Notes From the Internet Apocalypse (15 page)

DAY 57. UNDESIRABLE NO. 1

Something in my dreams smelled wonderful, and it was caring for me. Keeping me warm.

“Wake up, old man.”

It was Oz, and she was staring down at me with less than her usual zeal.

“Look in your pocket,” she said.

“I got your note, thanks.”

“No, not that,” she said. “Something else.”

“Again with the pocket? Why can’t you just hand me things like a normal person?” I asked, and she smiled.

I reached inside and once again unfolded a piece of paper folded in fours. This time it was a flier. A wanted poster. Apparently, I was a person of interest under the NET Recovery Act and wanted for questioning. The faulty sketch from the news stared back at me.

“Seems like you’re Undesirable No. 1,” she said.

“
Harry Potter
reference?”

Oz shrugged.

“See, I would have gone with
1984
there.”

“What, you mean like Goldstein?”

“Well, yeah. I even have a book…”

While Oz considered the superiority of my reference, I reached up for assistance and then pulled her down onto the bed with me. Oldest trick in the book.

“For fuck’s sake, Gladstone! This isn’t a joke.”

“Calm down. They don’t know who I am and that pic looks nothing like me.”

“Yeah, but those Christians … They fucking
hate
you. It’s not even logical. No one even has the same reason. You’re like this inkblot for all their hostility. You took the Net. You created the Net. You want to displace Jesus with the Net. Oh, and my favorite: that you and Jeeves have some sort of sick sex thing.”

“Not my type,” I said. “He’s not even Australian.”

I sat up and looked down at Oz laid out before me. Even in an undercover Christian blouse and sensible shorts (I’m guessing Talbots), she was incredibly sexy. I opened her legs and pulled her close to me. The back of her thighs over the top of my legs.

“Tell me what you’ve learned about Christians Against the Messiah,” I said, running my hands inward.

“Well, there’s some good news,” she said.

“Oh my God,” I said. “You embed with Christians for just two days and you’re already spreading the good news.”

“Ha, very funny, fuckwit.”

Her beige shorts might have been loose and Martha Stewart-approved, but that only made it easier for my right hand to slip up and inside. And with the sensible hem now resting up to my forearm, I could tell she wasn’t wearing underwear. This was the Oz I was crazy about. Able to put on the enemy’s clothing and still deliver an under-the-radar fuck you.

“I’m sorry. Tell me the good news,” I said, my thumb running down the length of her and slowly back up. She bit her lip like the woman in the library as I settled into tiny circles.

“You said there was good news, Oz. What’s the matter? Can’t you tell me?”

I started undoing the shorts with my other hand.

“God, you’re the worst,” she said. “The good news is that when they released that Jewy sketch of you … when they released that sketch, half the Christians took off to find you in Brooklyn.”

“But that means they won’t be allowed back into the city?”

“Exactly. Half your problem just went away.”

That was a call for a celebration. Christians in disarray. Zombies uptown. A government that didn’t know my face or name. And a beautiful woman in my bed.

“Hey, can you do me a favor?” I asked, pulling down her shorts.

“Yeah?”

“Can you let me call you Jeeves? It’s, like, the
only
way I can even come close to getting an erection these days.”

“I hate you so fucking much, Gladstone.”

*   *   *

I woke up on the couch. The back of my head dull and flat from the armrest. My neck stiff, and my journal splayed open on my chest. It reminded me of those times I hadn’t followed Romaya to bed. When I fell asleep with the laptop on my stomach. Or at least half asleep, after leaving half-considered comments on half-remembered sites for virtual people to halfheartedly read or fully ignore. Oz wasn’t in the bed, and I felt that energy in my fingers again until she emerged from the shower in a towel.

“Go clean up,” she said. “I told Tobey we’d meet him at one.”

“When did you speak to Tobey?”

“Wednesday, when you were in hiding.”

“Isn’t today Wednesday?”

“Thursday.”

“Wow, it’s really easy to lose whole days without work to quantize your pain, isn’t it?”

Oz filled me in on the details on the way to the East Side. Tobey had picked a diner not too far away from his UN gig so we could compare notes, provided it was safe for me to come out of hiding. And with CAM partially banished and befuddled, it was apparently safe. Now, I’d find out what was going on internationally. Or at least what Tobey thought was going on internationally.

