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  “Don’t shout, please. This is a place of peace.” He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named sat back into his thinking position. “Do you think these people would want some carbon offsets?”

  “No, Gore damn it. I don’t think they care one bit about your damn carbon offsets. They want to take over the Internet! What don’t you understand?”

  Brittany was getting bright red, and now she was pacing at the bottom of the steps. She looked on the verge of running up those steps and punching the Creator in the face. He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named produced a small pad of paper and a pen, writing something with a flourish on the pad. He slowly folded it into an airplane shape, ignoring all the cursing coming from Brittany. He stood up and threw the paper airplane down towards Brittany and Emal.

  “Here. Take this prescription and call me in the morning. I’ve got to run and find an engineer who can build me a small jet plane. I’m very excited about it.”

  With that, he disappeared behind some curtains on his high throne. Brittany’s curses followed him as he went. Emal caught the paper plane as it floated down to them. He unfolded it and was surprised to find that it really was a prescription.

  The prescription read “unlimited carbon offsets,” and it was signed “He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named.”

  Time to run

  ~

  Brittany continued to pace at the bottom of the stairs and hurl insults at the now empty throne. When she decided He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named really wasn’t going to come back and listen to her yell, she turned to the only other person in the great room.

  “DO YOU REALIZE WHAT IS HAPPENING? I’m telling you, this is only the beginning. They will keep building these barriers, choking off the Internet from everything but approved traffic. They want to become gatekeepers of something they have no right to own,” Brittany yelled at Emal.

  “Okay!” Emal yelled back, stuffing the prescription in his pocket and throwing up his hands in defense, or surrender, whichever Brittany might be willing to accept. “I believe you, and I’m on your side, but what can we do? If He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named is the creator of this place and he doesn’t care, who are we going to get that will help us fight these mystery people of yours?”

  “Just let me think,” she said and sat in an angry huff on the steps.

  Emal sat down beside her; she wrinkled her nose at him, and he scooted away. I’ve seen these brick walls myself, Emal thought. One of them, particularly close up. I can agree with Brittany they don’t belong in the Internet. Barriers go against everything the Internet stands for. I’ve only been here a day or two, but this place seems like a paradise. You can do whatever you want or be whoever you want. Sure, there are some seedy areas, and trolls, but isn’t that the price you pay? Now someone wants to control the tubes, putting up roadblocks in order to tell people where they can go and what they can do. Everyone should be able to get here, and once here, do whatever butters their toast.

  There was a noise of claws on the floor and Emal felt a familiar wetness on his face.

  Apollo, the packet sniffing dog, had appeared suddenly and was slobbering Emal with wet kisses.

  “Hey, buddy,” Emal cried out as he roughly pet Apollo’s great mane. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hey yourself,” Apollo said as he spun in circles and slammed himself into Emal, looking for some pets. “I’m just playing. I got my sniffing done. I got my ball. I’ve got nothing but time. Well, I think I have nothing but time. I don’t really tell time very well. But hey, it’s been so long since I saw you. Throw it!” he said excitedly as he spit a ball out at Emal’s feet.

  Emal grabbed the ball and threw it across the room with Apollo right behind. Emal glanced over at Brittany, expecting Apollo’s presence to have brightened her mood as it did his. Emal was surprised to see that she was now standing rigid, with an expression that suggested doom was approaching. Guess she doesn’t like dogs, Emal thought.

  “You know that dog?” Brittany asked, watching the creature play.

  “Sure, that’s Apollo. He helped me out before when I was in rough shape. He’s a fun guy,” Emal said, waving in the dog’s direction as he ran after the ball.

  “Did he sniff you?” Brittany yelled, grabbing Emal by both shoulders and shaking him. “Did he sniff you?”

  “Well, yeah. But he said he does that to everybody. Said he was a package sniffer.”

  “PACKET sniffer, you idiot.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything about this before,” Brittany said turning in circles as though looking for some type of threat.

