A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

by Hank Green

  “A half hour.”

  “Shouldn’t we get the other guys up, then?” I asked.

  “Now that you mention it, yeah.” Har leaned forward and turned off the TV.

  They went and collected Sid and Paxton, and they both showed up looking remarkably presentable ten minutes later.

  “These guys and I were just talking about our first screen names,” I told them. Har and Marigold’s eyes got a little big.

  “My first screen name was on Neopets. I know . . . frickin’ embarrassing.”

  Sid and Paxton laughed a little.

  “Mmmm.” Paxton thought. “I think it was RuneScape. Oh god, this is awful. What was your Neopets name?”

  “Yours first!” I said.

  But then Sid broke in and said, “I am not ashamed. I was CaptainSippyCup and I have no idea why.” I could tell that Marigold and Har were about to explode, but Paxton still hadn’t gone yet.

  “That is pretty bad. I was Diggles, so, like, equally rough, though.”

  “I don’t know about that. What about you, Paxton?”

  He was blushing. “I don’t think I remember.”

  “Oh, you definitely remember,” I said. And then I almost told him it was OK to not tell us, but that was clearly not what I was supposed to do.

  Finally, he sighed and said, “LittleP-Nut.”

  Har and Marigold screamed again, jumping up and down. They literally put their heads under my arms and lifted me up off the ground, screaming, “DIGGLES! You legend! You absolute legend!” Honestly, it was nice. I’d missed feeling like I was part of something.

  * * *

  —

  It turned out that the dorm was actually physically connected to the campus. You didn’t even have to go outside. Most Altus employees chose to walk through the outdoor courtyard, but to give us a sense of how the giant C-shaped building was actually structured, they walked us through the hallways. From the dorms, then into the recreation area and gym, which was more about Ping-Pong tables than elliptical machines, and then into the areas dedicated to actual science. You could tell when you made the transition because the door was huge and thick and heavy. It must have cost a fortune to get it to the island.

  The C was the bulk of the campus, but it certainly wasn’t the entire place. A giant cinder block building with prominent air conditioners on the ceiling was referred to as “the server farm.” I remembered that first article I’d read and realized they were mining cryptocurrency in there.

  Marigold held his badge to the door. It clicked, and we went through. A lot of the labs were the ones we’d seen the day before, but there were just so many. They were so pristine and slick, and I was probably biting my lip like I was in love because I was.

  But also I was nervous. Part of that was trying to make a good impression on new people. This whole experience had a distinct first-day-of-school vibe. But then also I was trying to catalog everything I saw in case it became important to my espionage, and that made me feel like I was constantly at risk of being caught.

  “Do you use local workforce?” I asked.

  “We do, there’s actually an on-campus dorm,” Har told me.

  “Separate from our building,” Marigold added. “Pays very well. Though security means they can’t leave campus for the next year.”

  “The next year?!” Sid—or rather . . . Sippy said.

  “Yeah . . . THEY KNOW TOO MUCH! Otherwise we’d have to keel them!” Marigold joked.

  After a solid ten minutes of walking through various labs, including comp science and what looked like a fabrication lab, we finally hit the administrative offices. Just the fact that we were in Val Verde and not Puerto Rico was hugely valuable information, but this walk through the building had given me even more. I had plenty to report back, if only I could get the phone to work.

  Luckily, I’d seen a few things around the lab that had given me an idea.

  I filed it away for the future, though, because we had just arrived at our destination. Enticingly, the door read “Demo Room.”

  * * *

  —

  “OK, you’ve all been offered positions at Altus,” Marigold pronounced boldly, producing three clipboards from a table behind him. “These are your employment contracts. They say that you cannot leave this campus for the next twelve months. Not this island, this campus. You cannot contact anyone at home other than to say you’re doing fine in 450 characters or less a maximum of two times per week. All of your emails will be read by Altus security, and they are not joking around. Hidden characters, they look for them. Images, not allowed at all. Codes embedded in your email, not possible because of the character limit, but analyzed by a code-detecting AI nonetheless. If you sign this contract, you agree to that. You also agree that anything you discover while working here is the intellectual property of Altus. And you promise that you will not tell anyone ever about what goes on here. Forever. You have to sign this paper to go into that room . . . but you will not truly be Altus staff until you go into that room.”

  “But, they said they were just flying us out here for an interview and we’d be going home,” I said.

  Marigold looked at me and smiled. “They liiiied.”

  It was still possible that this was a mistake. I had been certain just an hour before that I was going to be on a plane home, and the only people who had told me otherwise were a couple twenty-somethings who were acting significantly under their age. Knowing that I might have just slipped through the cracks, and with every intent to violate it, I signed the contract.

  “OK, this is where we leave you. See you in a few, when your whole goddamn world has changed.”

  * * *

  —

  Sippy and Peanut stood a little behind me as I reached for the knob. Heart thumping and head swimming, I pulled the door open and the guys slipped in behind me. I was somewhat surprised to find a woman in there. Neat, flat, chin-length blond hair fell around her round face.

  “I’m Dr. Rhode, you can call me Claire.”

