An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

by Hank Green

  “But can’t you just see that everyone else is valuing it and respect it for that reason?”

  “No, Andy. I’ve honestly worked my whole life to not think that way. I think that’s how a lot of people end up respecting bad things, actually. Not that I think that show we just taped was bad—I’m sure people love it and it makes them happy. I just don’t know enough about it to care.”

  I was starting to feel a little bad, but I also wasn’t going to give up on the freedom and the power I’d felt.

  “I don’t know if I’m necessary . . . Why am I even here?” he said quietly.

  I grabbed him by the face, and he blushed slightly. “Andy, don’t be dumb. You’re here because you’re part of this. And also you’re here to make the videos.”

  “Huh?”

  “Like you were saying yesterday”—he had been saying it yesterday—“we have a YouTube channel with fifty thousand subscribers. We should make more videos. We should be controlling this story.”

  “You want that?”

  “I think I do.”

  “But . . .” He didn’t have to say all the reasons I had already given him for not wanting to make more videos.

  “Don’t start arguing my case back to me . . . You won.”

  “A hundred thousand,” he said. “We doubled in the last two days.”

  I leaned forward and said to the driver, “Can you take us to someplace that sells cameras?”

  That night we made and uploaded the second April-and-Andy video. It was about what our lives had been like After Carl. I made sure everyone knew that Andy was a partner in the channel. (Every time we did a TV thing, there was some confusion because I had faked that he was a stranger on the street in the first video.) I made some jokes about television sucking, but at least there was free food. I only made very peripheral mentions of Carl and I certainly didn’t mention the Freddie Mercury Sequence. Carl wasn’t going to be news forever, I figured, so if we were going to transfer this into something that would last longer than that, we’d have to start differentiating ourselves.

  I figured we could maybe turn it into a show about art and design. I could do all the talking; Andy could make the camera work and do the editing. We could even bring in Maya to help us write episodes and do illustration. It’s weird to look back on how we imagined ourselves back then and feel equal parts “Aww, we were so useless and adorable” and “I miss that life so much I would end every panda to get it back.”

  Sometime while we were shooting that video, the show aired on the East Coast and I got like five thousand text messages. I didn’t bother to respond to any of them, not even Maya’s. I figured we’d talk soon enough. I was giddy with the attention, with lack of sleep, and with excitement about what Andy and I were doing. I had understood the magnitude of the lightning strike, and we were catching it. Or at least part of it.

  But maybe the most energizing thing was that we didn’t have anything to do the next morning. Andy’s dad wanted to get us into an agency to talk about whatever agencies do, but that wasn’t until like three in the afternoon. We were going to get to SLEEP! Really, truly, wonderfully, covered-in-drool, all-by-yourself-in-a-king-sized-bed sleep!

  I didn’t even bother to stay up and watch the West Coast airing with Andy. I shuffled to my hotel room to take off my goddamned shoes and my goddamned bra and my goddamned pants and drown myself in fancy high-thread-count hotel sheets.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Of course it didn’t work out that way. I looked at my phone, and instead of texting some of the many people who had texted me, I went through Twitter and saw all the things, good and bad, that people were saying about me. And then I opened my inbox . . . like an idiot.

  I read and answered an email from Maya and one from my brother, who was proud of me and so excited to see me at his wedding, and one from my parents, who really hoped I was taking care of myself. Then I remembered that email I’d sent to the woman at UC Berkeley. I checked to see if she’d replied. She had, actually, like twelve days ago. I hadn’t seen it—her reply had been buried by everything else and I’d totally forgotten about our conversation.

  This turned out to be extremely fortuitous because it allowed me nearly two full weeks of blissful freedom from crushing anxiety. I almost went to sleep one last time like that. One more night of normal. Well, not normal, of course, but not this. I’ve pasted it here completely unchanged (though I did fix some typos because Miranda would have a total meltdown if I didn’t).

  RE: You said it was warm?

  April,

  The properties you describe . . . hard, resonant, shiny, heavy, extremely low thermal conductivity, do not sound peculiar, they sound impossible. There are no known materials that have these properties. It is difficult to imagine a material that could have these properties. I managed to access the Carl in Oakland and did my own inspection. His thermal properties make no sense. He’s showing 0% thermal conductivity. Nothing. All energy that hits him just bounces right back. It’s basically impossible, so it must just be that my instruments aren’t sensitive enough. I was also in line with a bunch of tourists getting selfies, so I couldn’t stay too long without attracting a lot of attention. My research is mostly nonstandard semiconductors, so this is a little outside of my expertise, but I’ve asked around and no one I talk to thinks this is possible. How energy moves around is what we do in this lab, and we have studied a lot of materials. He’s like an aerogel but more dense than uranium. It doesn’t make sense.

  Anyway, we’re left with three possibilities.

  I have forgotten something very basic about a topic I know a great deal about, and so has everyone else I’ve talked to about this, including people who are smarter and know more than me.

