A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

by Hank Green

  “That’s very interesting,” said Dr. Sealy. “How do you think that would be achieved?”

  “Well, if you have a high-bandwidth system, like Sid guessed you do, then it could help people do things they’re bad at, or have become bad at because they’re sick or hurt. Yeah, that’s economically valuable because it helps people do things they can’t do. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think the most valuable use would probably be allowing humans to help computers do stuff they’re bad at. Creativity, humor, object identification, asynchronous processing, probabilistic cascades. If a computer can coexist with a brain, receiving constant feedback, you can use that to model true AI. Computers understanding how humans solve problems.”

  “But that kind of connection is impossible, right?” Sid said. “Something that deep feeding data, extracting data. That’s not next-generation technology, that’s next-millennium technology.”

  It was right then that my brain caught on fire, and without thinking at all I opened my mouth and said, “You didn’t build a link.”

  “What?” Dr. Sealy said at the same time Sid and Paxton said, “Huh?”

  I wished I had kept my big dumb mouth shut, but I guess it was too late now.

  “Altus—you didn’t build a link, you found one. The one Carl built in all of us. It’s still in there, and you found it.”

  “Fuck,” Sid said.

  “Holy shit,” Paxton added.

  Dr. Sealy just smiled.

  * * *

  —

  The trip to Altus just kept going. We had been in the plane for more than three hours. Either my internal understanding of where Puerto Rico was wasn’t correct, or we’d been flying around in circles for some reason. When we finally started descending, I looked out the windows but only saw a few tiny islands. The runway, it turned out, was perpendicular to the coastline and butted right up against the shore, so there was nothing but water to see out the windows. Just before the wheels hit the ground, I glimpsed the lush, green, rolling foothills of a massive volcano-like mountain.

  “Any last text messages, send them now, I’m taking your phones before we get off the plane. It’s not that we don’t trust you, it’s that we don’t trust anyone.”

  I shot off a last-minute text to Andy: I’m getting off the plane in Puerto Rico now, they’re taking my phone for espionage reasons. I should be back in touch in a few days max.

  Then I texted Dr. Lundgren: Arrived in PR, you were right, they’re taking my phone! TTYS!

  Sid, Paxton, and I each handed over our smartphones to Dr. Sealy. My phone case showed one of Maya’s cats saying, “But what about a Maximum Wage?” Dr. Sealy glanced at it and gave a little chuckle. I winced, thinking I probably should have taken that off.

  The air was warm and humid, and the sun was low in the sky.

  “Welcome to Val Verde,” Dr. Sealy told us as we stumbled off the little jet.

  “Val Verde? I thought the lab was in Puerto Rico,” Sid asked.

  Dr. Sealy smirked. “That is the first of several secrets you’re going to learn today. We tell the press we’re in PR, and we even have a satellite office there, since it’s part of the US and a lot closer than Florida. But the operation is actually run out of Val Verde.”

  I had heard the words “Val Verde” before, but I don’t know if I could have told you it was a country. I could have told you it was in the Caribbean, but other than that, nothing. I couldn’t look it up either because Dr. Sealy had taken my phone. I immediately felt like a dope for not having anticipated this.

  “That’s not even close to Puerto Rico,” Sid said, amazed.

  “Depends on what you mean, but yeah, we’re closer to Venezuela than PR right now. And actually, if you don’t mean proximity, you’re still right, it’s also not all that similar to PR. Puerto Rico is basically a US state, just without statehood. It has all the same federal laws, and all of the people are US citizens. Val Verde is its own country with its own government, its own money. It’s small and out of the way, and most people couldn’t tell you where it is, though it seems that Sid is not most people.”

  “I was the champion of the Orange County Geography Bee in sixth grade,” Sid said. I laughed, thinking he was joking. He was not.

  Dr. Sealy herded us through the terminal, which was clearly brand-new, and immediately onto the Altus Labs campus.

  “As Sid could no doubt tell you, Val Verde has been through some tough times. That mountain is indeed an active volcano, and it erupted in the eighties, causing much of the population to flee. A further hit from a few successive hurricane seasons has kept the country from rebuilding. The founders of Altus wanted a place where secrecy could be preserved and we could also be a part of rebuilding. The economy has already grown 80 percent since we moved to the island.”

  Paxton asked the question I wanted to ask: “So the volcano is . . . active, then?”

  “Mount Belain is an active volcano, and there is a wide area around which no one is allowed to live, and visitation is strictly controlled. But there are no signs that it will erupt any time soon. We do keep an eye on it, though.”

  I feel like I have to tell you right now that this volcano does not erupt in this book. Like, it seems like foreshadowing, but it’s not. But it is important that you understand that Val Verde was in a terrible place economically before Altus showed up.

  Our first stop was the dorms, where I was given a room to myself, and Sid and Paxton discovered that they would be, at least for the moment, sharing a room. This, it turned out, was one of the nice things about being a woman at Altus. Guys all shared a central bathroom, so women were given the rare rooms that had bathrooms in them. This was only possible because women at Altus, I would soon find, were uncommon. I have two brothers, so I spent more time with guys than with women growing up. For a brief moment in middle school, I was even one of those intolerable “I hate hanging out with girls” girls. I grew out of that blessedly quickly, but even before I started on a clear track to a career in science, I was OK at working in majority-male environments.

