Хэнк Грин - A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

I let out a long breath. This was exactly what I wanted to do, but I didn’t want them to know. “But, Andy,” Robin said, ever the clear thinker, “if you do that, you have to know that you’re going to get sucked in. And you can’t let yourself forget why you’re doing it. OK?”

“I can do it,” I said, relieved that it seemed like I was going to get to keep my friends and my Altus habit.

“So what are our other assets?” Robin asked.

“Miranda is in Val Verde right now, though it’s not easy to talk to her,” I said. “Maybe we can count on her for something at some point.”

April added, “And we have an artificial intelligence that can inhabit a monkey. That has to count for something.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Maya said, like it was something really obvious.

“OH!” April said. “Yeah, and I can Google stuff with my mind!”

I just stared at her.

“Also, the special skin, it seems to be very strong. I punched a hole in a car. Also, when Maya got shot, it healed her.”

I stood up from the couch. “What? Go back! Go slower!”

So she did. She told us the whole story and it took a long-ass time, but it was a good story, so no one minded.

At the end, April listed our assets out loud.

“So we have a hundred fifty million dollars, a sentient monkey who is also a superintelligent alien AI, access to a massively influential anonymous video-essay platform, a mole in Val Verde, a high-level Altus user ready to turn his coat when needed, and a woman with superstrength who is capable of Googling things with her mind—that’s me.”

“I mean, that’s pretty good,” I said, “but I don’t know how it helps us take down Altus.”

Maya looked at April, and April looked down at her lap. “I guess I also have what I’ve always had,” she said, a little sadly. “An audience.” I didn’t even notice that Maya had been holding April’s hand until she let it go.

Nothing is inevitable.

APRIL

Andy didn’t want to leave us, but the sun went down and Carl told him he had to go home and sleep in his own house. And so, eventually, Maya and I were left alone to squat in a four-thousand-square-foot high-rise apartment with our pet alien monkey.

It felt wrong, to be sure. It felt like both trespassing on whoever owned the place and trespassing on society for enjoying something so decadent. Did I take baths in the giant soaking tub with a view of both the Hudson and the East River (and everything in between)? Yussss. But I had complicated thoughts about structural inequality while I did it.

Maya had set Tater up in the nicest spot in the house. We certainly didn’t need the sunlamp anymore. Suddenly the tiny leaves were flourishing. It was the only plant in the whole place, which I guess made sense for a vacant apartment.

Andy had brought us a computer, and apparently Carl didn’t have any problem hacking the Wi-Fi, because it was on immediately. But that didn’t mean that I wanted to hop back on social media. I mean, I did, but also I did not.

“I just hang out on the Som,” Maya said to me when I brought it up.

“Yeah, I know.”

She smiled at me. “It’s not the same, of course. People use it to work on reality games or indulge in conspiracy theories. There are a lot of people there looking for you. They actually put me onto your trail.” I could tell that was a long story. “Anyway, you shouldn’t go on Twitter.”

“I’m going to have to eventually, right? It’s one of our assets.”

“I know, I just don’t want you to,” she said while handing me the laptop. “I guess this is what life is.” You would think that literally dying would make it so that you don’t care about how many followers you have on Twitter, but, like, just between you and me, I did. I spent the next hour looking through the hundreds of people who had sent me @replies just in the last day, trying to get a feel for how I was being imagined.

Holly

@accioawesome

OMG look at this adorable picture I found of @AprilMaybeNot and @AndySkampt chowing on In-N-Out. I miss her.

1 reply 3 retweets 6 likes

Chris in Hell

@edens_halo

It’s legit gross that @realDonaldTrump has a Hollywood walk of fame star when legend and literal angel @AprilMaybeNot doesn’t.

3 retweets 12 likes

Saskia

@saskiab

Going for an @AprilMaybeNot look this AM. That girl had style.

2 replies 0 retweets 9 likes

Dan Burdick

@RenoDan203854

President Ashby is so clearly talking at the regular with @AprilMaybeNot. Every word that comes out of her mouth is so fake. We all know who is actually in charge.

5 replies 24 retweets 49 likes

Cat

@Catriffic

Sometimes you have a real shit day at work, and then you remember, hey, at least you don’t have to hear @AprilMaybeNot’s voice every fucking day anymore.

0 replies 2 retweets 10 likes

Here I was, a reconstructed humanlike thing with literal superpowers, still getting my feelings hurt by randos.

“I looked up that sofa.” Maya had walked into the room, and I hadn’t noticed. “It’s a Fendi.”

“Fendi, like the fashion label? They make couches?”

“They do.”

“Do I want to know how much it costs?”

“Probably not. How is the internet?” she asked me, still standing.

“Oh, y’know, things are apparently pretty bad,” I said, making a show of closing the laptop.

“They’re just calling it ‘the Crisis.’ Not ‘the Financial Crisis’ because it’s bigger than finances. I think we all just forgot what life is supposed to be for. People haven’t adjusted.”

“Can we talk?”

“Yeah.” She sat down on the couch next to me. “So, I got shot.”

“You got shot.” We hadn’t talked about it. The boiler room had been too strange, like another world where we didn’t have to think about reality, but now we were in the world again. “Are you OK?”

“Physically, yeah, I think so.” She lifted her shirt to show me, and there, just under her bra, was an irregular, pearly-white spot in her dark skin. Around it was a bloom of purple and red bruise. I felt sick looking at it. Not because it looked gross—it honestly didn’t—but because of what it meant. And what it had almost meant.

She pulled her shirt back down, wincing a little with the movement. Then she dug into her pocket and brought out a milky-white stone with flecks and veins of iridescence flashing through it. “I think you should have this,” she said.

I took it in my right hand; it felt hollow and cool. Then I looked down at my left hand, still smaller than it had been, still with only four fingers. I put the stone in my left hand and … it vanished. It slid into my hand like dropping water into water. And then, the hand rippled and, as we watched, my pinky finger grew back.

“Where the hell did you get that?!” I nearly shouted, staring at my re-formed hand.

“At a flea market in New Jersey,” she said.

I stared at her. And then she told me her whole story. Brooding for months, storming out of her parents’ house, chasing dead dolphins and bad internet, lugging around a potato plant, and running from crazed reality gamers. It was proper adventure! “Well, thank you,” I said when she was finally done. “For coming to get me. I don’t know what I would have done if I had opened that door and no one was there.” I shuddered. “Or worse, if someone else was.”

Before Andy left the apartment to go back to his work getting into the Altus Premium Space, we had concocted a very rough plan.

1. Always have our ringers on in case Miranda texts again.