Agents of the Internet Apocalypse (5 page)

“I've had that frame since my first job,” she said.

Behind the damaged tree photo was another picture I recognized, and I slowly pulled it out, letting the top photo act as a buffer against all that was sharp and damaging. It was our wedding photo.

“Well at least this is still safe,” I said, handing it to Romaya.

She looked down at the redwood photo instead, so I handed that to her too while I piled the glass slowly with the side rubber of my sandal. Then I took a manila folder from her box and got most of it on there before encasing it with a reverse flip. I folded the top and sides over.

“A little care package of glass,” I said. “Want me to deliver it to your old boss?”

“I didn't even get the e-mail,” she said. “They sent it as soon as the Net came back last night, and when I walked in they're looking at me like, ‘oh, hey, uh,.… aaahhhh, hmmm.'”

“Ouch.”

“And I'm such an idiot. It took me forever to get it. They're all like ‘oh, after the e-mail, we didn't expect to see you.…'”

“Painful.”

“Yeah. So I'm just standing there silent, and Ken, that's my boss, is like, ‘Well, um, we sent you an e-mail last night.…'”

“Did they give you severance?” I asked, and she laughed. “What? No severance?” I asked.

“No, that's the best part. I went to my desk because we can still get internally sent e-mail with this antiquated makeshift thing they did and they gave me two weeks!”

“That's pretty shitty after two years.”

“Yeah, but I only found that out later because when they told me, when they actually had to see me, when I was in their face crying and packing up this box of shit, they were like, ‘Forget the e-mail. We know times are tough,' and they gave me three months!”

“Awesome. That's like free money!” I said, but it wasn't what she wanted so I tried again. “I guess they realized you're a much better employee in person.”

She was happier with that.

“Fuckers,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, and she smiled. “We were always good at hating other people, weren't we?” I asked, but she turned to shut her trunk and I jumped like a commuter for a closing subway door.

“Hold on,” I said. “There's something else that belongs with your things.”

The love letter was in my jacket pocket, folded in four as it had been before, when it sat in our closet for two years, but it was no longer a relic. Now it carried the experiences of my New York investigation, and traces of the Hudson River. It had the memories of sitting watch over me while I healed up in the hospital. It had the knowledge, by osmosis, of all the books stacked on top of it as it dried. It was waiting for release and now it wanted home.

I took out the letter and offered it to Romaya.

“What's that?” she asked.

“It's yours.”

She held the letter only with her fingertips, fearful that full contact would mean acceptance, and unfolded it no more than necessary before sealing it up again.

“I gave this back to you,” she said, holding it in front of her.

“I don't want it. It's yours.”

Romaya closed her trunk and readied her keys. “I can't,” she said, and placed it back into my jacket pocket. It would have been too childish to run away like a game of tag, and the feel of her fingers across my chest also made it hard to move.

“Thank you,” she said, pushing the letter into place and taking, instead, the package of broken glass. She got into her car and I watched her wave in the rearview mirror without turning around, the way you thank another motorist who makes an opening that lets you go on your way.

A normal man would have taken that as a cue for adventure. Explored California, untied to anything, but the thought of getting lost in traffic was too much to bear. I headed home past the newly shaved palm trees and the row of stupid apartment buildings I'd seen before until I reached Romaya's apartment and reversed my handwritten MapQuest directions. When I got home, Tobey's space was still waiting, and I parked like the last hour had never even happened. I didn't know where I was going, but I was sure I'd find something to occupy me before dissolving into Tobey's couch for the rest of the day. I wound up at a miserable sports bar somewhere along what they called the promenade. Apparently, sports fans drink Budweiser in Santa Monica too, and I ordered one because there was a special. Then I ordered two because the first went down like water that was bad for you and I still didn't want to go home. The next one was a buyback, and even in a shitty Santa Monica sports bar, the bartender said, “This one's on the house, buddy,” because some things just need to be the same everywhere.