  Someone has constructed a new material that behaves unlike anything that currently exists, or should be able to exist, and then put it on the sidewalk for everyone to see.

  Carl is alien. And I don’t mean alien like “weird.”

  I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Occam’s razor but, basically, it’s a principle that the simplest solution tends to be the correct one. It’s BS. If there’s an objective measure of simplicity (outside of, like, entropic ones), I haven’t seen it. Every person will have a different opinion regarding which explanation is simplest. So when I say that the “external origin” hypothesis is the simple one, that’s informed by my bias. But I also recognize that it’s the least likely, just because so far there have been a lot of things that have happened, and “external origin” has never been the reason.

  So, like, external origin has a 0% success rate at explaining stuff, which means it is unlikely. But I do not have a simpler explanation. I am not the only person who will have understood this, but I have also not heard anyone credible saying “external origin.” To be fair, I have also not been saying it because, well, it sounds ridiculous and is unlikely.

  In any case, I think we can rule out the “art installation” angle, since, even if it were possible (which it isn’t), producing sixty-four ten-foot-tall robots out of a completely novel material like this would cost, at minimum, billions of dollars.

  Look, I don’t know you but I feel like I have a responsibility here since I’m potentially breaking this news to you. There is a very real chance that you made First Contact. In case you aren’t a nerd, I’m saying that you were the first human to discover extraterrestrial technology . . . possibly extraterrestrial life. So . . . congratulations?

  I’m weirdly honored to have your email address. You should change your email address. You should do a lot of things. This is not something that can unhappen to you. I’m willing to say that there’s a 90% chance that I’m wrong and that your life will be normal in a few weeks. But a 10% chance at being the first to meet an ambassador from another world is a pretty big deal. So . . . maybe do a little prep work.

  I’m CAMiranda on Skype if you
want to chat,

  Miranda

  I immediately started writing a response, but after half a sentence I opened up Skype to see if she was online. She was. Seconds after I requested her as a contact, a call from her came through. I answered, and her face popped up on my screen.

  She was at a desk in what appeared to be an office. Bluish fluorescent light beat down on her wispy, uncontrolled, red-blond hair. Huge brown eyes looked at me with excitement.

  “APRIL MAY! This is wonderful!”

  “Are you still at work?” My brain was still on East Coast time, but it was after ten on the West Coast.

  “The lab, yeah, not really work. Tides and spectrometers wait for no one! You know. I live on campus, so it’s barely worth going home.”

  She was bright and seemed perfectly well rested. Skype is never the most flattering, but she was, like, adorable. Way cuter than I would be interested in. Frankly, I’ve worked my whole life to not be adorable with only limited success, and two adorable people dating is waaaay too cute for me.

  “So, I have to apologize, I only just got your email. And, well . . .” I had no idea what else to say.

  “Indeed. I’ve gone back and forth about six hundred times since I sent the message, but the longer they remain unexplained, the more obvious it seems.”

  “Obvious?”

  “Yeah, I think no one’s saying it because everyone’s thinking it.”

  “I mean, I was on a late-night show tonight, it should be on here soon, and the host actually joked about Carl being from space. But, like, just because that’s the simple solution doesn’t mean it’s the solution. Are you sure you’re not being . . .” I trailed off. I didn’t want to insult her.

  “I agree. I am there with you. Like I said in my email, explaining something by saying ‘aliens’ has a 0 percent success rate. I just think that ‘external origin,’ which is what I’ve been calling my hypothesis because it doesn’t necessarily mean intelligent others, should be taken seriously because, like, I don’t have any others.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it doesn’t necessarily mean intelligent others’?” I said, already feeling a couple of steps behind the conversation.

  “Well, the only thing I know is that these things are really far outside of how stuff works. I don’t want to say ‘aliens’ because I don’t know anything. But it doesn’t seem possible that this was done by any man-made technology, and it certainly didn’t happen naturally. Like, the Carls didn’t grow from seeds. So the vaguest, most general thing I can say is ‘external origin.’ Meaning, basically, this doesn’t make sense.”

  “So you’re not saying Carl is a space alien.”

  “No, but I am saying it looks increasingly likely that the Carls weren’t made by humans or by nature.”

  “So you are saying Carl is a space alien!” I started to freak out again.

  “No, I . . . I don’t know, April! It’s exciting, but space aliens are a very specific explanation for a very broad circumstance. There’s more to the universe than humans and aliens. Maybe they’re made by humans but sent from the future. Maybe they are a kind of projection through space-time. Maybe they’re proof that our universe is a simulation and someone is changing the code. Mostly, I don’t pretend an explanation is correct just because I haven’t thought of any others that fit with current data.”

  She seemed very sure of herself, even if she looked a little timid and freaked-out talking to me.

  “Well, Miranda, speaking of the current data. We haven’t told anyone about this, but there’s more.”

  Her eyes, impossibly, got bigger.

  I took her through the procedure of the Wikipedia clue.

  “This is deeply impossible,” she said after we had gone through the whole sequence, “and nonsensical as well. I-A-M-U.”

