A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

by Hank Green

  “No, no, but we’re still here. No one’s dead—” Then she paused. “. . . I don’t think.”

  Oh Jesus, what were we doing?

  I told her about The Thread.

  “Fuck,” she said. “Hold on.”

  I could hear her repeating the news to someone else in the room.

  “OK, thank you, I’m going to make a video and send it to you. Because, Jesus, I know the world has changed a lot, but I still know how to make a fucking video. Footage incoming.”

  MIRANDA

  I could see April writing the script in her head while she delivered the news about The Thread. I’d seen it dozens of times, she was building the outline, rearranging bullet points, molding information into a story. Even with my hand clamped inside a giant robot’s fist with hundreds of zombified Val Verdians just a door away, I loved watching her mind.

  But then she said, “I don’t know how to make it work.”

  “It won’t,” a voice said, coming from the smartwatch wrapped around the apparently dead monkey’s neck.

  “It won’t?” April asked back.

  “Nnnnno.”

  There was something wrong with it.

  “Carl,” she said, so that shed some light on the situation, “what’s wrong?”

  And then April’s eyes lost focus, and she fell into Maya’s arms.

  “APRIL!” Maya choked, lowering her to the ground.

  “It’s . . .” the monkey said, and then, eventually, “OK. She will . . . be . . . back soon.”

  Maya was sitting on the floor, gently and slowly stroking April’s hair, when, just a few minutes after she fainted, April lifted herself out of Maya’s lap and sat up on the floor. Her eyes were unfocused, a hard crease between her brows. She sucked in a shuddering gasp of air.

  “April,” Maya said, “are you OK?”

  “They took me into the Dream,” she said without looking anyone in the eye. “We talked. Carl is . . . fighting very hard to keep us safe. They don’t know what’s going to happen.” She refocused, looking from me to Maya and back. I could see something was lurking on the other side of her eyes. Something she wasn’t talking about. “They can’t run simulations anymore. But they do know that us broadcasting from our platforms wasn’t ever going to be enough. They are very mad that they didn’t guess that The Thread was more than human. But they can create blind spots in each other.”

  “Did they have . . . any suggestions?” Maya asked.

  “No, if I’m being honest with you, Carl did not give me a great sense of confidence. I think they’re . . . they don’t have all of their resources anymore.”

  I looked at Peter as she was saying this, and his face got this look on it like he’d always known he was going to get away with it.

  I couldn’t let him be right. I almost got angry. But then I did what I do.

  “We have to work the problem,” I said.

  “OK?” April answered.

  “What is the problem? Tell it to me as simply as you can.”

  “We . . .” She looked sick and distracted by worry. I snapped my fingers in her face, the new face that I had not yet gotten used to, but now was not the time for anything but the problem.

  “We need Altus’s investors to sell us the company. They need to believe that it’s worse for them to own it than to sell it for cheap.”

  “No,” I said, “that’s the solution. The problem is that Altus . . . ?”

  “That Altus exists?” Maya said. “Carl’s . . . brother . . . this other intelligence, they’re going to use it to pacify humans, turn the Earth into a zoo. We’ll be guided through our whole lives and satisfied, and every person who has to die to get us there . . .” She trailed off. I didn’t need to be told. I was remembering how close I had come to killing her.

  “So we have to make Altus not exist anymore, good, I like that.” I looked Peter in the eyes as I said it, and felt the adrenaline rush through me.

  “The current plan is still to make them look so bad that investors give up billions of dollars to preserve their public images?” I asked.

  “Yeah?” April answered, unsure.

  “What we really need to do is break Altus, though. We’re here . . . Can we do that?” I asked.

  “You would know better than us,” Maya said.

  But I’m not sure I did. I understood, roughly, how the system worked. But nothing here did anything but push changes to the interface. There was nothing to blow up or break or light on fire.

  “Altus just works,” I said, feeling hopeless.

  “Except not for everyone,” Maya added, more as an afterthought—she just wanted to not forget about the people who couldn’t get in.

  “What do you mean?” April asked, but Maya didn’t answer. She’d seen the look on my face. I had it.

  I opened my mouth to talk, but nothing came out. My hand was clamped tightly into Carl’s, but my body was still there for Carl’s brother to control.

  My mouth moved, and clumsy and slurred words came out. “It is so easy to predict their decisions, but it is so hard to predict their ideas. It is amazing, isn’t it, brother?”

  “Get out . . . of her,” I heard Carl say.

  “You are so delicate,” my voice said. “You failed. There is no shame in failing, only in not accepting that you failed.” I couldn’t move, but my mind was racing. I knew what I had to do! I just had to get free!

  “What is going on?” Peter said.

  “Hello, Peter.” My head turned toward him, my eyes staring relentlessly into his. “Thank you for building this for me. What a wonderful host you have been for my vision.”

  “What . . .” he said.

