A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

by Hank Green

  Paxton and Sid were lovely guys, but they did not know what to do with a suddenly furious young woman they had known for less than twenty-four hours. That was the truth of it, though. I never really hated Peter Petrawicki until he got into my world. I was always separate from the ideological arguments. I saw what he did to April, but it never made me hate him because I imagined him as a force of nature. You don’t hate a storm when it cancels your rocket launch.

  Peter Petrawicki was bad weather. He wasn’t even a person to me. But Altus made him real, not only because he’d just knocked on my door before coyly walking away, but also because he was tromping all over my vision of my future. And as much as I wanted to think that industrial espionage was the only reason I was at Altus, I was also there because this was supposed to be my story, and the only reason it wasn’t going to be was because, out of billions of humans, Altus was being led by that one.

  * * *

  —

  Eventually I convinced the guys that I was fine, and that I still had a lab waiting for me at Berkeley, and thanked them for being with me during my meltdown. We had a hug and then I shuffled them out of the room. In the few moments before I fell completely unconscious, I thought to fish the prepaid phone out of my bag. I wanted to text an update to Professor Lundgren. Maybe I could even call her. It turned out I couldn’t do either. There was no cell signal in middle-of-nowhere Val Verde.

  CORPORATE DEFAULTS SURGE TO RECORD HIGH

  Associated Press

  Defaults on corporate bonds rose to a record high this year, leaving regulators struggling to assess how to manage what are coming to be seen as the early warning signs of a recession. “Issuance of corporate debt has risen in the past ten years as low interest rates and pressure to raise stock prices have resulted in unprecedented share buybacks,” said Susan Gordan, senior economist at Goldman Sachs. “That has been healthy for many companies, but for others, those bills are coming due.”

  Fed chair Arthur Pai has indicated that rate cuts were likely in the face of lower consumer confidence and a slowing economy.

  MAYA

  How did I spend the longest three weeks of my life?

  Well, I tried to take the book’s advice and bring my nose up from off the ground, but I mostly failed. I did have dinner with Derek’s family. Their house was a beautiful split-level from the fifties. His wife and daughter were perfect and made me ache for family, and for a future in which I might have a family.

  I’d like to tell you I spent the time off doing sit-ups and reading novels, but I mostly spent it on the Som and researching Fish. The book had said I was safe now, and I had decided to trust the book, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still terrified by my Cowtown experience. None of my Som friends wanted to talk to me about Fish, though. The Som was still trying to track down where April was, and that’s all people wanted to discuss. That made sense. Before I had solid leads, that’s basically all I talked about with my Som friends. But I was absolutely not going to start sharing now that I had concrete information.

  The economy was skidding, and that seemed like a pressing problem to the world at large, but it felt distant to me. I asked my dad about it and he said, “Sometimes the economy needs a correction, I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” but I could tell he was stressed.

  I spent a lot of time staring at the rocks I’d kept, sometimes just holding one in my hand, feeling it pull the heat out of my skin. Eventually it would warm up, and then it would stay warm for hours.

  Then I got a call from Andy, which was suspect because he never called. I’d stopped reaching out to him because it seemed like it just stressed him out to talk to me. It didn’t hurt my feelings. Too much, anyway. He had obviously picked April in the breakup, but it did feel like I’d lost him as well as April, and it also seemed like no one had ever considered how that might make me feel.

  But lord, it was actually really nice to talk to him. Our conversation relaxed me, and also gave me a chance to be strong for someone, and to think about what I might say to April if I got the chance. Andy believing April was alive meant a great deal. It had taken a lot of energy to not tell him about the book. I wanted him to know everything I knew. Then again, I didn’t want him to have too much false hope. Knowing what I know now, this is hilarious.

  All of these things were only temporary distractions, though. I waited. I watched trashy TV and spent too much time in bed. And it turns out, time does eventually pass no matter how anxious you are.

  On the anointed day, I put all of my supplies into the bed of my rented Nissan Frontier and drove the truck to the Wolton Motor Inn at dawn. I pulled around the back and waited.

  Time crawled by. I listened to The Thread’s podcast—a new project for him/her/them. You know how sometimes the news reports on itself? Like, CNN will show clips of Fox News and vice versa to explain what their rival did wrong? Well, I had actually heard a mention of this Thread podcast on NPR. The Thread itself was becoming important enough for the news media to report on it. The podcast I was listening to that day, their second episode, was about both the history and the present of housing in the US and how the system did a great job of increasing inequality, especially along racial lines, as power structures encouraged both segregation and the fears that perpetuate it.

  But the reason it got on the news was that they had broken another story. Local government in a suburb of Houston had enacted a number of policies that, people argued, were making it harder for people of color to move into particular neighborhoods. The politicians insisted it was just normal zoning, but The Thread somehow got ahold of recorded telephone conversations in which those same politicians literally celebrated keeping Black citizens out, and they didn’t use the word “Blacks.” Six people had already resigned.

  It was, in the old-school sense, pretty righteous.