  After dropping our stuff in our new rooms, we moved across the courtyard to the main lobby. A massive bank of TVs in the two-story-high room each showed elegantly designed graphs that made no sense to me.

  The carpet was made up of hexagonal tiles in the Altus logo colors of gray and red. Two women, apparently local to the island, stood behind a desk on the side of the room that featured a huge Altus logo constructed from driftwood. We went over to them to get security badges and lanyards stating that we were visitors. They were the only women I could see.

  When we did a walk-through of the cafeteria, which was serving chicken and rice that looked completely serviceable but definitely not San Francisco start-up fare, I was finally able to do a head count. The male-to-female ratio was over 10 to 1. I’d never seen anything like it. It was like I’d gone back in time forty years.

  Then, before our one-on-one interviews, Dr. Sealy took the three of us into a working lab and I forgot . . . everything.

  My lab in Berkeley had all of the equipment I needed, but it was also built in the 1960s. As the needs of labs changed and personal computers started existing, lab benches had been repurposed over and over again. Tiles were chipped where things had been dropped, and no one ever let me forget that the red specks on the ceiling above my workstation were from when a chemist used the wrong flask for a vacuum distillation and the whole thing imploded.

  Basically, my lab was cluttered and cobbled together, and it looked as old as it was. This lab at Altus was modular. Plug spools hung down from the ceilings; every computer monitor was on a track along the back of the bench and could be adjusted up or down for sitting or standing and moved through the whole length of the bench. All of the cabinet doors were Altus red, and the phenolic resin lab benches were Altus gray. Everything that wasn’t hooked into ventilation was on wheels. The floors w
ere gleaming white concrete. Centrifuges spun, fume hoods quietly whooshed, and everywhere men (every person I saw was a guy) made it all happen. This was a little surprising as it was 7 P.M., a little after most labs shut down for the day, though not that weird in the context of a start-up, where a forty-hour workweek is far less than expected. It’s not like I’d never pulled an all-nighter in the lab.

  Windows on one side of the room looked out over the forest. On the other side, windowed walls showed further labs with more specialized equipment. Through one, I spotted a massive, twenty-foot-high binocular transmission electron microscope, which I ran toward, drooling. Paxton and Sid marveled at my reaction, having no idea what it was. I wanted nothing more than to put some of my samples inside of that thing to see what they’d look like with that level of resolution.

  “That’s not even the highest-resolution microscope we have,” Dr. Sealy told me, “though the Hitachi is hugely in demand and hard to keep running because the island’s power supply gets hit pretty hard when it’s operating. We’re working on it.”

  Next we went through the computer engineering area (where Paxton would be working) and then to our one-on-one interviews.

  My first interview was with Dr. Sealy, which was comfortable.

  “So I guess, before we start asking you questions,” he said to me, “how do you feel about this place?”

  “I mean, it’s hugely impressive. I want to ask two questions to start out, if that’s OK?”

  “Of course.”

  We were in Dr. Sealy’s office, on a corner of a building with windows on two of the walls. It wasn’t like a fancy office tower; it was roomy and functional.

  “First, what are you doing here?”

  “I can’t tell you that right now. I know that’s frustrating, but you get it. Your guesses are good, but they’ll have to remain guesses unless you end up working here.”

  “I thought you’d say that. My other question is, like, so, there are always more men than women in a chemistry lab or software start-up, but . . .” I didn’t feel like I had to finish, so I didn’t.

  Dr. Sealy tapped his teeth with his fingernails for a second before he began speaking.

  “You’re absolutely right. It’s a problem, but we don’t know how to fix it. Ultimately, the pool of applicants has been overwhelmingly male. I think that has to do with a lot of things. Part of it is our founders, who have male audiences. Part of it is that this is risky, and women tend to be more risk-averse and less motivated by being a part of something world-changing.” He saw me getting irritated and continued, “And that’s just tendencies, not absolutes, of course. You’re here, obviously, and you’ve already done world-changing work in your short career. But we’re going to hire the best candidates from our pool of applicants. We don’t consider race or gender, and we don’t see any reason to. We look at talent first, and your talent is impressive at all levels.”

  This, if anything, made me more uncomfortable. People who “don’t consider race or gender” sure seem to end up hiring almost all white guys, almost as if they’re absolutely considering race and gender. I didn’t say that, though. I tried to make the less confrontational argument.

  “But aren’t you worried you’re going to make a product just for guys if only guys work here? Or that the culture might become unwelcome for other kinds of people? Or that you’ll end up doing something dumb because you have one dominant perspective?”

  “Miranda, all of those things are legitimate concerns, but trust me when I say we’ve got to move fast here. Our first responsibility is to the problem.”

  He said those words, “the problem,” like they were mentioned a lot at Altus.

  “So I guess you also have questions for me?” I asked.

  He did. I answered them. Thirty minutes in, he invited Tom, the HR guy from our Skype interview, in. He talked to us about company policy and secrecy and how they didn’t have to worry about hackers at Altus because almost nothing they did was actually on the internet.

