Notes From the Internet Apocalypse (17 page)

“I told you I wasn’t. And I would think a man as successful as you would have learned it’s bad form to gloat.”

“I apologize. If it makes you feel better, it’s not all your fault. It’s a rigged game. And the Internet was behind your misery as much as anything else.”

I may not have amassed Hamilton’s fortune, but I was smart enough to know that the best way to get him talking was not to speak. I placed my flask inside my coat pocket and gave him my full attention.

“Alfred Nobel,” he said. “The peace prize guy. Know what he invented?”

“Yeah. Dynamite.”

“Correct! They thought it would end war. That big violent explosion. Who would subject their troops to such a creation? They said the same thing about the machine gun. And the nuclear bomb. But man has never invented a weapon he failed to use. You can see where I’m going with this.…”

“Y’know, Mr. Burke. I think I will take one of those cigars. A Cuban. If you’ve got it. Y’know, to give me something to do while you’re schooling me.”

He took out another cigar, even cutting and lighting it for me. After three puffs I could almost see the chemicals dancing on my tongue.

“There has not been a piece of technology designed to save labor that has not increased labor,” Burke said. “Word processors allow you to do what your secretary used to do for you. The Internet, BlackBerries, iPhones, yes they keep you tethered, but that’s not the main problem. It’s that along with increasing personal productivity, they increase the expectation of productivity. It no longer becomes a bonus to do the work of one and a half men, but the norm. And then when everyone’s working at one hundred and fifty percent capacity, they can fire a third of the workforce and still maintain output.”

Perhaps it was the hours of drinking or the way the Cuban had escalated the chemical reactions, but I took out my journal to take notes. I’m still not sure if I was trying to mock him or actually learn something.

“You cannot change business. Business is a maniac in a hockey mask. In 1920, an anarchist exploded a bomb in a horse-drawn carriage two blocks from where we’re standing. Right in front of the House of Morgan. He killed thirty-eight. He injured four hundred. There’s still the shrapnel marks in the side of the building. But what did he change? Nothing. You can’t tame business. Only remove some of its tools for mayhem. Monopolies were one tool. The Internet was another.”

Hamilton stared at my pen flashing across paper.

“So you’re a reporter now?” he asked.

“Don’t mind me,” I said. “All for the investigation.”

“The one that’s not going so well?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say that.”

“But you did say that.”

“Maybe some of us are modest?”

He laughed. That would have been a good time for me to stop speaking. But I didn’t and now I can’t write this without cringing because I did something I wouldn’t have normally done. And it wasn’t the smoke or the liquor. It was the proximity to success. It was the unbearable reflection of my failure in his eyes.

“Right now, there are thousands, maybe millions, who are looking for the Internet Messiah,” I said.

“Yes, I am aware of that.” Then an unbridled joy broke out across his face. “Mr. Gladstone, are you saying that person is you?”

“Don’t be silly, Mr. Burke. I’m just someone who never understood the business of the world the way you did. An ineffectual detective out on disability. Someone who’s made too many unhappy choices. But thank you for the cigar and the company. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” he said while inspecting me like a new commodity on the exchange. “I hope we speak again.”

I put two fingers to the brim of my hat and walked back toward Broadway.

“Mr. Gladstone,” he called out while his words could still reach me. “Forget about past misfortunes. Is the Net what you must find to be happy?”

Fortunately, a truck hit a pothole on Broadway and Wall, and I kept on walking as if I hadn’t heard every word.

Return to 4Chan

I walked as fast as I could, pretending my speed was more than just flight from Hamilton. I wanted to believe I was racing toward success. But I was all alone and there wasn’t a single person to help or hide me. The only place I’d learned something even close to useful had been at the Bowery Poetry Club, so that’s where I headed. It was even Thursday night. Perhaps I could find Anonymous there still integrated and apart from the mindless 4Chan rabble.

And while a destination quickened my pace, I had to hold up when I hit the Bowery. A group of ten CAM members were marching in two rows of five, looking for the Messiah and stopping only occasionally to spit at perceived homosexuals. Some zombies were also milling about on corners, but most of them were mellower these days, having come down from their antsy Net cravings with ever-increasing amounts of weed. I only had to wait a minute for a clearing before I headed for the door. Once again, white shopping bag guy was holding his clipboard.

