“And?”

“Sixty-six percent cited economic concerns, 37 percent cited social concerns, like that a loved one was addicted, 32 percent cited concerns about inequality of access, and 12 percent cited concerns that Altus use would exacerbate the ‘cultural divide.’ ”

I opened a Google Doc to start writing things down, but it wouldn’t open. “I think the internet is down.”

“Yes,” Carl replied. “Well, that does happen sometimes with larger queries. It will be back up shortly.”

“So it was you,” I said, thinking of the internet outages in South Jersey.

The survey always looked a little calculated to anyone who knew how the internet worked. We were collecting email addresses and also information about people. That would be valuable, even if we just wanted to sell them shirts. But it actually turned out to be a lot colder and more calculating than we intended it to be.

We were able to segment people into groups and create different messages for each of them. People who were worried about their loved ones got one email; people who were worried about inequality got a different one.

And then we took it a step further. April was able to create a list of the people who were most upset about each issue, and we created a private chat for them to organize. We tapped into some of my contacts from the Som to help moderate and mobilize them. They would try out new tweets and posts, promote each other’s ideas, like each other’s tweets, support each other emotionally, craft messages, and pile on when people were being extra idiotic about Altus.

In less than a week, using only data from a survey, some trained moderators, and a superhuman AI analysis engine, we were political operatives. We were, in effect, organizing an army of social media accounts to affect public opinion, like the Russian government, except it was just two women in an apartment that they could not leave. And we did it all entirely in secret.

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT:

START UP WATCH PODCAST WITH RANDALL BOLT

Randall Bolt: Today we’re talking about Altus Laboratories, which has just made an announcement that is shaking up not just digital media, but the entire economy. Altus recently raised a couple billion dollars at a valuation of FIVE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS. A private company has never been this valuable before, and no company has ever grown this fast before! It took Facebook TWELVE YEARS to reach a five-hundred-billion-dollar valuation. Altus has done it in Less. Than. A. Year!

But that’s old news! This new news is, I’ll be honest with you, not easy for an old fogey like me to understand. So, today we have on the podcast none other than Andy Skampt, friend of April May and early entrant to the Altus Premium Space.

Andy, thank you for coming on the podcast today. First, how did you take it when you found out April was alive and well??

Andy Skampt: I think, as you might expect, it was a shock, and also it was a huge relief. Good news for the world and, honestly, I’m just glad to have my friend back.

RB: But that’s not what you’re here to talk about. What do you think of this new Altus announcement?

AS: Well, if you’ll let me correct you, Altus has, in effect, made three massive announcements here, nearly simultaneously.

RB: Correct away!

AS: First, a broader opening of the Altus Premium Space to over a million people. Remember, just a few weeks ago the Premium Space was shrouded in mystery and only available to a select few people, myself included. A good bit has been said about the Premium Space, but as someone who has spent time there, I can guarantee you it really is world-changing.

RB: Before you get to the second thing, just give me one way it is revolutionary.

AS: Oh, well, that’s easy. Just imagine being able to literally learn how to play piano in your sleep. That’s not an exaggeration.

RB: OK, yeah, I mean, those of us who haven’t used it hear stuff like that and we just assume that it’s more marketing. It’s too good to be true.

AS: It’s not.

RB: Well, this brings us to the second thing. The thing that I need you to explain to me because I don’t quite get why it’s such a big deal.

AS: OK, well, you know that a number of private companies have wanted very much to have their own monetary systems decoupled from international systems.

RB: Yes, and that’s always been folly. Governments don’t like it, and as we’ve seen with Bitcoin, it might be a wild investment, but it doesn’t function super well as a currency. It’s too easy to manipulate. Too volatile.

AS: Well, here’s the thing: Right now, if you want to learn piano while you sleep, or really do anything besides make things yourself, you have to pay Altus. And you can only pay them in AltaCoin. And until this week, the only way to get AltaCoin was from Altus. They’ve created a bunch of it themselves. But there’s a limited supply, and so the value of the coins had been going up, so they’ve been getting more expensive and people are hoarding them.

But now, Altus has opened up the ability to mine AltaCoin on your own, as long as you have a VR headset.

RB: This is the thing I don’t get. To mine cryptocurrency, don’t you need fancy computers doing fancy math?

AS: AltaCoin isn’t technically a cryptocurrency. Actually, it isn’t entirely clear what it is or what we should call it. But you can buy it on a market, or you can mine it inside of the Open Access Altus Space. Basically, you enter the Space and then select the mining protocol. You then just sleep, and in the morning, you see what you made.

RB: So you just have to sleep and you can mine these coins?

AS: That’s about the size of it. You mine a base amount per minute, but occasionally you will come across a full coin, which is, at this point, worth around fifty dollars. I hope that this is a way to help make the Altus Space more accessible because, right now, it is a platform that has a lot of power, and it should be available to more than just well-off folks like myself.

RB: As long as you can afford an 8K headset.

AS: Indeed. That is a real problem.

RB: But that’s not it, there’s a third thing?

AS: Yes. Now, this is a little weird, and I’ve not actually seen it put to use yet. But Altus has been capturing experiences and putting them up for sale on the Altus Premium Space since the beginning, but now, they say, with the help of a device … an expensive device … you can capture your own experiences and sell them yourself on their marketplace.

RB: You’re saying—correct me if I’m wrong—that I could buy this piece of equipment and then capture my brain’s experience of, say, recording a podcast, and then I could sell it and people would be able to … what exactly?

AS: They’d basically experience this moment exactly as you are experiencing it. They’d get to think all of your same thoughts and feel what it’s like to be you.

RB: If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.

AS: <laughter>

RB: So, do you think, given these changes, that Altus is actually worth five hundred billion?

AS: I’m not a banker, Randall, but my guess is Altus is worth a heck of a lot more than that.

ANDY

DAY FOUR OF NINETEEN

What lesson did I learn from destroying my first real-feeling romantic relationship of … maybe my entire life? Nothing. Fuck it, I was an Altus hound now. I gave up my mission of trying to be universally liked and likable and got myself a brand-new brand.