Notes From the Internet Apocalypse (12 page)

It was that Fox News morning news show with the Stepford wife, the lanky homophobic gay guy, and the third dude of unknown, swarthier origin playing clips from Bill O’Reilly’s broadcast the night before.

“Isn’t that a picture of Jeeves?” Oz asked, pointing.

It was. Apparently, O’Reilly had interviewed Jeeves about his Internet Messiah prophesies. I sat up, hoping not to be national news.

Jeeves had cleaned up only slightly. A short-sleeved button-down shirt, khakis with frayed hems, and Birkenstocks. Not the best look, but I’d never seen a man with less to prove, so I’m sure it didn’t matter.

“My vision is very clear, Mr. O’Reilly. And this is not something I’m trying to profit from, but, yes, to answer your question, for the lack of a better word, I do believe there is an ’Internet Messiah’ and he will return the Net to us.”

“How?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Who is he?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But you’re sure this Internet Messiah exists?”

“Yes, I have seen him.”

O’Reilly didn’t try to hide his disdain. “You’re a Columbia University librarian, aren’t you?”

“I was.”

“Oh, that’s right. Was. You went into this Ask Jeeves business when the Net died.”

“I did.”

“Your real name’s Dan McCall.”

“That is also true, but these days I prefer Jeeves.”

O’Reilly had had enough. “Um, Mr. Jeeves, if I have to call you that, why should I believe any of this?”

Jeeves sat forward in his chair. “Well, Bill, I guess it doesn’t really matter if you believe me or not, but for everybody else—who won’t be dead within three days—I am telling the truth.”

Fox then cut back to the morning anchors.

“What did that mean?!” the hostess asked.

“Please,” said the tall guy. “Did you see the state of his khakis? New York apparently has no shortage of crazy.”

“Well, you caught a break there, old man,” Oz said, nuzzling into my chest. “No one’s taking Jeeves seriously.”

Not that there was much to take seriously, but Oz was right. These were desperate days, and it wouldn’t be the first time people believed a thirty-something Jew could lead them to salvation.

“Where do you feel like going today, lady?” I asked.

“I’m not leaving this bed.”

“Okay,” I said. “But tomorrow, we look for the Net. I told Tobey we would, and I wasn’t lying. I don’t want to lie to Tobey.”

“Tomorrow.”

DAY 53. THE MUSEUM

I’ve been lying to Tobey. For the second time in a month, I’ve spent days in this hotel. Not out of fear or withdrawal, but just because I could. The booze was flowing, Oz was sensational, and best of all, I slept. I slept the way I hadn’t slept since Romaya—where you’re completely dead to the world, but not oblivious. You can’t be oblivious. It’s the knowing that someone is right next to you that lets you fall so far away.

But when I woke, I knew I’d hate myself if I spent one more day doing nothing.

“Pack your Vegemite,” I said. “We’re going to the Museum of Natural History.”

“You think stuffed animals stole the Internet?” Oz replied.

“First off, they’re not stuffed, they’re real animal skins pulled taut over carved wood, and second, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m not the Internet Messiah. I have no idea where the Internet is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not in your vag.”

I’ve always loved the Museum of Natural History. With the exception of the giant whale room, it hasn’t changed since I was a kid. Or even for fifty years before that. And it doesn’t need to. Neither television nor Atari nor
World of Warcraft
has tarnished its ability to captivate. And I don’t really know why. Something about the architecture, the lighting, and the layout transforms these animal-quins behind century-old glass into something otherworldly. Magic is a cliché, but what do you call it when you enter a place and you can pretend you’re anywhere and everywhere from the Mesozoic era to present day, provided you haven’t killed every bit of childhood wonder with cynicism? It is magic. The kind that exists.

Or maybe it’s knowing you’re seeing what your grandfather saw, the way he saw it. The same stimuli are firing your synapses in the same way they worked some little boy’s brain in 1912. It’s a rock of consistency in the fastest-changing city in the world. But the best part is that you can spend all day there without learning a damn thing. Staring at the dinosaurs and statues, feeling the flow of the space, and ignoring the explanatory cards and postings. It’s like surfing the Net at 2:00
A.M.
without the capacity for thought. But the difference is, by the time you leave the museum, you know that knowledge exists and that it deserves to be showcased and exalted. So the real magic is that even walking the museum passively informs your priorities—a philosophical education if not a factual one.

