Late on Saturday, July 30, I got back to Washington after a four week vacation. Cerise and I had been planning it for quite some time, and she had been nagging me to take a vacation for even longer. One important thing I learned from the experience was that it’s actually a good thing to have a girlfriend who knows how to nag you into doing stuff like taking a four week vacation. Turns out I needed it. In fact, we both did.
It cost me a lot of money, of course. Not for the summer house on the island off the coast of northern Maine – that was free, actually, a token of appreciation from one of Cerise’s many cousins for taking care of one of her many aging aunts during a time of crisis. No, I’m talking about all the money I didn’t make taking four weeks off, and all the money I had to pay for rent and other overhead on my office in downtown DC while it was just sitting there, empty. I must confess, for the first couple of days, thinking about that really bothered me. Then on the third day, I completely forgot about it. Staying at a summer house on an island off the coast of northern Maine can do that.
But being self-employed, at least I knew I’d have a job when I came back, which is more than a lot of people can say. Truth be told, the United States of America is full of folks who are afraid to take any kind of leave from their jobs, much less an entire month. And if the horror stories I hear are any indication, their fears are amply justified. People come back to the office, full of tales about seeing whales and orcas from the decks of their Alaska cruise ships, breathlessly relating their experiences in exotic landscapes of the Orient, proudly showing off digital pictures of them in gondolas on the canals of Venice, only to be ushered into HR five business days after their return for the Big Kissoff. And why? Because every day they were out seeing the Grand Canyon or Yosemite with their family, every moment they were lounging on a beach in Hawaii, every instant they were scuba diving in the Red Sea or marveling at lions and wildebeests on safari in East Africa, somebody back at the office where they work was scheming to get them fired. Hell, if the hapless vacationer is really good at their job, probably several people would be at it, snarking and lying and spreading defamatory rumors like demented demons. Beats me how anybody could possibly enjoy visiting the Great Wall of China or the pyramids at Giza when it’s dollars to donuts they’re going to get a boot in the behind out the office door as soon as they come back home. Not my problem, fortunately – I’m my own boss and not at all likely to fire me when I get back from a vacation, no matter how long it is.
That summer house on an island off the coast of northern Maine is one of the few places left east of the Mississippi that doesn’t have cell phone coverage. And, unless you bring your own satellite rig, there’s no Internet connectivity, either. There is, however, a copper land line with an old fashioned carbon-button dial telephone. Connected to the mainland as it is, by a privately owned underwater copper cable laid down in the 1930’s, I tried it out the first day to make sure it worked – I called the land line telephone at my home in Great Falls, Virginia and left a message on the voice mail. My message was, “This is a test.” Then I called my voicemail to make sure the message was properly recorded. After that, I never touched that telephone again, and nobody called me or Cerise on it the entire time we were at the summer house. She had instructed those who knew the number not to call it unless somebody was about to give birth, had had a serious accident, been kidnapped, arrested, was about to die or had actually done so. For my part, I gave that number to no one, since I knew from experience that after my first few days away from Washington, desperate clients would be frantically searching for whoever had it, and I would spend my entire vacation conducting telephone consultations.
Every three days, a fellow from the little town on the mainland would bring us fresh produce, venison, seafood, domesticated meats, cheeses, groceries, various beverages and such, all according to a list we would prepare and give him upon his arrival. Our boatman was the Original Taciturn Yankee. The arrows in his quiver of repartee consisted, in their entirety, of “Yup,” “Nope,” “Maybe,” “I reckon,” “Don’t know” and “Can’t say.” We were in no danger of learning anything of the outside world from him, nor did we inquire of him regarding it. We took no newspapers and brought no transistor radios. While there was electricity, provided by a generator powered with the same propane tank that provided flame to our stove and hot water heater, there was no cable TV, and no appreciable broadcast signal either, had we wanted one, which we assuredly did not.
