A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

by Hank Green

  This was not physically difficult—it was trivial, like cutting a single hair—but I knew that there would be pain, a new kind of pain. I had lost pieces of myself to my brother before, but only cell by cell. Even though it was a battle I was losing, I could move out and set defenses in a slow retreat.

  But to cut a piece of myself and abandon it caused a pain to radiate through everything. It was like a wire that ran through my entire body was instantly heated to plasma. I had become an antenna for pain.

  And then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended.

  APRIL

  I was in the kitchen when I heard the noise. I ran into the living room to see Maya’s face, her eyes wide, and Carl on the couch, slumped over, unconscious.

  “What is going on?!” I asked, worried, despite myself, that Maya had done something to Carl.

  “I asked them about Miranda,” she said, on defense, “and they said they would check on her and then they just screamed and then collapsed.” She was helplessly holding her hands toward Carl.

  I ran over and knelt down next to Carl, running my hands over the smooth fur of their head, looking into their limp pink face.

  “Carl!” I said firmly.

  The body seemed fragile and frail. I didn’t want to shake it.

  And then, finally, movement began again. “It’s OK. I’m OK.” The voice came out clearly from the smartwatch, but the animal’s eyes were flickering and unfocused.

  “What happened?” I said softly.

  The monkey’s eyes cleared a bit.

  “I was tracking the location of Miranda Beckwith at Altus, but my brother was expecting me. He attempted to trace my threads to my deeper consciousness. He was partially successful. I lost all of my inroads to Altus. I can no longer observe anything happening there. I should have known better. We are at war and he’s too strong for me.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Maya asked, glancing from me to Carl and back, looking guilt-stricken.

  The monkey took a deep inhale and then let it out slowly. “It would be nice if I could have some juice.”

  I sat down next to Carl, who draped their body softly over my lap. Maya was back in a moment with a Capri Sun.

  “Can’t you just . . .” She sounded exhausted, but she stopped herself before finishing.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Carl said. “And no, I cannot just kill Peter Petrawicki. Also, according to simulations, it would not do any good. He’s a figurehead only, his work is done. But no, I cannot kill anyone. I can’t violate the norms of your system.”

  Maya grunted in frustration. “You and your goddamn norms! You did all kinds of things that violated our norms. You changed the way we think! You took away our freedom to be on this planet alone.”

  The monkey looked at Maya like she was the crazy one, which I could tell was infuriating her. Then they said, “But you allow other entities to take away your freedoms all the time. It’s an intrinsic part of your system. It couldn’t function without that. You grant companies access to your attention so that they can alter your choices in exchange for entertainment. You identify with groups and grant them the ability to choose for you which problems you will be most concerned about. You listen to a friend when they care about something, and then you care about it too. One of the most powerful traits of your system is how ardently you believe in your individuality while simultaneously operating almost entirely as a collective.”

  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.

  “My left arm too, and both my legs. I was really messed up. If you look close, you can see this eye isn’t mine either. When I first woke up, I didn’t have that eye, or any of these new parts. It was really bad. But I got through it.

  “Anyway, I’ve only told a few people I’m back, so if you’re finding out via this video and feel like I owed you a personal message, I’m sorry.

  “I’m not sure how to head off the inevitable conspiracy theories that this video is fake. I’ll post this to all my socials, and Andy can confirm it’s me. As for the deeper conspiracies, that I’m part alien, part human, well, that didn’t used to be true, but I guess it is now. I understand that people are going to have wild ideas about me. Sometimes reality doesn’t make sense, so we try and find ways to make it make sense. My story, it’s nuts. I get that some people are going to try and make it make sense. It doesn’t make sense to me either.

  “It would probably be best for me to just let you all know I’m around and end the video with that. But in the catching up I’ve done, I do want to say something more.

  “The people at Altus are right: Communication is humanity’s superpower. And every time we have increased our ability to communicate, society has shifted. In the short term, those shifts are really disruptive, but in the long term they’ve always been good. I am worried that things are moving too fast this time.

  “I’m not saying shut it down. I’m just saying, let’s take it a little more slowly. Move fast and break things is great for a business, but not for society. Or the human mind.

  “I’ve been really out of it, of course. I slept for almost all of the last six months. So bear with me as I get back up to speed with what’s going on in the world. If there’s anything in particular you want me to know, I’ll be reading the comments. Right now, I’m hiding out in an undisclosed location, which is neat. I’d very much appreciate it if you didn’t come searching for me or bother my family. It’s been a really intense time for all of us.

  “I’m feeling strong and safe and very happy to be back and, y’know, alive. I hope you don’t mind if my life now is a little less public, and a lot less controversial. That’s my goal, anyway, so don’t be surprised if you don’t see me on Twitter.

  “I know people are going to have lots of questions—I hope I can answer a lot of them in upcoming videos. I’ve set up three links below. First is for press, if you want me to comment on anything or are interested in an interview. Second is for questions . . . about me, the future, relationship advice, opinions on 1980s romantic comedies, et cetera. The third is a little weird.

  “When I decided to make this video, I realized that it was going to be seen by a lot of people. And my friends and I had a little conversation about what a person should say when they have literally everyone’s ear. And I realized, if I have the power to have everyone hear me, that’s too much power. Instead, it would be better to take the chance to listen. So the third link is a survey that I would like everyone to take. It’s really short, just a dozen questions or so. If you’ve got the time, let me know how you’re doing.”

  We uploaded that video, but we didn’t make it public. Instead, we emailed it to a bunch of friends and family. So that’s how a number of people I care a lot about found out I wasn’t dead. I was coming back, just not quite yet. We wanted one more night to ourselves.

  “Nineteen days,” Maya said.

  “Nineteen days,” I replied.

  EMPTY PORCHES

  The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed

  Kasey Willis

  We have been falling down the hole of isolation for decades. In order to protect ourselves from potential pain, or damage, or just complication, the walls of social isolation have gotten thicker and taller. Sometimes these walls are actually visible, the AirPods in the grocery store, but usually they’re below our notice. The closing churches, the empty porches.

  Even as we have had more and better tools for connection, we spend more time alone and we take every tool we can get to distract ourselves from that loneliness. Too often, those tools are chemical, but we all have our addictions that protect us from the empty irritation of loneliness.

  The tools of the internet promised to connect us, but they have just been further surrogates for real connection. And now, more terrifying than any tool I have seen, the Altus Space threatens to turn entire demographics into people without any meaningful connection in their lives—individuals without communities.

  Suicide, substance abuse, and overdoses are all exceeding any previous US records. As worrying, the number of people who have died inside the Space indicates that there may be something actually damaging or dangerous about using Altus. Whether it is simply
how the Space encourages us to disregard the physical and social needs of our bodies or some deeper ill effect, we just don’t know. There is very little data, and Altus has not been forthcoming with their own.

  “Altus is perfectly safe when used properly,” Peter Petrawicki tweeted recently. “We have always encouraged users to take regular breaks, and of course it is unhealthy to be in the Altus Space for the majority of your day.”

  But there is no software that prevents users from being in the Space for any amount of time, and we’ve all got that friend who we haven’t seen or heard from in the last few weeks, don’t we?

  I do not think this is an Altus problem; I think that it is a human problem. We seek the safety of isolation even as it kills us.

  MIRANDA

  All right, here’s the Miranda Beckwith Guide to Working the Problem.

  It doesn’t matter what your problem is, only that you’re sick of it and you’re willing to work.

  Step One: Understand Your Problem.

  A surprising number of people skip this step, thinking they know what the problem is when actually they don’t. This is something you actually have to think about.