I showed Oz the giant spider crab that terrorized my childhood dreams. We lingered over the Peter Stuyvesant mannequin my mother had shown me on a parent-chaperoned school field trip, just as it had been shown to her when she was a schoolgirl. The history was kind of lost on Oz.

“Oh, I guess in your country, it would be a lot more mannequins getting prison raped, huh?”

“Seriously,” she said. “Do you know anything about Australia?”

“Of course not. Facts would only ruin my jokes.”

We spent nearly the whole day there. Oz was taken by the section with the dinosaur bones, which, for reasons that have never been clear to me, also contained a bear skeleton. She started laughing when we reached that part.

“What?”

“It reminds me of you.”

“Y’know, I can’t help it that I don’t have any shins. You think I like putting my shoes on my kneecaps?”

“Aww, bears are cute.”

We continued on to the evolution section, and I couldn’t pretend I was on anything other than a date, but I also felt this was more than a pleasure trip. That I could honestly report to Tobey that I’d learned something on this part of the journey. Something for the journal, even if I still had no idea what that was.

“I’m getting hungry,” Oz said. “I could eat the arse out of a dead ’roo.”

“Did you really just say that?”

“What? It’s an expression.”

“Christ, you people are ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous and hungry.”

We made our way to the exit, ending a beautiful day, but still waiting to learn whatever it was that I felt was coming. I hoped Tobey was just fucking off and getting high, because I was feeling increasingly guilty about taking three days off from our mission, but I felt he wasn’t. That diner exchange was the closest I’d ever come to fighting with Tobey. I’d never seen him with that level of determination. Eventually, he’d come find me or I’d find him, and I wanted to have something to report when that happened.

Outside, the street was filled with ambulances and police cars, and I assumed there was yet another terror alert. It was becoming a familiar scene in the city. Soldiers on bullhorns directing pedestrians away from certain public buildings. Closed subway lines. Instant congestion by sudden road closings. For many, city life had become incredibly difficult. But those were mostly people with jobs and places to go. We were just trying to get a burger. And it wasn’t terrorist activity we were seeing after all. Just a really bad car accident.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t sit around and gawk, but I did. And Oz did too, despite her arse-munching hunger, because new salacious details kept flowing. We learned the driver was drunk. There was opened booze in the car. And while he’d been killed, his passenger was still alive. She said they were late for an anti-abortion rally. Others said they must have been going over seventy when they crashed into that limo. And that was the other thing. There was a dead limo passenger too. Bill O’Reilly.

9.

DAY 55. IDOLATERS AND THE DEVOUT

O’Reilly’s death tore through the television media with all the right/left jabs of grief and dark humor you’d expect. But the surprising part was that even without the clip-circulating power of the Internet, it was only hours before people started reporting that Jeeves’s prediction had come true. O’Reilly was dead within three days of the interview. In the next twenty-four hours, Jeeves went from a local celebrity and national wingnut to a legit psychic.
The New York Times
reported: “Local Psychic Predicts O’Reilly Death.” The
New York Post
headline was less subtle: “O’Reilly? Oh, Really! Crackpot Jackpot!”

It didn’t take long for people to turn to Jeeves’s other prophesies. He’d become the man with the path to the messiah of e-salvation. Fortunately, he didn’t know who I was, and only fifty or so zombies had seen my face. People were just looking for the Messiah, not necessarily me. Jeeves told the media he still felt my presence in New York, but could give no details. Still, he was taking blind walks through the city with half-closed eyes and arms outstretched, and an increasing number of zombies and people with too much free time had started following him. I wasn’t sure how he got lucky on O’Reilly, but whatever psychic powers he was claiming to have were leading his ass all around the Upper West Side, so I wasn’t overly concerned.