I opened the door for Oz because even post-punk, bad-ass grrls like to be treated like ladies. Tobey was already there, and he greeted us with a smile, gesturing and pulling all the air toward him with an open palm. An easy grace befitting a man presiding over his booth like lord of the manor.

“Are we late?” I asked.

“Not at all. Please. Sit. Let me get you some refreshments.”

He shouted out to the waitress, “Madame, some disco fries, a coffee, a Dr Pepper, and your finest dingo juice for my Australian friend here.”

The waitress came with the drinks a moment later, correctly surmising that Tobey was the kind of crazy best to quietly patronize.

“This beverage looks remarkably like ginger ale,” Oz said, while I sipped half of my coffee to make room for whiskey.

“Well, that’s what
we
call it
here,
” Tobey said. “But enough about your country’s odd nomenclature. So! G-Face. Gotta tell you. Lots of people with lots of money are
very
interested in you.”

“Me or the Internet Messiah?”

“Well, that’s the same thing, isn’t it?

I took one of Tobey’s fries. The one with cheese ensnaring four additional fries. It was the least I could do after his nacho shenanigans.

“Where you getting your info, Tobes?”

“Um, how about, the UN? I mean, I
am
a page. I hear things. Then I speak. Then other people hear the things I say. We call that having a conversation. It’s technical, but I think I’ve put together some attractive offers for you.”

Oz slammed down her drink, spilling some on the table. “Tobey, you fuckwit. Have you been blabbing about Gladstone?”

Her voice, which started in a scream, dialed down to a whisper by the sentence’s end as she looked around the diner for adversaries. There were some Asians in one booth. Men of Arab extraction in another. Pakistani maybe. Other dudes who could have been Russian. I wasn’t sure. It’s hard to tell without the furry hats.

“First of all,” Tobey said. “If you didn’t want the dingo juice you could have just said so. That’s just wasteful. And second, how stupid do you think I am? Of course I haven’t. I’ve just made it known that I may or may not have a connection to the Internet Messiah.”

“And did it occur to you that you may or may not have given them an incentive to have you followed, bugged, traced, whatever, y’know, just to discover who this Internet Messiah might be that you may or may not know?”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“Am I?” Oz asked, looking over her shoulder. “I mean, look at this place. Could be anyone.”

“Uh, that’s because this is New York City. Tell her, Gladstone. They have minorities here. It’s not like Australia where everyone looks like Yahoo Serious or the chick with red shoes from the ’Let’s Dance’ video.”

“Are all your Australia references eighties-based?”

“Has anything happened in Australia since the eighties? I mean, besides Nemo being reunited with his dad?”

“All right, enough,” I said. “I think we’re safe for the time being. But what do they even want with the Messiah?”

“Are you kidding me? It’s the Internet. It’s like the new nuke. Everyone wants it. Whatever country first reclaims the Net wields a huge cache of wealth and power.”

I guess that was a fair point. We were no closer to knowing who had stolen the Net, but at least we knew all the people who wanted it.

“So,” Tobey said, finishing the last of the fries, “in exchange for exclusive control of the Net, a spokesman for Japan has offered the Messiah five hundred million and a lifetime tax-free residence.”

“Holy fuck,” Oz said. “Wait, dollars or yen?”

“Does it matter?” Tobey asked.

“Well, it is a ten to one ratio.…”

We both stared at Oz.

“What? You think only Aussies want to see me shower? A girl’s got to know these things. Only a moron would trust PayPal implicitly.”

“Fair enough,” said Tobey. “Anyway, Germany has also made an almost identical offer. Five hundred million yen, dollars, krauts, whatever.”

“That’s great and all,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure when I took their money and couldn’t produce the Net, it would lead to some problems.”

“I think you should listen to all the offers before forming any opinions,” Tobey insisted.

“Well, aren’t they all pretty much the same? The Net for money?”

“Not so fast. Saudi Arabia has also promised not only ’countless riches,’ but also twenty-four/seven military protection from those ’who would see the streets run red with the Messiah’s Zionist blood.’”

“Man, that was one Jewy sketch,” I said.

“The Jewiest.”

“More like Nazi art therapy,” Oz offered.