  “That’s not exactly something that comes up organically in conversation. Oh, by the way, I had my package sniffed by a dog while you were away,” Emal said in a poor imitation of a conversation.

  “PACKET! You idiot. You’re going to get us both killed,” Brittany said as she now began to pace back and forth very quickly. “Dog! Dog!” Brittany called. Apollo came bounding back over, dropping the ball near her feet.

  “Did you . . . already turn . . . in your data . . . today?” Brittany asked as slow as she could in her panicked state. She seemed to think Apollo would only understand her if she spoke very slowly.

  “Of course, buddy,” Apollo said with a drooling grin and a glance at the ball. “How else would I have gotten my ball, silly goose? Throw it! Oh, please! Throw it!”

  Brittany made no move to grab the ball, so Emal grabbed and threw it into the distance; Apollo tore off after it again.

  “We can’t stay here anymore,” Brittany said as she began running in wide circles that were leading her nowhere.

  “Why? What’s the big deal?”

  “Do you remember when I said people are trying to kill us?”

  “Well, of course. That’s not something you easily forget now, is it?”

  “With you, I don’t know. Those people trying to kill us use packet sniffers like Apollo to track data on the Internet. To track us! If you’ve been sniffed, then you’ve been marked. Which means there are private investigators out right now searching for you. Searching to capture and or kill you! And now I’m associated with you! I knew I should have left this stupid story when I had the chance.”

  “Oh my Gore! Why didn’t you say anything? We need to get out of here,” Emal yelled while starting to run in circles himself.

  Apollo bounded up with the ball in his mouth, but his tail was slightly tucked as he realized something was not right with these two humans.

  “Did I do something bad, guys? Awww . . . I didn’t mean to do anything bad,” Apollo mumbled around the ball in his mouth, with his head drooping in shame.

  “It’s okay,” Emal said. He stopped panicking long enough to give him some reassuring pats on the head. “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. You were just doing your job. It might be helpful if you could show us a back way out of here though.”

  “No problem, buddy,” Apollo said, bounding off again. Just that quickly, his shame had been forgotten. He joyfully called back to them, “Follow me.”

  Brittany was cursing again, this time at Emal for not telling her about Apollo.

  “Well, next time someone sniffs me, I’ll be sure to take notes and give you all the details.”

  Golden fur flying, the dog led them out a back entrance of the great building and through a row of hedges. Rabbits scattered, diving into bushes and climbing trees to get out of the path as Apollo led them across the lawn. The group ended up running in a big circle once when their leader gave chase to a particularly good looking rabbit.

  “Sorry,” he yelled as he straightened back out and crashed through another hedge. The manicured lawn came to an end, and Apollo jerked his head in the direction of a narrow path that led into the thick woods. “There’s another way out through there. Good luck.”

  Emal grabbed the ball one last time and threw it back toward the lawn. Apollo pursued after it happily as Emal and Brittany ran onto the forest path.

  “Who are we running from?�
�� Emal called out to Brittany as she ran ahead of him.

  “The FCC.”

  “The FCC?”

  “Frankly curiously clueless.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, but I am new here in case you forgot.”

  “No, idiot. That’s what they’re called. It’s their job to monitor the Internet.”

  “Oh, so shouldn’t they be the ones we need to talk to?”

  “You would think so, but no. They are frankly, curiously clueless. Most of them used to work for the fat cats, and they seem confused about who they work for now.”

  “What do cats have to do with any of this?”

  “Everything. Now keep moving,” Brittany said.

  They crashed through the brush, and Emal’s face got fresh cuts from whipping branches that Brittany didn’t bother to hold for a split second longer. The pair came to the very edge of the old server farm, reaching a wall that disappeared up into clouds. A few feet off the path a mostly rotted wooden door was visible. Brittany tore at it, sending chunks of rotten wood flying. They went through a narrow hallway for a dozen feet before opening another door that led back to the tubes. This was an older path with cobblestone floors, little lighting, and no traffic. Emal and Brittany walked to the opposite wall and bent over, catching their breath.

