All This Life

In fact, why not tweet now? Jake opens up Twitter and transforms into TheGreatJake and tells his legion of followers what’s what.

He’s up to 200,000 of them.

Immediately, nine of them favorite it.

That makes Jake feel good for like two seconds, but here comes more anxiety, getting more nervous, feels like he’s throwing a 404 error message, experiencing a disconnect between himself and the server he’s normally tethered to. Because if the world is a search engine, then every human being is a webpage, and URLs are our fingerprints.

It all makes perfect sense.

“How are you liking your experience with this machine?” a red-shirted employee asks him, right by his side. The man is Asian, thirty and change, and has a ton of gel in his hair, twisted mats of it sticking into barbs. Jake could snap one off like an icicle.

He shuts down Twitter, and YouTube pops up.

“Are those astronauts?” the employee asks.

“I wanted to see how video looks on this,” says Jake.

“Sweet, huh? This one has retina display. Processors that crank. Screen brightness that’s unrivaled. Video quality that looks better than the real world, don’t you think?” he asks, pointing outside.

“I like it,” Jake says.

“And it has all-day battery life.”

Which of course reminds Jake of his current mission: “How much are 5 chargers?”

The Asian man pecks at his iPad and a few seconds later says, “$19.”

Serendipity, thinks Jake. That’s exactly how much money I have.

“Is there tax?”

“Of course.”

“How much then?”

“$20.71. Should I snag you one?”

Serendipity is extinct.

And 404 errors don’t mean you’ll never be connected again. Those messages only tell people that there’s a problem right now, something’s not routing quite right. Refresh the page. You might simply have to clear your browser’s cache and cookies. Or try getting at that site from a different server and see what happens. Point is that if Jake’s page throws an error now, it won’t be an error forever. That’s what his moonwalk is all about. One stolen charger and he can treat his audience to the utmost access.

But there’s the other side of that coin, the one that reminds Jake that if he gets busted, the cops will come, and he’ll be returned to his dad. That will be the end of his celebrity. He’ll be another teenager, and he can’t have that. He should panhandle for the tax money. Or tell the truth to one of the redshirts and see if there’s any mercy in an Apple Store, letting him have half an hour on a charger out of kindness? But that’s far-fetched. Commerce always trumps compassion.

Or he’s talking himself out of acting. He’s beige and safe and boring. This is no time for being smart.

“I’ll let you know if I want to buy one,” says Jake.

“Okay,” the Asian man says, off to stalk someone new.

The thing is that he can’t get pinched. He needs his freedom. He needs to up the ante. The video of the brass band isn’t enough and neither is running away. He knows that the Internet — aka the world — will forget about him in sixty seconds if he doesn’t keep the magic going. There is always another story barreling behind you. One that has no more or less staying power. One that enraptures people for the proverbial fifteen minutes and then it’s chewed.

A pioneer such as Jake can’t let down his audience, has to push and push and push and stay relevant with new content to titillate, and since he’s already tweeted about his crime spree, he can’t back out now. No, once you start lying, or not living up to your promises, the trust bursts like a piñata and your fans find new gods and Jake isn’t ready to relinquish his fame.

So the decision is made.

Steal the charger.

Evade the zealots.

Outrun the security guard.

Which only gets him outside, and what’s he supposed to do then? He has no getaway car, no accomplice, no diversion, no help. He’d still be in the middle of an outdoor mall, and it doesn’t seem like the best plan to run to a bus stop, standing there, casually waiting for a lift. He’d get picked up, all right, not by a bus but a cop, trapped in juvie within the hour.

His only chance is to offer his followers an alternative. Something better than petty theft. Something that makes them forget all about his nonexistent crime spree. Something that keeps their attention fixed on a new commodity, so they forget about his indiscretion.

He opens Twitter again on the laptop: I wonder how many of you would meet me at the Golden Gate Bridge? I have something up my sleeve that you won’t want to miss!

He waits ten seconds and peeks at new notifications. Eight people have favorited it. Five people have retweeted it. One user called AbbyDubz has responded with this: CU there, while another person going by UnhappyCamper says We are with you!

And one celebrity in an Apple Store will give his fans the crescendo they want.