“I found him.”
“Him who?”
“Gnostic Baptiste!”
“The spam tag?”
“It’s not just a tag! I wasn’t even running a simple traceroute function before I get a local postal address. So I go there…”
“Wait a second. I need a beer for this.” Alex and I had worked together for 3 years out of the Attorney General’s Office, doing tech consulting for an anti-spam task force. Alex was one of the best systems designers I knew, parlaying hacker-honed skills into the legit and the lucrative. But the thankless and poorly- paid search for spammers had become his holy grail. I thought I’d seen him at his most weirdly obsessive, but this was different. I popped two beers and handed him one, but he just put it on the table and kept pacing.
“You’re saying there’s a person named Gnostic Baptiste?”
He stopped and his eyes got too bright. “A…’person’?”
He finally fell onto the couch and rubbed his hands through his hair.
“…I find the place. An abandoned warehouse by the yards. Not a computer in sight. No phones. No jacks. No Wi-Fi. Nothing. Zip. Except this fat kid in a swivel chair. When I get close he stands up and says, ‘I am Gnostic Baptiste. Spread the word.”
I reached out to pat him on the arm. He shrank back. “Don’t touch me! I’m infected!”
“Infected?”
He sprang off the couch and bent over, clutching his crotch. “Here. Look.” He booted his computer and tapped the keys. “You see?” The screen showed a word document. Alex was typing out a solid block of spam:
BIGGER AND THICKER WITH GNOSTIC BAPTISTE!
GIGANTIC ORGAN COCK FROM GNOSTIC BAPTISTE!
BOOST HER WET HAPPY WITH VIAGRA PENIS PATCH
FOR ULTRA HARD PENILE SEXUAL WITH 100 MG
X 10 PILLS PRICE CHEAPER MASSIVE COCK WITH
75% OFF ROLEX, MORADO GUCCI VACHERON
WATCHES WITH EXTRA LONG COCK FOR HER
PLEASURE FROM MR. GNOSTIC BAPTISTE!
“I don’t get it.”
“Shit, Rob! Look at the keys I’m hitting!” He slowed down so I could see:
t-h-e q-u-i-c-k b-r-o-w-n f-o-x j-u-m-p-e-d o-v-e-r t-h-e
“Wow. Something with the keyboard?”
“It’s not the keys!” He went to my desktop. The same thing happened. We tried the four other computers in my apartment.
They only showed spam.
“Effing weird. We’ll run diagnostics. Entangled zombie shit. “
He grabbed between his legs and crawled into a corner, rocking and whispering to himself. I went to him but he waved me away and staggered back to his feet, bent over and clutching his crotch again. “Gotta’ show you.” He undid his belt and pulled down his jeans and tattered underwear. A hot, yeasty smell filled the room. His penis heaved out of his pants, drooping low from his pubic hair to coil around his leg all the way to his ankle. Even limp it was thick and solid enough to hold a dozen or more silver wristwatches along its impossible length. We both stared, breathless, as it unwound and thudded to the floor. Despite the weight of the watches, it reared up five feet into the air and stayed there, swaying. The glans was round and fat as a grapefruit, like an orchid starved for heat. Alex finally looked at me and I could see the same thought behind his eyes: and he’s not even hard. He went rigid reciting a spam rant in whispers.
“’…massive cock growth for ultra-hard and thick penile enlargement with 75% off all Rolex, Gucci, Vacheron Viagra watches from Mr. Gnostic Baptiste…”
“Alex…!”
“You understand now, Rob? I’m the tangled zombie. I’m fucking spam.” He hefted his cock in both hands and swung it against his leg. After cursing through several floppy misses the weighted organ wrapped itself tightly back around his thigh and down to his shoe. He tugged his jeans up over the pulsing coil and limped to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I gotta’ find him.”
“Wait.”
“Don’t touch me, Rob! You’ll spend every cent you’ve got on shit watches or Viagra or West African gold ingots or horny Russian mail-order brides or pictures of teen girls having sex with horses or…”
I blocked the door. “You bought the Ultra Viagra, or some shit, and took it?”
As if in answer his penis pressed, then strained against the side of his jeans. “So, what if I did? It was that or be sucked in. I told you—I’m fucking spam! You have no conception of what it feels like! To actually fuck spam! “
His erection was so stiff now that Alex could no longer bend his leg. The denim swelled. The seams popped in low, hectoring snicks. The glans wiggled and squeezed out the bottom of his jeans, white and loamy as dough. The material gave way with a shrieking rent, and his penis sprang across the room. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus. When I came to the door was on one hinge and Alex was gone.
Who, or what, was Gnostic Baptiste? I never saw any trace of him, or of Alex, either. But I know that the moment I get back online again they’ll both be there, selling watches, Nigerian gold ingots, low cost Viagra or Russian teen brides. And waiting for me. And whatever it was that Alex was powerless to resist – the promise of sex beyond any sex he’d ever known, the fucking of spam incarnate with a penis of freaks – will be popping up or dancing across or seeping into every move I make online. The only sanctuary is in silence, and cunning; an electronic chastity that will leave me alone under GPS dumb stars. Now when I walk through L.A.N. parties and Wi-Fi fields I can almost feel a tingling along the back of my hands and up and down my spine. And sometimes it even makes me hard.