Notes From the Internet Apocalypse (4 page)

I used to gawk at the sheer size of it on a subway map and be amazed that no developers had disturbed its pristine beauty. No industrialist had insisted upon access to the millions and millions of dollars of wasted prime real estate. But the truth behind the park is far more difficult to comprehend. Central Park is not a square of God’s beauty so majestic that it pushed back man’s skyscrapers by a sheer force of nature. Central Park is man-made.

Before the Civil War, it was just overgrown, sporadically populated land, but those inhabitants were displaced by Government decree to make way for Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s creation. (They won a contest.) There was a belief that if you forced all races and social classes to live among and literally on top of each other, under constant metropolitan pressure, then there had to be a release valve in the center of that social experiment. So men built not only fountains and bridges, but lakes and foliage. And when it was done, New Yorkers stood back and stared at something unique and free which belonged equally to everyone. A place used by celebrities and vagrants alike to see and be seen. Central Park was the closest thing they had to the Internet.

I hadn’t been to the park in a long time, but, at first, it seemed unchanged. The trees and landmarks were all there, as were the joggers and the stoners playing Hacky Sack. But a harder look at the circles revealed some were filled with Internet zombies, and a few of those joggers were just the terrified people fleeing them. I was a little surprised. Even I was getting used to zombies. In another week, they’ll be just like pop-up ads with the X hidden on the left side. You adjust. Learn a new way to delete.

Harder to ignore, however, are the Twatters. Clever, huh? That’s what we’re calling Twitter addicts now. Losing the Internet has forced them to interact verbally instead of microblogging their lives, but a lot of them still talk in Tweets:

“Ugh! I’m standing in line at the post office.”

“I’m not eating the crusts on my sandwich because apparently I’m five.”

“Oh, my god, the barista didn’t leave room for milk, like some sort of ax murderer.”

But not all the changes are so ominous or annoying. As we sat and regrouped, I pointed out to Tobey that some of the park chess tables had been converted to Scrabble boards to meet the word addictions fueled by Facebook apps.

“Hmm, I didn’t think folks would go for that in real life,” I said. “Keeping score’s a drag.”

“I wonder if people will start farming again,” Tobey pondered.

We sat there a little longer, but neither Tobey’s jokes nor sips from my flask could quell my rising anxiety. Keeping this journal causes tension as much as it calms it. The writing busies my hands and occupies my mind, but there’s something about the pen scratching against the thick textured paper that makes my words take on an uncomfortable weight. Online, words flow almost as quickly as thoughts without revision or purpose, the way they do when you’re alone or with someone who’s fallen in love with you.

This was the first time I’d gone to the park without Romaya or failed to visit the Bethesda Fountain, which Romaya called the most romantic place in the world. She made that decision on her own one day, not knowing just how iconic the angel fountain was. It just struck a chord with her.

“Tobey,” I said, while unscrewing my flask for dramatic emphasis, “we’re not doing this right.”

“I don’t know. Knees bent, ass planted … I’d say we’re sitting on this bench like champs.”

Much like a 2:00
A.M.
text from a drunken acquaintance, I decided to ignore Tobey’s joke completely.

“No, I mean, we’re looking for information. But we’re not getting involved enough.”

“Gladstone, I’m not hitting another Digg or Reddit circle. I can’t take it.”

“No, we need to go deeper. Not self-styled Internet reporters and editorialists. We need to get behind the scenes. Hackers. What we need is…” I now took the swig of Scotch, really nailing the timing. “4Chan.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You want to seek out a bunch of /b/tard hacking imps? Online, they gave us Rickrolls and LOLcats. Who knows what they’re capable of in real life?”

“I’m guessing nothing,” I said. “They did that behind the cover of anonymity. In person, I’m guessing we’ll find Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, except inexplicably bitter.”

“Don’t disrespect the /b/tards,” someone said. And upon closer inspection, that someone appeared to be a woman. And Australian.

Sitting on the neighboring bench in her boots, torn fishnets, and miniskirt was a living hyperbole of retarded sexuality. The pink streak in her hair, the heavy eye makeup, and the harlequin nails alternating in red and black all reeked of desperate Hot Topic posturing that spoke in equal parts to fourteen-year-old boys and dirty old men.

