An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

by Hank Green

  “Hi, can you tell me anything about you?” I say, hoping to engage it in conversation.

  “Do you have a passcode?” it says.

  “No, but . . .”

  And I woke up. But at least now I knew where the song was from: It was the one playing in the dream lobby. It sounded a bit like an elevator music instrumental of a sixties pop song. Like “It’s Not Unusual,” but it wasn’t that. It had 100 percent earwormed into my head, though, and would stay there for pretty much the next six months straight.

  I must have been singing it in the car, I thought. That’s how Miranda and Andy had heard it. I’d gotten it stuck in their heads.

  I’d never been one to have recurring dreams. Certainly, there was that one about not going to class all semester and then having to take the test, but everyone had that one. This was the first time I could remember having a dream that seemed so entirely the same as one I had had before.

  But if there was a part of me that thought this was weird, it was not a loud enough part to prevent me from going the fuck back to sleep, which I did immediately.

  And you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t open my phone to look at my text messages. If I had looked, here’s the sequence of texts I would have seen from Maya over the past twenty-four hours.

  April 2:00 AM: I need to talk about some stuff

  Maya 9:52 AM: What’s up hun

  Maya 12:12 PM: April?

  Maya 7:02 PM: Are you OK?

  Maya 9:30 PM: Poke?

  Maya 12:12 AM: See you tomorrow, I guess.

  * * *

  —

  I didn’t even see Miranda the next morning. Somewhat heroically, Robin met us in the lobby and corralled us all the way to the airport and then through airport security, and it wasn’t until we were boarding that I realized that he had booked a last-minute ticket on our flight back to New York. He had also, amazingly, upgraded me and Andy to first class.

  “Did you sleep at all?” I asked him after they’d given us our fancy kooshy seats.

  “I did not, I had a lot of emails to send. You’re going to want to get a book deal,” he added abruptly.

  “Why?”

  “It will help you sway public opinion. Every person who reads your book will be far more likely to be on your side. Books are the most intensive of all current media. People are willing to spend hours and hours with a book. Additionally, people are still willing to pay for them.”

  “I’m getting paid for my YouTube videos already,” I said as I scrolled through my Twitter. People were freaking out. I started to type out a tweet because I couldn’t help myself: “Video coming later today, editing now. Very weird. Very excited.”

  Robin continued as I typed: “You get paid very poorly for your YouTube videos. You get a fraction of a cent for every person who watches a video. I’d bet we can get you more than five dollars for every person who buys your book.”

  This made my ears perk up. “And how many people do you think would buy my book?”

  “Hundreds of thousands.” He paused before saying, “Conservatively.”

  “I’m going to want to get a book deal,” I told him. “I’ve also been thinking, I’d like to get an apartment on Carl’s block.”

  “Oh! Interesting idea. I like it. You can watch over him, stay informed. I can look into it. Any requirements?”

  “Like what?”

  “Price range, style . . .” He paused. “Number of bedrooms?”

  Oh, right.

  “Maya and I,” I said to Robin. “It’s weird, we’re roommates, but we’re dating, but we’re not really at the ‘moving in together’ stage. We just already were moved in together when we started dating.”

  “That sounds difficult,” Robin replied.

  “Well, I would like your advice.”

  “I don’t know that I can give you any. I know that you’re going to have a very complicated life in the next weeks and months, and that you won’t have time for much else. But I also know that having someone that you care about and who cares about you might help keep you connected to reality.”

  “Every time I play the scene in my head . . . I just can’t imagine asking Maya to move in with me. It’s like imagining dropping a penny through a lead brick. My brain won’t do it.”

  “Just because you can’t imagine something doesn’t mean you can’t do it,” he said.

  “That sounds like good advice.” But still, the thought hurt my head. And I was exhausted.

  “So, how many bedrooms?” Robin asked.

  “Ugggh, two, I guess.” Keeping my options open. And then I pretty much immediately fell asleep.

  Of course, I immediately had the Dream again. And again, I didn’t think much of it at the time.

  You might think it’s weird that Andy and I hadn’t figured out the Dream yet, but it was a pretty boring dream and, in general, talking about even interesting dreams to other people is dull as hell. I try not to do it under any circumstances because of how much I hate it when other people do it to me. And besides, Andy and I probably had said a total of four words to each other that day.

  I did talk a bit more with Robin, but Robin had not slept yet. And so, though he almost definitely had the Dream in his head by this point, he had no way of knowing that. He’d know soon enough, as would at least half of the people on that airplane and a number of others I interacted with at the airport.

  You can go ahead and add that to my list of accomplishments:

  April May, former pet detective, dairy-supply heiress, initiator of First Contact with space aliens, video blogger, and patient zero for the first and only known infectious dream. And also . . . terrible girlfriend.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By the age of twenty-three, I had already become a master of not being in relationships. Here are some tips if you too enjoy completely isolating yourself from the love of other humans because of deep, subconscious fears that you are unable to recognize even exist.

