Notes from the Internet Apocalypse--A Novel by Wayne Gladstone

Author:Wayne Gladstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

DAY 53. THE MUSEUM

I’ve been lying to Tobey. For the second time in a month, I’ve spent days in this hotel. Not out of fear or withdrawal, but just because I could. The booze was flowing, Oz was sensational, and best of all, I slept. I slept the way I hadn’t slept since Romaya—where you’re completely dead to the world, but not oblivious. You can’t be oblivious. It’s the knowing that someone is right next to you that lets you fall so far away.

But when I woke, I knew I’d hate myself if I spent one more day doing nothing.

“Pack your Vegemite,” I said. “We’re going to the Museum of Natural History.”

“You think stuffed animals stole the Internet?” Oz replied.

“First off, they’re not stuffed, they’re real animal skins pulled taut over carved wood, and second, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m not the Internet Messiah. I have no idea where the Internet is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not in your vag.”

I’ve always loved the Museum of Natural History. With the exception of the giant whale room, it hasn’t changed since I was a kid. Or even for fifty years before that. And it doesn’t need to. Neither television nor Atari nor World of Warcraft has tarnished its ability to captivate. And I don’t really know why. Something about the architecture, the lighting, and the layout transforms these animal-quins behind century-old glass into something otherworldly. Magic is a cliché, but what do you call it when you enter a place and you can pretend you’re anywhere and everywhere from the Mesozoic era to present day, provided you haven’t killed every bit of childhood wonder with cynicism? It is magic. The kind that exists.

Or maybe it’s knowing you’re seeing what your grandfather saw, the way he saw it. The same stimuli are firing your synapses in the same way they worked some little boy’s brain in 1912. It’s a rock of consistency in the fastest-changing city in the world. But the best part is that you can spend all day there without learning a damn thing. Staring at the dinosaurs and statues, feeling the flow of the space, and ignoring the explanatory cards and postings. It’s like surfing the Net at 2:00 A.M. without the capacity for thought. But the difference is, by the time you leave the museum, you know that knowledge exists and that it deserves to be showcased and exalted. So the real magic is that even walking the museum passively informs your priorities—a philosophical education if not a factual one.

I showed Oz the giant spider crab that terrorized my childhood dreams. We lingered over the Peter Stuyvesant mannequin my mother had shown me on a parent-chaperoned school field trip, just as it had been shown to her when she was a schoolgirl. The history was kind of lost on Oz.

“Oh, I guess in your country, it would be a lot more mannequins getting prison raped, huh?”

“Seriously,” she said. “Do you know anything about Australia?”

“Of course not.

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