  “What are we going to do?” Emal gasped.

  “We have to go to The Pirate Bay,” Brittany said through clenched teeth. “Before you even ask, it’s my home in a loose sense. It’s our last haven. There used to be more places—Port Royal, Tortuga, Barataria Bay—but they were raided years ago.”

  “Did the FCC raid these other havens?”

  “Ha! The FCC couldn’t raid an old folk’s home without hurting themselves. No, unmarked militia executed raids on all those havens in the same week. We have rumors about who sent them but no one knows. They destroyed the entire infrastructure of the server farms we had set up and erased anyone they found. They walled the havens off from the rest of the Internet, leaving any people still in the servers to die slow, agonizing deaths of boredom. They were dark days. We created The Pirate Bay as our final sanctuary.”

  “Well, how will going there help us?”

  “Back at The Pirate Bay we can get a new scent, one that hasn’t been tagged by packet sniffers. Also, you need a shower.”

  “I wouldn’t mind some food either,” Emal said.

  “Forget about food. We need to rally the resistance. If He-Who-Must-Always-Be-Named isn’t going to help us, we’ll get this revolution started without him. It’s time to take the fight to the fat cats for control of the tubes. I only hope it isn’t too late.”

  “You can use my time machine if you like.”

  Time travel?

  ~

  Brittany and Emal jumped at the unexpected voice.

  “Who said that?” Brittany asked as she started pointing her finger at imaginary people. “Who said it? Who?”

  “It was me, friends,” came the voice from behind them. They both turned to see an older gentleman sitting underneath a light, in an ornate chair, fifty yards down their side of the tunnel. They hadn’t even noticed the man when they came into the tube; he had apparently been eavesdropping on them the entire time. The man sat in the chair wearing an old suit and an older thick mustache. The chair was covered with red felt and had brass railings around the outside. On the back of the contraption was a large dish with strange symbols and what appeared to be dates on it. It was a bizarre set-up, even for the Internet. Emal eyed it closely, waiting for it to do something he wouldn’t like.

  “I was merely suggesting that perhaps you would both like to pile into my time machine here and simply go back to a more convenient time,” he said with a flip of his hand. “We can go back as far as you like. A few days ago, before you met, or even back to before these places you spoke of were destroyed. You, good sir!” The man said, pointing directly at Emal. “Do we know each other?”

  Emal pointed at himself in confusion, though he was clearly the only good sir in the tube.

  “Me? I don’t think so. If you haven’t heard, I’m fairly new here.”

  “No. I do know you. I have a prophecy for you.”

  The old man fumbled in a cup holder, looking for something. He tossed out soda bottles and food wrappers before exclaiming, “Aha,” and producing a piece of paper.

  “Yes, here it is,” he said, clearing his throat. “One will be born of one. Two will be born of none. And more will come.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Brittany asked as she strode over. She stopped next to the man and the machine, eyeing them both rather pointedly.

  “Oh, I have no idea, but don’t all good stories need a prophecy of sorts?”

  “No, I don’t think they do,” Brittany said.

  “Sure they do. It’s part of the hero quest. This fella over here is the hero of the story, isn’t he? He needs to have strange birth origins or early trauma. We can check that one off, I think. He needs a mentor. I believe that is you, young lady,” the man said, pointing at Brittany. “He needs a call to adventure, which I think you are providing for him quite well. Save the Internet and all that jazz. Of course, there are other things to come that will really round him out as a hero. Like his initial refusal to answer the adventure call.”

  “Damn right; I don’t want any adventure,” Emal shouted. “I just want to go home. I just want to deliver my message.”

  “See, there you are. Another check off the hero checklist. But we’ll stop there; we don’t want to give away any more details of the novel, or its future follow up novels, am I right?” he added with a wink to the reader. “Anyways, are you guys ready to travel in time and get this adventure started for real or what?”

