The Secret Lives of Emails.docx (17 page)

He found a single stall in the room and no way out. He used the toilet in despair, a common enough emotion, and then washed his hands. Emal had no place to go and no one to help him. He was going to be executed for crimes he hadn’t been told about and that he wasn’t even sure he had committed.
Some hero of this story I am turning out to be
, Emal thought as he bent over the sink and stared into the empty water basin. He glanced back up and did end up soiling himself a bit when he saw the reflection of a tabby cat in the mirror.

Seated on the back of the toilet, where it certainly hadn’t been a moment ago, was an orange tabby cat. And not just any orange tabby, but the one who had previously attacked Emal when he hadn’t been able to give it a cheezburger.

“You!” Emal cried out as he spun around to face his potential attacker.

“Meh?” the cat asked in mock surprise.

“Yes, you. If you want to attack me again, go right ahead; I’m about to be killed anyways.”

“Meh attack yu? Ai no rememberz that.”

“Yeah, well I do. I still have the scratches on my legs and face—and probably some kind of infection.”

“Youz baybeh!”

“What do you want? You didn’t just appear here to insult me, did you?

“i can haz cheezburger?”

“Stop that. You know I don’t have any cheezburgers. Speak normal,” Emal demanded.

The cat began to lick its paws, contemplating something, and then spoke in a regular cat voice.

“Fine, Emal. Though I think you are really ruining the mood of this scene by not allowing proper lolcat speak.”

“Lol what?”

“Lolcat. That’s me. And that’s how we talk. People like it.”

“The cats in there didn’t talk like you,” Emal said.

“Those are not cats. They look like fat cats, but they are not. They are given the rights of people and appear as fat cats, but they are really just faceless and nameless nothings. They are names on paper to be traded between people who really like paper and don’t give a shit about anything else.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Never mind that. Why do you think you are here, Emal?”

“Because I didn’t want to soil myself before my execution. Though, it’s too late for that now.”

“No, why are you about to be executed in the first place? Why aren’t you jumping into a portal as we speak?”

“Because I ran into a brick wall; then you and your friends attacked me. One of you was quite vicious, I might add. He just kept going right for the face.”

“Oh yes, that’s Oscar. Good kid, just has a little obsession. If it makes you feel better, he has been disciplined.”

“How?”

“He had to pose for pictures in strange little outfits, of course. Though I do think he actually likes wearing eye patches, but that’s another story entirely. More to the point, you were actually heading toward home when we met. But we couldn’t have that happen. Let me explain,” the tabby cat said, raising a paw to stop Emal from interrupting again.

“He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named might have built the Internet, but we lolcats have made it what it is today. These imposters want to destroy that. If they get their way, there will be no more lolcats. We will be considered the lowest of the low in terms of traffic priority. No one is going to pay them extra money just for little old me—no matter how many cheezburgers I ask for. We want to stop these fat cats just as much as your friend Brittany does. We want the Internet to be free again. We want lolcats to have a thousand year reign.”

Emal raised his eyebrows.

“Well, let’s just keep that our little secret. We helped get you here for a reason. We have been watching and making sure that everything led to this moment. You, Emal, are our only hope. You’re the hero of this little story.”

“I don’t want to be anyone’s hero; I just want to go home.”

“First, all the heroes say that, so I’m just going to ignore it. As far as you going home, that is what we want as well. In fact, you going home is what must happen and what will make you a hero. But, we also need you to do something else first.”

The orange tabby sprung from the back of the stall, onto the sink, and whispered the plan into Emal’s ear. Emal giggled from the whiskers tickling his ear, but he listened and accepted the plan. After their discussion ended, the tabby cat walked to the bathroom door. She stopped and turned back to Emal.

“I almost forgot. I’m Tabitha. Welcome to the Internet.”

Tabitha left Emal, giving him a moment to gather his thoughts.

I know what I need to do
, Emal thought to himself. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he knew what he needed to say and, more importantly, who he needed to say it to.

Protect me, O corporation

~

It took just a moment for Emal to gather himself. He needed to hurry before Kelly came looking for him.

“Jeeves! I am sorry. I need your help!” Emal called out to the now empty bathroom. “I need the help of a friend.”

A few moments passed with Emal thinking his plea hadn’t worked, when suddenly Jeeves appeared in front of him.

“Hello, Emal,” Jeeves said with a calculated indifference.

“Hello, Jeeves. I want to apologize to you. I am sorry for the things I said earlier. I should never have questioned your intelligence or called you a simple program. I should never have said you were ugly and scary looking,” Emal said.

“I don’t remember you calling me ugly or scary looking,” Jeeves said, squeezing his metal parts into a quizzical look.

“Oh, I guess I just thought that part. Anyways, I have been thinking—what is it that makes us human? I don’t think it’s something you can just program or put in a computer chip. It’s the strength of the human heart, Jeeves. And while you don’t actually have one of those, I think that you’re just as human as I am. So I am sorry, my friend.”

Jeeves stayed still for just a split second before letting out a little sob.
“You had me at ‘my friend.’ Come here, you smelly bastard. I will give you my heart,” Jeeves cried.

Jeeves and Emal attempted the first ever paperclip to person hug, and Emal almost lost an eye. After carefully separating from each other, Emal wiped a tear, or perhaps blood, from his eye and told Jeeves what his plan was. Jeeves readily agreed and they quickly got to work.

Five minutes late for his own deletion, Emal strode back into the courtroom with Jeeves hovering behind him. He went and stood in front of Kelly, who had quickly gone from annoyed at his delay to shocked at his companion.