At this point, I’m sure that many people under the age of thirty are wondering, given the absence of smart phones, radio, cable TV and the Internet, what in the world Cerise and I did for a month on an island off the coast of northern Maine. Well, certainly, we took long walks by the sea, did some fishing, went swimming in the bracing cold Maine surf, donned plenty of insect repellent and explored the woods, lazed about on the porch swing while tending the barbecue, and enthusiastically enjoyed one another’s physical companionship. But primarily we read books. Real books – the kind that are printed on paper and bound in cloth hardcovers. To that end, we brought fifty four such artifacts to that summer house on that island and I’m pleased to report that between the two of us, we read them all. Admittedly, some of them were only novels and poetry, less than two hundred pages long, but others were substantial works – biographies, non-fiction, collections of essays – even a few classics.
Then, as all such things must, the idyll came to a close, and we returned to Washington, and plunged back into the real world. Or was that island the real world? Who can say? Did the Master dream he was a butterfly or the other way around? In the final analysis, Washington must be the real world, I suppose, given that it’s rife with the misery and suffering of humanity, echoing with cries of woe and news of war and strife. Of which there was plenty that I had missed during my absence, naturally. I expected that – more police shootings and shootings of police, more car bombs and suicide bombs in the usual places, more bloodthirsty massacres, more deranged servants of Satan, Allah, Jesus and Nameless Voices in the Head doing their worst with everything from steak knives to assault rifles to massive runaway refrigerator trucks. And the conventions, of course, both Republican and Democratic – maybe some people were surprised by what Ted Cruz did, but I figured he’d pull his pants down and moon the crowd for sure; the only thing that took me aback was that they let him on the stage in the first place. And the Democrats? Well, it wasn’t surprising that they announced someone had hacked the DNC computer network – just like most of the organizations in DC, they use Microsoft, and as anybody knows, a twelve year old child can break Microsoft security using any number of tools readily available for download from a myriad of websites. What I didn’t expect, however, were five things. First that the Democrats would blame the Russians for the hack; second, that Donald Trump would congratulate the Russians and invite them to give Hillary Clinton’s thirty thousand missing classified emails to Wikileaks. The third one was the coup in Turkey, and I must admit, I’m still trying to figure out whose monumental act of stupidity that asinine farce was – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Fethullah Gülen, Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad, John Kerry or John O. Brennan. The fifth one was the subject of a frantic call from my sister-in-law, Katje, which I received while still in bed at my home at 8:49 Sunday morning.
Katje: Hello, Tom?
Tom: Yes?
Katje: Holy [expletive], Tom, where have you been?
Tom: On vacation with Cerise. I told you that, didn’t I?
Katje: Not me!
Tom: Well, I told Rob Roy. I don’t suppose he kept it a secret from you.
Katje: He said you two were somewhere in Maine, that’s all. No address, no hotel, no telephone number, no…
Tom: That was the point. We wanted to be alone together away from the Washington merry-go-round for a while.
Katje: Okay, fine, I get it. You feel better now?
Tom: Yeah. Cerise does, too.
Katje: Well, all right then – where were you?
Tom: On an island off the coast in an old summer house. No cell phone, no Internet, no TV, no radio, no newspapers, nothing.
Katje: My God! What the hell did you do for an entire month?
Tom: We read books.
Katje: You did nothing but read books for a whole month? Tom, that’s seriously weird, you know that don’t you?
Tom: All right, I will concede that, in the Year of Our Lord 2016 it’s a highly unusual thing to do. May I ask why you’re calling me at ten minutes before nine on the Sunday morning after Cerise and I arrived back from Maine last night at eleven-forty five?
Katje: It’s Jason.
Tom: What about him?
Katje: Pokémon Go!
Tom: Pokémon? The Nintendo game from the 1990’s? The one that’s older than Mario Brothers?
Katje: Jesus Christ, Tom! Where have you been, living in a cave?
Tom: No, I’ve living on an island off the coast of Maine, actually.
Katje: Yeah, right – reading books while Pokémon Go was released!
Tom: From the distraught tone of your voice, I dare surmise that there may be quite a few other people who wish they were also doing that. So, I take it that Jason likes this new version?
