Хэнк Грин - A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

She just exhaled sharply and rolled her eyes. That’s what she does when she doesn’t want to agree with you even though she knows you’re right.

Carl’s ideas on norms have given me a lot to think about. It’s not a pretty scene if you look at it from Carl’s angle. What is acceptable and what isn’t? We can’t kill people, absolutely not. But someone can starve on our doorstep while we pour food out for our dogs, and that’s just fine. That sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not. It’s something we all do. We treat our cats for diseases that are far less preventable than diseases children die of. But no one thinks about it because, ultimately, we aren’t actually acting to prevent the cats’ suffering; we’re acting to prevent our own suffering. Carl can clearly see contradictions like that where none of us could. Carl understands our morality better than we do. We let people buy the ability to influence us and we don’t notice. We take drugs that are tested on nonhuman primates and we don’t notice. But Carl knows, because they only have a few rules, and one of them is “Don’t do things that violate their norms.” And so Carl lets people die all day and all night. But Carl cannot kill. And how they find the line between those things, I don’t know, but they can, and that is maybe the most terrifying thing about them.

“We are going to have to act soon now,” Carl said. “When I realized it was the last time I would be able to contact Miranda, I sent her a message. It was brief, but she will understand it. That’s going to put a sequence of events in motion.” They sipped from the Capri Sun. “I’m sorry, but this intermission is over. In nineteen days we will be in Val Verde. In the meantime, there is a lot to do.”

“What?” I blurted.

“That’s how much time we have. More than that, and I will not be strong enough to help you.”

“What will we do in Val Verde?” Maya asked.

“I don’t know, hopefully something really smart,” they said.

Before either of us had time to respond to that, Carl continued, “But that’s not important right now. Right now, you two need to talk about how you are going to conduct your campaign against Altus.” They stood up on the couch then. “I am going to rest.” They hopped down and walked awkwardly on two feet out of the room, holding their juice in one hand.

The sun was getting low in the sky, reaching toward the Hudson. The sunsets from this place were ludicrous.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” Maya said. I felt like it was almost an accusation.

So I explained: “Someday people are going to know I’m back. And that will be a big deal. People will talk about it. Everyone will want the interview. Opinions about me, now, are muted and mostly respectful. It never looks good to yell at a dead person. But when I’m back … with … this”—I waved my hand vaguely at my face—“it will be bad.”

“It will be bad,” she agreed.

“I need you to make me do it,” I said as I realized it was true.

“What?” She looked like she legitimately hadn’t understood.

“I don’t trust myself. Why would I? I’ve never done anything but fuck up.” I could see pain in her eyes as I said it, but I couldn’t stop myself. “I’m a bad person.”

“No, April, you were a bad girlfriend, that’s a very different thing. You didn’t even cheat on me.”

“Yeah, but I lied. I lied about how much I cared, even though I knew it was hurting you.”

“But I knew it was a lie, and you knew I knew, so it was a shitty lie. But you’re right, it still hurt.”

I stared out the giant wall of windows, trying to pull myself back from tears. “I’m sorry this is all so fucked-up,” I said.

“Me too, April.”

“Well, it’s not your fault!”

“And you think it’s yours?” I didn’t reply, but I mean, yes, of course it was my fault.

“We’re talking about the entire human system and superintelligent aliens, April. This is something that happened to you, not something you did.”

“I made my decisions,” I replied.

“And now we’re making more of them. I don’t get why we’re the ones who have to choose.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Why does Peter Petrawicki get to choose how to release Altus? Who gives the CEO of Twitter the right to say what can and can’t be said on that platform? Most people who have power, they don’t have it for reasons, they just have it.” I was getting a little upset just talking about this, getting louder as I kept talking. “Only I get to decide how April May returns to the world because I’m the only one who can do it. It’s too much. I need you to tell me what to do!” It came out like I was begging, and maybe I was.

She stared out at the sun hanging over the Hudson.

“Honestly, I didn’t think I was going to have to convince you. I thought you’d be excited to get back to the game. Why don’t you want this?”

Oh. Uh. I mean, all of the obvious reasons. If you put your hand on a stove and it keeps burning you, eventually you stop doing it, right? But was that the only reason? Maya and I hadn’t had that long to be reunited, but already I was comfortable. I was happy. And yes, we were in a $15M apartment, so that probably helped, but when I looked deeper, I found something else.

“I thought it was a game,” I said. “I thought it was a game and I was winning. I was just like Peter. I just wanted more power and more attention and more money and more followers. Everyone was telling me that was the thing to want. I don’t mean explicitly, but every signal I was getting was that more was better. And so I was just winning a game. It felt good. I was getting the things everyone else wanted. I was curious too. And I believed most of what I was saying, but mostly I just wanted to win the game that everyone else wanted to win.”

“But?” she asked.

“At the moment, I just don’t care as much. I can feel it, right now, trying to suck me back in, but having spent time away, the parts that I liked about it seem like things other people care about, not me.

“But more than that”—and here I was getting to the real point—“it wasn’t ever a game, and it certainly isn’t now. When it was fun and snarky, that was fine. But now it’s like, ‘Use your power to save humanity,’ and, like, that’s not what I signed up for, Maya. I just wanted to feel important, I didn’t want to, like, be important.”

“But you are. And we need to use our superpowers now. Let’s make a video.”

Maya and I talked about what I wanted to say for at least an hour. At first I wanted to not show my face, to just tweet and write and maybe do some podcasts. But Maya convinced me that if I hid what I looked like, a lot of people would interpret it as a manipulation when they found out, and they would eventually find out. Then we had some ideas. First, I had to call my parents and tell them what I was about to do, just because that felt like the fair thing. Then we had to do a bunch of setup for an idea. Eventually we had an outline, which was probably more than I needed. Finally, Maya held up her cell phone and started recording me.

“Hi. It’s April. It’s been a hell of a time, huh? I’m still getting caught up, and oof, I’m sorry to have not been around during such a rough time. I’m sure you have questions.

“Long story short, well, I was in a warehouse fire, you heard about that. Carl saved me, but I was hurt really badly so it took me a long time to recover.

“I’ve spent most of the last months inside of an abandoned bar being … rebuilt, I suppose. This is what I look like now. It’s not a mask, it’s my face.” Here I ran my left hand along the lower half of my face. Then I held up the hand.