Хэнк Грин - A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

A couple of guys were up, eating cereal and watching, I was pretty sure, Bumblebee on the flat-screen TV.

One of them gestured to me and said to the other, audibly, “They should tell the new recruits to bring DVDs in their bags. I’m not saying this is a bad movie, but a fourth viewing doesn’t feel necessary.”

“You’ve got to watch DVDs?” I asked, horrified.

“No streaming, no cable, not even anything to pick up with an antenna. We’re pretty out of it here.” He was wearing a baseball cap that just had the area code 605 on it.

“There’s no internet at all?”

“There’s internet—it’s slow, first of all, entirely satellite. But it’s locked down tight. Unless you have top-level clearance, you can only access the intranet. It’s got most of what you need, though. I’m Har.”

“You’re Har?” His smile was big and friendly, but as I shook his hand, I watched his eyes tear down my body. As mentioned, there were not a lot of women in this place.

“That’s what they call me anyway. This is Marigold.” He gestured to the guy sitting next to him, whose messy blond hair reminded me of Andy. He waved at me without looking up.

“I’m Miranda. Bumblebee , eh?” I was skeptical.

“It’s not that bad. Definitely the best of the Transformers movies.”

“I’ve felt different about them since Carl,” I said.

He let out a little spurt of laughter. “I’ve felt different about everything since Carl.”

“I guess that’s not wrong. Do you mind?” I was pulling a chair over.

“Please, it’s a free island.”

“In my experience so far, it is one of the less free islands.”

He chuckled without looking away from the movie. I was coming into it halfway through, so I was pretty confused, and mostly I just thought about Carl and April and looked around the room. All at once I noticed that the big bowl next to the TV was full of condoms. This really was like a college dorm.

“Hey, what was your first screen name?” Har asked after we’d watched for ten minutes or so.

“Huh.” I thought back, and then laughed out loud. “That is a surprisingly personal question.”

“Come on, what have you got to lose?” he asked.

“Well, it was on Neopets, it was a virtual pet simulator—”

“I know what Neopets is. What was the screen name?”

“OK, fine. Diggles?”

Har and Marigold leapt off the couch with huge smiles on their faces and shouted, “HOOOOO!!!!!” They whooped and hollered. I sat there, eyes wide, completely confused. The movie was forgotten. Marigold, who had said nothing to me at all, was now staring at me with a big, joyful smile, and then he yelled, “WELCOME TO ALTUS, DIGGLES!!”

I finally stood up. “What is happening!?”

“Everyone at Altus goes by their first screen name—that is, if we can get it out of people. It’s kinda a big deal to get someone’s name before anyone else, especially if you get it before they find out about the tradition. No offense, Diggles, but that was pretty easy.” The frat house vibe was real .

“I’m a very trusting person. Are you actually going to keep calling me Diggles?”

“For as long as you’re here!” Har shouted. Their names suddenly made a lot more sense.

“Well, enjoy calling me Diggles for the next few hours, then. I’m afraid I washed out early.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know what you know, but what I know is that you’re going on a tour today that they only give to people who have been hired. We’re here to gather you and a couple other kids who got jobs.”

What the hell? I thought about telling them they were wrong, but maybe they were right. Or maybe someone had just forgotten to file my paperwork and I was about to get my last chance to learn about Altus!

“So, when are we going over?” I asked.

“A half hour.”

“Shouldn’t we get the other guys up, then?” I asked.

“Now that you mention it, yeah.” Har leaned forward and turned off the TV.

They went and collected Sid and Paxton, and they both showed up looking remarkably presentable ten minutes later.

“These guys and I were just talking about our first screen names,” I told them. Har and Marigold’s eyes got a little big.

“My first screen name was on Neopets. I know … frickin’ embarrassing.”

Sid and Paxton laughed a little.

“Mmmm.” Paxton thought. “I think it was RuneScape. Oh god, this is awful. What was your Neopets name?”

“Yours first!” I said.

But then Sid broke in and said, “I am not ashamed. I was CaptainSippyCup and I have no idea why.” I could tell that Marigold and Har were about to explode, but Paxton still hadn’t gone yet.

“That is pretty bad. I was Diggles, so, like, equally rough, though.”

“I don’t know about that. What about you, Paxton?”

He was blushing. “I don’t think I remember.”

“Oh, you definitely remember,” I said. And then I almost told him it was OK to not tell us, but that was clearly not what I was supposed to do.

Finally, he sighed and said, “LittleP-Nut.”

Har and Marigold screamed again, jumping up and down. They literally put their heads under my arms and lifted me up off the ground, screaming, “DIGGLES! You legend! You absolute legend!” Honestly, it was nice. I’d missed feeling like I was part of something.

It turned out that the dorm was actually physically connected to the campus. You didn’t even have to go outside. Most Altus employees chose to walk through the outdoor courtyard, but to give us a sense of how the giant C-shaped building was actually structured, they walked us through the hallways. From the dorms, then into the recreation area and gym, which was more about Ping-Pong tables than elliptical machines, and then into the areas dedicated to actual science. You could tell when you made the transition because the door was huge and thick and heavy. It must have cost a fortune to get it to the island.

The C was the bulk of the campus, but it certainly wasn’t the entire place. A giant cinder block building with prominent air conditioners on the ceiling was referred to as “the server farm.” I remembered that first article I’d read and realized they were mining cryptocurrency in there.

Marigold held his badge to the door. It clicked, and we went through. A lot of the labs were the ones we’d seen the day before, but there were just so many. They were so pristine and slick, and I was probably biting my lip like I was in love because I was.

But also I was nervous. Part of that was trying to make a good impression on new people. This whole experience had a distinct first-day-of-school vibe. But then also I was trying to catalog everything I saw in case it became important to my espionage, and that made me feel like I was constantly at risk of being caught.

“Do you use local workforce?” I asked.

“We do, there’s actually an on-campus dorm,” Har told me.

“Separate from our building,” Marigold added. “Pays very well. Though security means they can’t leave campus for the next year.”

“The next year ?!” Sid—or rather … Sippy said.

“Yeah … THEY KNOW TOO MUCH! Otherwise we’d have to keel them!” Marigold joked.

After a solid ten minutes of walking through various labs, including comp science and what looked like a fabrication lab, we finally hit the administrative offices. Just the fact that we were in Val Verde and not Puerto Rico was hugely valuable information, but this walk through the building had given me even more. I had plenty to report back, if only I could get the phone to work.

Luckily, I’d seen a few things around the lab that had given me an idea.