  “I know. I’ve been racking my brain over this for days, so I don’t expect you to—”

  “Elements,” she interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Elements. I, Am, U—those are all elements. Iodine, americium, uranium.”

  “OK, that’s another lead to add to the fifty-mile-long list of guesses as to what this might mean.”

  She looked a little dejected, and I felt bad for immediately dashing her first try at explaining it. I mean, of course Miranda would find a sciencey explanation—she did sciencey stuff. So I said, “I mean, that’s interesting, though—we hadn’t thought of it.”

  Her smile came back.

  “So does this Wikipedia thing make . . . your hypothesis more or less likely? Also, is there a time when we’re going to know for sure?”

  Her eyes shot around in thought for a moment before she said, “The Wikipedia thing is weird, but less weird than the material thing. But maybe that’s just because I don’t really know that much about how the internet works. I’d have to talk to someone who knows things I don’t know. But the material is not only unknown technology; according to my understanding of physics, it’s not possible. And your second question is a great question. I don’t know when we will know for sure. Maybe never. Sometimes there are mysteries that linger for centuries. So I don’t know. I just can’t fathom another explanation.”

  We sat there and stared at each other for a long time before she got too uncomfortable and just said, “So . . . uh . . .”

  “So do you suggest operating under the assumption, privately at least, that Carl is . . . external?”

  “It’s hard to say, right?”

  “It is.”

  Saying that felt weirdly like cursing in church. I wasn’t quite in shock; I was more feeling like I must be an idiot for even listening to this.

  Miranda continued. “Sometimes we have to do that. Sometimes we have to go with an imperfect theory and . . .” She got quiet and her eyes unfocused and moved around the room. I stayed quiet because it seemed like if I said something I would be interrupting something intimate and sacred.

  “April, what if Carl’s asking for something? Like, they want us to bring them things. None of those elements are abundant. Maybe they need something!”

  I was, to be clear, completely clueless. For Miranda, things appeared to be crashing into place faster than I even got my mind around the fact that this might be a for-real thing that Carl was doing. That Carl was alive. That Carl was . . . external. I did my best to keep up.

  “But, well, we’re not going to be able to give Carl uranium.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, it’s uranium. Doc Brown tried to get some and the terrorists shot him.”

  “That was plutonium, and in any case, it’s all a matter of quantity. Iodine is easy—we’ve got that in the lab. Uranium I don’t have, but you can buy unrefined uranium ore on Amazon—it’s not dangerous unless it’s purified. Americium, though, I don’t know much about. It’s transuranic, so radioactive and rare. I’ll have to do some research. Quantities and purities are the hard part with rare stuff.”

  She fired this all off at rapid speed, and as soon as she hit “do some research,” I could hear her typing while she talked.

  “OH! I’ve got a lead on americium,” she said after a tiny pause. “It’s in most smoke detectors, so you can literally buy it at Walmart.”

  “Miranda, is it possible that Carl doesn’t want uranium? I’ve already started to get questions from people who think that they’re dangerous. Probably wouldn’t be good for their image if they’re searching for radioactive materials.”

  “I mean, I dunno, it was just a thought.”

  I felt bad for throwing a wrench into her beautiful brain machine, though I did kinda want to slow the conversation.

  “I mean . . .” I wanted to encourage her. She was hard not to like, almost like a kid. A genius kid. “It could be. I just thought maybe we should be a little surer before we start stockpiling uranium.”

  Again, she was typ
ing while I was talking.

  “Oh god,” she said, seeming scared. And that made me scared. It was the first time I thought maybe the Carls were indeed here to hurt us. Like she had discovered that mixing americium, iodine, and uranium would make a bomb that would destroy the earth.

  “Is everything OK?”

  “Shhhh.” She shushed me. She shushed me like I was a five-year-old who wanted a Popsicle and she was on the phone with a very important client. She was clicking and typing and clicking and typing. I just sat there because, obviously, Miranda was hitting this problem way harder than I had the ability to. After a full minute of me being completely silent, she picked up exactly where we had left off.

  “HAH!” she shouted. I startled. “Sorry! Yes! Omigod, April, I am so sorry. I shushed you. Oh god.” She was turning red, and then she seemed to remember other things were going on. “April, everything is fine. But Carl definitely meant elements when he said ‘I AM U’ because everything on this Wikipedia page has reverted to normal except the original typo . . . and about”—and here she started frantically scribbling in pen on her own hand—“nine numbers from the citations. Nine numbers are gone.”

  She held up her hand, on which was scribbled, “127243238.”

  “How did you figure that out so fast?”

  “I have a proxy IP set up so I can watch BBC shows. I was able to open the page from my IP and a British IP simultaneously. Comparing was easy once I noticed numbers were missing.”

  “OK, so what is it? It’s not enough numbers for a phone number.”

  “Hah . . . no. They’re the most common isotopes of those elements. Iodine-127, americium-243, and uranium-238. Do you know what an isotope is?”

  “No, but maybe I don’t need to?”