An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

by Hank Green

  I got out of the bed. I had started thinking of it as my bed, but that feeling had suddenly evaporated.

  “Miranda, can you stay here and work on making sure you have the program ready to run if I can get the password?”

  “It’s ready to run now.” And then she added, “I think,” in a manner that was most unlike her. I was used to her being ridiculously sure of everything.

  “Well, I need it ready to go the moment I have the key. Is there a way to email me a file or website I can input it into if I don’t have you at hand?”

  So, yes, I was offhandedly asking this beautiful genius who wanted nothing more than to be a part of this to compile a bunch of code for me that would make her unnecessary to me. Did she know that? Oh, absolutely. Did she do it anyway? Of course she did.

  “Yeah, I can work on that.”

  “I need to go for a walk,” I said, leaving “alone” implied, and left Miranda there without another word.

  I exited Andy’s building on 26th and just started walking. I called Maya immediately and explained the situation. I realized I was pissed at her too, because the Defenders wouldn’t have been able to figure any of this out if I had just kept the 767 Sequence a secret like I initially wanted to. It was a dumb anger, and also not a helpful one. I tried not to throw that in her face because I needed her.

  “How could the password be outside of the Dream?” I asked.

  “We don’t know that it is. The sequence may lead you to another part of the Dream that is public. Clues have been skipped by brute force before,” she replied.

  “Why did it have to be a Defender?” I asked in frustration, knowing that the question wasn’t helpful. “They’re like maybe 2 percent of the humans in the world. How did they figure it out before the rest of us?”

  “That’s actually a really good point, April,” Maya said.

  “It is?”

  “Yeah, I mean, it could just be a coincidence, but it could also be one of two other things. One, they knew that the information would be passed along and they’re just fucking with us. Or, two, it’s something different about the way they think, about the way they see the Carls, that helped them uncover the password.”

  “Oh, so it helps to be a xenophobic, delusional conspiracy theorist?”

  “Maybe, yeah.”

  I had just arrived in a park I didn’t recognize. People lounged on grassy green hillocks. There were basketball courts and old guys playing chess. Very NYC.

  Maya continued. “What do the Defenders obsess about that you don’t?”

  “Um . . . me? That I’m a secret space alien? They want me to do a DNA test, they don’t think my parents exist. Either that or I’m a traitor to my species. Or that the Carls have been using me all along and that I was chosen specially and duped into being their shill. There are reams of conspiracy theories, Maya. I don’t read them because it freaks me out.”

  “They think that you were chosen by the Carls, and you don’t?”

  “Right. It’s ridiculous to think that they picked me out of eight billion humans on the planet. Like I was the only person lovable and gullible enough to be their missionary.”

  “April, really?”

  “Really what?”

  She didn’t reply, sensing we were on treacherous ground, so I just continued talking.

  “OK, yes, Carl saved me. He didn’t save anyone else,” I said, conveniently leaving out that I had also been saved from an assassin’s bullet by Hollywood Carl’s right hand. “They gave me a dream that no one else had access to. I get it, I’m . . .”

  I couldn’t finish that sentence.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “God, that gives me the fucking creeps. The Defenders were spouting that from day one and I hate that it’s true.”

  “You hate that you were chosen by an alien race to be their envoy? That they think you’re special enough to give unique knowledge to, and to keep from being currently dead?” She said this somewhat mockingly—like, of course I loved being special.

  “Yes, OK! I hate it!” I was suddenly angry. We had made it to the treacherous ground and now we had to deal with it. “I hate it now and I hated it the first moment I thought it. I hate that they saved me and let all those other people die. I hate that the weight of this bullshit situation is all on me!” My volume level had increased, but it was Manhattan—people screamed into their phones all the time.

  “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’m sorry I didn’t think of that.” She paused. “But it’s not just you, you’ve got help. You’ve got good friends. Good people. I love Andy, of course, and Miranda and Robin seem lovely.”

  There was no way I was going to get into the weeds of my day thus far, so I just said, “I don’t know that I do, Maya.”

  “Oh, April.” She sighed.

  “Yeah. I sure do know how to fuck shit up.”

  “Yeah, you do,” she agreed.

  Those words should have been extra weight on me, but for some reason they made me lighter. The silence hung for a while. For that one moment, I forgot that I was at the center of a swirling storm of political intrigue and I was just a shitty ex-girlfriend. It was kinda lovely. I laughed.

  “OK.” I headed back to the topic at hand. “So the Carls really did choose me and they really are treating me different than everyone in the rest of the world. How could that help the Defenders solve the 767 Sequence?”

  “I don’t know, April,” she said, a little dejected. I didn’t know why, possibly because we had gotten close to talking about something else and, again, I didn’t let it happen. “I think the Carls, maybe they didn’t pick you because of who you were but because of who you could become.”

  “That’s a nice thing to say, though I don’t know that I love who I’ve become.”

  “Maybe you’re not done yet.”