  If someone you regularly hook up with serves up an overly familiar pet name, double down on your return. Example:

  “Could you pass me the remote, baby?”

  “Yeah, here you go . . . pookie patchoopie.”

  When conversations head in directions that might result in your relationship being defined as a “relationship,” completely disregard all societal rules of conversation. Example:

  “Have you ever felt like this is . . . going somewhere?”

  “I wanna be the very best like no one ever was.”

  “Are you singing the Pokémon theme song?”

  Be prepared, at a moment’s notice, to mercilessly and cruelly distance yourself from people who you care about and need more than oxygen. Example:

  “So, April, my mom is going to come visit.”

  “Cool.”

  “Do you think you should, like, meet her?”

  “I live here, don’t I?”

  Basically, do your best to mock and deride their connection to and appreciation of you because, deep down, you dislike yourself enough that you cannot imagine anyone worthwhile actually wanting to be with you. I mean, if they like you, there must be something wrong with them, right?

  This probably seems weird to you, as you are familiar with the April May of video and social media. Always confident, clear, and comfortable. How could that person possibly act so confident and yet be so deeply insecure? Well, if I weren’t so insecure, I would have had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to spend every day of my life getting really good at seeming confident.

  My relationship with Maya was the longest romantic relationship I’d ever had. I think the fact that she was a great roommate and school partner had probably kept me from completely destroying us, which I had had the impulse to do several times already. But our relationship was mostly held to
gether by Maya’s understanding that my ridicule of her feelings for me was a manifestation of my distaste for myself, not her.

  The result of this semi-long-term relationship with a beautiful and intelligent woman was that if I even for a moment thought about my life with or without Maya, I would notice how deeply and passionately in love with her I was. The knowledge that I would have to tell Maya about what had happened, and the feelings that gave me (knowing that I’d want her to talk it out with me, being afraid that she’d be disappointed in me, caring what she thought at all, the knowledge that she really knew me), made me want to run like I was being chased by an anaconda. A seventy-foot anaconda that wanted to hug me REALLY HARD.

  I’m talking about all this now like I understood it then. I did not. All I knew was that, after that first missed call, I found it more and more impossible to imagine the conversation we’d have once we finally had one. And I’m telling you this because I want you not to hate me. You’re probably going to hate me in a couple of pages, and I’m giving you a well-rounded understanding of my psychological turbulence so that you will hate me less.

  * * *

  —

  Our apartment was clean when I got home. Cleaner than I’d seen it in a while.

  “Whoa, did you go all mom on me?” I shouted to the empty living room, knowing Maya was somewhere in the apartment.

  “APRIL! Oh god, it’s good to see you. I’ve been worried!” she said as she came out of her bedroom. She was in a Wonder Woman tank top and plaid sleeping pants.

  “Worried? You did go all mom on me.” I smirked like it was a joke, but also a little bit like it wasn’t.

  “You haven’t texted me since you told me you had some stuff you wanted to tell me. You might imagine that could cause a girl some anxiety.” And she did look anxious, even more than I’d expected.

  Two things occurred to me simultaneously. First, that she might have already been expecting a breakup. Second, that it would in fact be a breakup, a real breakup, bigger than any I’d ever had before. How did I let it get this far?

  Panic.

  “Well, there are some things we need to talk about.” This did not lessen her anxiety, and I realized we were already off on the wrong track. I continued. “My trip to LA was very eventful.”

  “Did you hear that all of the Carls’ right hands have vanished?”

  I had to laugh. “Yes, well, no, not quite.” I’d just watched a video on Twitter that showed a tourist gasping in shock as Tokyo Carl’s hand vanished. It didn’t drop off and run like Hollywood Carl’s hand, it just disappeared. Other videos from other Carls showed that the hands didn’t run away, they disappeared. All except Hollywood Carl. I explained this all to Maya, though I was a little astounded that she hadn’t been following me on Twitter or Facebook.

  And then I told her that I was there when Hollywood Carl’s hand ran away.

  “Oh lord, of course you were!” Her eyes were lighting up.

  “Maya, a lot has happened. Um . . .” This was not easy. “Carl is very probably from outer space and Andy and I have—”

  “Carl is WHAT?”

  “Probably from outer space. Like, a not-of-this-earth, ‘E.T. phone home’ space alien.” I waited to see if this was going to need more explanation, and when apparently she required none, I started back up. “We’ve already filmed—”

  She interrupted again, “Please continue with the space alien thing!”

  “Uh, well, right, we solved the sequence. Rather, Miranda did.”

  “Who’s Miranda?”

  “She’s a graduate student from Berkeley who emailed me about Carl’s physical properties. I told her the sequence and she solved it in like six minutes—it was pretty amazing.”

  Maya was looking uncomfortable with this news. I broke it down for her step by step, hoping to make it seem a little less like I had a new girlfriend.