  There was no way this guy was one guy—he knew too much. I had to pee, but there was no way I was leaving. I crept into the bushes.

  * * *

  —

  When the podcast was over, I switched to an Octavia Butler audiobook and played Candy Crush, making my way through the energy bars and Gatorade . . .

  The sun went down. I had to pee again, so I slipped out of the truck once more and into the now substantially creepier shrubs.

  The moment my pants were past my knees, I heard a bang, like a hammer on a piece of metal. I yanked my pants back up, and my heart kicked into overdrive. I ran back around the truck just in time to see the back door of the Wolton Motor Inn bend outward as another slam sounded across the empty space. Bright white light leaked through the seam between the door and the frame.

  I stood silent, motionless, without any idea what I should be doing.

  A final slam and the door swung open, taking part of the frame with it. The light now poured out of the doorway along with the final words of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” In that door stood a small person, just over five feet tall and so full of “fuck the world” energy that there was absolutely no one else it could possibly have been.

  APRIL

  Finally.

  I hope you appreciate how hard it was for me to have these people tell their stories for so long before getting to mine. By this point you’re probably all comfortable with my friends and are loath to go back to my voicey prose and tendency toward overcapitalization, but, ahem, DEAL. Also, we’re going to get started here and it’s going to be a little upsetting. I was not in great shape when my story starts back up, but there’s no getting around it, so . . .

  * * *

  —

  There’s something about the mouth . . . Any change feels disturbingly foreign. Like that moment when you’re a kid, and suddenly there’s one fewer tooth in there and you can’t keep your tongue from repeatedly shooting out to sense the change. That marvelous, nerve-packed face-tentacle spends years getting used to every curve and lump of the inside of your mo
uth, so when you chip a tooth or get your braces off, it stands out like a rocket launch.

  That’s why, when I first woke up, I knew that everything was wrong. Bright light poured painfully into me, my skin was lit with a dull persistent ache, and my mind raced to try and find some reality, some identity, to hold on to. While all that was happening, a song that I had never heard, but will now never forget, was playing. It was chill, a thin female voice that seemed satisfied with life. But I couldn’t hold on to any of that—my tongue was yelling to me about my mouth. Where was I? Who was I? How long had I been asleep? Was this Earth? Did anyone know I was alive? None of that broke through the shouting of my tongue.

  * * *

  —

  I tried to lock onto the song. I still remember every word she sang.

  And weeks went by but felt like hours

  Spring would lie in summer showers

  In my hair were winter flowers

  And weeks went by but felt like hours

  This is going to be gross.

  * * *

  —

  My tongue, dry and thick, did not find any teeth on the left side of my face. Indeed, it couldn’t feel much of anything on the top left. That caused me to bring my hand to that side of my face. As my hand approached, I noticed that I couldn’t see it because I couldn’t open my left eye. Or, as I soon discovered, because my left eye wasn’t there. My hand fell through the space where my face should have been. Part of my forehead, my left cheek, and a hunk of my nose were all gone. My lower jaw remained intact, though a number of the teeth were missing. I can’t describe this sensation in any other terms than nightmare. I’m recounting it here simply, step-by-step, but this all happened in a matter of shattering moments. I began to shake as I felt the space where my face should be. There was no pain; if anything, there was the slightest itchiness, as if the openness of my face, with its exposed tissues and shattered bone, wanted to be gently rubbed. Just before the panic and the sobs building inside of me bubbled through the surface, a new fear hit.

  And weeks went by but felt like hours

  Spring would lie in summer showers

  In my hair were winter flowers

  And weeks went by but felt like hours

  “You should not touch there,” a clear tenor said, soft and kind. A voice I recognized, but I could not say from where.

  “WHOSH ZHERE?!” I shouted in panic, my tongue clunking around in my unfamiliar mouth.

  “You should not have woken,” the voice said. I moved to prop myself on my left arm to look over my shoulder. I failed to do this because of how my left arm, just above the elbow, did not exist anymore. Instead the stub at the end of my upper arm slammed into the bed I was lying on. Pain flared, shooting down from the elbow into the hand that was no longer there and then ricocheting back into the whole rest of my body.

  In that moment I remembered the fire and then I fainted.

  * * *

  —

  The second time I remember waking up, my mouth had been rebuilt. It still felt foreign, but at least it closed. Music played, but now it was instrumental, something you’d listen to while studying so you didn’t get distracted. It was chill; I was not. My next thought was of my arms. I lifted them both. My right arm remained whole, though there were some scabbed-over burns on the forearm. My left arm was much worse. The raw flesh stopped just before it got to my elbow, but then my arm continued, but it was not my arm. It was the size and shape of an arm, but it wasn’t made of April; it was a gemstone. Smooth and milky white, with shifting veins of cyan, green, yellow, and pink flecking and spidering through it. I ran my right arm over the surface, and it was cold but not hard. It had a very slight texture, like hard rubber, and it yielded slightly as I pushed my fingers into it. I felt the heat of my hand, and the pressure.

