A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

by Hank Green

  “It just doesn’t seem like something you’d do!” he told me.

  I didn’t know how to respond to that because, of course it wasn’t. I would never have done any of that if the book hadn’t told me to.

  I was quiet for a while thinking about that, and I must have looked awkward because Robin said, a little concerned, “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No!” I said. “No, you’re right. I was just trying to figure out how I’d ended up doing something so weird and also, like, slightly inappropriate. She’s really nice. We had a good time. Do you think I should see her again?” I asked unnecessarily, since I was absolutely going to see her again if I could.

  “God, don’t ask me.” He looked appalled.

  “Yeah, what about you?” It occurred to me then that I didn’t even know Robin’s sexual orientation, so I just said, “Anybody interesting in LA?”

  “Honestly, Andy, dating has been complicated. For me, I mean. Not like since, uh, whenever. Just, always. So I don’t really do it anymore.”

  That was the most disjointed sentence I had ever heard Robin speak, and I was surprised to find myself legitimately unnerved by it. I had to fight not to tell him he didn’t have to share. Ultimately, that would have been giving him an excuse, and I only wanted to give him that excuse to protect my own vision of him.

  “Why is dating hard for you?” I asked.

  He gestured up to the driver and said, “I think we’ll talk about it another time.”

  We never did talk about it, though. I tried, that was the moment, but he pushed me away a little, and I let him.

  “Do you know where we’re headed right now?” Robin changed the subject.

  “A hotel, I assume?”

  “Oh god, no. The rooms won’t be ready, and even if they were, I wouldn’t let you go into one because you would fall asleep and it would destroy any chance you have at beating jet lag. No, right now we are going to meet the CEO of Redstone on his yacht. And then after that we’re going shopping, because it appears that you did not bring a suit.”

  “I did not bring a suit. Should I have brought a suit?”

  “Honestly, no, because Cannes is the best place in the world to buy a suit.”

  “An expensive suit?”

  “Very.”

  * * *

  —

  Cannes was gorgeous, though I felt I might have been missing something by visiting this very beach-centric place in the wintertime. It was definitely the off-season.

  The taxi dropped us off at the waterfront, and in my blue jeans and hoodie, I followed Robin on some docks through ever bigger and bigger yachts.

  “Can you tell me again what the International Private Equity Market is?” I asked as we walked.

  “You just had ten hours to read the one-page brief I gave you, and you didn’t do it, did you?”

  “Look, we can spend time arguing, or we can spend time learning about private equity.”

  He looked at me a little hard and a little sad, but not at all amused.

  “When you are normal rich, you can do what you’re doing with your portfolio. You buy stocks on public markets, and those stocks go up as the economy grows and your net worth increases. When you are very wealthy, or when you are an institution like a pension fund or a country, you get to do ‘private equity.’ The stock market is a public equity market. Private equity markets are when, in order to buy some or all of a business, you have to have meetings and sign papers and talk to lots of human beings. There are now big, giant private equity companies that consolidate wealthy people’s wealth, and then they use it to buy whole private companies, or parts of them. The people at this conference, combined, manage trillions of dollars.”

  “Why do they want me to talk to them?”

  “On paper, they want you to talk because you are a thought leader and will help guide their decisions, and any amount of insight they gain from you could be extremely valuable.”

  The phrase “thought leader” made my eyes roll so far back into my head I could see my brain, but that didn’t mean that there was anything in the world I wanted more than to be a thought leader.

  “What do you mean, ‘on paper’?” I replied skeptically.

  “Well, it’s also a show of power. Their event happened to be on the anniversary of the Carls showing up, and I think some of the conference organizers felt it would be a big get to have you here. If you weren’t here, it would be like them admitting that this isn’t the most important place in the world right now, which gave me some negotiating leverage.”

  * * *

  —

  The yacht we ended up on was, I guess, tasteful as far as yachts go. It definitely wasn’t the biggest boat in the marina, though it did have a spiral staircase enclosed in mirrors, so maybe “tasteful” is the wrong word. Weirdly, and even though I was dramatically underdressed, I was more or less comfortable as Robin and I were shuffled around to speak with various VPs and managing partners. I made jokes about jet lag, talked about how beautiful Cannes was, and everyone was astounded when they heard I’d never visited in the summer, as if all people regularly come to the South of France.

  And then I met Gwen Stefani. She had also been invited to the event for a performance, and my dumb brain did the dumb brain thing and said, Oh my god, you have to find April, she will be so stoked to meet Gwen Stefani. But, of course, April wasn’t there. I was only on that boat because I had stormed out of a room right when my best friend needed me the most and then she had gone and burned to death in a warehouse and that’s why I was hanging out with Gwen Stefani.

  I muttered some nonsense to Mrs. Stefani with tears starting to sting my eyes and ran out of the room onto the deck.

  I looked out at the Mediterranean and all the yachts and the powerful people and tried to pull myself together.

  “You OK, man?” It was Robin. He came up and put his hand flat on my back.

  I turned around and grabbed him and held on.