I was more troubled by my lack of progress. Almost two months into my journey, and I was no closer to finding the Net than when I started. I turned to my list of “suspects.” Corporate America, Terrorists, the Government. My investigation was more pathetic than I’d imagined. I’d spent more time jerking off, drinking, and fucking than gathering clues. I sat alone with my journal, which was nearly devoid of information, while Oz showered, and thought about my one lead: the detection of Internet activity somewhere downtown and/or on Staten Island. I needed Tobey. Yes, he sniffed leads without discretion like an overzealous puppy, but that was something. And even rejecting his ideas carried some worth in itself. Got the wheels turning. I needed him.

And then he was there. A knock at my door answering my deepest wishes. I opened it without even checking (which was probably a good idea, since I still hadn’t recovered from the time Tobey managed to drop his pants and do a handstand for the sole purpose of giving me a peephole full of his fish-eyed junk).

Tobey looked good. Eyes not all dilated and bloodshot. Clear-headed and focused right when I was so lost. I dragged Tobey into the room with a hug that was as hard as I missed him, because I knew neither of us was stupid enough to say “no homo.”

“I’m sorry, Tobey,” I said. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Yeah, me too, G-Balls.”

He started eating from a bag of pretzels on the dresser.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, Tobes.”

“Fuck, you mean you’re not the Internet Messiah?”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay, Gladdy. I’ve been on the job. Guess where I’m working; you’ll never guess.”

Tobey kept staring and waiting.

“What? You said I’d never guess!”

“You’re useless. The United Nations.”

“How the hell did you get a job at the UN?”

“Told you you’d never guess. Well, one of us had to be a detective. What about foreign governments? You been investigating those?”

“No, but I would think the UN would have, like, a huge background check.”

“Have you listened to anything I’ve been telling you, Gladstone? We’re off the grid. We can be who we want. Don’t you know that every single disgraceful thing I’ve ever done has happened online? I don’t rob liquor stores. I make tasteless jokes about how I’d rather skull-fuck Demi Moore’s eye socket than let Miley Cyrus blow me. I download pornography weeks away from being criminal. Or just a thumb away from criminal if we’re talking amazing penetrations and the purity laws of some of our southern states. But in real life, I’m clean. I mean, look at me.”

There he was. Oversized sagging shorts, t-shirt, and baseball hat. Twenty-nine and looking nineteen. An almost-angelic baby face of soft skin smiling out from under shaggy, dirty blond hair.

“This is bigger than some ’clear private data.’ We’re free from our cookies in a way I still don’t think you understand.”

“So the background check…”

“What could they find? Nothing.”

“Yeah, but what did you say you did? What qualifies you to work at the UN?”

“Well, first off, take it easy. I’m just an intern. But I have been writing a blog for the last few years on third world debt forgiveness, rape in Darfur, the rain forest and—”

“And there’s no way to call bullshit.”

“Right, and it’s kinda true. I had some rape in Darfur jokes on my site. But enough of that. We have an Internet to find. So, y’know, grab your crocodile huntress and let’s start walking.”

Oz emerged a few minutes later, wearing tight cutoff jeans, Doc Martens, and a t-shirt. They smiled politely at each other and took inventory, making sure there were no hidden dangers in this reunion.

“It’s nice to see you, Tobes,” she said. “You look well.”

“You too. Quick question, though. Did you get a boob reduction?”

“No, but thank you.”

“Hmm … well something’s different,” he said. “Why do I want to fuck you less?”

Oz was diplomatic. “Well, you can only suppress your latent homosexuality for so long, Tobes. But I’ll tell you what, if you help us find the Internet, I’ll be sure to wear something sexually retarded for you really soon.”

“Deal!” Tobey exclaimed, and extended his hand to shake on it.

“So, we got everything we need?” Oz asked. “We good to go?”

I checked my flask.

“Maybe we should hit the bottle-o?” Oz suggested.

“The fuck is a ’bottle-o’?” Tobey asked.

“It’s a liquor store,” I said.

Tobes looked at me.

“Oh fuck. I’m turning Australian.”

Despite Oz’s suggestion, we walked on without drugs (or much of a destination) and were rewarded for our fearlessness. There was no sign of Jeeves or any would-be disciples of the Internet Messiah. I was still free to walk the streets as unnoticeable as my companions. It was like living online: seen by all and still unknown. And perhaps because we had no destination, we ended up at the center of it all in Midtown. Or maybe that’s just where the streets became unwalkable.