  All in all, it felt like the day was going really well.

  And then Peter Petrawicki walked in.

  * * *

  —

  “Miranda Beckwith!” His smile seemed warm and genuine. His hair, also, seemed authentically but artfully tousled. He wore a white short-sleeve crushed-cotton shirt and khaki slacks. He was tan and looked stronger and healthier than he had on TV. His smile, though, didn’t reach all the way to his eyes, and I felt my chances of getting a job at Altus dropping to very near zero percent.

  “I almost never talk to candidates at your level before they’re officially hired, but I think you can understand why I might make an exception in your case.”

  I sat silently, because I knew that was the safe choice, and also because I had no idea what to say.

  “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I was an asshole. An asshole and an idiot. I wanted all the wrong things, and I made the world a worse place while your friend was trying to make it a better place.”

  Every second I stayed quiet made me feel like I was guilty, but all of the things popping into my head to say felt either confrontational or obsequious.

  Dr. Sealy and Tom looked just about as comfortable as I felt. At least I wasn’t alone.

  Finally, Peter continued, “I guess my question is, how much do you hate me?”

  As soon as there was a single thought in my head, I said it: “I’m not good at hating. My brain makes excuses. It looks for reasons to forgive.” I realized I hadn’t been meeting his eyes, so I looked up at him. They were blue. Powder blue. I just Googled gemstones because I wanted to tell you exactly the color they were: They were the color of polished blue beryl.

  I should have stopped right then. That was a good answer. It was honest and not dangerous. But then . . .

  “I thought you wanted people to pay attention to you, and you’d found a way to make that happen. I never thought you cared much about what you were saying because you seemed too smart to believe any of it. I figured there was something sad inside of you that made you need that attention. Those followers.” My brain was shouting, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, but I kept going. “I still think that.”

  Peter looked calm, like we were talking about the weather; Tom and Dr. Sealy both had looks of proper concern on their faces.

  “But then it all went to shit and April died, and you, well, you vanished from that world. It felt like remorse to me, so even then I didn’t hate you. So, how much do I hate you? Not at all, but I used to pity you, and now I don’t anymore because now you’re doing something actually interesting.” I held his eyes as long as I could. Mercifully, he looked away for just a moment, allowing me to lean back in my chair. I hadn’t been aware that I’d leaned forward.

  Peter looked around the room for a second. He pushed the rolling chair away from the conference room table and walked out of the room without saying a word.

  I looked at Dr. Sealy. “I’m sorry I wasted your time. I thought the best thing would be for me to be honest.”

  * * *

  —

  To get to the dorms we walked across well-lit but rough ground. It didn’t feel like America; it felt like adventure. It also felt like that’s how they wanted it to feel. Dr. Sealy dropped me off with an appropriately contrite goodbye.

  I entered the building into a common room with a bunch of couches and a big shared kitchen. I immediately spotted Paxton and Sid talking to some Altus guys. They seemed to be having a blast with it. I slunk past, thinking I hadn’t been noticed.

  A few minutes into getting ready for bed in my little hotel room, though, someone knocked on my door.

  There was no peephole, so I hastily re-dressed myself and opened the door to find Peter Petrawicki.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  “Um,” I said, not wanting to say yes, but also not sure I could say no.

&
nbsp; “It’s fine, no, I was wrong to come.” And then he turned around and walked away.

  I closed the door.

  Thirty seconds later, there was another knock. At this point, I was feeling completely depleted.

  Paxton and Sid stood at the door wide-eyed and silent.

  “Hi, guys,” I said, resigned, walking away from the open door in tacit invitation.

  “What the hell! Why was Peter Petrawicki just knocking on your door?!” Sid asked.

  “I honestly don’t know. He didn’t tell me.” I sat down on the bed. “I guess he wanted to continue our discussion from my interview.”

  “He was in your interview?” Paxton asked, a little quietly, leaning on the room’s desk.

  I surprised myself by asking, “Do you guys know who I am?”

  “You’re Miranda? You work in materials?” Sid volunteered.

  “Also, I’m Miranda, one of April May’s best friends and founder and former CEO of the Som.”

  It was quiet for a while before Sid said, “Fuuuuuuuck,” and sat down in the desk chair.

  “Why would you even want to work here?” Paxton asked.

  “Why do you want to work here?” It came out accusatory.

  Sid stepped in, understanding me. “This place is going to change the world. You want to be a part of it. I get that. I’m sure that was a tough call for you, deciding to apply.”

  “What did you say to Peter in your interview?” Paxton asked.

  “He asked me how much I hated him,” I said, replaying the conversation in my head.

  “And?”

  “And I told him I pitied him. I told him I thought he was sad, and that I found his ideology not so much odious as boring.”

  Their eyes got big.

  “I didn’t expect to see him! I didn’t prepare for it, he just popped in. I have . . . emotions about that guy, OK!” I was getting loud. “I don’t know if I hate him. Maybe I do! I feel like I hate him right now because he shut this all down just by poking his fucking shark nose in it. Why did it have to be him? This is my research, this was how I was going to change the world. Why did it have to be him?”