An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

by Hank Green

  We stood there for another few seconds while nothing continued to happen. Finally, Andy lowered his camera and said to Robin, “OK, well, maybe time for you to go get the car so we . . . Holy fuck.” Andy froze, staring at the place where I had pressed the americium for a tiny moment before frantically grabbing at the DSLR and thumbing the record button. Just in time.

  Soundlessly, smoothly, Carl’s hand had begun to move. Andy got about two seconds of that movement before the hand disconnected from the body with a soft click and dropped to the ground. Stunned silence became sounds of exclamation from the crowd, from me as well. My particular sound we could not include in the final video because we wanted it to be child-friendly.

  Carl’s hand—as big as a dinner plate—hit the cement, flipped itself over so its fingers touched the ground, and then it ran.

  * * *

  —

  I say it “ran” because that’s the closest word I have to what it did, which was that it pushed itself up on the tips of all five fingers and then skittered away, clicking rapidly down the sacred marble of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, causing yelps and leaps of surprise as tourists spotted it. The line behind us rapidly devolved as people rushed to see what was happening or began running in fear.

  We spent a precious few seconds staring in absolute shock, which I think is understandable, before Miranda shot after it just a millisecond before Andy and I had the same idea.

  We shoved our way through Los Angeles’s only busy sidewalk like perps in a crime movie. I pretty much bounced off a Chewbacca who was posing with a lovely middle-aged couple. I caught a glimpse of the hand as it hung a right on Orange and increased my speed to match my certainty that this was a thing that was actually happening, and also thanks to the complete lack of pedestrian traffic just three feet off the Walk of Fame.

  I flew around the corner and saw it, just twenty or thirty feet ahead, but now somehow galloping? Instead of individual steps, it was moving in a leaping gait. Andy stopped as he turned on Orange to film me chasing after the hand a bit before following.

  Miranda and I did not stop. We flew past the parking garages and hotels and apartment complexes on Orange. I was not and have never been an athlete. Miranda, on the other hand, showed no signs of slowing down, so I did everything I could to keep up with her.

  Orange dead-ends into Franklin, but Miranda and I both distinctly saw Carl’s hand head straight across Franklin and then leap up over a small orange retaining wall. I followed a few strides behind Miranda, up a steep, curving driveway, and up to a . . . a frickin’ castle?

  “What,” I said as I gasped for air, “the fuck.”

  Though it was dark, the building was lit by a number of dramatic sources. It had weird, surprising architectural details like turrets and faux crenellations. After the apartment buildings and shopping centers we had just run past, I had the sudden disorienting feeling that maybe Carl had created a portal and we had been transported to some kind of kitschy Narnia. I looked behind us, and Franklin Avenue was still there, bustling with traffic.

  I decided that this was still the real world and marched past the valet parking sign and up to a young man in a tuxedo.

  “Did you see a large robotic hand run by here just now?” I said, having caught enough of my breath to speak.

  “Hmm?” he said, as if he were just realizing we were talking to him. “Ah. Yes, it just went inside.”

  “What?”

  “Well, it walked up and looked as if it wanted to go inside, so I let it inside. It had not strictly obeyed the dress code, but while the rules are both specific and comprehensive, I thought it made sense to allow an exception in the case of an autonomous hand.” He did not seem to think this was all that weird.

  Miranda attempted a response—“Um, well, we’re . . .”—and she failed in her attempt.

  “We need to get in there,” I interrupted.

  The man, maybe in his late twenties, dressed in a full tuxedo and white gloves, looked us up and down before saying, “Are you members?” as if he already very much knew the answer.

  “Um, no. But you just let a robotic hand into the club, why not us?”

  “Well, first, you are not members. Second, and I don’t mean this as any kind of criticism, but you are not in compliance with the dress code.”

  “But a robot hand is?!” I said, amazed.

  “There is nothing in the rules about robot hands.”

  “Look,” I said, “can we just take a quick peek around?”

  “Are you members?”

  “No, we are still not members!” I said, losing patience.

  “I am very sorry, there is—”

  I just pushed past him. I mean, I’m not big, but he wasn’t a real bouncer. This clearly wasn’t a rough-and-tumble kind of bar, it was some fancy club, and this guy wasn’t used to physically throwing people out.

  I pushed past, through the door, Miranda on my heels, and found myself in a small room with dark wood paneling, a few small potted trees, and a fair number of bookshelves. Two more twenty-somethings stood behind a desk. The man tumbled in after us. “Nika, I’m sorry, they pushed me!” He sounded astonished.

  “Did a robotic hand come in here?” I said, firmly, still out of breath from the run.

  “Hello, I’m Nika, welcome to the Magic Castle, are you members?” She was having none of us.

  “The Magic Castle?”

  “The Magic Castle,” Nika replied. “The clubhouse for the Academy of Magical Arts. A members-only club for magicians.”

  “And this is a real thing?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “And that is why you do not think that it’s weird that an autonomous hand just walked in,” I said.

  “We have seen weirder things.”

  I decided to put some of my TV skills to work and attempted to pivot.

  “Regardless, a robotic hand, about ten inches, came through here several minutes ago, and it is very important that I locate it.”

