Хэнк Грин - A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

Maybe if we could take down Altus, we could have all of that. People would remain free to continue the beautifully stupid endeavor of humanity, and I would just be a person again. Well, maybe not just a person, but close enough anyway.

The point is, if you want to be happy, let go of your wants. If you want to be effective, harness them. I think either strategy is OK, but I’ve made my choice. Sorry, Mom.

“I think I figured it out,” I said to Maya, knowing Carl would hear me.

“What?” Maya asked.

“Where the money is going to come from.”

“The billions of dollars?” Maya asked.

“Yeah, yeah …” And then I told her.

She looked back at me with a slight curl of disgust in her lip. “I mean, if that works, then I guess it was all worth it.”

ANDY

It was time. I went on the Altus exchange and started selling AltaCoin for cash. I couldn’t do it all at once because there simply weren’t enough people buying. Every time I sold a hunk, the price would drop. But eventually, a few million dollars at a time, it all flowed out of my account and, instead of cryptocurrency, my bank account had billions of actual dollars in it.

I apologize for interrupting a fairly intense moment with a bunch of stuff about … fucking finance, but it’s important.

Remember Stewart Patrick, the guy who ran the private equity conference in Cannes and who gave me his business card? Well, I’d looked him up and, guess what, he was born before Star Trek: The Next Generation came out, so he probably wasn’t named after Patrick Stewart. It was the kind of lie that really didn’t matter except it let you know that a guy didn’t mind lying for no reason.

I called him at seven o’clock at night, assuming I would leave a message, but he answered his phone.

“I’m … I’m sorry for calling so late,” I said, surprised and unprepared.

“Who is this?” He sounded a little agitated.

“It’s … Andy Skampt, we met in Cannes. You told me to call you if I knew anything that might be useful.”

“Oh, well, in that case, hold on a moment.” I heard him talking to someone in the background.

“Andy, you have my attention.” Not long into the conversation, I felt way out of my depth, and I handed the phone to Bex. They had been talking for a solid thirty minutes when they finally got to the point.

“I’m going to have to ask you to stop talking about this like you’re saving the world,” Stewart told us, exasperated. “I don’t know any of what you know, and also I don’t care. The only thing I’m worried about is whether there’s money to be made here. If there’s a transaction that is going to occur, I can charge you for that. If it’s a large transaction, I will make a lot of money. If you know that the value of Altus is going to plunge, that’s all that matters. We put together a trade, I call every single person invested in Altus, I scare the shit out of them, and then, when the bad thing happens, you buy the stock when they’re willing to sell at a low price. I don’t care why we’re doing it. It’s great if it’s a good cause, but if there’s money for me to make, why are you trying to convince me it’s good? Who cares. I’ll do it.”

Jason, Bex, and I looked at each other. I mean, I guess he was right. If you’re going to pay someone a bunch of money, you don’t also need to convince them that it’s the right thing to do.

“And how much money do you have to buy Altus shares?” he asked.

“Right now, like five billion?”

“That is not enough,” Stewart said.

“We think we can get more together soon.”

“Very soon?”

“Very soon.”

We hung up, and then Bex turned to me and said, “I think we’re doing this right.”

“I’m glad. I have never done a hostile takeover.”

“No, I mean the whole thing, because a book told me to give you this after ‘an important conversation about buying a company.’ ” I looked down. She was holding out a book to me.

“Goddamn it, Carl,” I said under my breath and then began to read it out loud.

This is the last time I’ll be in touch. After today, I will no longer be able to communicate with you. I hope you have learned things from our correspondence.

I also want to say, of all the people I have communicated with in this way, you have had the worst time. I wanted to make people’s lives better while I did this, but yours has gotten worse. This is a function of our working together toward a particular outcome.

So, I’m sorry this has been a rough time. Remember that music brings you joy, that making a podcast with Jason brings you joy, that playing games with friends brings you joy.

You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful.

The last round of fundraising Altus did valued the company at over $500 billion. But we didn’t need to buy all of Altus, we needed to buy over 50 percent, so we just needed to convince a few very, very rich people that they were holding on to a deeply toxic asset and they would be lucky to get even 2 percent of their money back.

Anyhow, now that that’s all explained, we can return you to your regularly scheduled climax.

MAYA

The copilot walked into the cabin after our ears started popping with the descent and said, “We’re coming in on final approach, we don’t really know what’s going to happen when we land, so be ready, I guess.”

We had talked through a bit of the plan and at least knew what we were each going to do once we were on the ground.

“April, when we land, you may notice a difference in your ability,” Carl said. “I severed the node that connected me to Altus, which means that you will not be able to reach into the network. I am going to begin rebuilding that network from the inside when we land, but it will take time. You should notice if and when you reconnect.”

“I’m already disconnecting, I think,” April said. “It’s like … it’s like I’m trying to grab something, but my hand is passing through it.”

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said without turning to look at me, “I’m fine.”

We landed uneventfully, and as we taxied down the runway, Carl and I went to the back of the plane and, well, we hid in the bathroom. I sat on the toilet; they lounged in the sink. I always expected Carl to smell like an animal, but they actually mostly just smelled like April, because they used her shampoo.

The moment the copilot brought down the door, we could hear someone yelling.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING! YOU CAN’T JUST LAND A PLANE WITHOUT TOWER CONFIRMATION OR FILING A FLIGHT PLAN! GOOD LUCK HOLDING ON TO YOUR LICENSE AFTER THIS!”

It was time to start the plan. I peeked out of my position in the bathroom as April walked to the front of the plane and then down the stairs.

“This seems fine,” I said to myself.

“Yes,” Carl said, ignoring my sarcasm. “So far, all according to plan.”

As April stepped down the stairs and into the light from the tiny terminal building, the guy stopped yelling, though I couldn’t hear what he was saying.

I sat in my thoughts, staring into space, trying to keep my breathing steady, and then, I finally asked Carl, “When do we go?”

“We just need to make sure that no one will see us when we leave the plane.”

“How long will that take?”

“About ten minutes.”

“How long have we been waiting?”

“Eight.”

It had felt like an hour.

“And then what?”

“And then we take out the cell phone jammers, and then we go get Miranda, and then we try and explain to the world how bad these people are and hopefully the price goes down low enough for us to buy it.”