Jason didn’t know the plan. I was only setting myself up to be a leader in the Space so I would be credible when I turned my back on it. And I’d do that as soon as it was the right time. Except that “the right time” seemed further away every day. And every day I felt a little more like the Space was the next step forward in human consciousness. Yeah, sure, I looked sallow and unkempt. And yes, Altus was being run the wrong way, but still, it was so powerful. And I was a part of that, a part of something so big it was crashing the world economy and making me disgustingly rich.

Even while I sat there with Jason, my mind wanted to go grab my headset. I didn’t even know what I would do once I was there. I just wanted it.

The Space actually could make humanity better—of that I had no doubt. The way it was being run … Jason was right. It was mostly a bunch of dudes making stuff that mostly appealed to a bunch of dudes. And Altus had set it up so that they would be making money from every angle possible.

Everyone who had access was taking their first crack at a sandbox or an experience and spending all of the rest of their time mining AltaCoin so they could buy more.

Altus was now worth hundreds of billions of dollars. But that day there was a 20 percent stock market drop, trillions of dollars of value lost—if no one wanted or needed to buy things, if all of the best human experiences were inside the Altus Space … what was the economy even for?

“Can’t you see that Altus is just … bad?”

I found myself wishing I could experience Jason’s brain to know where that sentence had come from.

“It’s not good or bad,” I said. “It’s just another tool. We just have to do the right things with it.”

“And who’s going to decide who does the right things? Peter Petrawicki?”

I looked at him for a long few seconds and then said, “Yeah, fuck you, man.” And I stood up and walked out of the coffee shop and back up to my room.

There was a padded envelope on my bed. I stared at it for a long time and then finally opened it. The Book of Good Times. I threw it straight into the wall, screaming. But then it just sat there on my floor, open, showing words that I knew I was going to read eventually. So I went over to it and read.

A part of you is wondering if I made you colossally wealthy just so you would know that being colossally wealthy will not make you happy. But no, that is only a side effect. It’s only made you more miserable, of course, which is also not what I want. I want you to be happy, and there’s a good chance that you will be, though it will cost you.

I’m trying to change something in this world, and it’s going to take a lot of money.

I had had hundreds of millions of dollars when Carl told me to convert everything to AltaCoin. In the time since then, the value of AltaCoin had increased 1,000 percent. So, while my wealth was just numbers on a screen, if I cashed it out today, I would have $5 billion. I was a real live billionaire now.

I know it’s been a bad day, but I guess the thing I most need to tell you is that you’re on the right path, and you’ve nearly walked the entire thing. You may be wondering when the time is to act, but when you realize it, you will not be unsure. You will know exactly when you need to act, so if you aren’t sure, it isn’t time.

It will be time soon.

Also, don’t be a jerk to your friends. You need them.

Fuck you, Carl, I thought to myself. What the hell right did they have to tell me how to treat my friends.

My sleep schedule was so messed up by the Space. I always felt rested and I always felt groggy. No one thought it was healthy to spend twenty hours a day inside Altus, but no one had definitely died of it. Sure, people had died, but people died in the real world too. There just hadn’t been time to do any research on the actual effects before Altus launched. The point was, I hadn’t actually slept in weeks, and I wanted to know if I could still do it.

I lay down on my bed, prepared for hours of insomnia-fueled brain ramblings, but actually, I was unconscious in minutes. And then I slept from like ten thirty in the morning till nine at night, because that’s healthy, right?! My default upon waking was to just reach for the headset, but that felt wrong. Jason’s words had stuck in me like splinters. He didn’t know what I was doing. April and Maya and Miranda and The Thread and I were all doing something together—something big! And I couldn’t tell him, so of course he was mad … but still, shouldn’t he trust me?

I thought about The Thread, and the video we were working on about inequality and Altus. I thought about Maya and April up in their tower, barely tweeting anything at all.

And then I thought about Miranda, all alone, working at Altus headquarters. God, Miranda, we hadn’t heard from her in over a month now. She hadn’t even sent a Don’t worry about me, I’m fine message. And then I started to feel ill because I honestly hadn’t really been thinking about her much. She was down there in Val Verde taking risks for us all, and I’d just spaced on her. Panic boiled up in me. Was she OK? How could I help her? We’d gone way too long without hearing anything from her at all.

Where would she hide something? I thought to myself. If Miranda wanted to talk with me, where would she go?

I grabbed my headset and entered Altus Space, opened the search dialogue, and inputted the most Miranda thing I could think of: “Lab.” There were a few results where you could play with a dog, which sounded lovely, but five results down a result said “Chemistry Lab.” It was part of a broader sandbox that was pretty unpopular, a really well-constructed school.

Not knowing what I would be looking for, I entered “Chemistry Lab” and started to move through the room. It was … a chemistry lab. It had all of the normal chemistry lab stuff.

There were lab benches and beakers. Each bench had a sink in it, and there was a periodic table on one wall and, at the front of the room, a blackboard with a few chemical equations written on it. It was all very carefully done.

Would this be the place Miranda would use to try and communicate with me? Was there anything stopping her? Did everything get inspected on the way out? She said that they were extremely careful. But it was worth a try, right? I opened every drawer, looked under every lab bench, and found nothing but crisp, unmarked surfaces. The room wasn’t just new; it was Altus new. That feeling of everything being just a little too perfect, a little too crisp, not a speck of dust anywhere. There was another thing that was a little off, but was common in the Space: There were no books.

Writing had to be inputted manually when constructing sandboxes, so when there was writing, it was usually just a few lines. Except that periodic table was a doozy. Every box was filled in not just with the element’s symbol but also its name and its atomic weight. Someone had spent a lot of time on that table, maybe as much time as they spent on the entire rest of the room.

I walked over to that poster with my heart in my teeth. I held my hand out, tracing the boxes, looking for the one I wanted.

It took too long, but there, at the way, way bottom: Americium. I got close, inspecting the little square. I traced it with my finger. It looked normal, like nothing at all special. I pushed on it, and it pushed back into the wall. I let go, and it popped out.

Inside, there was a small piece of paper.

Hello,