  The room was white and windowless and sterile-looking except, of course, for the six cloth-upholstered La-Z-Boy recliners that ran through the middle of the room.

  “Recliners?” Peanut asked.

  “They’re significantly less expensive and also quite a bit more comfortable than medical-grade adjustable beds,” she said, efficiently answering every question I could possibly have had on the topic.

  On one side of each chair was a simple monitoring station for blood oxygen, blood pressure, and heart rate. On the other side was a desktop computer tower with a VR rig sitting on top.

  “The procedure here is very simple. Sit in chairs one, two, and three, please.” She sounded like she was following a well-trod script.

  It took us all a second to realize she was already telling us to do stuff, but then she said “Please” again but more firmly, and we all scrambled into one of the first three chairs.

  Dr. Claire Rhode helped us slip on blood pressure cuffs and O2 monitors.

  “Place the headset over your eyes. There will be a test image. Adjust it until it is in focus and then give me a thumbs-up.”

  I looked over and watched as Peanut took off his wool hat and smoothed back his brown hair. He adjusted straps and knobs like he had put on a lot of VR headsets in his life. I had not put on a lot of VR headsets. Dr. Rhode came to help with mine.

  Once the headset was on, I could see a simple crosshairs design in the middle distance. I gave my thumbs-up.

  “Now, stare directly at the crosshairs. Images will begin appearing, but don’t look away from the crosshairs.”

  Images began appearing . . . if you could call them that. Swirls of color like on the surface of a bubble, but more saturated and variable and vibrant. They escalated in complexity, from simple food coloring in milk to dramatic sweeping loops and twists in three dimensions.
Of course, I couldn’t really see them that well because I was staring at the crosshairs, trying hard not to look away and follow the shapes.

  And then, suddenly, the shapes disappeared and I was in an empty field of perfect white nothingness, but it wasn’t VR anymore.

  I couldn’t hear anything, or feel anything, or sense anything. The pressure of my back against the chair had vanished. The feeling of wearing the VR rig was gone. My tongue in my mouth, the air on my skin, the breath in my lungs—nothing. My mind was there, though, and it was starting to panic. There was nothing to latch onto. Mind without body. Mind without body!

  “You’re now in the Altus Space.” Dr. Claire Rhode’s voice suddenly existed, and it rang clear and true without the reverb of the room.

  “Many people find this very disorienting or even upsetting. You may feel like you are going to be stuck here. Rest assured, you are not.” Her tone was strong and calm, like a meditation app. “Your bodies are right here with me. I can see them. No one has ever gotten stuck in the Altus Space. It is impossible to get stuck in the Altus Space. If you want to leave the Space, all you have to do is say ‘Exit.’

  “We are now going to introduce objects to the Space.”

  Ahead of me, a table appeared. It did not look like a VR table. It looked like a table.

  “OK, everything has gone according to plan,” Dr. Rhode’s voice said. “Now we will give you a body. If you experience any negative sensation, remember, all you have to do is say ‘Exit.’”

  Suddenly, weight returned to my limbs. I looked down and saw myself. Nude. “Can I have some clothes?” I asked, but she did not respond.

  “Please remain calm. If you are experiencing a negative sensation, please just say ‘Exit.’” Her voice sounded less calm. I was not experiencing what I would call a negative sensation. I just felt slightly cold and very naked.

  “OK. Well.” She was definitely less calm now. “We’re going to have to take a break. I’m bringing you out of the Space now.”

  With the softest blink, I was back in the chair with my black-target-on-white-background VR headset on. I have absolutely nothing I can compare this sensation to. Teleportation, I guess, though that is also not something you’ve experienced.

  As my mind realized it was back in the real world, it identified a noise—a kind of gasping weeping. I tore off my headset and blood pressure cuff and ran over to Paxton, who was sitting with his legs hanging over the chair, looking down at a pile of vomit.

  Dr. Rhode held me back as she knelt down to Paxton, talking to him softly: “Sometimes the body still does not mesh correctly with the consciousness’s position, and it is extremely unsettling. It is rare, but it does happen.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s unsettling’?” I asked, wanting more data.

  She ignored me.

  “Paxton, what you saw and felt was not real. You’ll be fine. You still have a job here. It’s no reflection on you. You have seen how powerful Altus is, and that is all the demo space is for.”

  I came up and took his arm, but he ripped it away from me. “Paxton, it’s OK. God, I’m so sorry. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I turned back to look at Sid, who was green. I was too, probably. Sid whispered to me, “It’s not just what happened, we were talking to some guys last night. Anyone who has this happen never gets in. It will happen every time he tries again. People here have names for people who can’t go in.”

  Of course they did.

  “I’m so sorry to the two of you as well,” Dr. Rhode said. “It’s usually a magical experience. I keep telling them that we need to do this one at a time, but there just isn’t enough staff time to run single sessions. Nonetheless, you all know now what—”

  “Can you not tell them?” Peanut said, still shaking with the rush of the experience.

  “What?” Sid asked.

  “Can we just make out like it went fine for us all, like we had an amazing time. It was amazing. It was so amazing . . .” And then a wave of shaking hit him and he closed his eyes tight.

