Agents of the Internet Apocalypse (11 page)

Just then a criminally happy young woman called to us from curbside. She was standing on a Segway. “Hello! Ms. Petralia?” she asked. Maiden name. Romaya kept her back to the curb for a second to retrieve a new expression. Then she turned, all smiles.

“Yes, hello,” she said. “Just getting my things.”

She took a step from the car to pull down on her skirt, and I grabbed her folder of materials from the front seat.

I stood between her and Suzie Segway so she could gather herself as she adjusted her blouse.

“Hey,” I said, and put my finger gently under her chin, like I did on our first date. She looked up slowly. “I promise we'll behave, Babe,” I whispered. “And you'll do great. You got this.”

She looked at me, and I nodded, forcing as much confidence into a smile as I could manage. Then I offered her the folder, but she was distracted by Tobey.

“No one's gonna mess anything up for you,” he said, trying to echo my sentiment. “Besides, we have no choice. I doubt they'd let us back into the lot without you.”

And as Romaya stared at Tobey and tried to divine his intent, I did a terrible thing. I took the love letter from my pocket and slipped it into her folder. Not terrible because it would fuck her up during the interview—there was no chance of that. I buried it deep in the very back of her papers. But terrible because it was cheating. A desperate attempt to get it home, based only on the hope that she'd realize it was a good thing once she noticed it living where it belonged.

“Look, just stick to the truth,” Tobey said. “Say you had car trouble this morning and asked some friends for a ride. Just don't tell them we drove hundreds of miles. Trust me. That is an excellent lie.”

And despite my best efforts, I had to admit that Tobey's scheming brought her more comfort than my support.

“Okay, but please behave,” Romaya said. Then she took the folder from me and we closed up the car.

“Could you lose the hat?” Romaya asked me. “You look like a vacationing dentist.”

I laughed and said, “Good. Jokes are good. They'll like you more if you look like you're too happy to care about Google.”

Suzie led us into Google headquarters and I couldn't help humming
World of Imagination
to myself from
Willy Wonka
as we were greeted by the high ceilings of red and yellow and blue. We got our superspecial Google badges, which we affixed to our T-shirts with a red plastic clip, and then we headed into a larger room. Suzie scooted ahead and did a quick U-turn. She opened her arms and said, “Would you care for anything to eat? We have everything.”

I hadn't realized we were in an employee kitchen—probably because it was the size of half a football field. There were five or so glass-doored, industrial-sized refrigerators filled with juices, yogurt, and prepared sushi. All the counters had rows of drawers stuffed with Sun Chips and all manner of organic snackery. It was like being in a supermarket for insufferable twats, and I looked around for a cashier. There was none. My hesitation was visible.

“Yes, anything you want,” Suzie said for my benefit.

Tobey didn't need further prodding. He was already opening and closing the pantry drawers with wild abandon. I wasn't really in the mood for prepackaged sushi, but how do you turn down free Google sushi? I thought about calling it “Gooshi” as I pulled a pack from the fridge, but I'd promised Romaya I'd be as boring as possible. She was also playing it safe, opting only for a bottled water. Tobey, however, kept pulling the drawers until Suzie spun around.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked. “We have fruit, yogurt, sushi, even some organic turkey jerky. Y'know, practically everything.”

Tobey stopped on a dime. “Ah there it is,” he said with a slight grin, freezing the drawer at half pull. “
Practically
everything. That explains why I can't find any Funyuns.”

Suzie shrugged apologetically.

“Don't mind my friend,” I said. “He still uses Yahoo because it has all his porn bookmarks.”

“Okay…” Romaya said. “Maybe we should get me to my interview and let my companions continue this discussion without us.”

“Oh, I don't mind,” Suzie said, looking at me. “Also, Google Chrome can import all your bookmarks from your previous search engine. Once the Internet comes back that is.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Make a note, Tobey.”

Suzie smiled and leaned into her Segway, a hair short of movement. “Well, now that you have snacks, let's get you situated so I can get Ms. Petralia to her meetings.”