  “Ma’am, I’m afraid I’m not authorized to discuss our clientele with nonmembers. Additionally, we cannot allow you admittance as it would be against our policies, which are very clear. This conversation is over.”

  I decided that pushing had worked last time, so I started to push my way past them into whatever weirdo, freak cult club this was and then realized why this small room was so strange.

  “If you would like to push past us,” Nika said, “you are welcome to try.” She gestured to the doorless room.

  “What the frick kind of place is this?” I half yelled. I looked over at Miranda, whose brow was knitted so tightly I thought it might cramp.

  “This is the Magic Castle, and I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”

  “OK, so, you know how, down the street on Hollywood Boulevard, there is an unexplained ten-foot-tall robot? Well, his hand just fell off and ran into your club. If I can’t come in, can you at least go and look for it?”

  Nika finally looked at least interested. “We will do that, but first you have to leave.”

  Seeing no other particular recourse in the doorless room, we left.

  As we came out of the castle, I pulled my phone, which had been buzzing for several minutes straight, out of my pocket. Andy and Robin were the culprits. I texted them both to say we were at the intersection of North Orange and Franklin because I didn’t want to sound absurd asking them to meet us at “the Magic Castle.”

  They were both there in less than a minute.

  We all piled into Robin’s car.

  “Why does it smell so good in here?”

  “I got In-N-Out,” Robin said. “I had to guess preferences. I’m not 100 percent sure that we’re even all meat eaters, but there are some animal-style fries for those who aren’t.”

  “You are Jesus!” I exclaimed, realizing that I was starving.

&
nbsp; “I’ll take those fries!” Miranda said. Of course, the beautiful genius was also a vegetarian. A vegetarian consuming fries brought to me by the man whose job was literally to serve me.

  I should text Maya, I thought. But then there was a Double-Double in my lap, so I didn’t.

  We passed the bags around the car as Robin drove us back toward our hotel while we told Robin and Andy about the bizarre incident at the Magic Castle.

  “I can get you in there,” Robin said.

  “What is it?” Miranda asked.

  “Only magicians can become members, and you can only go inside if you are a member or have been given a guest card by a member. I can probably get one by tomorrow.”

  “I’m afraid that will be way too late. Besides, we have a lot of video to edit. Also I have tweets to tweet.” I got my phone out.

  @AprilMaybeNot: Just performed a dramatically successful experiment with Hollywood Carl. His hand detached and ran away. I know that sounds absurd, but that’s what happened. We have footage and will be uploading the moment we finish editing.

  @AprilMaybeNot: Carl’s hand ran to the Magic Castle, where we were denied entry because we were wearing jeans and are not magicians?! ¯_(ツ)_/¯ But, again, we have successfully interacted with a Carl and Hollywood Carl’s right hand is now AWOL.

  Soon after this, I received about eighty tweets linking me to an AP story with the headline CARL HANDS VANISH ACROSS CONTINENTS. It wasn’t just Hollywood Carl. Every Carl had, in the last hour, lost its right hand. The story was just a couple of lines and didn’t make any mention of where the hands had gone or show any pictures or video of hands scampering around Mexico City. It was early, so we didn’t understand that there was really only one hand loose. We just knew that every Carl that had been checked was now missing its right hand.

  “FUCK!” I shouted to the whole car, startling Andy, who had already fallen asleep.

  “What is it, April?” Robin said, concerned, from the driver’s seat.

  “It’s bigger than we thought, the AP is already out in front of us.”

  It’s almost better to be first than best, but being best is much more work, so I was frustrated. I wanted my tweets to be as viral as my first video. I wanted to be in control of the story. The numbers were clicking up fast, but not as fast as if I’d broken the news. Reporters would start calling soon, so at least I would be part of the story, but it wouldn’t be my story, and so I wasn’t going to get all the value out of it I could have gotten if I’d just started tweeting instead of running after the hand.

  I figured that the news of Hollywood Carl’s hand running off would spread quickly, of course, but if all sixty-four Carl hands had suddenly started roaming around sixty-four metropolises on six different continents, this was already a huge story! And we were behind. I was so scared and frustrated and I didn’t even know what I was chasing.

  “Andy, get out your camera, let’s film an outro and upload now. Robin, can you find us someplace nearby with fast internet?”

  “No,” Robin said.

  “What?” I replied, shocked at the thought that Robin was incapable of something . . . anything, really.

  “You don’t need to do that. Write an outro, film it tonight, but don’t upload tonight. Let the press freak out. If you upload now, you’ll be drowned out. You have big news in that camera, but the news has news for today. Tomorrow or the day after . . .”

  “They’ll be jonesing again,” Miranda said.

  “Yes, exactly,” said Robin.

  “But I already tweeted about it,” I said, now unsure whether I’d posted too early or too late.

  “Then you’ll be getting lots of media requests, and we will ignore them until the video goes up and it will just make everyone more excited to see it,” Robin said.

  Andy added, “This is a good plan because also it means I can not freak out for, like, as many as four whole hours. I can edit on the plane and I can sleep now.” And then he added, in a bored voice, “Chauffeur, take me to my place of unconsciousness and away from this ridiculous woman.” Then he leaned back up against the window.

