tempting the Santa Monica Mountains.

  “I thought this would cheer you up, Gladstone,” he said. “Y’see, L.A.’s like two cities at least. There’s L.A.—y’know Beverly Hills, Venice, and all that—and then there’s The Valley. You can see both from up here.”

  He addressed the last part of the narrative to the rearview mirror because Jeeves and I were in the backseat.

  “Can you watch the road?” Jeeves asked.

  “We’re high enough to look down on it now, but all that smog and pollution that releases to the ocean on the L.A. side just sits in The Valley. Also, it’s, like, always ten degrees hotter.”

  “Why would that cheer me up?” I asked.

  “Because, y’know, the Lynch movie, Mulholland Drive? Remember that hot lesbian scene with Naomi Watts?”

  Tobey pulled off Mulholland and headed south, turning right on Highland.

  “Hey, the Hollywood sign,” Jeeves said.

  I hated to admit it, but I always wanted to see that up close.

  “Who built that?” I asked Tobey.

  “I don’t know,” Tobey said.

  “And why?”

  “Um, still don’t know?”

  “Yeah, I should research that,” Jeeves said, and we looked at him. “In a library. Y’know, I do still know how to do that.”

  With the sightseeing and fear of imminent death over, we started bringing Jeeves up to speed as he looked us over with increasing incredulity.

  “Yeah, it’s a lot to believe, huh?” I asked.

  “No, that’s not what you’re seeing, Gladstone. If I understand you correctly, you basically have one clue. A list of suspects in some Internet phone book.”

  “Yes,” I said, handing it over to him. “Can you feel anything from it?”

  “No, I can’t feel anything from it, but that’s not the point,” he said, and then turned still and confused.

  “What is it?”

  “You,” he said. “You look different.” He stared and then looked down at my hat on the seat between us before placing it on my head. “Ah, there you are,” he said with a surprising amount of relief. “There’s my Messiah.”

  He smiled and straightened the hat before remembering he was annoyed with me. “Oh, anyway, the point is you’re looking for the most recent version of this phone book so you can further narrow the search, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the part that’s killing me. Am I correct that you’ve still done no actual research on the names in this book? I mean some of these people might be dead now. Some might have formed corporations together. There are connections. Clues.”

  “Well, in my defense,” I said, “yeah, we started. We visited a former UCLA professor from the book, but that’s when I got locked up. I’ve been held by the NSA for the last three weeks.”

  “And what’s your excuse?” Jeeves asked, turning to Tobey, but he didn’t wait for an answer. It wouldn’t have been good anyway. “Tell you what,” Jeeves said. “Give me that phone book and take me to a library. A real one.”

  * * *

  Jeeves had made us feel equal parts shame and gratitude, so after we dropped him off at UCLA we set about making our contribution: preparing for an emergency Messiah meeting to address the Farmers Market explosion. By now it was midafternoon and we had only a few hours to get it together for that night. Fortunately, in my time away, Tobey had practically become royalty over
at The Hash Tag. Along with my book, he’d elevated a hack drug den masquerading as an Apocalypse party place to ground zero for the Messiah Movement. So he arranged an impromptu “Messiah Release Party,” and we made fliers beseeching followers to call their friends. We also stressed calls to anyone they knew in the media. The Hash Tag liked that. With no Internet, being on the news was just about the coolest thing there was.

  “I still think we should get Anonymous involved,” Tobey said while stapling a flier to a telephone pole.

  “Who? Quiff? Isn’t he 4Chan anyway? Why do we call him Anonymous?”

  “Because who knows? There’s a fine line between defenders of liberty and pranking jackasses.”

  We showed up at 8:30 P.M., which we felt would give us enough time to fill a room—or at least fill the first few tables near the stage so it would look like a full room if the media came. There was a line down the street. Jynx busted out of the door and kissed Tobey right on the lips.

  “You did it, baby! I’m gonna make mad tips tonight.”

  Another change from the last few weeks. He hadn’t even mentioned they were dating.