  “The stuff Carl is made of, the way it behaves, how it interacts with its surroundings, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s not possible. Carl is not a possible thing, and yet there he is, guarding the Chipotle, leading people to conclude that he was not created by humans.”

  “And?”

  “And Miranda figured out that Carl was asking for chemical elements. I, Am, U . . . iodine, americium, and uranium.”

  “URANIUM?!”

  “Yes, that is the reaction most people have. Anyway, we gave Carl some iodine and americium, and his hand detached and it ran away and, good lord, why am I telling you this story and not just showing you the video? Andy is going to make it live any minute now.”

  I logged into the YouTube account and showed her the video, which was about to be the third public video on the channel. When it was done, she turned to me and said, “She’s pretty cute, huh.”

  Well, that didn’t take long. I searched for something negative but also true that I could say about Miranda to make Maya feel less threatened.

  “Yeah, she’s a weirdo,” was the best I could do.

  There was a long silence during which I hoped we were going to get back to the more stable ground of discussing how I had found a literal space alien on the streets of New York City, made some videos with him, and become the de facto ambassador to outer space.

  “And you’re going to make this video public soon?”

  “Yeah! No one else has footage of the hand moving independently, it’s just us! And we’re the only ones who have any idea how or why this happened! No one even knows about the sequence yet! It’s just like you said: Now I’m not just the person who uncovered the sequence, I’m the person who solved it!”

  She had gotten what she asked for, so at least there’s that bit of blame I could properly lay at her feet.

  “And you know what happens if you do this?” Her face was like stone.

  “I get a platform? I get to communicate simple, positive messages at a time when people need them? It’s not that different from advertising, and Andy knows everything there is to know about social media.”

  “Andy. So this was Andy’s idea.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Andy couldn’t make me change a light bulb. It was my idea, front to back.”

  “April.” She sat down on my bed, and then stayed quiet for longer than I was comfortable with. “What do you think this is really about?”

  She said it like she knew the answer better than I did. Which she did, but that didn’t make me hate it any less.

  “No one gets a chance like this, Maya! Yeah, there’s money, but it’s not just that. I think I can do some good here.”

  I don’t know why I’ve never felt like a totally worthwhile person. I just haven’t. It’s what drives me. It’s who I am. Maya knew that better than I did. She knew that bringing it up wasn’t going to help, so she didn’t . . . yet.

  “And you think you can pull this off alone.” Again, not a question.

  So I told her about Putnam and Mr. Skampt and that I had an assistant already who was helping with my emails. I didn’t tell her too much about Robin because, if there was someone who was going to win my pants, it was more likely to be him than Miranda. I had an agent and maybe a book deal coming, and Andy and I had already built a brand and a launch strategy.

  “Did you think at all that it would be a good idea to talk to me about this?”

  And here’s the moment when a sane person could have healed the situation. It would be very easy to separate all of this. It would probably have been a good idea to put some space between the “We Are Not Alone in the Universe” talk and the “I Want to Grab Power and Do Good with It” talk and the “I Am Terrified of Our Relationship” talk. But I wanted to turn the fight into a breakup—the idea of “us” couldn’t compete with the idea of “April May”—so I burned it all down.

  “What does it have to do with you?” I said.

  She was legiti
mately shocked. She stood up and then froze, still in her pajamas, with her jaw literally hanging open for a few seconds before she understood exactly what had happened. “Oh fuck you, April.”

  “What? We’re roommates, we’re friends. I texted you that first night because I wanted some advice, but then we were all caught up in it so I figured I’d just tell you when I got back.”

  “Roommates. Right.”

  “Speaking of”—I meant to say this matter-of-factly, but it came out strained and quavering—“I was thinking, for the sake of the story, it would make sense for me to move to Manhattan. Robin found an apartment that has a window that literally looks directly down on New York Carl.”

  “Robin?”

  “My assistant.”

  “Found you a new place.” It came out like fire. “And I assume it’s one bedroom?”

  “We’re just roommates, Maya.”

  There was a bit of silence then. Her emotions—oh, they were everywhere. Anger, pain, disappointment. Disappointment in me, specifically, not in the situation. I got the impression that she was unsurprised that I had turned out to be exactly what she expected me to be.

  All of those strong emotions dissolved into sadness then. Maya was clearly starting to cry as she turned away from me and walked toward her bedroom door. She got there and looked back, her eyes puffy already, and said, softly, “Oh god, April, you really have no idea, do you? You have no idea what this is really about? You’re just trying to find an audience who will love you and I’m not enough. Well, this isn’t going to be enough either, but I guess you’ll just have to go and find out.” That was the first time she said “I love you” to me. Or, at least, the closest she’d gotten. She’d known that if she said it I’d freak out.

  “I weigh a hundred twenty pounds, and I’m the scariest thing you’ve ever seen. Call me when you grow a pair.” She closed the door behind her.

  Thinking back, the only emotion I can remember having as that door closed was relief. I reached for my phone and checked Twitter.