“Wait, this is weird. You need to tell us what’s going on,” Maya pushed.

“Let’s just say that we’re both very grateful to a little book.” He gestured to the copilot. “Both of us have had a string of luck. And it hasn’t led us wrong yet.”

We didn’t need to wait in any security lines, and we didn’t need to put a monkey through an X-ray machine. The pilots didn’t even seem to care that there was a monkey (maybe the book had told them that Carl was potty trained).

When we were alone in the cabin and getting ready to take off, I asked Maya, “How many people do you think have been getting these books?!”

“Only a few dozen,” Carl said, overhearing me. “It takes resources to know exactly where to place them and how they will affect people. Little nudges here and there can have large effects.”

I didn’t want to talk to Carl, so I ignored them.

Maya turned to me. “Is this definitely the best way to do this?”

“I have no idea. I kinda expected us to be sneaking in through the jungle or something. Landing a plane in the middle of their secret base doesn’t seem very stealthy, even if it is in the middle of the night.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Carl said.

“Is that honestly the best you can do, you shitty sentient monkey?” I said, not as a joke. I was trying to be mean.

“This is what has to happen. You are the only thing my brother cannot predict, and the Altus campus is the only thing I cannot predict. Only in bringing those two things together does the future become completely unpredictable.”

The plane began to surge forward, and it got loud in the cabin, making it hard to keep the discussion going.

I didn’t want to talk to Carl, and their hearing was too good for them to not be inside of every conversation. So mostly, Maya and I traveled in silence, each of us looking out our windows, wondering how in the world our lives had ended up this way.

I think that happiness is very important. But I will also say that the most effective people I know are not the happiest, and there is something to be said for effectiveness. Even if we were managing a team of nearly a hundred thousand volunteer social media users, living with my girlfriend and my monkey, watching Netflix, having breakfast, and taking care of a single lovingly spoiled potato plant was pretty fucking relaxing. But I think there’s something inside of us, something at the seed level, something that blooms in us in adolescence and never leaves … and it’s just … want. Some people have more of it than others, but I think we all have it. And the most amazing tool that I think anyone in the world can have is the ability to control and direct that want.

Some people work to minimize it with mindfulness and meditation; some people let it grow and run free and take over their lives. But some people, and I consider myself one of them, study their want, refine it, and build an engine that burns it. Even if their want pushes all in one direction, they can tack against it like a sailboat, getting somewhere better than where they wanted to be.

I know my want. I know that big well inside of me is never going to get filled. I know that life is not about actually satisfying the want; it’s about using it. In that moment, all of my wants were pushing me to Val Verde. I wanted to make Maya proud of me. I wanted to be important. I wanted all of this to be worth something. I wanted to save the world, and I wanted to have saved the world. I wanted to find some end to all of this, and I wanted life to be normal again.

Maybe if we could take down Altus, we could have all of that. People would remain free to continue the beautifully stupid endeavor of humanity, and I would just be a person again. Well, maybe not just a person, but close enough anyway.

The point is, if you want to be happy, let go of your wants. If you want to be effective, harness them. I think either strategy is OK, but I’ve made my choice. Sorry, Mom.

“I think I figured it out,” I said to Maya, knowing Carl would hear me.

“What?” Maya asked.

“Where the money is going to come from.”

“The billions of dollars?” Maya asked.

“Yeah, yeah …” And then I told her.

She looked back at me with a slight curl of disgust in her lip. “I mean, if that works, then I guess it was all worth it.”

ANDY

It was time. I went on the Altus exchange and started selling AltaCoin for cash. I couldn’t do it all at once because there simply weren’t enough people buying. Every time I sold a hunk, the price would drop. But eventually, a few million dollars at a time, it all flowed out of my account and, instead of cryptocurrency, my bank account had billions of actual dollars in it.

I apologize for interrupting a fairly intense moment with a bunch of stuff about … fucking finance, but it’s important.

Remember Stewart Patrick, the guy who ran the private equity conference in Cannes and who gave me his business card? Well, I’d looked him up and, guess what, he was born before Star Trek: The Next Generation came out, so he probably wasn’t named after Patrick Stewart. It was the kind of lie that really didn’t matter except it let you know that a guy didn’t mind lying for no reason.

I called him at seven o’clock at night, assuming I would leave a message, but he answered his phone.

“I’m … I’m sorry for calling so late,” I said, surprised and unprepared.

“Who is this?” He sounded a little agitated.

“It’s … Andy Skampt, we met in Cannes. You told me to call you if I knew anything that might be useful.”

“Oh, well, in that case, hold on a moment.” I heard him talking to someone in the background.

“Andy, you have my attention.” Not long into the conversation, I felt way out of my depth, and I handed the phone to Bex. They had been talking for a solid thirty minutes when they finally got to the point.

“I’m going to have to ask you to stop talking about this like you’re saving the world,” Stewart told us, exasperated. “I don’t know any of what you know, and also I don’t care. The only thing I’m worried about is whether there’s money to be made here. If there’s a transaction that is going to occur, I can charge you for that. If it’s a large transaction, I will make a lot of money. If you know that the value of Altus is going to plunge, that’s all that matters. We put together a trade, I call every single person invested in Altus, I scare the shit out of them, and then, when the bad thing happens, you buy the stock when they’re willing to sell at a low price. I don’t care why we’re doing it. It’s great if it’s a good cause, but if there’s money for me to make, why are you trying to convince me it’s good? Who cares. I’ll do it.”

Jason, Bex, and I looked at each other. I mean, I guess he was right. If you’re going to pay someone a bunch of money, you don’t also need to convince them that it’s the right thing to do.

“And how much money do you have to buy Altus shares?” he asked.

“Right now, like five billion?”

“That is not enough,” Stewart said.

“We think we can get more together soon.”

“Very soon?”

“Very soon.”

We hung up, and then Bex turned to me and said, “I think we’re doing this right.”