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November 25, 1996: Ptolemy

Web Master Speaks

I couldn't get the e-mail off my mind. So Ptolemy is one of the last people Ginny wrote to. I dreamed for hours about Cleopatra and pyramids that printed out faxes until I woke suddenly. Bobby would know about anything big on the Internet. Also, he wouldn't mind a phone call in the middle of the night.

"Bobby," I asked, when I got him on the phone, "who's Ptolemy?"

"'Scuse me," he said.

"Ptolemy. Internet cult book," I said.

"Oh, oh I know who you mean," he said. "Puttlemee. At 3:00 A.M. you want to talk about Puttlemee?"

"It's pronounced "Tall-mee," not "Puh-tul-mee," I said.

"Like, duh, John," he said. "But people who are going to spell their name with a P-T have to take a little shit in life. I mean, if you want me to call you "Tall-mee," then spell it T A L L M E E."

"Bobby, please, they were ancient Egyptians. They probably wrote it with a bird picture. Just tell me about Ptolemy."

Ptolemy the High Priest

"Okay. Ready, Mr. 3:00 A.M.? Ptolemy is part of this new digital cult on the Web. They call themselves the Collective Cybconscious, if you can believe it, and they're big. Like 4,000 people.

"So what do they do?"

"Apparently they spend all their time in intense intellectual discussions. Ptolemy's kind of like the pope or maybe a very high cardinal. Why do you want to know all this?"

"I found a note from Ginny to someone called Ptolemy," I said.

"Oh. Well BFD. She borrowed that cult book from me," he said. "Maybe she thought she'd try to write him an e-mail. Not possible by the way."

"Well, this note wasn't exactly from Ginny. Ginny wrote it, but she only wrote it as a courtesy for her boss, Isabel. You remember Isabel, right, blond woman at the Fiat Lux Christmas party?"

"The rich lady, the owner?"

"Right. She just died."

"Oh, yeah. Fell off her balcony, right? Whoopsie."

Isabel, High Priest?

"Yeah, big whoopsie. But listen a minute. Isabel received a note from Ptolemy asking her to meet him at the Cliff House. She was dead when she got the note, so Ginny sent a reply. I thought it was a strange thing for Isabel and Ginny to be writing mail to Ptolemy."

"Uh, yeah, correct, that would be weird," said Bobby. "But come on John, it probably isn't the real Ptolemy-most likely someone who read the book and thought it was a cool name. What is it, Ptolemy@aol.com?"

"No, it's Client64@CafeZuZuPetel.com. But it's signed Ptolemy."

"Cafe ZuZuPetal. John, do you understand what that means? Somebody went into Cafe ZuZuPetal and used the cafe's e-mail to send a note to Isabel. They can sign it anything they want, so they signed it Ptolemy. I'd be willing to bet a hundred million bucks that it wasn't the Ptolemy from our Internet cult. By the way, have you seen the cult web site. It's really cool."

"I'm about to see it, I guess," I said. "Who wrote that book?"

"Max von somebody," he said, "just a sec. Yeah, Max Reinhold."

"Well, get over here and let's find him."