  “Gladstone,” Tobey said, “you know Jynx.”

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “Great. Good luck with the show tonight. There’s, like, five different networks here! I’m gonna be on T.V.!”

  “Exciting.”

  “Hey, you changed your outfit,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah. The old one had kinda had it.”

  I didn’t bother reclaiming the white sports jacket after the paramedic episode. I thought about appearing in my prison clothes, but that would send the wrong message. So before the show, I stopped back at the apartment to throw on jeans, a T-shirt, and my old brown corduroy sports jacket. It looked kinda worse for wear after the dip in the Hudson River, and was far too hot, but I wanted to be recognized. Also, I still needed a jacket pocket to carry my love letter to Romaya. Then I swapped the white fedora for the old brown one so I’d match, because even guys who dress like assholes have standards.

  Tobey and I took our spot as we had before, only this time our free drinks were a Scotch for me and the most expensive beer the bar kept, Radeburger, for Tobey. People stared like we were celebrities, but they did not approach. I wondered about that, but then I noticed a truly terrifying six-foot-four bouncer standing behind our table.

  “Gus,” Tobey called to him. “Say hello to my friend Gladstone. He jumped off the Staten Island Ferry to find the Internet.”

  “Evening,” Gus said without uncrossing his arms or taking his eyes off the crowd.

  “The dude’s fucking unflappable,” Tobey said.

  Jynx took to the stage and played to the cameras in a way that made me incredibly uncomfortable.

  “Say you want a revolution?!” she shouted, and everyone hooted and hollered because if we hadn’t, holy shit, the douche chills would have been unbearable.

  “All right,” Tobey said. “But she’s really nice and a freak in bed. And, oh, by the way, I told her to just introduce you tonight. It’s your night.”

  “Before I bring up our special guest, straight from his NET Recovery Act arrest, I urge you to try some of our special drinks. There is The Messiah, which comes in two versions, an $8 Jameson and a $12 Macallan. There’s also The Tobey, which is just PBR in a can, except you call it The Tobey. Sorry. I thought of that one. And The Oz, which is a Foster’s because that’s Australian for beer, mate, even though I understand that no one actually drinks Foster’s in Australia. But still, y’know?”

  Tobey was deeply embarrassed.

  “So here he is. You might know him as the Messiah, but to us, he’s just Gladstone!”

  I was greeted by the loudest ovation of my life, and none of it felt personal.

  “Thank you,” I said, and the applause did not die down. I waited. I watched the cameras zoom in.

  “I don’t have a lot to say. I understand this is a bar. I understand we’re all united in a cause. I understand that we’re celebrating my release from an undeserved incarceration, but today is a day of mourning. People died today. I saw people die today. As you know, something dark and evil blew up a trolley at the Farmers Market. That order did not come from me. It did not come from anyone I know, and if anyone here committed murder today under the twisted notion that it somehow supports our cause, then leave. This organization wants no part of you.”

  I took a candle from the front table.

  “I know this doesn’t change anything or mean anything, but I’d like us all to pray. To pray that the wounded heal and to pray for those who lost people today, that they find strength to continue.”

  I closed my eyes and lowered my head, raising the candle high.

  “What is this, fucking church?” a voice called out. I looked up and saw some kid with a shaggy haircut, shaved at the sides, and a neck tat. “I don’t need to hear some messiah talking about God.”

  “Did that sound smarter in your head before you said it out loud?” I asked.

  “You know what I mean. Save that shit for Senator Bramson.”

  “Look, I’m not sure God exists either, but we’re saying a prayer, and if you need to believe in something better and more important than yourself to join us, then why not look at every other person in this room who had the decency to keep their mouth shut?”

  I lowered my head again and thought of all I’d seen wounded. I thought of the boy and wondered if reattaching that arm was at all possible. I thought about the squirrel I killed in my backyard. And after a minute, I thanked everyone and returned the candle.

