Agents of the Internet Apocalypse (2 page)

“How's the world doing without me?” I asked.

“The world was already living without you,” she said.

“I know, but what's going on out there?”

She readjusted herself in her chair. “Your doctor asked me not to discuss it. He doesn't want you agitated.”

It was true. For all his kindness, Dr. Kreigsman did not allow me television. There were many patients sicker than I who were granted that privilege, but Kreigsman believed the news and all the Apocalypse talk would only distract me from the work I had to do. “Let's worry about you,” he'd say, sounding a lot more like a Jewish mother than my mom ever did.

I pressed her again. “What's going on with the Internet?”

“Who knows? You know I didn't go online even before the Apocalypse.”

It was funny to hear my mother say “Apocalypse,” considering she'd lost something she never really had.

“But it was back, sort of, I heard,” she continued. “For a bit anyway.”

“It came back?”

“Yeah, a few weeks ago. Not great, but yeah.”

I sat up in bed. “Really?”

“Yeah, who's that one on MSNBC in the morning? Not him, but the woman next to him. She said that supposedly people had always been able to get on in little fits and starts around the world.”

I tried to remember if I could recall a single instance of someone getting online in those two months. I flipped through my Rolodex of still images. My mother put a stop to the spinning.

“But now that's all done. It's dead. Completely. And the government is taking it over.”

“Whaddya mean, taking it over? It's not a factory.”

“I don't know. The … um. The points?”

“The hubs?”

“Yeah, hubs. I think.”

A few months ago I wouldn't have known what that meant, but I'd read the books now. And although I'd never understand the science of packeted information traveling through fiber-optic cable at the speed of light, the infrastructure of the Net was still a very real and startling simple thing. Just like electricity, you still needed poles and cables to connect the world. There were only a handful of hubs on the planet—places where networks met up directly with other networks, transforming little pocketed e-villages into worldwide communities. Turns out there was one on 60 Hudson Street, walking distance from Trinity Church where I spoke to Hamilton Burke. I don't know what I would have found if I had gone there, standing outside, drunk and depressed, but I'm guessing it would have been more productive than jerking off at the Rule 34 Club for a week. Or at least productive in a way that required less cleanup afterwards.

And that was the other thing I learned in the hospital: more information about Hamilton. Obviously I knew I was speaking to a wealthy man outside Trinity Church that night, and yeah, in the back of my mind, the name was familiar. But apparently Hamilton Burke was one of the richest men on the planet. Like Warren Buffet rich. Bill Gates rich. So rich that Dr. Kreigsman didn't believe I'd met him.

“Hard to believe a man like that is just hanging out waiting to talk to you, don't you think?” he asked

“Well, he
wasn't
waiting for me. I just approached him. And is it really so weird to believe one of the richest men in the world would be in New York City's financial district?”

He let it go, but I already knew what he was thinking. Dr. Kreigsman was big on the theory that I needed to believe I was more important than I am. And certainly pretending to hobnob with the rich and powerful could support that. But why would I make that up if I didn't even know who Burke really was? And if it was wish fulfillment, why did that late-night New York City conversation fill me with such shame?

“Are you getting better?” my mother asked.

“I think so.”

“So you'll go back to work?”

“Never.”

For the first time, my mother sat back in her chair, pulling away from me. “Your father didn't retire until he was seventy.”

“Well, I wish he would have,” I said, and she came forward again until I finished my sentence. “Or would have been able to at least.”

“So, no job?” she asked.

“I don't know, Ma,” I said. “Dad worked to support us. To send me to college. And fucking law school, for that year anyway. I don't have those kinds of obligations.”

“Well, maybe you should get some.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But when I get out of here, I'm going to California for a bit.”

“What's in California?” she asked, but already knew. “Romaya's not your wife anymore.”

“I know that.”

“But isn't that the point? That you didn't know that? Didn't you forget everything?”

“She wasn't the whole problem. I hated my job, too. The job you're so eager to throw me into again.”

“I don't care what job you have, I just don't want you to lie down.”

“But they're paying me to. That's the whole point of disability.”

“Well if you're so proud, maybe you should print up business cards.”

I knew she'd disapprove, but there had to be an order for everything. It wasn't time for a job. It wasn't something I could do now.

“I just want to talk to her,” I said, swapping topics in the flawed belief that I could handle the discussion. Kreigsman had already put me through the ringer about Romaya. At first he wasn't sure I was really going out West for her, considering California is also ground zero for the tech industry. What if I were continuing the investigation, and doing it on a coast that made a lot more sense than New York? But slowly he came to believe me, and even though he approved of me dealing with my mental health and emotions instead of playing Internet detective, he did not encourage that plan either.

“You're not ready for that, especially…” He polished his glasses again.

“They're clean,” I said. “Especially what?”

“Especially if you're going to try to win her back.”

“What's wrong with that?”

For the first time Kreigsman became, not angry, but more strident. “What's wrong is that you're not ready for that kind of rejection,” he said. “The last time you felt it, you lost your shit. Is that clear enough for you? We've spent the last two months putting you back together. You reclaimed your identity. You want to risk all of that? Throw that all away?”

I didn't reply, and he took one more stab at it, this time with slower and more deliberate speech. “Do you want to risk losing everything you've gained?”

I didn't answer.

“This is serious,” Dr. Kreigsman said. “When you lost her, you became sheltered, delusional, dysfunctional. You lost everything.”

“Well then,” I said with a smile, “I must have really loved her.”

But my mother didn't say any of the things Kreigsman said. She just sat there, very still, before finally speaking in a whisper.

“You can't fill someone's cup when there's a hole in it,” she said.

I was defensive. Too quick to respond. “Maybe my cup has a hole in it.”