We followed Suzie down a corridor past a room of cubicles separated by some sort of appealingly obnoxious grass planters until we reached a room more suited to my interests: foosball tables, darts, old-time video games, new-time video games, and, just because they could, a giant kids' ball pit filled with Google-colored balls. The room was sparsely populated with employees so relaxed in their workplace environment that even I, out of work for two years on psychiatric disability, wanted to slap them for being damn millennial slackers.

Suzie raised her arms to the red, blue, green, and yellow ductwork and announced, “Have at it, boys.” By the time she completed her phrase, there was only one boy. Tobey had run headfirst into the ball pit.

Suzie giggled in nervous surprise.

“Yahoo, am I right?” I said with a shrug.

Romaya was almost too annoyed to turn her nervous quiver into a smile for Suzie, but she managed. I straightened myself up like a professional and warmly offered my hand. “Thank you for your hospitality,” I said. “Please don't let us keep you.”

“Not at all,” Suzie said. “Ready to go, Ms. Petralia?”

“Sure am.”

I tried to wish Romaya good luck, but she was already following Suzie down the hallway to a future, unaware that my letter was tagging along.

“Gladstone!” Tobey called, bursting from the pit. “Get in here.”

I put my sushi down on a ledge and walked over. “Y'know, you did promise Romaya you'd behave, jackass.”

“I'm behaving. Get in here.
I have to talk to you…”
he whispered.

I stepped into the pit as gracefully as I could, which was not at all.

“I wanted to get off the camera,” Tobey said, his head only slightly emerged from the colored balls.

“Why? We're not doing anything wrong,” I said.

“Not yet. But are you seriously telling me the Internet Messiah and Tobey are going to go to Google and not investigate the Apocalypse?”

“Aside from promising Romaya we'd behave, what do you think we could possibly get away with before security booted us?”

“Why do you think I'm in the ball pit?” Tobey asked.

“Because you're functionally retarded?”

“Boo,” Tobey said with only half his face emerging. “That's a fratty joke.”

“No, a fratty joke would be because you like having balls on your chin.”

“Homophobic.”

“No, it's not. It's making fun of a frat boy's homophobia. Jesus, now even you don't get how satire works?”

“I know, jackass,” Tobey said. “I'm satirizing people who don't understand satire.”

Just then, a disproportionately loud CNN news banner graphic reading, “Internet Apocalypse” blasted across the huge TVs before dissolving into an insanely handsome anchor sitting beside my old friend Senator Melissa Bramson. Dr. Kreigsman had confirmed my memories of her and Christians Against the Messiah as true, but believed their protest pertained to some other e-messiah. It was disconcerting to see her from a sober point of view. And from a ball pit. That was weird too.

“Yesterday, standing beside the Liberty Bell, Pennsylvania's junior senator and founder of Christians Against the Messiah, Melissa Bramson, held a rally of more than two thousand supporters,” the anchor read. “There, she lobbed criticisms at the Obama White House for not finding the so-called Internet Messiah, and she joins us in our studio now. Senator Bramson, welcome.”

Bramson sat stiffly in a red blazer straight out of the Nancy Reagan collection. “Nice to see you again, Chris.”

“Senator, we haven't heard anything about the Internet Messiah for a couple of months, and, frankly, it wasn't the largest story in the first place. Why all the fuss?”

“Well, because he's building an army.” She dropped a copy of what I assumed was my journal on the counter.

“Ooh, nice velo binding,” Tobey said. “Really classes it up.”

“That, I take it,” Chris said, “is the Internet Messiah's purported journal that's been spread around in the last couple of weeks?”

“It is, indeed. And if you thumb your way through this filthy manifesto, you'll see it is very clearly the message of someone leading a revolution.”

“Huh,” Tobey said. “And here I thought your journal had too much whacking off to be a proper manifesto.”

The anchor said pretty much the same thing in gentler prose. “And what is that message, Senator? Because I have to tell you, I did read it, and I didn't see much in the way of politics. Some call it a love story.”

