So when I say the Open Access Space was child’s play, that’s what I mean.
But every piece of communications infrastructure I could find was locked down. It wasn’t like, “You can’t hack this computer”; it was like, “You can’t touch this computer.” Computers that connected to the actual internet were literally behind doors guarded by armed men.
I still had my international cell phone, which I’d kept charged. I had taken it for an evening run once, which felt very risky, but there was no cell phone signal anywhere.
Which brings me to my absolutely ludicrous plan.
See, there was a soda carbonator in the rec room. We didn’t have any good ways of getting replacement cartridges, but we did have big-ass carbon dioxide tanks in the lab. So once or twice a week, whoever finished a CO2 canister would take it to the lab and refill it from one of the big tanks. But here’s the thing: You can put any gas into one of those canisters—it doesn’t have to be CO2.
So one day, I went to carbonate a bottle of water and an empty canister was sitting next to the carbonator. I grabbed it and put it in my bag. I went to the lab, did my work, and then, around lunch, told my supervisor I’d be a bit because I needed to refill the canister.
All of our gas tanks were stored outside in the same area, and since refilling the SodaStream canisters was such a common chore, one of the big CO2 tanks had the adapter screwed onto it all the time now.
While standing in the wide-open air in full sunlight where anyone could walk by at any moment, I grabbed a wrench and removed the adapter from the carbon dioxide tank. In the Caribbean humidity, my hands sweaty, heart pounding, I attached the adapter to a low-pressure hydrogen tank and started filling the purged CO2 canister with an extremely dangerous, flammable gas.
“There you are!” I jumped and turned around to see Sippy and Peanut.
“Jesus,” I said, “you scared me.” Now, unless you looked at the labels, all of these tanks looked roughly the same, so I wasn’t immediately hosed. “I’m just filling up the SodaStream canister,” I said, because what else would I be doing!
“Yeah, that’s what your supervisor told us,” Sippy said. “So, we have news, you want to tell her?”
Peanut looked better, but his confidence had clearly taken a hit by him being “incompatible” with the Altus Space. That’s the language people here used, “compatible” or “incompatible.” People like Peanut were quietly called “incoms.” There were only a few known incoms, and they were thought of with a mix of pity and neglect. Loving Altus Space was such a central part of the identity here you could sense people’s discomfort at the idea of incoms even existing. As far as I knew, no one else knew about Peanut yet.
And since most people spent their evenings in the Altus Space now, Peanut was left tremendously bored. Sippy had, somewhat valiantly, mostly kept out of the Space in order to keep Peanut company, but I didn’t know how long it could last.
“I want to try and get back in,” Peanut said.
I swallowed. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I said, looking at Sippy, not at Peanut, but also thinking mostly about the little hydrogen canister hissing quietly as it filled behind me.
“No, I mean, of course not. It was bad, but I could go through it again. It was just a nightmare. It all happened in my brain, not in my body.” His shoulders were hunched forward, and he looked even littler than he was in another of his ill-fitting knitted wool hats.
“I don’t know that there’s actually any difference between what happens in our minds and in our bodies,” I told him.
“I get it, but it can’t hurt to try, right?” His Alabama accent was more apparent than usual. “So I’m going to try again tonight. Can you be there?”
I didn’t know what to say, both because I didn’t really understand the question and because I kinda already had plans for that night. Also, I had just built a small bomb behind me and would probably go to Altus jail if anyone found out.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
A strain came onto Peanut’s face as he searched for an answer.
Sippy, confident in his skin, with his muscles and his perfectly straight black hair, answered this one: “Look, I think it’s just nice to have some friends around no matter how it goes.”
Right, of course. I was the support team for if it went badly.
Nut was such a good guy, and all he wanted in the world was to get into the Altus Space. I wanted to help him, I really did. I also wanted to bring this whole thing down.
After work, we all met up in the cafeteria and then walked back to the dorms together. As we were leaving, security checked my bag, and I did everything in my power to act like it was just another boring day. Laptop, great. Tampons, cool. SodaStream canister stuffed with highly flammable gas, also fine! Don’t worry about me, just the long, stringy redhead who is fascinated by this company’s mission and nonetheless planning to destroy it. I’m making a joke here, but honestly I was starting to feel a little bad about what I was doing. A lot of these people were … nice. And the research they were doing was amazing. And only hearing about it from one angle, Altus’s angle, was making me feel like maybe it wasn’t so bad. But it was. It was bad. Very bad. And if all went according to plan tonight, people besides me would know about it. I stashed my contraband and then went to meet with Sippy and Nut. Their room was neat and sparse, as were most rooms at Altus, and Nut did indeed have about twenty hand-knitted wool hats.
“Can I have one of these?”
“What? Why?” Peanut asked, laughing.
“I dunno, you have a lot of them. I get cold in my room sometimes.” This was a lie, but I was getting better at lying.
I picked one I hadn’t seen him wearing much, assuming that meant he wasn’t a huge fan of it. He told me to help myself.
“OK,” Peanut said after we’d all chatted a bit. “I just want to do this thing, let’s not push it back any further.”
“We got this, bud,” Sippy reassured him. “Just like we talked about. Your eyes are in your head, feel your body, and keep your bearings. We’ll go straight from the launch screen into the body.
“OK, dude, lie down,” Sippy said, handing the VR headset to Peanut. “Feel your body. Just like every other day of your life.”
Peanut slipped on the headset and lay down on his bed.
“OK, see y’all on the other side,” he said.
His body went suddenly still as he entered the Space. This was my first time watching someone go in. It’s so subtle, but still obvious—just the littlest adjustment upon their consciousness fleeing their body.
What we were hoping for was nothing. If, after a minute or two, we’d seen no reaction at all, then we’d know it had worked. He’d be in there and enjoying his first nightmare-free excursion in the Space. Then Sip and I could celebrate, even if Peanut was in another world for it.
And then his body cramped together like a fist. Sippy was at his side in an instant, pulling off the headset. Peanut came out of the Space with a rough and ragged scream.
Sippy’s voice got loud and strong, but still somehow gentle. “You’re out. It’s over. You’re here.” Peanut was crying now. I knelt down beside his bed and put my hand on his hand. He grabbed on and squeezed painfully tight.