“Thanks man,” I said, and he smiled in a way that made it easy to picture his headshot from twenty years earlier.

Although the bar was filled with SportsCenter plasma screens, one lone, poorly-placed TV was showing MSNBC with the sound off and subtitles on. The news told me what I already knew: The Net was out again. Unofficial comments from the White House made only vague references to the problem being more systemic and complicated than first thought. Apparently, the Apocalypse was engineered by more than just some bumpkin leaning against the wrong switch at the hubs. But I wasn't much in the mood for believing anything. And it wasn't even politics or a question of trust. This was an administration that couldn't get its healthcare Web site working. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what field you're talking about, only about three percent of people are good at their job, and that's just not enough manpower to fix the world's problems.

After several rounds of wings, I finally left the bar, beer-tired but sober. When I reached Tobey's door, I heard music coming from inside, which was good because it wasn't until that moment that I realized I didn't have keys to his place. I knocked, but had trouble making myself heard over Yes'
Awaken
. Tobey finally came to the door, eyes bloodshot and weary, but happy, as he took a step back to reveal all of his apartment. The stink of shwag wafted into the hall, but I was more preoccupied by the man on the couch—a fifty-something sporting a balding ponytail and a
Doctor Who
T-shirt so stiff and new it looked like it still reeked of silk screen.

“Gladstone!” Tobey exclaimed, pointing to the couch. “You know this dude?”

I studied him for a moment, tilting my head to make sure what I was seeing was really there. “Well, let me ask you, is this dude a fifty-something man with a pony tail and
Doctor Who
T-shirt?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah?”

I heard myself say “Jeeves,” but I didn't really say anything, because how do you greet something you don't understand? I had been positive Jeeves was real when I first got to the hospital because I had clear memories of the man who sat at his little table in Central Park, working as a human search engine, selling information to people too lazy to open books for free. But after that the memories got hazier, and when he never came to see me, I started to believe he wasn't real.

“Gladstone?” he asked.

“Jeeves?”

He planted his palms on his knees and sprang from the sinkhole of Tobey's couch with more grace than I expected. “Yes!”

“Come in,” he said, and I wondered why I needed to be invited into my own friend's home by a more comfortable stranger. I took only a few slow steps before he came over and put his arm around me, leading me to the couch.

“It's good to see you,” he said. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“Like what?”

“I dunno…”

“An Argentinian child-prostitute pimp?” Tobey offered.

“No,” Jeeves replied. “I was gonna say something like a back-alley Monte Carlo plastic surgeon?”

“Too wordy,” I said.

“Definitely,” Tobey agreed.

“Well, anyway, it's great to see you.”

Jeeves plopped back into the couch, and I took a seat as Tobey went off to the kitchen.

“So,” Jeeves said. “What have you been up to?”

“Well, I just got in yesterday. Catching up with Tobey. Trying to reconnect with my ex.”

I could see Jeeves lose his energy.

“No,” he said. “I meant about the Internet. Your investigation.”

“I don't have an investigation.”

“Of course you do! You're the Internet Messiah, remember?”

I hadn't heard that phrase in a couple of months and it embarrassed me to remember I'd written that about myself. It was more cringe-worthy than a three-quarter head-turn selfie, shot from above.

“Holy shit, that messiah shit's real?” Tobey asked, returning with two PBRs. “I thought Gladstone was just blowing himself again.”

“Yes, it's real,” Jeeves said.

“This guy's gonna find the Internet?” Tobey said, pointing to me with one PBR while extending the other to Jeeves. “Says who?”

“Says me.” Jeeves grabbed Tobey's wrist with his left hand, removing the beer with his right. Then he laid his palm flat on top of Tobey's.

Tobey pulled away after a few seconds. “Bad touch, Mr. Grabby.”

Jeeves made a pronouncement. “Three things: First, you're not my type. I like my men able to speak in full sentences. Second, this morning you jerked off to a Web site called ‘Amazing Penetrations,' and third…” Jeeves looked down at his hand. “Do you have any Purell?”