“Sup, newfag? You sure you’re in the right place?” he asked through his poorly cut mouth hole.

“Fuck off, pedo.”

I handed him a five and headed inside. The party was a bit thinner than last time, but already in effect. Some dude in a cheap Guy Fawkes mask was clicking through his projected PowerPoint presentation of new memes he’d created. They were all just still images he’d snapped off his TV with boldfaced writing superimposed via MS Paint. I didn’t get a single one. Of course, I wasn’t paying much attention either. Just sipping my Jameson at the bar and scanning the room for Quiffmonster42 or any other possible Anonymous members amid a sea of 4Chan pranksters.

Some dude drinking a vodka and cranberry next to me poked me on the shoulder.

“Hey, you wanna see, like, the dirtiest porno ever?” he asked, pointing to his open laptop on the bar. There was a big red X through the Wi-Fi icon in the bottom right corner.

“Not really.” I punctuated with a tilt of my head that killed my drink.

“Oh, come on! It’s like super dirty. Just press play.”

He’d already lined the arrow up on the Windows Media Player
PLAY
key. I begrudgingly tapped the touchpad.

Within a moment, the video for Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” blared out from his computer’s shitty little speakers, still audible over his forced laughter.

“You like Rick Astley?” he asked. “Super gay.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m super gay for Rick Astley. So gay that I ripped his video to a laptop before the Apocalypse even happened. So I could own it. Oh wait, this is
your
laptop.”

He stopped laughing long enough to say, “Shut up, fag. You’re the one who pushed play!”

“Guilty. You totally got me,” I said. “And now that I’m so pwn’d, could you do me a favor? Could you tell me where to find Quiffmonster42?”

“What makes you think Quiffmonster42 will see
you
?”

“We had a chat a month ago. I’m Gladstone. I’m looking for the Internet.”

His face lit up. “Oh, I remember you! I’m Sergeant Turd!” he said. “I stole your jacket and hat.”

He stretched out his hand for a shake without a trace of embarrassment. Unfortunately, the death of the Internet had not given rise to the concept of shame.

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “So any idea where I might find him?”

“Sorry, Gladstone. He hasn’t been here for weeks. Or any of the bigwigs. We think the Feds picked them up.”

“Wait, seriously? How do you know?”

“Know? I don’t know. Just what I heard. What proof were you looking for? A Wikipedia page?”

Just then, black-suited troops crashed through the doors with weapons drawn.

“Everybody listen up!” the lead soldier screamed. “I want all former members of the 4Chan /b/forums on the floor!”

A few guys hit the decks, but one guy with an Elvis half mask raised his hand. “I’ve visited 4Chan, but I never went in the /b/boards. Can I leave?”

“Shut up,” one of the Guy Fawkes guys screamed from the back. “Rule number one: don’t mention the /b/boards!”

“That’s just during raids, newfag,” another Guy Fawkes guy corrected.

“This is a fucking raid, you idiot,” came the reply just before the two descended on each other in an absurd slap fight that sent tables and chairs flying—mostly by the crowd that gathered to root and cheer.

In the confusion, I ran for the back room Quiff had shown me last time. I didn’t turn to see if anyone noticed, but I could hear the sounds of marching boots and strict military orders: “on the floor,” “no one move,” “hold still, /b/tards!” Even in my fear, I had to smile when someone taunted, “You mad, bro?”

I made it to the back room. The same shitty couch and closet I’d remembered from before, but the room was empty. No 4Chan royalty. No assistance to be found. And the soldiers were still coming.

The closet opened, revealing that same middle-aged fat man in a Nixon mask from the time before. Once again, naked, but this time not covered in hentai porn and ejaculate.

“Gladstone, get in here,” he said.

“Um, Glendoria was it?”

“Glendoria4, yeah. They’re coming. Get in. I can hide you.”

“Um…”

“Trust me, Gladstone. Getting felt up by a perv is the least of your worries now.”

It wasn’t that I trusted Glendoria4, but I had nowhere else to go. The boots were only getting louder. I got in the closet.

