“CARL!” I shouted, and then the monkey ran from me. Of course it did. It ran down the hall toward where April was now standing. It crawled up her leg and then onto her shoulder.

“April,” I said, knowing what was happening, but feeling like I was hanging over an edge. Her face was hard; she moved slowly, like she was lost.

Dr. Noise

@drnoise

I just … fuck. I just was in the Space and something happened. It was awful, like I was seeing out of both elbows at once. Is that Body Dislocation? I puked on my mom’s carpet! @AltusLabs.

63.1K replies 23.3K retweets 128.4K likes

@drnoise

Fuck, I just tried to get back in and it happened again. What’s wrong. I tried three times and each time it was like my whole body turned inside out and up was down and up and sideways at the same time.

6K replies 1.3K retweets 9K likes

@drnoise

It’s not just me, is anyone able to get into the Space right now?

1.9K replies 784 retweets 4.7K likes

@drnoise

People are saying that once this happens you can never go back. That better be a fucking lie. @AltusLabs.

1.5K replies 1.4K retweets 3.7K likes

APRIL

It’s time to go back a bit. Remember when I fell unconscious in that hallway and Maya caught me and then I came back? I didn’t tell the full story then, and I haven’t since. I guess it’s time.

I’m not going to pretend to understand what it’s like to be Carl, but they did their best to explain as I crashed out of my body and opened my eyes in the lobby we all used to wake up in back when we were sharing the Dream.

“April …” Carl spoke in their comforting tenor. It was pleasant in the bright white room, warm and familiar. It felt like a gift. It felt, somehow, like home. Robot Carl was standing in front of me, towering and gleaming and sharp and kind. “April, I am dying.”

“What? You …” I wanted to protest, to tell Carl that that was impossible, and if it wasn’t, then that we would save them somehow.

Carl continued, in their clear voice. “I once spanned this planet. I was a nervous system that could sense any corner of the world, and even the corners of people’s consciousness. And I was nothing compared with the power we are up against. I am not going to exit this battle alive.”

“No, there has to be a way, though,” I said. I had, not twelve hours before, been so angry with Carl that I didn’t want them to be in my life anymore, but now the possibility of losing them was carving into me and it was horrible. Carl was a constant.

They continued, “There is not. When people mine AltaCoin, their entire mind is given over to my brother. The number of people doing that is increasing very fast. I could have hid, I could have lived here for centuries while he hunted down every secret enclave of my system, but I did not do that. Instead, I drew all of my power—everything I have, everything I am—to this island. All of me is here. My brother, he cannot do the same. He needs to maintain his whole network, and so we are on roughly equal footing here, but only here. I can hit him as hard as he can hit me, just not for as long. And I will be needed. He will draw me into direct contact because he knows I am a threat. Once he does it, I will be able to fight him, but not for long. I have cut off any avenue of escape myself. All of me is here and I will not be leaving.”

“So, then … have we lost? Is it over?”

“No,” Carl said immediately. “No, it is just … unlikely.” The sadness in their voice was immense.

“How unlikely?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I cannot run simulations anymore.”

“But if you can’t run simulations, how will we even know if we’ve succeeded?”

“Oh, my brother can still run them. If he calculates you have good odds of not destroying yourselves, he’ll just stop. I know some of his tools. He’s hurting the economy to make people easier to manipulate, and I know he’s behind The Thread now. If he stops, those things should stop too. That’s how you’ll know. Also, I’ll tell you when it’s safe to leave, or when it’s not, but I can’t help anymore. I’ll let you know that too. I have one or two tricks still up my sleeves. Right now, all of me is being devoted to giving you more time.”

“More time to do what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. You will have to figure it out.”

“But I have no idea!” I shouted up at the statue. “I don’t know how to fix this!”

I heard a noise, like water passing over rocks. I looked around the room to see where it was coming from, but then I realized Carl was laughing. “You still think I chose you.”

“What?”

“You think it was you,” Carl repeated.

“But you did, you told me you did. You said you ran the simulations and I was the … the host who succeeded most often.”

“You did not succeed in the simulations, the simulations showed successful outcomes.” The water trickled over the rocks again. “I chose you as host, but you were not the reason for the successes.”

I waited for more, but Carl apparently wanted me to ask.

“Who was it, then?”

“I love you.” The words seemed so careful. “You are so … human. You still think it had to be someone. It wasn’t anyone, it was all of you.”

And then I woke up back in that hallway in Val Verde, knowing that Carl was dying, knowing that every action they took on our part sped that process. Miranda wanted to run across the Altus campus, but I didn’t want her to because I knew Carl would have to consume their very self protecting her.

I held the door so Carl wouldn’t have to. I fulfilled my part … I guarded the others. I made my video. I let the other heroes do their work. It was all of us. It was me and Maya and Andy and Miranda and Peanut and Sippy and Bex and even Stewart Patrick. And then the banging on the door stopped, and I thought maybe they had just moved on to some other tactic. Until a voice spoke in my head. Carl’s voice.

“It’s time for you to go, April. Thank you. Goodbye.”

As far as I know, those were Carl’s last words. Spoken in my head, a gift only for me. A gift I didn’t share until now because I wanted it to be mine only. But I guess you can have it too.

I took a long, unsteady breath and noticed that same hollow feeling I’d had when we first arrived at Altus. I was no longer connected to anything outside myself. I knew if I let myself feel anything, it would be too much, so I put my emotions away. As I walked into the hallway, the monkey ran up to me and climbed onto my shoulder. I didn’t even need to look to know that this wasn’t Carl.

“Where’s Carl?” Maya asked. I could hear the panic in her voice. But I didn’t answer. Instead, with the monkey on my shoulder, I walked down the hall. Peter Petrawicki was slumped and unmoving in his carpeted hallway next to the giant, empty statue that had once contained Carl.

The sculpture’s back was still pressed against the door, and even though it was sitting down, I could still barely reach its head. But I did. I put my hand on its cheek, and I felt it. It was not the neither hot nor cold we had felt on 23rd Street. The face felt cool, like metal, like it was a sculpture someone had created and left as a piece of art in this long, opulent hallway.