  “Andy, we are at the crux of history,” I said, leaning over the front seat to look at Andy while doing my best American Hermione Granger impression.

  “April, I am at the crux of violence.” He didn’t open his eyes.

  “What is the crux, anyway?” Miranda asked.

  “It’s, like, the center of the cross maybe? Definitely something to do with a cross,” Robin guessed.

  “You guys, we did that,” I said. “And we’re doing this.”

  We all looked around the car at each other. None of us older than twenty-five years old, cruising down Santa Monica Boulevard, planning our press strategy for the announcement of First Contact with a space alien.

  We were all a little punch-drunk, so someone began giggling. Within a few seconds it was everyone. Laughing at the absurdity of it all, of that night, of these weeks, of the fact that it was us. We had no right to play this role, but here we were playing it. There was whooping and recapping and fist-pumping, and Andy roused from his grogginess long enough to let a smile take over his face.

  Once everybody’s cheeks hurt and we had rehashed the whole night one more time, I opened my notes app and started writing a script, which I recorded on that car ride to our hotel while Andy and Miranda slept, Miranda’s head lolling on Andy’s shoulder.

  “We chased Hollywood Carl’s hand down Orange and into the Magic Castle, a club for magicians, where we were denied entrance. Staff there, however, reported seeing the hand enter the establishment. It would appear that our interpretation of the Freddie Mercury Sequence was correct, and that presenting Carl with americium or iodine or both either caused or allowed Carl’s hand to disconnect and move independently around Los Angeles. We do not know where the hand is now. It’s now evident that every Carl on every continent has lost his right hand, but while Hollywood Carl’s hand was observed running away, multiple videos show other Carls’ hands simply vanishing at the exact same time. We don’t know what this means and, honestly, we don’t know what we’ve done. But they asked us for materials, and we provided them. It occurs to me now”—this had only taken so long to occur to me because I had actively prevented myself from thinking about it—“that we took a number of actions today on behalf of all humanity and maybe should have asked for some kind of permission first . . . or let the government decide if this was the correct course of action. I did not do that. I did not think that the result of our experiment would be so substantial or significant. I have no reason to think, however, that the Carls are anything but friendly at this point . . . Well, maybe they are also very, very odd.”

  And that’s how I ended that video. I looked into the back seat. Miranda’s head was resting on Andy’s shoulder. It looked like the right thing to do, so for the last five minutes before we got to our hotel, I went to sleep, and that was the first time I had the Dream.

  * * *

  —

  I am in the lobby of a fancy office. Shiny and bright and brand-new. Light comes from everywhere, but there are no windows, just wood-paneled walls and gray carpeted floors. There’s music playing, but I don’t recognize it. No one is around except, at a check-in desk, there’s a small robot. Well, not small, human-sized. It looks smoother and sleeker than Carl, blue and white and no chrome at all. It’s approachable, so I approach it.

  “Hello,” it says in a smooth, human-sounding male voice.

  “Hello, I’m here to see Carl,” I say.

  “Do you have a passcode?” the robot behind the desk responds.

  “No?” I reply, skeptically.

  Then I woke up to find that we’d arrived at our hotel. Discussions had occurred while I was unconscious. Miranda needed a place to sleep, so Robin offered to get her a room at our hotel just to save on driving around. Andy’s and my flight was leavin
g in six hours, so we would actually get to have a solid four hours of sleep in real beds! We were all zombies, but Andy and I more than anyone. Andy was humming a weird little tune as we waited for Miranda to finish at the check-in desk. The song was familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  We all rode the elevator up together. Miranda was humming the same weird song Andy was.

  “God, what is that song? It’s so familiar. You’ve both been humming it,” I said to Miranda and Andy.

  “Um,” was all Andy could manage.

  “Sorry, I didn’t even realize I was humming,” Miranda replied sleepily.

  I looked at Robin since he was good at solving problems. “Sorry, April, it doesn’t sound familiar to me.”

  We all headed to our separate rooms.

  I did not take off my clothes, but I did take out my phone. I stared at the gobs of tweets coming in. I’d added more than ten thousand followers since I posted about the hand. I wasn’t even interacting, I wasn’t learning about my audience, I was just watching it grow. My phone felt like it weighed ten pounds in my hands, and I almost fell asleep, but then I realized I’d been neglecting Facebook, and I hadn’t checked my email. I copied my tweets and posted them on Facebook as well, and I watched the post grow there. This whole other audience seemed completely unaware of the situation, and the post grew just as fast there as on Twitter. I checked my email and told my parents I would call them tomorrow. Then I switched back and forth between Facebook and Twitter, checking to see if there was any news, what people were saying to me (and about me.) My phone booped with a text from Maya. See you tomorrow, I guess, it read. I was so tired, and that sounded like drama that I did not want to deal with. I swiped it away. And then I kept poking and swiping my phone before sleep finally won its war for my consciousness.

  I am in the shiny office lobby, the song is playing, the robot waits behind the desk, I approach it. “Hello,” it says again.