  I didn’t respond to that.

  “April, I’ve never stopped being obsessed with . . .” And then she paused.

  I waited patiently, silently for her to finish that sentence.

  But then I couldn’t because I had solved the 767 Sequence.

  “Obsessed with me!” I said.

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, I thought I could detach from this whole weirdness, but after you left, I just threw myself in. I lied when I said I just liked the Dream. I needed to keep being a part of it. I thought I was better than you, but I was exactly as obsessed, just in a different way.”

  I let her finish because it was important, but it was also agonizing.

  “OK, but that is also not what I meant. I meant the Defenders are obsessed with me. They have a thousand conspiracy theories, Maya. They know everything about me. Every move I’ve ever made, every poster in the background of every video. Everything public I’ve ever done in my life!”

  “And?”

  “Row six,” I said. “I sat in it that first week when I was flying out to meet Jennifer Putnam and do that late-night show. I got upgraded because someone was in the seat I’d been assigned, but they’d been assigned it too. It was my first time in business class. It was a 767. It was row six.”

  “Six like the Mayan number on the tail of the 767?”

  “Yeah, and my little TV was broken. Or, I thought it was broken. It had a bunch of weird code on it!”

  “Weird code like . . . ?”

  “Weird like hex code.”

  “But how would the Defenders get their hands on that? How would we?”

  “BECAUSE I FUCKING TWEETED IT, MAYA! GODDAMN IT!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  There were people looking at me, which wasn’t great because I was pretty recognizable. I moved as fast as I could, with my back and shoulder still stiff and twinging, back toward Andy’s place but then, instead, popped into a coffee shop on 12th. It was a cute place with a couple of bars and a few two-tops. About a
half dozen student-looking people were drinking their lattes in front of their laptops.

  “HELLO! My Name Is April May and I Need A Laptop Computer Right Now,” I said.

  I had bet correctly, and there was indeed one person, a guy in his late teens or early twenties, who was not just willing but honored to give me his computer.

  In a moment I had my tweet up:

  @AprilMaybeNot: On my way to LA and got bumped to business class. My little plane TV is broken though, so I want the money I didn’t spend back!

  That was a simpler time.

  The little plane TV indeed showed code that I now instantly recognized as hexadecimal. Was that the passkey? It was a lot of characters. So I popped it into its own window and started typing it out. As soon as I was done, about five minutes later, I emailed it to Miranda and Maya, which hopefully wasn’t going to cause any drama.

  The Key?

  I think this is the key, though I don’t know what it is or what to do with it.

  Then I texted them both separately, Check your email. Maya wrote back first, It’s hex, I’ve converted it, would you like to guess what it is?

  Me: The lyrics to a song?

  Maya: Last night they loved you, opening doors and pulling some strings, angel.

  Me: Of course it’s Bowie

  Maya: Hell Yes

  Miranda replied back with the same information, except to say that she had also inputted it into the latest version of the full code compiled on the Som. I’m sending you the result right now. It is not complicated, but April, let’s talk about this.

  It wasn’t complicated; it was an address in New Jersey and five words, “Only April. No One Else.”

  Until that moment, I had fully made up my mind to call the president as soon as we were sure we’d cracked it. It wasn’t even a question in my mind, we had the procedure down and I was going to do what I’d been told. I was tired of making big decisions and I was especially tired of screwing everything up when I made them.

  But now I was being told to do something else, and while I’d made up my mind what to do, it hadn’t stopped me from fantasizing about what might be waiting for me at the end of this road. My secret heart said that it was a face-to-face meeting with the intelligence behind the Carls—rather, the entity that I had come to think of as Carl in my head. The thought of that meeting happening between Carl and Peter Petrawicki made me want to vom. That’s not actually accurate: It made me angrier than any other thought I had ever had.

  I was being asked to do one thing by the president, who had been honest with me, who had trusted me, who was the absolute personification of authority. And then there was Carl. Carl who changed my life, who saved my life, who let everyone die except me. Carl the mystery. My mystery . . . my identity.

  I logged out of all my accounts and thanked the guy for his computer. He wanted a photo, we took one, I told everyone else who had gathered to watch that I was in a bit of a rush but thanks for watching my videos! Less than half an hour had elapsed.

  Miranda wrote again, Are you going? If you’re going, just let us know.

  But I didn’t think I’d been given a choice, or maybe I didn’t want to think I’d been given a choice. I finally felt fully comfortable with what I’d become. Did I know the Carls were good? No. I thought they were, I hoped they were, I felt they were. But I didn’t know. What I did know is that I’d chosen my side, and my side had chosen me.

  My phone rang—it was Maya. I didn’t pick up.

  Then it buzzed with a text: I plugged in the key, I saw what it said. You can’t go on your own.

  I didn’t respond, but she didn’t stop.

  April, maybe you can go on your own, but don’t do it right now. Let’s take some time.

  But the Defenders were already on their way, who knows what mess they would cause. She didn’t give up: APRIL JUST CALL ME, TALK TO ME.