I took a moment before speaking, conscious that this was one of those dramatic opening lines that required a clever and witty response.

“Fuck, you’re hot,” Tobey said.

“Ignore my friend,” I apologized. “Sometimes he forgets public spaces are different from chat rooms.”

“I’m familiar with that phenomenon. So, you boys looking for the Internet? Because I could use some help in that area.”

“We’re all about helping you in your area,” Tobey said.

“Zing.” She sighed. Tobey tried a new tack.

“We’re doing some heavy-duty investigative shit,” he said. “We hear someone in New York’s got it.”

“Yeah, I heard that too.”

“That rumor’s going around Australia?” I asked.

“No, I got it from a Reddit circle in Brooklyn.”

“But then why were you already in New York?”

“For fuck’s sake. Because it’s New York. You try living in Perth without Internet.”

Her name was Oz, which was apparently short for Ozzygrrl69. Our newfound friend was twenty-four years old and made her living letting men watch her shower for money. Much like Tobey, the death of the Internet meant the loss of her livelihood, as we learned while exchanging introductions all the way around.

“So you came to New York to get your job back?” I asked, more than a little incredulous.

“Well,” she said, “that and I’m looking for a friend.”

Tobey’s energy was palpable as it surged toward what he thought was an offer of companionship.

“Not a friend in general, fuckwit,” she snapped before laughing. “God, that would be embarrassing. ‘Uh, hi guys. Will you be my friend? I’m looking for a friend.’”

Tobey put his energy away.

“No, I mean, when the Internet went dead, I lost touch with a lot of people I knew.”

“You’re right,” Tobey said. “Hopping a plane because you have no real-life friends in your home country sounds much less lame.”

I dissolved the tension with a question. “All your Internet buddies are in New York?”

“Not all,” Oz said, pulling another cigarette. “Just one, actually. I think. If he’s still here. He started pulling away even before the Net went down.”

I watched her smoke, liking the way she held her Marlboro Red too much. The purple lipstick stains on the filter were impossibly distracting.

“Not to be offensive,” I said after bumming a smoke, “but you seem far too sharp to spend your time being a webcam girl.”

“I have to shower anyway. Why not get paid?”

It was hard to argue with that logic.

“Besides, what’s more degrading? Being seen naked or having a boss?”

I raised my flask. “To showering for profit.”

“See that, Gladstone?” Tobey said. “Oz here has a perfectly legit reason for being a dirty cyber hooker.”

“Oh, excuse me, sir,” Oz said. “I didn’t realize making fart jokes online was God’s work.”

“Well, it beats a real job.”

Oz had to agree. “Fuck, yes. Seriously, Gladstone, how do you do it?”

“Well, I’d prefer not to,” I said. “Actually, I’ve been preferring not to so much that I’m out on disability.”

That made Oz very happy, and she took the flask from my pocket. I felt her nails graze against my chest.

“Cheers, daddy-o,” she said with a hearty swig. “I knew you were too together not to be batshit. It’s always the straight-laced customers who get their freak on.”

Tobey laughed. “Daddy-o. See, Gladstone? You gotta change that outfit.”

Oz shook her head. “Nah, it’s kinda exhilarating to see someone dress like a douchebag in earnest,” she said. “Too much irony these days.”

“You look too young to know anything other than ‘these days,’” I said. “You think things used to be different?”

“Christ, I hope so.”

We sat there a little while, the three of us, smoking and drinking, letting the park pass in front of us like a full-scale IMAX screening, and it was nice. There was a level of comfort that should not have been and we didn’t feel the need to ruin it with acknowledgment. In time, our talk came back to what started it: seeking help from 4Chan.

“Seriously, Gladstone. Have you ever even been to the /b/ boards on 4Chan? These are not people you want to know in real life.”

“No, Tobes, I haven’t. I don’t even pretend to understand the connection or the difference between 4Chan, the /b/tards on its forum, and Anonymous. But I know something out of that mess smoked the cyber counterintelligence agency that tried to bring down WikiLeaks. And that’s the kind of mojo we need now. Not loudmouths from Digg and Reddit.”

“So say we all,” Oz said, nodding her head.