  Then I remembered the rich, uncanny voice from the last time I’d woken and pushed myself up to look around, holding a thin sheet to my body, the only thing between me and complete nudity. I was lying on a bed . . . in a dive bar? The floors were unfinished wood, the booths lining the walls had cracked vinyl seats, and the bar was backed by racks where the booze should have been but wasn’t. The twin-sized bed that I was lying on was set up in front of a stage on what was once a dance floor. Dive bars are supposed to be dark, in part so you can’t see how long it’s been since anyone bothered to replace anything, but this room was brighter than a department store. Racks of fluorescent lights had been suspended from the ceiling, defying the dingy aesthetic of the rest of the room. Also incongruous were the several tables supporting quietly humming metal-looking boxes with LCD readout screens.

  “Hello?” I called out groggily, clutching the sheet.

  “Hello,” came a clear, somber reply, echoing around the room.

  The panic hit hard and fast. I wanted to shout, but I didn’t know where to start.

  I settled on “WHO’S THERE!?”

  Something small and fuzzy leapt up onto the bed. I freaked. I pushed myself off with my good arm and swung my legs over the edge of the bed to run. As I crashed to the floor, my nightmare expanded again. Both my legs were gone. I pushed myself to a sitting position, and then my hands rushed to feel what my eyes didn’t believe. My right leg stopped halfway between the knee and ankle; my left ended just below my hip.

  I frantically ran my hands over the rest of my naked body, the skin on the entire left side of my body was a raw and puckered mess of burn scars and scabs, but I felt no pain.

  I looked up and saw Carl, life in their eyes, reaching down their massive hand to me. It didn’t seem possible that they could fit in the space. They were immense and inhuman, but at least they were familiar. I reached both hands up to them, the real one and the new opalescent. They lifted me with that one hand and put me back on the bed. I felt a prick in my neck, and was gone again.

  * * *

  —

  “April.” It was Carl’s voice—I recognized it this time—clear and genderless. My eyes searched and suddenly found the source of the voice: a smart speaker sitting on the bar, its cord snaking off to an unseen plug. Under the voice played some eighties pop song I couldn’t place but that sounded familiar.

  The robot Carl was nowhere in sight.

  “I’m sorry I frightened you.” The light of the speaker ebbed and swelled as the voice flowed out of it. I searched the room but did not see Carl. As I thought about this, the song suddenly became familiar.

  I’ve got one, two, three, four, five

  Senses working overtime

  Trying to taste the difference

  ’Tween a lemon and a lime

  XTC—I’ve looked it up since. Jesus, Carl and their pop music.

  “Are you here?” I asked.

  “I am always here,” the voice said.

  “What?”

  “I am always here,” it said, matching its previous tone precisely.

  “No, I mean, what does that mean?”

  “I don’t have a body, so I think of myself as being wherever my senses reach. It’s not a perfect analog.”

  I would have pushed, but I also had other questions.

  “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “The fuzzy thing that jumped on the bed.”

  “That was also me.”

  It didn’t feel right to be having a protracted discussion with a smart speaker. Where was Carl? And how many were there?

  And then, somehow, another need began to weigh more heavily than the need to know what the hell was going on.

  I lifted my hands to my face.

  * * *

  —

  Do me a favor. Take your hand to your face, and feel the bones beneath the muscles beneath the flesh. Feel the structure, the familiarity. You’ve lived with this face your whole life. Maybe you don’t love it, maybe you don’t think of it much, but i
t is your face. You pick your nose, you stroke your chin, you rub your eyes. In a substantial way, your face is you.

  The missing limbs, the burns, the weird bar, the smart speaker, even the mysterious missing fuzzy Carl were nothing compared to the horror of feeling my face and it not being mine.

  The side that had been missing was now hard and smooth. It gave slightly to pressure, but not like the flesh and fat of the other side. I tapped it with my fingers and felt the sensation of that touch—the pressure, even the slight coolness of my fingertips. The sensations were blunted, but they were there. I felt no bones under it; the skin stretched and moved as my mouth did, but it was uncannily unfamiliar.

  “That was a great deal of work,” the voice said. “Your physiology is wonderful. I’m sorry I could not do better.”

  I ignored the voice and reached down to feel my legs, which, under the sheets, were now taking up the correct amount of space. I swung them out from under the sheet, and indeed they existed. Just like my arm, they were smooth and white and flecked with iridescence. My mind told me I should maybe consider panicking, but then just . . . didn’t.

  Whatever the material was, it came up to a seamless connection point with my skin on my right calf. On the left, it climbed all the way up my body, covering my hip, side, back, and chest before creeping up my armpit and around my shoulder, where it now fused with the milky material of my left arm.

  It didn’t look like skin, or even feel like skin, but my legs did look and feel like legs. So much so that I gathered the sheet around me and hopped off the bed. The rough wood of the bar’s floor connected with the soles of my feet, cool and dusty. Whether or not I had muscles anymore, I felt them. I flexed them, wiggled my toes, bent my knees. And then I squatted down. I felt strong. I felt awake.