Well, now I know more. My friend, Miranda Beckwith, was hired to work at Altus. But then they decided she violated company policy, and instead of firing her, they have been holding her prisoner. Not just locked in a room, but also locked inside of the Altus Space, with modified software that left her aware that she was inside, but unable to leave it.

This, obviously, is kidnapping and illegal imprisonment, and it’s deeply disturbing and unethical. I came here to see if it was true, and it is. While trying to determine the truth, I was attacked and shot at by Altus security.

<banging continues>

I am now in significant danger of being killed and am trying desperately to prevent people from entering this building because I believe they will hurt me and my friend. So please, while you can, listen to this tape of Peter Petrawicki explaining the situation.

<recording of Peter Petrawicki inserted>

I have spent a lot of time observing Altus, and also reserving judgment. The story of people is the story of sharing information, and Altus could be an extremely powerful platform for that. But I’m done reserving judgment, and I think the rest of us are as well. There are two problems with Altus.

<muffled yelling>

First, at some point, we have to realize that the places where we share information are not services we use, they are places where we live. And if we live in the Altus Space, Altus will control our lives. This platform should not be something that a few billionaires have complete control over. In this building, hundreds of people spend twenty-four hours a day mining AltaCoin for Altus. Altus imprisoned my friend, they responded to my being here by attempting to murder me. But more than that, they created their own currency and built their business on a remote island so that they wouldn’t ever have any threats to their control. They rushed to market without considering health or economic impacts.

When we asked Peter about these ethical and legal violations, here is what he said.

Peter Petrawicki: Fuck ethics. Fuck morals. Altus is the future. Governments are over.

AM: You have to ask why they pushed so hard. Is it because they wanted to control our lives before we found out something awful? Or is it just one more step down the path toward ever-bigger and more reckless companies controlling more and more of our lives? The inevitable conclusion is a company that owns and controls everything, and Altus is that.

And now we are all feeling the impacts. But it doesn’t matter, there is nothing we can do. We’re all quietly preparing to live our whole lives under the shadow of this thing, where the ones who benefit are the ones who had the cash and the luck and the foresight to get in on the ground floor and everyone else spends the rest of their lives holding on by their fingernails just to stay afloat.

An idea is not good just because it can make money. And I’m not alone in that belief.

Over 80 percent of people worldwide have an unfavorable view of Altus, and that includes many people who regularly use the service. It seems, though, that there is no getting rid of them.

But that’s not true. It will be true soon, but it’s not true yet.

We have set up an account, details in the description, and we are asking everyone to send in ten dollars.

Now, when I say “everyone,” here’s the thing: I mean everyone.

It is time to decide whether the world would be better without Altus.

From the moment this video gets uploaded, we have three hours to raise twenty billion dollars to buy Altus and shut it down. We have it on good authority that Altus’s investors will soon be looking for a way out, and we have already raised billions of dollars from anonymous rich people. But we can’t just do this with rich people because this can’t be something just some person decided to do. We have to do it together.

So we have three hours and we need two billion people to give us ten dollars. Give more if you can, but you can’t give less. Call people, wake them up, tell them this is our last chance and our only chance. It doesn’t have to be like this. If we raise it, we will buy the company, and Altus will no longer exist. We can free ourselves forever from this, we can take our economy back, we can take our lives back.

<banging continues>

Ten dollars. That’s what we need, to go back to the old world where we lived, for your money to be worth something again, for power to be ours and not these people’s. I know that, for many of you, every dollar matters. Well, it never mattered more than it does today. You know how to spread the word. Do it. Three hours, that’s as long as I can hold this door. Starting now.

ANDY

I got April’s footage and edited it together faster than I have ever done anything in my life, every moment of it believing that we wouldn’t actually be shutting Altus down. We could fix it. If two billion people spent money to buy Altus, then what would an Altus with two billion shareholders really look like? What could we make if we took this power and used it to try something completely new and open that no one controlled and everyone shared? That is the thought—the lie—that kept me working without thinking too much about what I was doing.

Because, as much as I knew Altus was a fucking unprecedentedly evil disaster, I also didn’t want to, like, stop using it. And not just because I was addicted, but because it was amazing! I’d learned Spanish in a month! Everyone who invested in Altus did it because they saw the potential to remake the human experience. What if that value was used to increase equality instead of just to make a profit? What could we become? That was too valuable a tool to just destroy.

If this went according to plan, I would control the bank account that bought Altus. And that thought was there, lurking in the back of my mind. Ultimately, I would be the one who legally owned Altus at the end of this day. Me, and me alone.

I also recognized the genius of April’s tactic. Mobilize people immediately and don’t give the opposition any time at all to mount any kind of resistance. But $20 billion was a big ask. An unprecedented ask, really. But if anyone could pull it off, it was April, the literal resurrected chosen one, the biggest social media influencer of our age.

The moment the video was up, I called Stewart Patrick and told him to watch it.

He did. “This all seems very precarious,” he said to me. “These investors are not going to sell because Altus is bad for the world or even deeply immoral. They’ll replace Peter, they might even open themselves up to regulation, but they won’t sell.”

“They have a plan,” I said.

“What is the plan?” The ask was firm—it gave no space for the possibility of the question not being answered.

“I … don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know.” He was quiet for a second, and then, “Fuck. FUCK. I should have known better than to hang this on you kids.” His demeanor had changed suddenly and completely. “There’s a lot on the line here. A lot of fucking money, my reputation. Maybe my career. I’ve been selling every high-net-worth asshole and sovereign wealth manager on the planet on a giant blowup, and so far all you have is that some dickshit kidnapped a girl? Do better.” His voice was cold. “Do better right fucking now.” And then he hung up.

I opened up the account that we had set up. Already, there were five hundred thousand new dollars. But then I did the math: $500,000 is, get this, 0.025 percent of $20 billion.