Хэнк Грин - A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

Eight:Celebrities. People with big internet audiences are asking their fans to buy cheap items to get them into the Space.

Five:They’re billing them as “Limited Edition” items. They’re available “Only today and tomorrow!” So, like, exactly the days they need to sell stuff to get into the Premium Space.

Twelve:Fuuuuuck. That’s shitty. The whole idea was that it would be available to the people who added the most value to the Open Access Space.

Eight:Well, yeah, I mean … have you met capitalism? The whole idea of everything is to reward people who create value and yet …

Twelve:Fuck. Why doesn’t Altus ban this?

Eight:At a guess, probably because it’s getting them lots of users and free marketing and money.

I was about to log back out when I got a private message from One.

One:I need you to experience the Premium Space, and it’s possible you won’t need the help getting there. But can you tell me what your object is? I might be able to give you a bump at the last second if you need it.

Twelve:It’s Breezy Spring Day.

One:Hah, amazing. Breezy Spring Day is a genius object. Thinking to make wind! I love it.

It was amazing how good it felt to have them compliment me. All anybody wants is to be appreciated by the people they think are cool, and it turns out I kinda idolized One.

Twelve:I could also just tell my audience to buy it. It’s not like I don’t have an audience. Hell, I could just start selling custom limited-edition socks and it would put me over the edge.

One:If you do that, you’ll get in, but you won’t be taken seriously. You’ll just be another rich person who bought their way in. You need to work for it, you need to really care.

Twelve:OK, I’m going back into the Space, I think I’ll make a limited-edition Breezy Spring Day to make fun of the weblebrities. Some of the people who check on my work will find it funny at least. But maybe I can sell a few.

One:This is such a great video topic. An open market rewards people who work hard and think critically at first, but once real value is at stake, the market rapidly transforms to reward those with access to capital. The fact that, in this case, the capital is fame and not money only makes it that much more universal and interesting.

Twelve:Yes. The top 50 today compared to the top 50 yesterday shows directly that people who aren’t adding value have bumped out at least 10 people who are.

One:And by the time the top 50 are selected, I wouldn’t be surprised if that number doubled.

Twelve:Just leave me a message here if you want any help with that script.

One:Will do. But first priority … get your ass in the Premium Space.

So I did. I ate a protein bar and peed and went back into the Altus Space. First I checked the ranking. I was in forty-first. No doubt, if I didn’t change something, I’d be knocked out by celebrities soon. The top sellers were still all legit object creators, mostly people making super cheap clothes and decor that traded on having tons of sales. But there were enough people making environments that I was just one of many. I might have been one of the top creators, but I only had one product.

I dropped into the Open Access Space and went ahead and did a gimmick. I cloned my Breezy Spring Day and made the sky pink and the grass purple and created low-flying, super-light objects that looked like massive, transparent crystals. It took me a couple hours to get the look right, but at the end, it was an alien world that still felt like a beautiful spring day. I released it under the name Breezy Spring Day: Alpha Centauri ~-[{(One Day Only)}]-~. Here’s what I wrote in the description.

Hey, no offense to anyone who’s cashing in on their celebrity to get into the Premium Altus Space with ~-[{(Limited Edition)}]-~ trinkets … OK, actually … offense. This is dumb. If you want to see someone who has worked to actually create value, you can buy this very cheap, high-quality, slightly modified version of my 500,000+ download Breezy Spring Day for one day only.

With six hours left, I was in the mid-thirties. And I felt secure enough to take a bio-break. Spending hours at a time in the Altus Space wasn’t uncomfortable until you left. You felt fine when you were in there, but the longer you stayed in, the more it sucked to come out. Headaches, body aches, low blood sugar.

The stress of the ranking was real, but I felt like I couldn’t do anything else about it, so I did the healthy thing and went for a walk down to the Subway were Bex worked. Altus didn’t feel like a massive world-destroying entity; it felt more like Etsy at the moment. But that’s the way of these things. One day, an internet company wants to sell books, and then ten years later they’re a threat to nearly every industry on earth.

The city felt a little dead. There just weren’t a lot of people out. I passed a store that said “Altus Headsets!” But then, under that, it said “Sold Out! Restock Thursday!”

“Andy!” Bex called out as I came in. “Are you OK?”

Apparently that’s how bad I looked.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Altus Space,” I answered honestly.

She pursed her lips and pushed them to the side of her face. “You and every other dude in New York. Business was starting to pick up with the recession, but now no one’s out at all.”

“Business was picking up?”

“Yeah, folks stop going to expensive lunch places, but they still need lunch! Now almost all of our orders are delivery apps.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I dropped off the planet.”

“You’re not the first guy who’s ghosted me for a couple days.” But she didn’t have her usual confidence as she said it.

I looked at her gorgeous dark eyes and felt like such a complete turd. But she saved me from having to say something.

“What’s Altus like?”

“You haven’t been in?” I asked stupidly.

She just laughed, though. “No, I’ve heard about it. They say it’s like the Dream. I miss the Dream.”

“You were into it?”

“Not any more than most people. I solved a couple sequences that had already been solved for fun. I mostly just walked around. It was nice to have a place to be alone.”

I barked out a laugh. “That’s the opposite of the problem I have. I can’t find time to be with people.”

“You know our lives are pretty different, right?” she asked.

“I mean, yeah. That’s true of everyone but more …” And then I didn’t know what to say.

“With the immigrant brown girl, yeah, you’re allowed to say we’re not the same, Andy.” I didn’t know if we were having a fight, but apparently we weren’t because then she just said, “Sweet onion chicken teriyaki?”

“Yes, thank you. After tonight, I should have more time. Can you come hang out tomorrow?”

“I’ve got another afternoon shift, so I can come over in the morning or late.”

“Come over in the morning, I’ll either have something to celebrate or something to be miserable about. I’ll explain then.”

“Why don’t you explain now? We’re closing, you can eat your sandwich and tell me what’s going on. If it’s so hard to find time to not be alone, just … stop being alone.”

The urge to leave the Subway and rush back to my apartment to check on the rankings was almost a physical tug. I could feel the nerves on that side of my body light up with sensitivity. I closed my eyes, took a breath, sat down, forcing my brain to settle, and unwrapped my sandwich, took a bite, and probably (knowing me) started talking with my mouth full.