  “You can’t lie to me. You knew the whole time what I was. I was only ever words on your screen because you had to be able to convince yourself that you didn’t, but you knew.” Even though it was my voice, it didn’t sound like me. My tongue was thick and slow in my mouth.

  “Let . . . her go.” The voice from the smartwatch was quiet, but as tight as piano strings.

  “I could kill her now, unless you want to try and stop me,” my voice told Carl. I felt every word as it formed on my lips. “I think, actually, that I will.”

  “NO!” April and Maya said together.

  An arrow of pain sliced through my head from my eyes down through my back. I thought I was dying, but then it stopped and I realized I was free. My body was mine again. I looked down and saw that Carl no longer held my hand.

  “Go now,” Carl said.

  “Carl, no,” April pleaded, though I didn’t understand why.

  “NOW,” the voice repeated.

  I ran.

  My legs pumped under me. I crashed through the first door, and then the second, and I was outside. I knew it was wrong to feel good, but I felt good anyway. Just the movement, the feeling of standing still while I pushed the world out behind me. Finally, again a resident of my own body, I tore through the courtyard to the dorms, the joy of it helped me forget the pain in my face. Also, I had some thinking to do.

  * * *

  —

  Every piece of software has a way to let you know that something has changed. You have to have that system, both practically and legally. Altus could have done this the old-fashioned way, with a pop-up. But, y’know, they’re obsessed with themselves. So instead they used an injected experience. Basically, every time they changed the terms of service, they injected a tiny experience that let you watch a woman telling you that the TOS had changed, and then you skipped it. It was gimmicky, but the gimmick was their business, so they did it.

  I didn’t know how these TOS updates worked, but they weren’t a security concern because there were standardized systems and those systems couldn’t be used to inject new code into a computer. They’ve been around forever. They’re a secure and stable technology. Except t
hat nothing at Altus was proved to be secure or stable because none of this technology had even existed a year ago.

  Best of all, I knew someone who worked on Altus user interface stuff. And if we were lucky, he’d pushed TOS updates before himself.

  * * *

  —

  The run to the dorms was short, only minutes, but then I realized that I had been thinking too much of the big picture. It was the middle of the night—the whole campus was locked down. I stopped running, trying to think how I would get through the door, when something blurred past me and my heart leapt into my throat.

  But then I made out the shape: It was April. Her fist connected with the door right where the bolt met the frame and it flung open.

  She turned to me and said, “You thought I was going to let you do this alone?”

  I ran inside, a little surprised to find that no one was up and awake. It seemed inconceivable that the whole world didn’t already know what was going on. Usually when something big was happening, we all found out together. But I guess that’s not really how it works. Actually, there’s always some person who knows first. This time, it was me.

  “Why did that thing let me go?” I asked through my panting breaths as we moved into the dorm. My nose was throbbing, and talking made it worse.

  “Because Carl attacked them, I think. I think they are fighting right now. I think we don’t have much time . . .” It sounded like she was going to finish that sentence, but then she didn’t. We didn’t have much time before Carl couldn’t protect me anymore and I turned into a bag of grape jelly.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when Peanut answered his door.

  “Diggles!” he said before registering anything else. “What happened to your face!?”

  The moment he mentioned it, the pain, both sharp and broad, came back to me. I had forgotten about it.

  “It’s a long story,” I said, but “story” came out like “sdory” thanks to my blood-plugged nose.

  “Also, where the hell have you been?”

  Oddly enough, that was a shorter story, but I didn’t want to tell it twice. “Is Sippy here? I need you both, badly.”

  He looked . . . well, confused. It was the middle of the night, my face was swollen and smeared with blood, and he hadn’t seen me in over a month. He’d probably assumed I’d washed out. Maybe Altus even told them that.

  He let me into the room and went to nudge Sippy—April hadn’t showed her face yet. Sippy blinked as he pulled off the VR headset and then looked down to check and see he was holding it in his hands, presumably because he was making sure he wasn’t still in the Space.

  “Can you push a fresh TOS update?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Sippy said. “I mean, I’d need the identifier of the experience, but yeah, I’ve done it like twelve times.” And then he settled more into reality. “Where have you been?”

  “Peter put me in the Altus Space with no way out, and I’ve been inside the whole time I’ve been gone. I figured out how to get a message to a friend and, well, here she is!” April walked into the room.

  I saw her with their eyes, small, wearing a gray blazer over an off-white blouse, with a face made half of human skin and half of opal iridescence. Even to me she looked a little frightening.

  “He took me because I guess he thought I was a threat and I’ve been inside the Altus Space and unable to disconnect for weeks.” I was rambling, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I don’t even know how long because they made it so that it felt like I was leaving, but I was really just sitting in a room on a chair peeing into a bucket and . . .”

  “We have to go now,” April interrupted.

  “What?” Sippy said.

  “We have to go, we can explain somewhere else, security is coming.”

  Now it was my turn to ask, “What?”