“Was that a
Battlestar Galactica
reference?” Tobey asked.

“Yarp.”

Tobey and I tried to conceal our intense nerd arousal.

“Anyway, you’re both right,” she said. “I would have sought them out already, but they’re not the kind of people you want to be alone with.”

I didn’t blame her. Overt sexuality without the distance and anonymity of the Internet was dangerous. She stamped out her cigarette, but even when she was done, she kept her head down, as if inspecting the significance of the crushed filter on the ground. She was waiting for something. Something I would have realized instantly if it hadn’t been so long since I’d spoken to a woman.

I remembered my first date with Romaya, if you could call it a date. Sitting on her dorm room bed listening to Nick Drake’s
Pink Moon
. Me trying to find an opening. She looking too intently at the CD case.

I spoke one soft word and waited. “Hey.”

Oz looked up with more innocence than I thought possible.

“Would you like to join us?” I asked.

“I guess I could do that, yeah. I mean, if it wouldn’t put you out.”

She looked to Tobey, who thankfully just nodded, although I would bet anything he was suppressing something like “Oh, cool, you’ll put out?”

“Well, then, okay, gentlemen,” she said.

I raised my flask in a toast. That’s when I noticed the black ops helicopters. Troops and dogs emerged around the perimeter of the park. Some zombies approached the dogs, eager to see a stupid pet trick like they remembered from YouTube or take a pic so they could add a funny caption. They were summarily mauled. New York City, it seemed, was shutting down.

4.

DAY 23. LOCKDOWN

I wasn’t positive what branch of the military I was looking at. Most wore black bulletproof vests over fatigues and had helmets not unlike Darth Vader’s, minus the face piece and flare. Oh, and automatic weapons. There were a bunch of those. It reminded me of the days after 9/11 when soldiers were a welcomed sight. Their earnest posture and polished weaponry helping us believe we could only be hurt when our guard was down.

But, for some reason, these troops didn’t bring that same assurance, even though the radios crackling in the park were reporting that the soldiers were a response to detected Internet activity in New York. Specifically, these intercepted transmissions all concerned terrorist acts targeting Manhattan. So, as hard it was to believe, it seemed someone did have the Internet.

“Radio, shmadio,” Tobey said. “We’ll see what 4Chan has to say about this.”

“Major world governments are without Internet while some third-world enemy combatants have found a way to dismantle and exclusively harness its power?” I asked.

Oz stamped her cigarette out under her boot. “Hard to believe?”

“Yeah, but if it’s true … well, it would be quite a tactical advantage.”

“The Internet for communications purposes,” Tobey said.

“Right.”

We watched the troops establish borders and checkpoints around the park. And we watched the people watching the troops. None of it seemed real. The experience was crying out for some hyperlink, carrying it to a validating source.

“So, assuming they let us leave eventually, how do we even find 4Chan?”

Tobey thought for a moment and then held up a Polaroid. “Well, about twenty minutes ago, I took this pic of a kid leading a blind man into a pile of dog crap. I bet he knows where to find 4Chan.”

“You sat and watched a kid fuck with a blind guy?” Oz asked.

“Dude, you don’t understand,” Tobey protested. “I haven’t seen something like that in a really long time. It was like a YouTube video.”

Oz ignored the response. “Well, I heard 4Chan has been congregating in the Village.”

“Why? Is there a NAMBLA support group there?”

Oz and Tobey didn’t laugh.

“Dude, seriously. Not cool,” Tobey said. “4Chan’s no joke.”

I looked to Oz.

“Playing with fire, Gladstone.”

“Seriously? Man, I have got to meet these guys.”

I made my way to the perimeter and Tobey and Oz followed. Bags were being sporadically searched, handheld metal detectors used. Occasionally, someone would be pulled out of line and questioned more extensively. There was even a screen set up for body cavity searches, if necessary. But all this hit-and-miss diligence made it impossible to predict what kind of terrorist plots they were hoping to thwart.

“Please step forward, sir,” one soldier said, pulling me slightly from my companions. I complied.

He reminded me of a cop I’d met in college who made a similar request when he caught me posting fliers for my band. After checking my driver’s license, he asked, “Don’t you know there’s a city ordinance against posting bills on public property?”