“Listen, Gladstone. Before they took Quiff, he readied this closet. There’s a false wall that leads out to a crawl space. Follow the space until it drops down to the boiler room and then take the emergency exit out to the alley.”

I could hear the soldiers tearing up the place.

“Go now,” Glendoria4 said. “I’ll distract them.”

I worked my way to the back of the closet and felt for an edge. Glendoria4 was right. Half the back wall was just sliced drywall held in place with a duct tape seam. Not quite Batcave stuff, but, again, not sure what I was expecting.

“I saw him come in here,” one of the soldiers said.

I exited just as I heard someone say “check the closet,” and listened from the other side of the false wall as I smoothed another piece of duct tape from the other side. That’s when I heard the surprise and disgust that could have only been born by Glendoria4 doing his patented falling-out-of-the-closet-while-masturbating move. You really couldn’t ask for a better distraction. I made my way down the crawl space, down to the boiler room, and out the emergency exit, all like Glendoria4 had said. Somehow, I had escaped the soldiers even if I had nowhere else to go. Even if I was still completely offline and alone.

I headed to the hotel as slowly and secretly as I knew how. It was late and I was so tired. But still, from the alley across the street, I watched people go in and out of the hotel for over an hour. When even a hipster douchebag with a fedora didn’t get stopped, I was pretty confident there was no surveillance going on. I made my way inside and up to my room, but I listened at the door before entering. I wasn’t sure if Oz and Tobey were inside and, if they were, if they could be trusted. I couldn’t hear anything. I opened the door slowly to peek.

Oz was alone and upset. Her hand against the window, looking down at the street below. She looked up. Her ghostly reflection stared back at me from the glass. She’d been crying.

“You left me,” she said.

*   *   *

I remember coming home early one night to check on Romaya. It had been a few days since the third miscarriage and she still hadn’t gone back to her copywriting job. I wanted to tell her all the things she’d already heard, all the things I’d already told her. That we would have a child. That someday the setbacks would be far away. But even I felt something dark growing.

The first baby had been an accident and it left almost as quickly as it came. Had Romaya gone another week without pissing on that stick, she wouldn’t have even known she was pregnant. But these were different. We were married now. We were in love and a child seemed absolutely necessary. Not because it was expected or because we loved kids. It was more about how much we loved each other. She couldn’t let me sleep, and I’d follow her around everywhere when I was awake. That’s what the cool people who mock breeders don’t understand: that there can be a love bigger than two people. And it swells and spills when you’re together. We wanted a baby to share it because not having a child seemed wasteful.

But when a baby wouldn’t grow, it made us doubt everything. Our logic was a poor defense against the crazy without shape or order. So I came home, hoping to surprise Romaya with something to make her smile. I didn’t have much of a plan. I could hear Peter Gabriel’s “I Grieve” coming from the living room as I opened our apartment door, and I stared around the corridor to see her still in her white silk nightgown dancing in our living room. Swaying and spinning like a ballerina angel, the soft fabric of her gown flowing behind, following her motions. Quick and sudden. Erratic, if not so graceful. And though her body moved in long fluid glides, I was struck by her arms, which stayed folded at her chest. I expected exaggerated sweeps and points, but she held them tight.

And then I realized she was holding our baby. Our baby that was never born, but in the still of her arms, it could not have been more real, and she spun and spun and swayed and never let it go. And no matter how tightly she held her arms, the emptiness could not contain all the love that poured out from her.

*   *   *

I must have passed out before even arguing with Oz because I woke up a few hours later on the floor. Oz was no longer crying, and now Tobey was here too.

“I’m not your enemy,” she said. “You ass.”

“Me either, G-Balls. We’re just trying to figure this shit out, y’know?”

I sat up in bed, my head hurting in a way I wasn’t used to.

“I overreacted, maybe,” I said. “But still. Fuck you, y’know?”

Tobey spoke for both of them. “I get it,” he said. “And you’re right. Fuck the government. All governments. We’ll find it for us.”

I nodded my head because I was too tired to speak. Also because I knew this wasn’t right. It wasn’t real. Something had been broken, and it wouldn’t fully heal without a lot of work and time. Work I couldn’t do. Time I didn’t have.