Katje: Like it? He’s obsessed with it! All he aspires to now is being a Trainer and winning the Pokémon League! All he talks about is his Pokédex and getting Experience Points for every Pokémon in his collection! He knows every Pokéstop in the DC metropolitan area. He’s already claimed five Pokémon gyms, and he’s evolving and capturing rare Pokémon like the Arcanine, Abra, Machop, Grimer, Rhyhorn, Voltorb, Lickitung, Scyther, Pinsir, Dratini, Magnemite, Electabuzz, Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan and Chansey. Last night, he sent me a text bragging that he’d won a Snorlax in a battle with a Trainer from England. Then he told me he had caught an Articuno and evolved an Evee into a water type Vaporeon. Everybody wants one of those – they’re incredibly good at defending gyms. Frankly, I don’t know whether to believe him or not.
Tom: Well, he wouldn’t lie to his mother, would he?
Katje: He might if he’s lost his mind!
Tom: Oh, I’m sure Jason’s okay, Katje. Actually all that business sounds mighty ambitious. Just think, if he put that kind of energy into becoming a software architect or an IT project manager…
Katje: Forget about it, Tom! Useful work doesn’t give him the kind of habit-forming biofeedback brain chemicals that gaming does. And now he’s found his ultimate fix! He’s stopped paying attention to his friends – even the female ones! He called in sick last week and hasn’t shown up for work since! What’s worse, Rob and I can’t find him! Most of the time, we have no idea where he is!
Tom: I don’t get it – wouldn’t he be in his room, or in the den or down in the basement playing this new video game?
Katje: Oh, [expletive], Tom! You’re the one who usually knows everything! How can you be so [expletive] clueless?
Tom: Clueless?
Katje: Pokémon Go is played outdoors on smart phones!
Tom: Oh, well, okay. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good idea – a video game that gets people off their duffs and out of the house to play it. Get some fresh air and some exercise, even it it’s just walking around chasing Pinkachus or whatever. I suppose this new version has Pinkachus, doesn’t it?
Katje: Yes, yes, of course it does! It has every kind of Pokémon that’s ever existed and a bunch of new ones, too. But it’s dangerous, Tom. Being outside staring at a smart phone looking for enhanced reality entities while you’re wandering around in real reality can be extremely hazardous!
Tom: You mean, like running into the street while you’re trying to catch a Pokémon with your smart phone?
Katje: I mean like driving your car into a police cruiser while you’re trying to catch a Pokémon with your smart phone!
Tom: Really? Somebody did that?
Katje: In Baltimore, last week. And there have been plenty of other things too, like robberies.
Tom: Robberies?
Katje: Yeah, the crooks download Pokémon Go, buy some Lures…
Tom: Lures?
Katje: They’re these enhanced reality objects that attract wild Pokémon for players to catch. They’re for sale for about a dollar each. Buy one, drop it somewhere, and the GPS subroutines on the Pokémon Go servers spawn Pokémon there for about an hour. The robbers buy them, then drop them in a good place for a mugging and wait for the suckers to show up with their cell phones, looking for wild Pokémon. Then they attack.
Tom: Pretty shrewd, actually. The robbers are always guaranteed that their victim will at least have a smart phone they can steal.
Katje: And anything else the Trainer happens to have on them.
Tom: And you’re afraid that might happen to Jason?
Katje: I’m almost positive it already has! The only time we’ve seen him in the last six days, he had a new watch and a new smart phone. Friday, he got a letter here at the house, from the State of Virginia. I think it’s about a firearms license. Oh, Tom, I’m so worried! Three Trainers have already shot muggers who dropped Lures in secluded placed and tried to rob them!
Tom: This is beginning to sound worse than texting.
Katje: It is! Highly distracted driving plus muggings and more!
Tom: More?
Katje: You know how idiots used to stand on freeway overpasses and drop rocks on the cars?
Tom: Sure – that’s why they put up those eight foot fences to discourage them.
Katje: Well, how about if some morons are just as messed up as that, but instead of dropping rocks, they drop Lures?
Tom: Then you have obsessed Pokémon Go Trainers running out onto the expressway under the overpasses during rush hour, trying to add more creatures to their Pokédex?
