An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

by Hank Green

  “Oh god, even my friends think of me as two different people.”

  He blushed a bit there, which I didn’t get at the time. “It’s how you talk about yourself, it’s hard not to pick up the habit.” He smiled.

  I was still April May, the snarky BFA grad, but that’s not who I wanted the world to see. That wasn’t the person who would establish First Contact with an alien race. So I was also April May, the surprising, quirky, unassuming, but passionately intelligent speaker for the Carls.

  “So you don’t think I should have it ghostwritten.”

  “It does not seem like the sort of thing April May would do,” he repeated.

  “UGH! I completely agree with you and it is so annoying. How long are books? How much do the NaNoWriMo people write?”

  “I’ll look it up.” He started to get out his laptop.

  “Fifty thousand,” Andy shouted from the living room without missing a beat.

  I turned back to Robin with a smirk. “Always use all the tools at your disposal. So that means I only need to write one word fifty thousand times. I mean, not the same word over and over. How many words are in the average tweet? Like twenty? So that’s just like twenty-five hundred tweets. I can tweet twenty-five hundred times. Oh god, I probably have. Can we just publish a book of my tweets?”

  “No, but there are degrees of doing this on your own. You don’t have to sit in here by yourself for a month straight doing nothing but writing. I think what we need to do is get you a great editor, someone who has worked on books like these. If they end up writing a significant part of the book, you can credit them as a coauthor because that’s the sort of thing April May would do.” He smiled at me.

  Robin had a narrow frame and bright, bright blue eyes. He didn’t smile much, so when it happened it felt good.

  I leaned toward him a bit. “I’m glad you think so highly of me.”

  He leaned away, pulling his laptop onto his lap. “I’ll email Jennifer about getting you some meetings with editors. You’ll have your pick, I think.”

  I watched his hands move over his keyboard and thought to myself, We should put him in videos more.

  February 19

  @AprilMaybeNot: What do you think is the best profession for your spouse to have?

  @AprilMaybeNot: Everyone is saying “Masseuse!” or “Doctor!” But I think it’s “Political Pundit” because that way you can shake them awake tomorrow morning and tell them that you’re going to divorce them if they don’t quit their terrible job that is destroying America.

  @AprilMaybeNot: And yes, I am aware that I am a political pundit.

  I’m sitting in a Pret A Manger in midtown. Because of the constant stress of being April May, I have forgotten what sleeping a full night is like and I am now a huge fan of coffee. I usually get an Americano with two shots, no room for cream. But I dump sugar in it because it makes it taste like hot chocolate.

  At the table with me are Robin and Sylvia Stone, who is the second editor we’ve met with. The first guy was sure he knew exactly what I wanted to do with my book and got frustrated when I disagreed with him. I hated the meeting so much I pretended like I had diarrhea to get out of it. Sylvia, in her midthirties, dressed in a black silk button-down and jeans, with dark glasses around her gray eyes, was fitting my image of whom I wanted to work with a lot better.

  “You’ve got two big problems with this story,” Sylvia was saying. “First, it’s too big. The whole world is in it, and people will be looking to you for a full story. You can’t just crank out some piece of slop because the whole world will want to read it. There’s an obligation, and that can be a lot of weight.”

  Robin looked at me. I nodded, knowing that this was at least part of the problem I had been having.

  “Second, it’s not over. You’re in the middle right now. If the Dream had never happened, there would be a clear narrative arc of this thing. It would end in some mystery, but in an appropriate amount of resolved mystery. Instead, there are millions of people working hard every day trying to solve the puzzles in the Dream and more of them are indeed getting solved every day. We can’t even endeavor to tell the whole story because we’re in the middle of it.”

  “OK, I think you’ve put your fingers on at least two of the many problems I have,” I said to her. “That doesn’t necessarily help me, though.”

  “You have to define a timeline and you have to decide what you want to get across. What are your goals with the book? What do you want everyone to think when they finish it? Do you want them to understand you? Do you want them to understand your story?”

  “Honestly I just want them to come away feeling like this is an opportunity for humanity and that the Carls are a good thing, not some alien nightmare.”

  “Oh, that’s really good, actually. Say that again but more.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, sorry, I . . .” She looked a little flustered. “I was editing you. I’m sorry, it’s a habit. I just mean, tell me more about that idea.”

  I laughed. “That’s pretty great, actually. That was a good note. I’m honestly worried, because I think we’re just starting to get used to the impact that the social internet is having on us culturally and emotionally and socially. It wasn’t exactly bringing us together before this, right? But now I’m worried we have this whole other massive change to get used to. If we keep driving wedges, if we keep getting more and more scared . . .” I trailed off because I didn’t actually know what that would mean; I just knew it would be bad. “It’s like when winter comes and it sucks outside and the sun starts going down at 4:30 and you can look at that and get pissed and sad and grumpy. Or you can invite some friends over and make hot chocolate and share blankets and light candles and tell dumb high school stories. Both of those are natural ways to respond to it getting fucking gross outside, both fit really well with winter, but one is great and one sucks. It’s like that, except with space aliens instead of winter.