Tobey was impressed. Shocked, even. I'd never seen him lose his flippancy before. He seemed to search for it on the floor as he took a seat.

Jeeves was here so either I was in a fully psychotic state right now or I was less crazy than I thought. He was the man I remembered. A man full of information, both learned and divined. But something still wasn't right.

“Jeeves,” I asked. “If you really believe that, that I was this Internet Messiah…”

“Am,” he corrected. “Yes?”

“Why didn't you visit me? I sat in Bellevue for two months. You never came once.”

“You weren't allowed visitors. Didn't you know that?”

“My mother came.”

“Immediate family only. I tried. Repeatedly.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “It's just I've been trying to put together a lot of what happened during those two months. I was told most of it was fake.”

“Fake?”

“Well, y'know … delusional.” It didn't feel good to say, but I could see that Jeeves was so sure of his messianic pronouncement that he would need convincing.

“Gladstone, I met you in Central Park,” he said, almost angrily. “I found you in your hotel. Those memories are real.”

“Yeah, well did you also appear with Agent Rowsdower at a press conference when I was declared a person of interest under the NET Recovery Act?”

“No…”

“Yeah, well in my mind you did. That was real to me. As real as those other things. I wrote it down.”

“Paranoia. The weed, the drink, the anxiety…”

“I don't need a diagnosis, Jeeves. I need to know what happened, and I've spent two months reconstructing memories where I was nothing important. Where I was just sad, Internet-addicted, and alone. I can deal with that. It's embarrassing, but I can accept it. But now you're fucking it all up again.”

“So everything was a psychosis? You dreamed you were the Internet Messiah like some batshit loony? Do you really think you could fall so far?”

“I
did
fall so far! I jumped off the Staten Island Ferry!”

“Yeah, that made the paper, but you were high. You were depressed.”

“Again, stop diagnosing. I wasn't suicidal. In my mind, I was paddling my raft to the Statue of Liberty, looking for the Internet.”

That finally put Jeeves off his game, and it was good to see him without answers for once. He stared at me, confused, as the remnants of my anger settled about the room. Then Tobey came to the rescue.

“Y'know, Jeeves,” Tobey said, holding up my journal, “you should really just read the book. It's all right here.”

“Book?” Jeeves asked.

“Not a book,” I said, snatching it back from Tobey. “A journal. And it's mine.”

“Gladstone's right,” Tobey said, picking his backpack up off the floor, “but here, take one of these.” He pulled out one of several clipped bundles of paper and handed it to Jeeves. “I made copies.”

“Why?” I asked.”

“Whaddya mean why? I work at Kinko's.”

“Yeah, but why make copies of my book?”

“Because I wanted my own. And Steve wanted to read it too, once I told him what it's about, and some of my jokes.”

“
My
jokes,” I said. “I wrote it.”

“Yeah, but my delivery was spot-on.”

“You're such a prick, Tobey.”

“Oh, and then I made a few for the guys in shipping.”

“Anyone else?”

“Taheesha. Well, all the cashiers, really.”

I just waited.

“Oh, and this really hot chick who came in to buy an insane amount of bubble wrap.”

“Good,” I said. “For a second, I was afraid not everyone in the state of California was going to be aware of how much I masturbated during the Apocalypse.”

Jeeves was taking his time to flip through the pages of my book. I liked the way he touched them, folding back the page halfway, then pushing it over. There was care and respect. I felt the need to explain.

“I started out keeping it like a chronicle of the Apocalypse. Then some details of the investigation, but, ultimately, it just documented what became of me.”

“Well, I'll take a look,” he said. “Maybe I can verify some things for you.”

“Wait a second,” Tobey said. “If you've never read that, how did you even know who I am? How did you find me?”

Jeeves closed the book. I was pretty sure I knew what he was going to say and I beat him to it.