  “I’m sorry I don’t treat you like a person.” I was actually crying. Crying and holding another man. I know it’s not supposed to be weird, but there was still a hurdle there.

  He moved his hand up and down my back and said, “I know,” and I could hear he was crying too.

  “She should have been here,” I said. “I don’t deserve any of this. I’m only here because she’s not.”

  He pulled back from me to look at my eyes. His eyes were rimmed in red. “You’re only here because I . . .” And then his face crunched together and his throat slammed shut.

  “No, Robin.” Someone came out onto the deck. I locked eyes with them and they turned around like they hadn’t seen a thing. Rich people, I have noticed, are good at looking the other way. I continued, “You can’t still be blaming yourself.”

  At that he just cried softly into my shoulder. It was the first time we’d actually talked about April. We’d both been sad, and I’d assumed I knew all about his sad because I knew about mine. Except, of course, he was dealing with even more guilt. I wasn’t the only one who had let April down that day. Finally he said, “Of course I blame myself, it’s literally my fault. I should have told her about Putnam . . . any day before that day.” I could feel him shaking, so I led him over to a plush outdoor lounge chair, which he sank onto. Helping him helped me feel stronger.

  I sat beside him and put my arm around him. He leaned into me. I talked in a low voice. “No one is responsible for what happened to April except the guys who lit that fire. Friends hurt their friends’ feelings sometimes. April hurt my feelings a thousand times. She knew I loved her. Sometimes she was a bad friend. You screwed up, but that is not why she’s dead.”

  Robin leaned out from under my arm and looked up at me, and I was suddenly worried that he was going to try and kiss me. I pulled back a little bit. He noticed and laughed.

  “You dork! You tho
ught I was going to kiss you!” he said.

  “What?” I said, convincing no one.

  He laughed a little more, sniffing up his snot. “Jesus, guys are screwed up, aren’t we. There’s no space between being emotional and making out. How have any of us survived? We’re so bad at this.”

  “Agreed,” I said, still feeling awkward.

  He stood up. “Let’s leave this boat.”

  Over the next few hours, we wandered around Cannes together. We didn’t try to network or make connections; we just went to fancy shops and gawked at all the rich people who were somehow way richer than me. We talked about relationships and life and the internet, and I didn’t think about IGRI a single time. Before I knew it, it was time to check in to give my talk. Just as I was going onstage, Robin grabbed my shoulders and said, “You deserve to be here,” and at least in that moment, I believed him. Here’s the juiciest part of what I said that night:

  I am not going to pretend that I understand what you do. Earlier today, I had to ask someone what private equity was. But my guess is that, to some extent, your jobs are to predict the future. I bet a lot of you even do it really quite well. But here’s what I know . . . This isn’t over. Last August, the Carls disappeared, and we have, for the most part, attempted to pretend that they never happened. But if you think things have gone badly in the past year, I have bad news. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

  More than ever in our history, we understand that we aren’t in control. We never were, of course, but now we really understand that we are not. The Carls could return anytime, or maybe they’re still here. We exist at the mercy of some superior intelligence. Incorporating a reality like that into our minds and our cultures doesn’t happen quickly. Already suicides are up. Already fewer people are buying the stories we’ve been telling. This is only the beginning, and I want you to ask yourselves whether you’re helping people find their place in the world, or whether you’re hurting their ability to do so.

  Stability is a big deal for the world, and I would not, if I were you, spend very much time expecting it. I would, however, work hard toward doing everything we can to create it. You’re a bunch of powerful people, and I assume you spend a lot of time thinking about not just how you can exploit the state of the world, but also how you can affect it. I imagine it’s harder to make money when the world is in shambles, so if there is anything you can do to set us on a path to be more able to withstand another cosmic kick in the nuts, please do it.

  * * *

  —

  “That was new!” Robin said as I came offstage.

  “New good or . . .”

  Robin shrugged, beaming.

  One of the planners of the event came up to me, a younger guy who I’d talked to on the yacht. “Oh, Andy, that was wonderful. Hah! I love it. ‘Cosmic kick in the nuts’!” He gripped my shoulder and shook me a little. “We got our money’s worth with you.”

  “Thanks, I worked up something special for you.”

  “You say you don’t have any actual knowledge of what’s coming, but if you did, it wouldn’t be hard to turn that knowledge into money.”

  I thought about The Book of Good Times in my bag back at the hotel. I thought about IGRI and my sudden foray into paranormal insider trading, and then said, “I know exactly as much as you do.”

  “Sure! Sure . . . Just in case, here’s my card.” These people still gave each other cards. I looked down at it. “Stewart Patrick?” I said.

  “My parents were Star Trek fans, what can I say.”

  “Sorry I don’t have a card for you,” I said, “but I think you know how to get in touch. Um . . . is there a bathroom backstage?” I knew there was—I had used it before the show. He pointed me the way, and I rushed off. The moment the door was locked, I sat down on the toilet and opened my phone. A text message from Maya had come in, complimenting my video. I moved past it and opened my portfolio.

