Notes From the Internet Apocalypse by Wayne Gladstone

a shit in here.”
    Mostly college-aged kids, but some older folks, were milling about in clusters, clearly in regrouping mode. Each was talking about what was really going on, what it meant, and what they had to do. At first, I thought recent changes had revitalized their economic protest. Without competition from the Net, shop owners had been free to fan the flames of inflation. And while that might have been good news for those businesses, computer and gadget sales had tanked along with all the tech and marketing jobs that go with that. Firms and businesses kept laying off IT people too. After all, how many guys do you need to fix your Excel spreadsheet or document management program? But one look at their signs and I could see this was no longer about the economy: G IVE U S B ACK T HE N ET ;Y OU C AN T AKE T HE W EB ,B UT N OT O UR F REE S PEECH , and one of what I’m guessing was Che Guevara wearing a Guy Fawkes mask?
    “Who are these signs addressing?” I asked. “The man? They’re acting like they know who took the Net.”
    “Time to investigate,” Tobey said. “I’ll kneel down behind that white guy with the dreads. You push him over and we’ll beat the truth out of him.”
    I had a better idea. There was a girl with big nerd glasses, striped stockings, and a purple bob.
    “How about her?” I said, pointing.
    Oz shook her head. “You really can’t help yourself, can you?”
    “Excuse me,” I said, walking over to the girl. “I couldn’t help but notice your sign.”
    She dropped a sandwich bag of what appeared to be weed at the sound of my voice.
    “It’s not mine!” she protested.
    Tobey nearly pissed himself laughing.
    “I don’t care about your shwag,” I said. “I wanted to ask you about your sign.”
    I pointed down to her posterboard, which read, G IVE I T B ACK , to make it clear I wasn’t talking about astrology. “Who exactly do you think took the Net?”
    “Who do you think?” she said. “The government.”
    “Why would they do that?”
    “Where ya been? Remember SOPA? The government’s in cahoots with the entertainment industry. They want to shut down the Web. They shut down Megaupload and BTJunkie. Now they’re like, fuck it, let’s shut down the whole damn thing.”
    She kneeled to recover her stash, so I directed my question downward. “Obama wants to appease Hollywood so much he just flipped some gigantic kill switch?”
    “Well, I don’t know how he did it,” she said, pushing her weed into her skirt pocket. “But yeah. Is that so hard to believe? Look how the government cracks down on us. Arresting us for sleeping on public property!”
    “Well, Zuccotti Park was private property, and even if it weren’t, I mean there are laws. If you were allowed to just set up camp everywhere we could solve the homeless problem in America by just passing out tents.”
    She looked at me with a kind of confused distrust. A touch of fear. Then she threw the weed out of her pocket again. “Why did I just pick that up? It’s not mine!”
    “Again, I’m not a cop. And I’m not even picking on your protest. I mean, it’s good that there are laws. I mean, you want the cops to arrest you, right? Isn’t that the point of civil disobedience? To get arrested for what you believe in? To prove a point?”
    The look returned, but without fear this time. She retrieved her weed again and asked, “Who the fuck wants to get arrested?” before walking away.
    “Smooth, G-Stone,” Tobey said.
    “I don’t get it. If OWS thinks Washington took the Net, why are they protesting on Wall Street?”
    Oz wasn’t confused. “Because who wants to be stuck in D.C. without the Internet?”
    She was right. I’d forgotten that while the exits had opened and people were free to leave, Manhattan’s entrances remained closed as a security measure. Twenty-five percent of the city’s population has now fled. And just like before the Apocalypse, all the most frightened and boring people took off for