Senator Bramson snorted, and I wondered if the surgeon who had built her nose anticipated such duress to the nasal cavity.

“Did you read it, Senator?” he followed up, showing an unusual amount of backbone for an anchor.

“Enough of it,” she said. “You don't need to actually go down in the sewer to know it stinks. But the real question, Chris, is why has this administration done nothing to find him? This administration that can kill by drone strike, that can suspend constitutional rights under the NET Recovery Act, can't locate one smut peddler?”

“Didn't you sign the NET Recovery Act despite public outcry against its constitutional abuses?”

“Sure did. And if it wasn't to round up filth like this, then what was the point?”

“But round him up for what, Senator Bramson?”

“I don't know, Chris. That's the point. We haven't questioned him. Don't blame me for not being able to answer your questions when this administration's fallen asleep at that the wheel.”

Just then the channel switched over to the Game Show Network. Some neck-bearded hipster without an appropriate amount of self-awareness and self-hatred had changed the channel from the comfort of his massaging reclining chair.

“Aww, too bad,” Tobey whispered to me. “I'm sure she was just about to warm up to you too.” Then he called out to the guy in the chair. “Buddy, any chance you could put that channel back for a minute?”

Captain Indifference turned to us, lowering his head and looking over the top of his plastic-framed glasses. “If it's important to you.…” he said.

I turned to Tobey. “And you call
me
a hipster douchebag.”

The anchor had finished with Bramson, and he turned to the camera again.

“Joining us now with a further perspective on the so-called Internet Messiah is Special Agent Aaron Rowsdower of the NET Recovery Act's Special Task Force.”

“Wait. Is that
the
Rowsdower?” Tobey asked.

The man on the screen was in his mid-forties, too thin, and too serious, but I wasn't sure it was the Rowsdower I remembered. Still, how many could there be?

“So Special Agent Rowsdower,” Chris continued. “You've heard the Senator. What do you say to the allegations that this administration has fallen asleep at the wheel regarding the Internet Messiah investigation?”

“Well, first of all, I'm not here to give sound bites on behalf of this administration. I can speak only to the task force efforts to investigate the disappearance of the Internet, including our inquiries regarding so-called Internet Messiahs.”

“Messiahs?”

“Yes. It puzzles me that Senator Bramson seems to think that only one person can proclaim themselves a messiah. Certainly the notion of multiple false prophets can't be unfamiliar to someone in politics.”

“With all due respect,” Senator Bramson said, “that's a dodge. I'm not interested in every crackpot.
This
so-called messiah has written a book. That's the one we're talking about.”

“No, that's the one
you're
talking about, Senator, for some reason I can't understand. I've met this person you're referring to, and trust me: if he or any other person is behind the disappearance of the Internet or holds keys to its retrieval, we'll see him again.”

“What can you tell us about this man?” Chris asked.

“Well, nothing. Speaking would be grossly irresponsible. But, y'know, do you need me to tell you anything? I mean, I know the senator isn't interested in reading the book despite her allegations, but it's all right there.”

“Does that mean you endorse the book?”

“Endorse it? Who am I? To me, it's evidence. To the senator it's a basis for loose talk. I don't know what it means to you, Chris, but seems to me if someone hands you a diary, it's silly to ask questions about who they are.”

The segment closed out and the Google recliner guy changed the channel. It was a commercial for the new iPhone, dubbed the iPhone Infinity—the first smart phone release of the Apocalypse. A woman's elegant hand handled it against an all-white backdrop. It looked just like the last iPhone, but with the sideways “8” infinity symbol in the Apple icon. The dude brought his recliner forward, taking an interest.

“No one knows when the Internet's coming back,” a woman's voice said, “but when it does, won't you want the most powerful iPhone ever made?”

“So smart!” recliner guy said. “So fucking smart!”

I stepped out of the ball pit. “You think people will buy something that doesn't yet work?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “And better yet, there'll be no shitty tech blogger dumping all over it the next day.”