  The phone rang again, I put it on mute. I was doing the thing I had to do, there wasn’t any point, but I did keep my eye on the three little dots that told me Maya was writing something to me. It finally came through as a wall of text.

  You’re so caught up in this, you have no idea. To Miranda and Robin, you’re so much more than a person. They’ve never known an April May that wasn’t famous. Have either of them ever said no to anything you’ve ever told them to do? Listen to me, April. In those relationships, you have all the power. Too much power. I’ve watched you with them, they idolize you. That’s how fame works. It sucks. No one you meet from now on is ever again going to feel normal around you. Both of them feel like it’s a privilege just to be near you.

  This is just something that happens, not something you did on purpose. But when they let you do these . . . frankly dangerous things, that doesn’t mean that they’re agreeing it’s a good idea. They just can’t say no to you. April, I hear you. But please trust me. Do not do this. I am telling you not to do this because I love you.

  I read the whole thing through four or five times. Maya had never said “I love you” to me, she knew it would scare me off. Not responding felt like it would be one of the greatest betrayals I could commit. I didn’t respond.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Are you sure this is it?” the driver asked. I didn’t need to check my phone because I’d been studying this very spot on Google Street View on and off for the last thirty minutes. I’d even found a real estate listing. It’s a warehouse. It’s not currently occupied. It’s for lease. If you would like to lease it, that would run you around $15,000 per month. It was, it turned out, a pretty big warehouse.

  “Yep! Thank you!”

  I didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried that there was no sign of Peter Petrawicki and whatever camera crew would be following him around. Speaking of cameras, I didn’t have one. What I did have was two phones and my ever-present “just in case” external battery.

  I thought for a long time about what Carl wanted. The message said “Only April,” but that seemed clearly about people’s physical presence. Carl usually seemed to want me to bring an audience with me wherever I went. And feeling certain that whatever was about to happen would be historic, I made a call that was both deeply foolish and genius.

  I went full livestream.

  Facebook’s system had gotten so good that it could handle pretty much infinite viewership these days. Worst-case scenario, I figured, I would crash it. Best-case scenario, I’d beat the record for the most-viewed stream of all time and share one of humanity’s greatest moments with the largest live audience in history.

  “This is April May, and I am pleased to announce that I have solved the 767 Sequence. For those of you who haven’t been following, for a while now we’ve known that all of the Dream Sequences have been solved and that the world is awaiting the solution of one final sequence that only appeared in one dream.”

  While saying all that, I walked from the curb up to a chained fence gate.

  “I don’t know why I was the only one who had this dream, just as I don’t know why New York Carl saved me from Martin Bellacourt on July 13.”

  I carefully kept the camera pointed at myself to minimize the clues of my location. The warehouse was big, three stories, made of wood, with large, mostly boarded-over windows and a few huge loading-bay doors. Wood lay strewn around the base of one of the walls. In between me and the door were both the fence and a parking lot that was being reclaimed by persistent little grasses.

  “After solving the 767 Sequence, we were given a password, which, when inputted into the code generated from the rest of the Dream Sequences, directed me here. The Garden State. The message was very specific that I should come alone, so that is what I’ve done.”

  I was poking at the fence now. It was capped with barbed wire, and the chain at the gate was tight and secure. I began walking along it, thinking aloud to what was now a massive audience about how I was going to get in
.

  But then, after I turned the corner, I spotted a cut in the fence. At this point, I decided to tell some truth. Not all of it or anything, but some.

  “However, we received word, not long ago, that another group had decoded the sequence and that they were on their way here as well. This is why I have, I’ll be honest, rushed into this trip a bit. I promised some people that I wouldn’t do it like this, but as we can see here”—there were still bits of chain-link fence scattered around in the overgrown grass—“I am not the first here.”

  I crawled through the slit in the fence and started walking up to the building. Along the way, my voice got quieter. I knew some of the Defenders must be nearby, possibly already taking part in whatever weirdness Carl had in store.

  I had thought a lot about what the endgame was, and, I’ll be honest, my dream was that it was some grand prize. Not, like, a new car or a million dollars, but some gift only the Carls could bestow. Immortality, my own spaceship, world peace. And there was a feeling inside of me that, if I didn’t get there, some ignorant, awful exophobe would be taking an all-expenses-paid trip to the Carl home world to show off how utterly awful humans are. I didn’t say any of this out loud, mostly because I knew it was a pipe dream to think anyone could ever guess what the Carls were up to. But also because I had made a pledge to myself to completely ignore that the Defenders even existed when speaking publicly.

  Instead, I talked in low tones about how we solved the 767 Sequence and all the people who had helped—the accordion players, all the people who knew Mayan numerals, the engineers who had taught me about the inner workings of a modern 767. And, of course, Maya, whom I had decided to give credit to for helping me uncover the final clue. It was she who had told me to get into the mind of the Defenders, after all.