  “You’re H.G. Wells?” Brittany asked brusquely.

  “I am.”

  “Author of works such as The War of the Worlds, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Time Machine, The Undying Fire, and countless other important stories?”

  “That’s me,” he answered proudly, thrusting his chin up.

  “And you think we should use a time machine to travel back in time to solve our little problem?”

  “Well, it certainly couldn’t hurt any—”

  Before he finished the sentence, Brittany pulled a pistol from somewhere in her skirt and shot H.G. Wells in the head.

  Willing to listen to more details about this hero business, Emal, who had been walking over to the pair, suddenly froze in mid-stride, one leg held in the air. For a few moments the echo of the shot down the tube was the only sound. Smoke wormed out of the barrel of the pistol held at Brittany’s side. Emal decided the best course of action was to bombard his gun-wielding companion with as many questions as possible to keep her occupied as he decided whether or not he should flee for his life.

  “What was that? What did you do that for? Where did you pull that out of? You shot a man with a mustache!”

  Brittany put the pistol back wherever she had gotten it from, turning to Emal. She took a few deep breaths to calm herself.

  “He suggested time travel,” she stated.

  Emal waited for what he thought was an appropriate amount of time for her to provide more detail, but she didn’t feel the need for more.

  “Okay . . . Didn’t you suggest time travel earlier?”

  “I said you needed it to become a teenager, not that I would let you use it. Look, time travel doesn’t work. Well, not that it doesn’t work; it might for all I know. What I do know is that it doesn’t work in fiction. Think of how many movies, books, comics, and more have been ruined by time travel plot holes. Terminator, The Lake House, The Butterfly Effect, Back to the Future. The list just goes on and on.”

  “You’re naming movies that are based on time travel. The movies might have some logic flaws involving the time travel, or poor lead actor choices, but without the time travel, they aren’t even movies to begin with,” Emal said.

  “Fine.” Without having to stop and think, she replie
d, “What about Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, Star Trek (2009), Planet of the Apes, Lost, Men in Black 3, Donnie Darko—”

  “—Donnie Darko doesn’t count; no one understands that movie, and anyone who pretends to is a pretentious twat,” Emal said.

  “That’s fair, but the list could go on if our writer felt like doing more research. I will not allow us to become part of that list. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of otherwise good works of fiction have been ruined by the failure of the time travel plot device.”

  “But aren’t the readers or viewers accepting of time travel if they are given a decent enough explanation?”

  “But what’s a decent explanation for time travel suddenly popping up in a novel? Take Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, the entire logic of the series is ruined because if they had the ability to turn back time, they could’ve prevented the entire seven books from needing to happen. Kill Voldemort before he is a powerful wizard. Simple. It’s done. Instead of seven books, eight movies, and countless addendums, we can read a journal article that Dumbledore submitted to Wizarding Monthly. Dumbledore can explain why he was justified in killing an innocent orphan. Surely he could justify killing Tom Riddle to prevent the deaths of thousands. And another thing, Dumbledore could have also come out as a homosexual as a simple note in his byline of the journal article. Instead, we are just going to pretend he was homosexual all along and we, the stupid reader, just never figured it out. Almost 900,000 words with no mention, yet I’m made to feel homophobic because I never knew he was gay.”

  “The entire logic of the series involves people using magic on each other with pieces of wood that have unicorn hair in them. I don’t think introducing time travel randomly in the middle ruins anything.”

  “Oh, I can suspend disbelief to a certain degree. All fiction requires that at some point. Well, except maybe the really boring fiction that deals with personal dramas. You know, the stuff that wins awards even though no one wants to read that crap. We all have our own drama; I don’t need to hear about someone’s disturbing childhood. I digress. I can accept the magical world of Harry Potter, but I cannot accept that they don’t have logic in that world,” Brittany said. She was getting angry now as the exchange became heated, as most discussions involving Harry Potter are liable to do.