“Speaking of hate,” Tobey said, “I’m sorry to report there were no offers from Australia.”

“Guess they couldn’t spare any Bloomin Onions,” I said.

“Crikey.” Tobey nodded. “Did I do that right, Oz? ’Crikey’ means many things, like how you can use ‘Smurf’ in lots of ways, right?”

“Yes. Like in this case it means the speaker is a nipple-dicked American d-bag.”

“Okay, kids,” I said. “Enough fun. What now?”

“Well, I’d go live in Japan,” Tobes suggested. “Not that Germany isn’t tempting, but, I dunno, Japan’s women are just hotter, on average.”

Tobey smiled the smile of a man fully aware of how annoying he was being. But then I saw it turn to concern. Fear. I turned to face whatever he was seeing over my shoulder that made him so afraid. I saw one of the Arabs coming down at me with a steak knife just in time to catch his wrist an inch before impact. His two buddies flashed by the corner of my eye, no doubt occupying Oz and Tobey, who were noticeably absent from my struggle as the blade, shaking by my left ear, angled toward my jugular.

It wasn’t a graceful fight. He was standing, and I was kneeling on the squishy cushion of the diner booth. But he no longer had the element of surprise. If I could just stand on the seat before he drove the serrated knife into me, he’d lose his leverage too. He was about fifty, greasy, graying, and filled with a child’s anger. He was also clearly right-hand dominant, and overtaking my left. I could feel the knife against my skin as my left knee sunk deeper into the booth. I stretched my right leg out to the side, feeling for the hard vinyl corner. I found it just as he smiled, seeing the knife draw first blood, but not knowing he’d already lost.

I sprung forward over the booth and into his chest. When we landed, I was on top of him and the knife was on the floor. I brought a wicked right cross against his face. The kind of punch I’d always imagined and never thrown. And after it connected, I drove my knees into his arms.

“Why are you trying to kill me?” I screamed down with full force. The blow had drained his power, but not his hatred.

“Your journal,” he growled.

My first question should have been how this random man had even heard of my journal, but for reasons I’m still not sure of, that thought didn’t occur to me. Maybe it was all the Messiah talk or Oz’s fear that each of these diner patrons hid some international agenda, but in that moment all I could think of was that he believed my journal held the answer to the Internet mystery. That I was the Messiah.

“My book won’t tell you anything! It’s nothing.”

“It is an insult! It is filled with lies!”

I had no idea what he meant.

“Why do you describe the smut peddlers as ‘smiling Pakistanis’?”

“What?”

“In your filthy book of lies. Your journal. Why do you make the porn sellers Pakistani? I am Pakistani. Am I a pornographer?”

The suited Japanese were pointing and conferring. Two Saudi Arabian men I hadn’t noticed before removed their sunglasses and stood from their booth. Even the Russians were engaged.

“You read my book? But how did—”

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Oz. Tobey was already outside pretending not to know me. I looked over my shoulder at our empty booth. No trace of the other Arabs.

“You about good to go, chief?” she asked.

The mini UN of Third Avenue diner patrons was now all in a row, staring at the international incident on the floor. Whether they thought I was a messiah or a lunatic holding down a beaten busboy was impossible to tell, but I knew it wasn’t safe either way.

“Excuse us,” Oz said to the crowd. “We have to um … fuck off. Now.”

Internet People

I may have been drunk and scared, but I could see the cycles. The signs of trouble, the flight, the subway providing escape. It was getting old. Unsustainable. Still, the three of us took comfort in motion and closed doors. Feeling the confines of your immediate universe like an embrace while still knowing nothing can catch you as long as you don’t stop moving between two worlds. The feeling didn’t last.

“The fuck was that, Gladstone?” Oz demanded.

“I have no idea. Apparently, Pakistan would rather kill me than make use of my alleged messianic prowess.”

“Uh, yeah, either that or you’re a psychotic busboy murderer,” Tobey said.

“What? He attacked me! You saw.”

Tobey was slow to respond. He was choosing his words. Something I’d never seen him do before. And when he looked up from the floor he looked at Oz before turning to me. Another first.

“Well, I did see a busboy drop a whole plate of dishes just behind you … but then it looked like you just beat the living shit out of him.”