  “Did I take your note well?” I asked, finally taking a breath.

  “April, I want to help you write this book. And the good news is that a manifesto is probably the easiest book for you to write. You can put in moments of your story, but more than anything you’re making an argument. That’s a very traditional format for a book, and one that does not have to be long. You talk to experts, who will all take your calls. You quote them, you build an argument, and you publish the book. I could write the outline for that book this afternoon. Probably faster if you helped me.”

  Robin had said this lady was no-nonsense. She had bylines in every major newspaper and magazine in the world and had several books as well, the most popular of which I had downloaded on Audible and listened to a bit of, called Luck Be a Liar. It was about how people are fooled by imagined or insignificant patterns into believing things that are very wrong. I liked it.

  “OK, let’s do it,” I said.

  “OK,” Sylvia replied, “your place or mine?”

  “Why not right here? Let’s build an outline,” I said, not really knowing what that meant.

  Robin said nothing. I think he was terrified of showing me how pleased he was because he thought maybe I’d notice and change my mind just to spite him.

  In an hour’s time, we had built a book. It wasn’t written, but it was constructed. It had an introduction in which I talked a bit about me, but other than that, the chapters were basically arguments against being afraid of the Carls and that was that. Easy! I took the outline home that night and I fleshed out some of the sections. Sylvia sent them back to me with some comments and ideas for whom we could talk to to get quotes and more robust backing for my ideas.

  March 10

  @TheCADDY95: April May is pretty cute, but she completely ruins it by being so full of herself.

  @AprilMaybeNot: I mean, definitionally though, what else am I supposed to be full of? It’s just me in here. Well, me and an emb
arrassing number of Doritos.

  I’ve been so stressed that I injured myself. I’m twenty-three years old and my back has flipped out, maybe from sleeping weird, maybe from staying up late working on the final revisions of the book, maybe from stress. Let’s be honest, it’s from stress. I’ve been interviewed for TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers for two months straight. First I was telling my own story, then I was defending Carl, but before long, I was defending the president, the Constitution, and freedom of speech. Robin had hired tutors specializing in press relations, government, and international law to try to make it sound like I knew WTF I was talking about.

  The scary part was that I had started to actually know WTF I was talking about. And I passionately believed it.

  Robin also booked me this appointment at a day spa. Just some alone time to get my whole body rubbed by a stranger, get my toes fancied up, and maybe come out of it feeling a bit more like a human. The people at the place were all deferential and nice. They knew who I was and they would have been happy to talk, but they also knew when a client didn’t want to and, honestly, I didn’t want to.

  This is going to sound weird, but, like, it was nice to just have someone touch me. Flirting with Robin was like flirting with a statue. He kept it so professional that we didn’t even hug. Sometimes I’d lie in my bed at night and fantasize about someone lying on top of me. I just wanted to feel another human. I’d been so cooped up working on the book, staring at it, talking to Sylvia about it. It was like my body had stopped existing.

  Anyway, I came out of the massage feeling slightly refreshed. The silent time was a good opportunity to put myself in check and make sure that I was working on all the things I wanted to be working on—that the not sleeping and stress were worth it. I thanked the ladies in the lobby as I left and they looked a little nervous, which I just put down to them not quite knowing how to behave around April May.

  It became apparent that it was more than this when a woman came out of the back, having finished her spa day as well. She was in her fifties, she looked as pampered and primped as could be, and she was using that voice that some rich people in New York use that says, “I’m only talking to one person, but I would nonetheless like everyone in the world to hear me.”

  “. . . and her nerve! She gets on with Rachel Carver and thinks she can go toe-to-toe on international relations. She’s a child! It would be funny if it weren’t so disgusting.” She was accompanied by the massage therapist who had been working on her.

  Hah, that’s funny, I thought. I was on the Rachel Carver show like three days ago.

  Everyone in the room knew what was going on way before I did. Everyone wanted to stop it; no one could. Her therapist tried to change the subject rapidly, glancing in my direction. “I really hope your IT band is feeling better, ma’am, it really seemed to loosen during the session.”

  “Yes, well, it’s probably all of this drama. I just hate that that thing is in my city and there’s nothing I can do about it. And people like that child—” And that’s when she saw me. She immediately went silent, which was the moment I finally realized that she’d been talking about me.

  “Well, let’s just get you checked out so you can be on your way,” the therapist said to her.

  Robin had already paid for me, so I just turned around to leave the lobby, heading into the hallway and then the elevator, which blessedly arrived before the woman came out of the spa studio.

  This dumb little moment was the first time I heard a stranger hating me in public. I knew then, for real, that thousands of people were having that exact conversation all over the world every moment of every day. Those people were real, and their thoughts were formed by overblown or just straight made-up stories about me that I could never adequately defend myself against.

  People all over the world whom I had never met and would never meet hated me. Hated. And what they thought about me was completely out of my control.