Katje: Exactly! And what about if they drop them from moving cars, or buses, or if some kid who doesn’t want to ride the train from DC to Philadelphia, but his parents drag him along anyway, and he gets massively passive aggressive and starts dropping Lures all along the railroad tracks? Who’s going to stop him? Don’t tell me that Nintendo or Niantic has a way to trace who buys and drops Lures! And what would it matter, anyway? There’s no law against it, even if doing it gets people killed!
Tom: As I have said about a million times before, I am not a lawyer, I’m a policy consultant; but I’m reasonably certain there are some laws related to the ones already put on the books that make it illegal to drop rocks off of freeway overpasses that probably apply in most jurisdictions, provided they could catch who did it, of course, and overcome whatever First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment arguments their attorneys might offer the court. It doesn’t seem to me that miscreants are going to be able to get away with malicious mischief using Pokémon Go for very long, or with much consistency, anyway. That said, it’s obvious that there will be a number of absurd and needless deaths attributable to this latest digital fad, just as there were with text messaging, until the legislatures eventually caught up with technology, as they always must.
Katje: Right – people are going to die and be maimed or disabled for life, and then maybe some restrictions on the obvious hazards of this product will be enacted by the bloated, turgid and incompetent bozos we elect to write our laws! Holy [expletive], Tom! Didn’t anyone at Nintendo or Niantic think about this before they unleashed it on an unsuspecting public? Didn’t anyone consider the possibility of unintended consequences before putting this monstrosity in the hands of millions of people – many of them minor children? It’s the height of corporate irresponsibility!
Tom: Well, it’s not the BP oil spill – yet. But I can’t say I disagree.
Katje: It’s revolting! It’s blatant, irresponsible prostitution of technology to make billions in profits for big corporations at the cost of human lives!
Tom: Uh… yeah. So what else is new?
Katje: What else is new is, one of those lives might be your nephew, you jaded [expletive]!
Tom: Oh, right. Point taken. So I guess you’d like me to tell you how to get back the Jason you remember from before the release of Pokémon Go?
Katje: Yes. Could you, please?
Tom: Of course. The solution is obvious.
Katje: All… right… um… what would that be, then?
Tom: An intervention.
Katje: You mean, gather all of Jason’s family and friends together, and ambush him with an overwhelming outpouring of love and concern?
Tom: Precisely. You’re good at organizing social events, aren’t you?
Katje: So I’ve been told.
Tom: Good – so you contact everyone and we’ll arrange for them to meet at my place in Great Falls. Then you and Rob make sure Jason knows that on that particular night, at, say eight in the evening, Tom is going to drop a huge wad of cash and burn a considerable amount of his business connection capital to open an awesome Pokéstop in his back yard.
Katje: Okay, then what happens?
Tom: When he shows up, we confront him with his problem. Then we offer him the standard Intervention Choice – either he continues with his Pokémon Go obsession, and he’s dead to all of us, or he accepts our solution for his addiction.
Katje: And what’s that?
Tom: Four weeks in a place with no cell phone service and no Internet.
Katje: Good God Almighty, where the [expletive] is that going to be?
Tom: Cerise’s family’s summer house on an island off the coast of northern Maine. I’m sure they would be glad to devote the place to the rehabilitation of a Pokémon Go addict. But Jason will need a chaperon, naturally. Someone to keep him there and make sure he doesn’t run off and relapse.
Katje: And who would that be?
Tom: Who do you think?
Katje: Me? Leave my job for a month to help my son kick Pokémon Go?
Tom: Sure. Why not?
Katje: Because… um… well… I don’t know exactly how to say this, but… okay, if I take a four week vacation from YoYoDyne Information Systems, I’m not entirely sure I’ll have a job when I get back.
Tom: Well, I guess you’ll have to decide – which is more important, your career or your son.
Katje: Damn. You know what Tom?
Tom: What?
Katje: Motherhood sucks.
Tom: So I’ve heard. Better get to work.
Katje: Oh, all right. Goodbye, Tom.
Tom: ‘Bye Katje.