“I'm sure it does,” she said. “So?”

I wanted to say something about love being more like puzzle pieces, or if not puzzle pieces then maybe love was putting one cup inside another without lining up the holes, so the two cups plugged each other, but then I realized that would only hold enough water for one. So I didn't say anything. I just stayed quiet and stared a little longer. And when visiting hours were over, I felt it in her hug. The knowledge that our visit had made her no stronger. She was still carrying the weight of my hollow.

I tried to put that out of my mind for the next few days, mostly unsuccessfully. But then I caught a break to save me from contemplation. Kreigsman busted into my room with an energy I'd not seen from him before.

“It's your big day, Wayne,” he said.

“You proposing?”

“Even better. I think you're ready to leave this joint.”

“You're discharging me?”

“Yep.”

Dr. Kreigsman handed me his clipboard, showing the order and everything.

“But I thought you were too afraid I was gonna run around being an Internet Messiah instead of doing the work that needed to be done on myself.”

“I'll be honest: That remains a bit of a concern. But you've made great strides. Also, they want you out. Not all mental patients actually have an apartment to go home to.”

I could visualize the period at the end of his sentence, but I also felt something more coming.

“Oh,” he said, taking back his clipboard, “also there's this.”

He dropped the
New York Times
on my lap. It had a banner headline: “THE INTERNET RETURNS!”

“It's back?”

“Seems so. An uninterrupted signal, at least in America, for almost two days now. Some sites still down. Sites with information housed overseas still hit or miss, but yeah, since the government took over the hubs, it's back.”

“Wow.”

“Yes, wow. So, y'know, investigation over, and time for you to work on you.”

I jumped out of bed, grabbing my books and journal off my nightstand and shoving them into the backpack that had lived beside me for two months. It took me more time to put my shoes on than it did to pack, and that's including unzipping my Jansport to double-check that my letter to Romaya was still safely lodged in my journal.

“Doctor,” I said, extending my hand. “Thank you very much.”

“You're welcome. And remember, your work's just starting. Stay on your prescription, and I expect to see you in two weeks. I can refer you elsewhere, but if you don't mind, I'd like to keep seeing you for a bit.”

I liked Dr. Kreigsman, but it was very important to me that I not say anything more than thank you. Really, what more was there to say? He was the best, but only on the sliding scale of incompetence representing the psychiatric profession. He hadn't fixed me. Weeks of being fed, sober, and safe fixed me. Quiet reflection on what I'd discovered on my journey fixed me. I fixed me.

“Sure,” I said, putting my backpack on both shoulders, positioning my grandfather's fedora, and heading for the door.

“It's late October,” he said. “You'll be cold.”

I looked down at my hospital scrubs, pretending to make note of the need for warmer clothing, but that's not what I was thinking at all. I was headed someplace warm.

 

2.

I was too afraid to go home after the release because shutting that apartment door in Brooklyn could mean never leaving again. But it wasn't just the fear. There was nothing for me in New York. I'd hidden so completely for the last two years that the place had forgotten me. Any chance of a future was out west. I would crash with Tobey in L.A. until I got my head together. After all, it was the least he could do for me after I'd been so hospitable, even if his visit occurred only in my mind. Good friends overlooked such things.

Aside from the brown, low-top Doc Martens I was currently wearing, I left the rest of my clothes—still carrying the taint of the Hudson River—in my backpack, and opted for the style of hospital-issue, doctor-like scrubs. A sane person would have called for a ride, or at least someone to bring them clothes, but a sane person would also want to get out of a mental institution as quickly as possible. I left the hospital and took the A to JFK without a second thought. Then I bought a ticket at the airport counter just like in the movies. Disability payments had been aggregating for two months with no expenses, and still by direct deposit. It turned out to be cheaper for banks and providers to work out some system of faxing debits and credits than going back to mailing checks. Or maybe it wasn't cheaper, but the people demanded it. Also, I hadn't been paying rent. I wondered if I even had an apartment to go back to. Two months probably wasn't enough to lose the place, but I'd worry about that later. Maybe it was four months. I couldn't remember if I mailed checks during the investigation.

I wondered if the counter lady thought I was a doctor, and then I wondered what they called airport counter ladies. Cashiers? CAIRshiers? Two months earlier I would have tweeted that or hopefully let it die in my drafts folder, and that's when I realized that even though the Internet was allegedly working again, I'd made it all the way to JFK without even thinking about it. My thoughts were on Romaya, and I was proud of myself. I was calm. All the panic that had kept me indoors, kept me high, kept me manifesting delusions for company, was gone. I was outside and alone and that was okay. Although it always helped to be in transit.

The cairshier was fiddling with something below the counter instead of taking down my information.

“So,” I said. “The Internet really back?”

“You haven't checked?” she asked, hurrying her iPhone into her pocket like a child busted for sneaking cookies. I tried not to notice. “Yeah, I mean, it's still all jacked,” she said, “but I got on my Gmail, and BuzzFeed had some new stuff today.”

“‘10 Things 90s Kids Masturbated To During The Internet Apocalypse?'”

“You saw that?” she asked.

“Just a lucky guess.”

She didn't believe me and it didn't matter because apparently our interaction was over. Everywhere I looked people were on their phones and laptops, but not with their typical ease. Each hit of the return button was like the pull of a slot-machine handle. Would this site work? Is there anything new? Did the e-mail fail to refresh or do I really have no messages? There were some phones for sale at an airport kiosk and if I bought one, I could get online too. I could surf the Web for the first time in two months. I could be just like everyone else. Part of them. But then I'd be here. In this airport for real. There'd be data pinning me to a place and time, and I didn't want that. I didn't want to be here. I was headed west for Romaya.