  My $100,000 of IGRI stock was no longer IGRI stock. IGRI had been acquired by a car company trying to lock up cobalt mines to make electric-car batteries. So now I had over $1 million of stock in that car company. I let out a long, cool breath, feeling my heart thumping under my new French suit.

  And then I opened my phone’s calculator and figured out that I would have to make $1 million every day for almost three years before I had $1 billion. Suddenly, inexcusably, I felt like I was playing with very small potatoes.

  I almost dropped my phone in the toilet when it rang. It was Miranda.

  Associated Press

  @AP

  Dozens injured as “Happy Birthday Carl” parade-goers clash with anti-Carl protesters in New York City. The parade, which was billed as “a celebration of our new place in the universe,” broke down into chaos when blocked by protestors.

  239 replies 730 retweets 593 likes

  Kyle Stafford

  @kyylestafford

  @AP What the fuck are they thinking, celebrating after everything that was done to us. there lucky no-one drove a Dodge Challenger into them.

  303 replies 21 retweets 187 likes

  Altus

  @AltusLabs

  We. Are. Hiring. We have dozens of positions open right now. This is your chance to make the future. Altus.net/MakeThe Future

  203 replies 2.7K retweets 15K likes

  MIRANDA

  I do not have the temperament to be a secret agent. I hate stress. I hate it so much that it makes me extremely productive, because I will work any amount necessary to make stress go away.

  But that was the thing. The existence of Altus was stress for me. Every minute of the day there was a little ache in my brain, and every time I checked to see what it was, it wasn’t worry about my experiments or about whether I’d said something dumb to a labmate; it was always only Altus. It was like a grain of sand in my heart. And when something is stressing me out, I have to do something about it. I have to at least feel like I’m trying.

  That was one of the worst parts of April disappearing. I kept feeling like I had to solve the problem. Unfortunately, you can’t solve someone being dead.

  But I could at least start on the problem of Altus. The stress was coming from two places. First, Peter Petrawicki was succeeding. Bad people shouldn’t get power, and he was getting more and more of it. I wasn’t even so much worried about what he was going to do with the power; I was too caught up in the fact that he was getting it.

  But I probably would have been able to ignore that eventually because it’s not like I had to look at Peter Petrawicki all day. I did, however, have to look at rat brains all day and think about the fact that right now, in Puerto Rico, a bunch of people were working on science that would almost definitely make my research completely obsolete. And that was my second source of stress, eating away at me and getting worse every day. I was getting snappy with people, and my stomach was always a little upset. Professor Lundgren kept telling me all research is supposed to be additive, and that science doesn’t actually work in breakthroughs the way we’re all taught.

  She could say that, but I couldn’t believe it. If the “service” they were going to provide included some high-bandwidth neural link, they were decades ahead of our lab. So what was the point of my thesis? What was the point of driving, head down, every day through piles of mind-numbing data entry to build something that might, in six months, look like an Apple II?

  That’s when I started looking at Altus job postings.

  JUNIOR SCIENTIST BIO-MICROFABRICATION—PUERTO RICO

  State-of-the-art research lab is seeking an R&D chemical and materials scientist to relocate to Puerto Rico. Our lab is pushing the boundaries of what is possible, and this is your chance to make the future. We’re looking for an energetic, resourceful chemist and/or materials scientist with experience in experimental design, and expertise in organic, polymer, and analytical chemistr
y. A passion for what’s next is a must. Team players only.

  * * *

  Now I just had two problems:

  1. I was qualified for this job, but not tremendously. They were probably looking for a postdoc candidate, though the fact that they didn’t say so was promising. It was also telling—they might not be being picky because of how fast they were hiring.

  2. My name was Miranda Beckwith, and I couldn’t change that. Most people wouldn’t recognize me, but the moment some recruiter Googled my name, they would see that I was friends with April May.

  The nice thing was that, with some time separating me from my initial find of the article, I was less angry and a little more calculating. I started thinking, Well, this probably won’t work anyway. Might as well give it a try! It felt like doing something.

  I remember the day I sent the application in because I was also distracting myself from the other piece of stress that I definitely couldn’t do anything about. It was the one-year anniversary of the Carls and of me sending my first email to April. Everyone was using it as an opportunity to shout at each other. The Defenders didn’t exist anymore, but all of the people who were sympathetic to them still did, and the arguments were never really about Carl anyway. Even with them gone, pundits were getting powerful by arguing that we needed to be more afraid. It felt like the public was only getting angrier every day. A group of people had decided to have a Carl parade in New York, and it was cute, but then it was blocked by protesters and the whole thing fell apart. Twitter then got very angry on absolutely everyone’s behalf.

  The whole thing made me feel sick. Maybe I even knew that the chances of something going more wrong were higher than usual. We were all a little on edge. So instead of looking at angry people calling out racism and xenophobia from citizens, pundits, and politicians alike, I guiltily scrubbed references to April and the Som from my social media profiles, spruced up my LinkedIn, and wrote up a cover letter.