It was now approaching a year since the Event. It became clear that the rest of the world had fallen out of orbit and sunken into Hell, but here was our little .3-acre bubble, a small slice of happiness. We had recently ventured out together and found some seeds, as well as some literature on how to cultivate a farm. By April, our backyard was transformed into a garden for everything from tomatoes to cucumbers to...tomatoes. Very few things were able to grow easily for us, but what we could grow, we could grow a lot of. When I tell people this story, they always ask if I'm sick of tomatoes, and I always answer, "of course." I still eat them all the time. Reminds me of the good times.
Perkins and I had turned the guest room into a study, now that I was finally on board in believing that all that noise about the modems was true. We scouted every house for miles, checking to see who had which modems, and charted our findings on a map we had drawn on the wall. We tried to trace exactly who lost electricity when, and who still did have it. It was rather exciting. We often rode to the office building where I kept watch, waited until nightfall, watched for lights that weren't fires, and tried to gage how far away they were. The next day, we'd pedal out and scout around. Normally, these homes were occupied by zealots of a particular modem-embedded ideology. The first house we went to had a 3Com: one of Perkins'. It was hysterical. These people seemed fairly normal -- or at least, they were probably perfectly normal pre-Event -- until the eight-year-old daughter showed off her memorization of Book 1 of Perkins' magnum opus of horseshit. "Dr. Dre begat Slim Shady. Slim Shady begat 50 Cent. 50 Cent begat Lloyd Banks." Perkins elbowed me in the ribs, and that's when I couldn't stop from laughing any longer. I turned and walked into their living room, still laughing. In the living room, in big bold letters across the wall, they had painted, "THE GREAT COMMISSION IS AS FOLLOWS: NO PRIMITIVE CULTURE CAN BE GIVEN OR EXPOSED TO ANY INFORMATION REGARDING OUR ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES."
I burst into laughter all over again and went right back into the kitchen. "Perkins! You goofy motherfucker. You did not base your message on the Prime Directive. Fucking A, man." We high-fived. From the dinner table, the family looked at us and each other in confusion.
After we settled down long enough to say two words without laughing, we talked with the husband and wife. I asked them what led them to accept what was written in their modem. The man said, "Well, we weren't always the best people faith-wise...I mean, we believed in the Bible, but didn't go to church all that much, you know? The first couple of weeks were really tough. The kids didn't have their Spongebob, I couldn't keep in touch with my business contacts, and we didn't really have many books to speak of. I mean, really, who has that many books anymore? Who has time for them? Or who had time for them, I mean."
I nodded. "Right."
He continued. "So we get this piece of paper. People were spreading them all over town. Says to punch in 192.168.100.1 into our browser. I had the time to kill, so I said, "what the heck." I type it in and click around a little, and then I found it. The Word."
"Yeah, but why are you taking it so seriously? You don't know who wrote it."
The man nodded in concession. "It's true. We don't. It's about...faith, that's all. I mean, a lot of that stuff in there is really silly. Stuff about the Yankees empire, and how they made money to stay rich by chaining Derek Jeter to a dungeon wall and beating him with a horsewhip until he spits out golden eggs from his vagina." Once again, I started laughing uncontrollably. Perkins kept it going for me. "Yeah, that stuff's pretty dumb, huh?"
"Ha, yeah. Pretty funny though, I'll admit. But you start reading more, and it starts talking about a massive worldwide catastrophe, and giving advice on how to live after it happens. It just -- I don't know, it seemed like it was talking to me, in my situation. And I started thinking. Now, I didn't read the Bible much at all, but remember Paul? He was pretty off-base a lot of the time, right? I mean, he said a lot of bad things, did a lot of bad things. But regardless of that, he was a prophet of God, right? And then I figured -- if Paul could be God's prophet and say all these great things after doing so many terrible things, why couldn't whatever goofball wrote this stuff be working as a prophet of God, too?"
Perkins' eyes just lit up. "Wow," he said. He tapped me on the shoulder. "Come with me." We excused ourselves to the backyard. "Dude! This shit is incredible! It's perfect! I didn't even think of that shit! I didn't even think about comparing myself to Paul! This is...wow." The smile wouldn't leave his face.
I looked inside. Through the window I saw the man sit at the table as his wife walked up behind him and hugged him around his neck. "Don't you feel kind of bad, though? They look like they're really buying into this stuff hardcore."
Perkins gave the same concessive nod the man had earlier. "Yeah, I mean...yeah. But at the same time. Did you hear him talk? Before all this happened, it seemed like his savior was technology. Now it's something that actually makes him think, gives him introspection. Plus! Plus. Remember what he said earlier? He said that his family had lots of food. Just like us. And that he wanted to share it. Just like your mom. But The Word -- the shit I wrote -- told him to look first after himself and his family. And it pulled him through. Not trying to toot my own horn here, but if that weren't there for him to read, he'd probably be dead, right?"
"True." Since reaching the family's house, I had been stunned by the all the electric lights and buzzes and hums I had once completely disregarded with the air I breathed. By this family's account, the surrounding couple of blocks experienced intermittent outages, but on the whole had enjoyed electricity ever since the Event, giving me hope that somewhere, someone was pushing the buttons and pulling the levers at a power plant. At least, I was pretty sure those things weren't able to run on their own.
I looked back up at Perkins. "Man, we need to get some hands on some Cisco and RCA modems. Find out what the the hell those have in them. I mean, what the hell did Matt write in those RCA modems? Fucking 'go apeshit and set fire to shit and kill people minding their own business riding their fucking bikes'?"
"Perkins nodded again. "We need to find the modems, and we need to find Matt, and we need to find Wes."