  At this point in my life I was tweeting about pretty much everything of note that happened to me. You can never stop creating content, both because it feels nice to have people listen and because you have to keep people’s attention. And I had become accustomed to measuring my life in likes. I did not tweet about this encounter. I didn’t even tell anyone about it. I just texted Robin to tell him how wonderful my spa day was and how great he was for thinking of me. I knew that if I stopped being mad at that lady (and at all her compatriots all over the world), I would have to experience some feelings that were much worse than rage.

  So instead of talking to any of the people who could have helped me at that moment, I went home and read blog posts about how I was awful, ugly, and a traitor.

  March 17

  @PrimePatr1ot: Sometimes I wonder how much people like April May are being paid to shill for the government.

  @AprilMaybeNot: They pay me in PopTarts. So. Many. PopTarts. Why did I sign this deal? I have a problematic number of PopTarts.

  I’m leaning out over my balcony, watching, with Andy standing next to me. He’s filming as they remove the tent from over Carl and reopen 23rd Street. Thank the lord, the noise will be back. Also, now I can truly look down on Carl and see him there beside the phone booths that, for some reason, are still taking up valuable street real estate in Manhattan.

  My book is in the hands of a legion of copy editors trying to find every mistake and mislaid argument. There’s nothing I can do to help it at the moment, which is wonderful because I’m fucking sick of the book. Also, we’ve got videos to make.

  The army of experts who had been flowing into the tent they had erected around Carl had figured out more or less absolutely nothing in the past few weeks. Did they deliver uranium to Carl to see what happened? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure someone somewhere did, though it didn’t seem that there was any immediate effect. If they did discover something new about Carl, they didn’t tell anyone.

  What we knew was that he wasn’t standing on the sidewalk; he was hovering very slightly above it, latched onto space somehow. He was not at all thermally conductive; it seemed that the atoms of our world didn’t even interact with the atoms of his body. He couldn’t be moved or damaged. It was as if we could see him, but he was not actually in our space. Except for Hollywood Carl’s hand, of course, which still hadn’t been seen since it disappeared into that weird magicians’ club.

  Suddenly, Peter Petrawicki was there, down on the street, followed closely by a young guy holding a camera. Some police started harassing him—I couldn’t hear what was happening. He looked indignant; he was gesturing to Carl, and to the building behind him. The police looked like they really, really didn’t want to be in the video, but they also had instructions to not let anyone near Carl right now. Besides, the street hadn’t been opened yet, so how did he even get in?

  “How can anyone look at that guy and not immediately get that he is the worst thing that ever existed?” Andy said.

  “There are people who say the same thing about me,” I mused.

  Peter posted the video later, and of course Andy and I watched it. It’s mostly Peter saying, “What have you found out? Is it safe? You clearly thought there was enough danger to block off the street last month, what have you found out that makes it safe now? The people deserve to know!” That kind of thing. But then he cuts from the street to him sitting in a small but chic office.

  “Eventually, a time comes when we must take some action. I am calling on the Defenders to begin collecting data from the Dream privately. I know that many of us would rather not interface with the Dream at all, that we wake ourselves up immediately to prevent it from further infecting our minds. But while hundreds of passcodes have been uncovered already, hundreds remain, and if someone . . . reckless is the first to decipher what the code means, that could put the entire planet at risk. We must decipher the code first. We can and must work together to play this game so that we can control the outcome, a
nd I am linking to several spaces online that we have created for that purpose. We have information that several governments are already putting personnel to work to attempt to solve the code before anyone else, but I don’t believe governments should be trusted with this either. While we can work together, when a code is deciphered, we must put that information in a central and secret location. I have created an encryption code and am including below instructions for how to use it. If you find a code, please send it to us, encrypted, and we will check it in the Dream for accuracy, and add it to our proprietary list of codes only Defenders will have access to. With the size, passion, and intelligence of this community, I believe we will be the first to understand what the next chapter in this story is, and I know we are the only ones I would trust with that information. Thank you, and stay safe.”

  “Thank you, and stay safe” was how he ended all his videos. Pretentious and subtly menacing . . . Peter Petrawicki all the way!

  “We’re going to have to do that now too,” I said after we’d finished watching the video.

  “Fuck that, we’re above his shit.” Andy was pretty pissed. “This is something the Carls want humanity to do together. Pitting us against each other, that’s what Peter wants.”

  “No, he just made it impossible for people to feel like we’re investigating some great caper as a species. I want that as much as you do, but I can’t encourage people to post discovered codes publicly. If he has access to all the secret ones they have, plus all the public ones everyone else has, the Defenders really will decipher the code first, and be in control at that point.”

  “Maybe that’s a race that it’s OK to lose.”

  “Fuck that,” I parroted back to him. “I’m not letting him win.”

  “Let’s take some time to think at least. Assemble the brain trust.”

  So we did. We got Miranda and Robin on Skype and explained Petrawicki’s plan.

  “That is not good,” Miranda said. “This is a genius move on PP’s part. Not only does it give them a chance at winning, just framing it as a competition instead of a collaborative effort helps their cause. It slows everyone down and it pits us all against each other.”