  “That’s mostly what I had to say tonight. Tonight can’t be about anything else.”

  “Can it be about the five more reported dead from an explosion in San Francisco twenty minutes ago?” a reporter by a cameraman asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I just got off the phone with my breaking-news editor. Right at this bar. He called to tell me a bomb went off in a San Francisco movie theater today. Five already reported dead.”

  “I have no idea. That has nothing … why would … why would you even think that has anything to do with the Internet Reclamation Movement?”

  “There was a WiFi hat symbol on the wall outside the theater.”

  “That’s it? No. I know nothing about that. And I don’t see how murdering Americans would help us get the Net back, turn back the awful NET Recovery Act, or get me out of prison, as I’m already free.”

  There was no answer and the cameraman just kept filming. Everyone was waiting.

  “Well, the only other thing I have prepared for tonight is this: Tobey, hand out the memes.”

  Tobey sent out three sets of photocopies to the crowd, all with the image of the M-shaped fedora-wearing WiFi, with blanks for writing above and below.

  “The paper you’re receiving is the symbol of our organization and it was drawn by idiot savant Brendan Tobey over there. Some of you have been spray-painting it around town with the words ‘Free the Messiah.’ Well, there’s only two things wrong with that: One, I’m free, and, more importantly, I’m not the Messiah. We are the Messiah. This is our organization. And we decide what the message is. So go ahead, take a paper meme and make it your own and spread it around. Make more. Leave it everywhere. In your classrooms, on your doors, on workplace bulletin boards. On walls. Spread what the Web is to you and why you want it back.”

  There was silence and confusion. There was the sound of skepticism, which is silence plus tiny movements.

  “This is a movement of words. Of thoughts and ideas. But what I’m asking you to do is to write something pure. Boil the Internet down to the purest most valuable thing it offers you and spread that around.”

  The skepticism remained.

  “I am not the Messiah. This is the Messiah,” I said taking off my fedora. “And anyone can wear this hat who believes in pure things.”

  “So the Messiah’s a hipster douchebag?” the guy wi
th the neck tat said, getting some laughs.

  I ignored it. “Well, friends, when there’s more to report, we’ll report. But it’s been a busy day, so that’s all … for now.”

  I knew it was time to leave. Slowly, calmly, but now. Seeming indifferent to the crowd’s disappointment was the best defense to being called a failure. I had to rise above and let it sink in. I didn’t have a car, I still didn’t know my way around L.A., but I walked out into the night and took my hat with me. There was some faint applause and chatter as I hit the doorway, and I kept walking. It didn’t matter where. All that mattered was removing myself and leaving words in my place.

  No one followed. Not Tobey. Not Alana, who I didn’t even see in the audience. Not the reporters. No one. And as I turned a corner, I could just barely hear Jynx say, “For the next thirty minutes, two-dollar Tobeys!”

  * * *

  For the first time in our weeks together Tobey woke me. He dropped a copy of the L.A. Times on my head.

  “You made the front page, Gladballs,” he said.

  “You’re up early,” I said.

  “I haven’t been asleep yet. I just came from Jynx’s and saw the paper.”

  I looked at the headline: “‘Meme-Siah’ Denies Involvement in Farmers Market Bombing.”

  “Fuckers took my joke,” I said.

  “Yeah, congrats. You’re as funny as the LA Times,” Tobey replied.

  Just then, Tobey’s phone rang. Neither of us were used to that. He went over to the kitchen to pick it up.

  “Hello,” he said, and somehow that seemed wrong, as if technology affixed to a wall required a more formal greeting.

  “Oh, hi,” he said. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Well, yes, right, that is the address. Great.”

  He was about to hang up before bringing the receiver back quickly to his face. “Quick question,” he said. “Can I come too? Okay. Awesome.”

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “We have ten minutes to get dressed. There’s a car outside waiting to take us to the Playboy Mansion.”

  That certainly didn’t seem like an obvious thing to be told, but ten minutes later Tobey and I were in the back of a limo arguing.