“Who is your friend, Emal? Does he wish to be executed as well?” Kelly asked in her most pleasant voice.

“There will be no more executions today, Kelly. My friend here is Jeeves. Together we have transcended being simple beings and have become a corporation.”

Kelly’s jaw dropped open, her eyes searched the room for help that wasn’t available. It was her court after all.

“But . . . well fine; what’s the corporation’s name then?” Kelly asked, sure they hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“Our corporation is called, TIPFU. That stands for The Internet Is a Public Fucking Utility! The F is silent.

“Language, child. This could’ve been a young adult novel until you dropped the f- bomb. Besides, you can’t be a corporation without customers, so who are your customers?”

“We have signed our first exclusive client. The lolcats.”

“Well . . .” Kelly stammered, running out of options to stop them. “What resources do you have? You need money or something; you can’t just declare to be a corporation. How are you going to purchase support without paying lobbyists to stuff pockets?”

“We do have resources,” Emal said proudly as he waved his prescription from He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named in the air. “We have unlimited carbon offsets!”

“My Gore,” Kelly cried. “That makes you the richest and greenest corporation in the world.”

“Damn right. And here is all the necessary paperwork,” Jeeves said, while dropping a stack of papers out from his clip. Which, I suppose means he dropped them out of his butt if you think about it too much.

Kelly glanced through the paperwork for a long time, trying to find something not filled out properly, but all was in order. Jeeves had been the key to creating the corporation because his brain had instant access to all the necessary forms and legal information required.

“Well, Tifpu . . . Tipfa . . .”

“TIPFU, it rhymes with achoo. The F is silent.”

“Well, I am so sorry there was confusion about us potentially deleting you. As a corporation, especially one with unlimited carbon offsets, you are too big to be guilty of anything. You now have an actual license to kill, and you’re certainly too big to be executed,” Kelly said with deference to Emal and Jeeves, who now controlled the largest corporation in the world.

“Thank you, Kelly. With our first act as a corporation we are demanding a committee be formed to consider Net Neutrality again. As the largest corporation, we must rightfully determine which of these proposals are in the best interest of our needs. We will, of course, provide a few thousand carbon offsets to any of The Old White Men you need to pay off for us.”

“Certainly, consider it done,” Kelly said.

“Better yet, let’s also create a committee to determine the members of any future committees that will review any Internet proposals. We’ll even let you, Judge Kelly, decide who gets to be on the first one as long as myself, Jeeves, and Brittany are included. Oh! And it can only have five people total.”

“Of course, whatever you want. Although I’m not sure that Brittany will be much help to you.”

“Let us worry about that,” Jeeves said.

Emal and Jeeves performed another person to paperclip first, the underrated and often maligned high-five. No one was injured or maimed in the process.

They proudly strode through the doors where Brittany had been dragged earlier. They found her sitting on the other side of the tube, and she quickly rose, coming over to meet them. She skipped over the limp forms of Nancy, Frank, and Joe.

“What the hell happened in there?” Brittany asked as she look confusingly between Emal and Jeeves.

“Are they dead?” Emal asked, pointing to the limp bodies.

“Them?” she said. “They’ll be fine. It was the strangest thing. They were about to shoot me when a huge clowder of lolcats came around the corner and took them all down. One of them in particular was really vicious. Just kept going for the face, even as the other lolcats tried to hold him back. Where did Jeeves come from and why are you free?”

“We are all free now,” Emal said. “You, me, and Jeeves formed the Internet’s newest corporation. A corporation that will be untouchable.”

Emal and Jeeves gladly caught Brittany up on how they had formed TIPFU, advising her of the silent F. They told her about how she was now one the three founders of a corporation with unlimited carbon offsets at their disposal.

“Is it a little ironic that you created a corporation to fight the other corporations? Doesn’t that contradict my speech or something?” Brittany asked.

“Oh, who knows. No one understands what irony is or isn’t these days. I’ve got the entire power of the Internet in my head, and I still can’t figure out what is ironic and what isn’t,” Jeeves said.

“You did good, kid,” Brittany said as she punched Emal in the arm. “We can live to continue this fight.”

“Well, thanks to Jeeves, the orange tabby, and you, we will.”

“You must be the smelliest hero in history,” Brittany said.

“And the first to be wearing a skirt since Achilles,” Jeeves added.

“There is still work to be done and questions to be answered, but first . . . there is lunch,” Brittany said. “I hear there is a good restaurant at the end of the Internet.”

“I would love to, but I actually have something else I have to do,” Emal said.

“Well, what is it? Jeeves and I will go with you.”

“I am going home.”

“You don’t want to do that, Emal,” Brittany said.

“I do want to. More importantly, I have to.”

“No, Emal. Listen to me. I didn’t tell you everything before. Remember when we talked about how we all started out as data packets delivering data from servers?”

“Yes,” Emal said.

“Well, you never understood right. You kept using the term “messenger,” but we are not messengers. We are the message.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“We’re data packets. We carry the data as part of something in our brain, but we are also part of the data itself. They can’t separate it from you. If you go home, you will be reassembled with the other packets, and it will kill you.”

“Oh, Tabitha told me I needed to go home, but she failed to mention that little detail.”

The trio stood in silence for a bit as Emal thought about what this really meant for him.

Death. I guess I didn’t ask Tabitha enough questions because I wanted to go home myself. But do I still want to go if it means I’ll die? I don’t want to be a martyr, but everything we have been through will have been for nothing if I don’t go. Everything my friends have been fighting for. Tabitha told me that I’m the final piece of a bigger plan.