  “I’m getting . . . updates on the security situation. They’re going hall to hall knocking on doors. They’re coming this way.” Her voice was getting more and more tense.

  “Do you guys trust me?” I asked them.

  Sip looked at Peanut and, before Peanut could answer, said, “Yes.”

  “Sippy, bring your rig, we’re going to the server farm.”

  We hustled down the hall toward the common area, but then April signaled for us to stop.

  “There’s two of them in there,” she whispered.

  “How the hell do you know that?” I asked.

  “I . . . I can’t explain it right now,” she said, a little angrier than I thought was necessary.

  “So, what are we supposed to do?” Peanut asked.

  “We’re going to run. I’ll go first,” April said, “and all of you need to follow me as fast as you can. On three. One. Two. Three.”

  And then she shot out into the common room. She was tiny, but she was going so fast when she slammed into the two security guards. The three of them toppled over in a heap as the guys and I ran past and through the busted door. I wanted to look back to see what had happened to April, but I kept moving. The sky was starting to lighten over the mountain in the predawn. I slowed my pace to let Sippy and Peanut keep up with me.

  We were around halfway through our run when April flew past us. I heard shouting behind me. I looked over my shoulder but couldn’t see anyone except the guys—it was too dark.

  “Faster!” I shouted to Nut and Sip.

  “Running . . . isn’t . . .” Peanut said, but then didn’t finish.

  I could see the door to the high-security building up ahead, and I moved to full speed, leaving the guys behind. April was already holding it open for us. I piled through and then turned around to see Sippy and then Peanut and then two men in uniforms just meters behind them. The guys tumbled through the door and April slammed it shut behind her. But the lock was busted.

  “Go,” April said, pushing her back into the door.

  The two men’s bodies crashed into the door, and then pounding came from the other side. But it didn’t move, not even a little.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  “I’m going to make a video,” she said quietly, seriously.

  “But . . . the lock’s broken.”

  She looked up to me, her face as solid as her feet on the carpet. “I’m stronger now. You need to do your thing, and I’m going to do mine. Go.”

  TRANSCRIPT: “LET’S END ALTUS”

  YOUTUBE VIDEO

  April May: Hello, everyone, it’s April. We find ourselves in a situation. I don’t know a ton about Altus, but I have been watching it with interest. The potential of that technology is massive. It could bring people together, make us more empathetic, educate people, and decrease inequality. At the same time, I have been concerned about it.

 

  I’ll explain about the banging shortly. I’m worried that one company having control over this massively useful and powerful thing is a recipe for disaster. I’m worried about people who don’t have access or cannot access the Space. I’m worried, as I have been for a long time, that we’re simply moving too fast. But I was quiet about those worries, because I don’t know any more about these things than you do.

  Well, now I know more. My friend, Miranda Beckwith, was hired to work at Altus. But then they decided she violated company policy, and instead of firing her, they have been holding her prisoner. Not just locked in a room, but also locked inside of the Altus Space, with modified software that left her aware that she was inside, but unable to leave it.

  This, obviously, is kidnapping and illegal imprisonment, and it’s deeply disturbing and unethical. I came here to see if it was true, and it is. While trying to determine the truth, I was attacked and shot at by Altus security.

 

  I am now in significant danger of being killed and am trying desperately to prevent people from ent
ering this building because I believe they will hurt me and my friend. So please, while you can, listen to this tape of Peter Petrawicki explaining the situation.

 

  I have spent a lot of time observing Altus, and also reserving judgment. The story of people is the story of sharing information, and Altus could be an extremely powerful platform for that. But I’m done reserving judgment, and I think the rest of us are as well. There are two problems with Altus.

 

  First, at some point, we have to realize that the places where we share information are not services we use, they are places where we live. And if we live in the Altus Space, Altus will control our lives. This platform should not be something that a few billionaires have complete control over. In this building, hundreds of people spend twenty-four hours a day mining AltaCoin for Altus. Altus imprisoned my friend, they responded to my being here by attempting to murder me. But more than that, they created their own currency and built their business on a remote island so that they wouldn’t ever have any threats to their control. They rushed to market without considering health or economic impacts.

  When we asked Peter about these ethical and legal violations, here is what he said.

  Peter Petrawicki: Fuck ethics. Fuck morals. Altus is the future. Governments are over.

  AM: You have to ask why they pushed so hard. Is it because they wanted to control our lives before we found out something awful? Or is it just one more step down the path toward ever-bigger and more reckless companies controlling more and more of our lives? The inevitable conclusion is a company that owns and controls everything, and Altus is that.

  And now we are all feeling the impacts. But it doesn’t matter, there is nothing we can do. We’re all quietly preparing to live our whole lives under the shadow of this thing, where the ones who benefit are the ones who had the cash and the luck and the foresight to get in on the ground floor and everyone else spends the rest of their lives holding on by their fingernails just to stay afloat.