  “I have to log it, but those reports are confidential, only for senior and medical staff,” Dr. Rhode said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Of course. We all had a great first experience in the Altus Space. Let’s take a little more time. We can just hang in our recliners for a while, yeah, Dr. Rhode?”

  “Sure, we were scheduled in this room for another fifteen minutes.”

  When our fifteen minutes were up and Peanut was looking a little more solid, Dr. Rhode opened the door and we all left, trying to look as happy and inspired as possible. I’d expected to go back to performing for Har and Marigold, but instead, my day got even weirder.

  Sippy and Peanut froze in their tracks, and I suppose I did too because Peter Petrawicki was sitting in the hall looking up at us.

  Oh fuck, I thought. I’d snuck in, and he’d found out. But too late. I’d seen it. He couldn’t take that away from me now.

  “Mr. Petrawicki,” Sippy enthused. “This is amazing. I mean, it’s earth-shattering.” Petrawicki nodded. Sippy continued, “I need to know more right now. Who is going to tell us more!”

  Peanut’s eyes shifted. He was smiling like he was excited, but his eyes kept creeping back to the floor.

  “You two are going to continue your orientation. Miranda here, or should I say Diggles”—he smiled—“is going to come with me.”

  I tried to control my breathing as I walked behind Peter toward a staircase. I was thinking, How possible is it that these people, who are doing something so gigantic that taking any risks with the knowledge of it is an existential threat, are going to actually literally murder me right now?

  I decided, very firmly, that I needed to say absolutely nothing. We went into Peter’s big corner office. He sat on a couch and gestured me to the plush red chair next to it.

  “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “How did you hear about that?” I blurted.

  “I didn’t hear, it’s easy to spot. We call it body dislocation. It is uncommon, but seems to be completely random. I’m sure Dr. Rhode will have a full report for me. I have heard it is a truly unpleasant experience.”

  “What causes it?”

  He looked down at the table for a while, thinking.

  “It’s complicated. I don’t think anyone really understands it completely, but the only reason Altus’s software works is that our minds fill in a tremendous amount of detail, even in normal IRL environments. We don’t have to physically model your entire body, we have to tell your brain that your conscious mind inhabits your body. If we do it correctly, the consciousness snaps straight into the body and you get to exist in your body in the Altus Space. When it feels as real as the Space, the mind provides the detail in much the way it would in a dream.”

  I wanted so badly to ask him how any of this was working at all, but I also didn’t want to do anything he would see as threatening, so I just let him keep talking.

  “Sometimes the body appears separate from the consciousness, which is bad. It looks dead, and you see it, and that’s upsetting. But in body dislocation, the consciousness hits the body imperfectly, and the brain has to interpret seeing not out of the eyes, but out of the chin, or the chest, or the hand. The mind can’t handle it, and it instantly rearranges the body. Arms become heads, feet become knees. Proprioception completely fails. It results in extreme vertigo and is apparently extremely unsettling.” He said this like he wasn’t describing my friend who was vomiting up his entire body a half hour ago.

  “The first sign that something is wrong is when the blood pressure and heart rate spike, but it all happens so quickly that by the time we read the reaction and begin shutting down the software, the psychological impact is done. It’s really terrible. I’m very happy it didn’t happen to you.”

  He seemed sincere, but remembering my commitment to
myself, I stayed quiet.

  Peter Petrawicki stayed quiet too.

  He was quiet for a long time.

  I was quiet for longer.

  “You were right yesterday,” he said finally. “That’s why I got angry. People in this company have seen me that angry only a handful of times. But I had no right to be upset. I thought I was going to send you home. But I was up all night thinking about what you said. I went through it word for word.”

  I later found out this was true. Altus recorded pretty much everything that happened without anyone knowing. There was no law against it in Val Verde.

  “I was pitiable. I was pathetic. I was chasing something so deeply boring and insular. And you’re right, I was just going where the wind was blowing. I was chasing attention. I never really cared about Carl, I cared about getting attention so I could leverage it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with collecting capital for capital’s sake, but it isn’t interesting. It’s not like what we’re doing here.”

  “No, it’s nothing like what you’re doing here,” I agreed.

  “The world is a mess right now, and we’re going to fix it. People can’t live without the Dream anymore, but we can bring it back, except better.” He shook his clenched fists a little as he said it.

  For one glistening moment, I had been a believer, and then I had seen Paxton. They certainly weren’t advertising body dislocation in the orientation pamphlets.

  “Will it happen to him every time he goes to the Space?” I asked, suddenly worried about Paxton.

  He looked at me for a long time and then said, “Can I trust you?”

  I mean, obviously not. He should know that, right?

  “Sure, I’m here for twelve months. Who am I going to tell?”

  He looked at me really hard, like he wanted me to believe he was a mind reader.

  “It will happen every time he tries, though he probably will not try again.”

  “Could it happen to me?”

  “Body dislocation? No. As far as we can tell, once you have occupied your body in the Space once, you will always do it successfully. Your mind knows what to expect.”