She did not comment on that before continuing. “April, I believe you are a good person. I think you made some questionable decisions, but I’ve read a good bit of what you have written about the Carls and I think it is good. I appreciate you being a calm and level voice when you easily could have been dangerously inflammatory. That being said, if you discover anything else, I’m going to send you a phone number that you should call immediately. You appear to be at the center of this. I very much want us to be on the same team.”

Somehow, that last phrase sounded simultaneously like a beautiful gift and a very real threat.

“Thank you, Madam President,” I said, my voice shaking just slightly. “Can I ask you a question?”

“I can’t guarantee an answer.”

“Of course,” I said. “It’s just, is this possible? Is any of it possible? Are you . . .” I wanted to ask if she was afraid. If I should be afraid. Publicly, my mind was made up. I’d chosen a course and I would stick to it. But in the back of my brain, I also knew I had been infected by an impossible dream, and that most space alien movies ended with wars. But instead I just didn’t say anything.

“April, I’m going to make you wait on my answer. You’ll hear along with everyone else. I have to go now. I’d very much like to meet in person. Hopefully that can be arranged sometime soon.” And then she hung up.

Andy, somewhat unsurprisingly, was still on the other line. I clicked over.

“DUUUUUUUUUUDE,” I said.

“What just happened?” he said, his voice brimming with excitement and confusion.

“Not only did I just talk to the president, I think I just got scolded by the president like she was my middle school principal. I don’t know why that seems weirder than hanging out with a space alien robot, but it does.”

“What was she pissed about?”

“Oh, y’know, just the whole communicating with aliens and providing them with gifts on behalf of my country and my species and my planet instead of letting someone qualified and authorized make that call?”

“That makes a lot of sense now that you say it out loud. Are we going to prison?”

“Hah. No. But I got the feeling that, if we do this again, we will have some very powerful enemies.”

“The most powerful,” Andy shot back.

“I suppose that is not an exaggeration,” I replied. “She said she was about to go on TV to give a speech about the Carls. I assume it’s streaming somewhere.” I popped open my laptop and, indeed, people were anticipating the speech, which had been announced about an hour earlier.

Andy and I stayed on the phone together until the speech began. And then we didn’t hang up; we just sat there silently together, listening to the other person listening to the speech.

Her points were well constructed. First, she wanted to be clear that there was no danger. All health concerns had been eliminated and the Carls appeared to be completely nonthreatening. The Dream seemed to be a harmless call for people across this planet to work together. Carl’s hand was still missing and the Magic Castle was cooperating. She then discussed a little bit of how they had eliminated other possibilities, ending with the kicker that the Carls weren’t in fact standing on the sidewalk; they were hovering micrometers above it, completely immobile and unable to be moved by any amount of force applied to them. They had jackhammered under the one in Oakland. It remained there, hanging above the space where the sidewalk had been.

She pitched it as a wonderful moment to be alive, assuring us that the government was hard at work uncovering the mysteries of the Carls, and all of humanity would have to work together to solve the mysteries of the Dream. It was good. It was sudden for almost everyone, but not for me. It was this slow gradual feeling, like your dog dying a year after being diagnosed with cancer. I had a little bit come to terms with it. But still, then your dog dies, and your dog will never not be dead. It happened, it was official, the president of the United States had confirmed it, the scientists had been consulted: The Carls were aliens and we were not alone in the universe.

“Goddamn,” Andy said afterward.

“Goddamn,” I confirmed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

OK, there’s a lot to tell here. First, let’s go back in time about six months. I was walking out of the bathroom and Maya was on my bed with her drawing tablet hooked up to her laptop. I peeked over her shoulder and said, “What are you working on, it looks adorable,” as she slammed her laptop shut. “Whoa! Hah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to peek.”

“No, it’s fine, I don’t know. It’s . . .”

This had never happened. Maya had always felt like an open book to me.

“Do you have . . . a secret?” I said, genuinely amused.

She looked at me, at first annoyed, and then I could see her getting excited.

“April . . .” A smile started eating away at her face. “I do.”

And then suddenly, six months into our relationship, I discovered that my girlfriend had an entire alternate life.

As previously mentioned, Maya is an amazing illustrator. She does fantastic hand lettering, but she’s also great at character design and her specialty is cats. Maya can draw thirty individual adorable cats in like fifteen minutes. The first time I saw one, I had no idea that the character design of the little fluff balls had been an ongoing process since she was in middle school. The final product was both elegant and adorable. It was unclear where their heads ended and their bodies began, and each managed to look distinct while clearly using the same visual language.

Sometime during college, before I knew her well, she meshed two of her hobbies (drawing adorable cats and criticizing late-capitalist financialization) into The Purrletariat, a web comic about anti-capitalist cats. It had gained a substantial following, and remarkably, through a combination of crowdfunding and T-shirt sales, it was generating enough revenue that she couldn’t just stop doing it. But she also, for both professional and personal reasons, liked having The Purrletariat be a secret project. Creating content and not taking credit for it, or leveraging it to promote your other socials, is so anti-now, but it was how I used to be, and it was a quality I really loved (and love) about Maya.

Anyway, that’s why I freaked out a bit when I heard the screen name ThePurrletarian. It probably wasn’t Maya, but also maybe it was.

After Andy and I finished debriefing post-speech, I took out my phone to think about texting Maya. Of course, I didn’t. I had tweet storms to outline and Facebook posts to write. Andy was working on a script, but I was sure I’d want to make a bunch of changes. Robin was texting me for yes/nos on interview requests, and while I managed all that, another call from my parents came in.

“Hey, guys.” I knew from experience it would be both of them.

“Hi, April.” My mom sounded worried on the speakerphone. “Based on when you’re posting on Facebook, we are assuming that you never sleep. How are you holding up?”

“Um . . .” This was not something I had checked. “Fine, I guess. I . . . I just talked to the president.”

“What?!” they both said, and then my dad added, “Honey, that’s amazing. After her speech?”

“Before, actually, I was talking to her when you called me the first time.”

“Well, usually we’re frustrated when you don’t pick up, but this was a good reason!” my mom said, right on the edge of a guilt trip. “What did you talk about?”

“We talked about the Dream, and about how maybe I should have acted a little less . . . carelessly, and she, I think, basically gave me her phone number.”

“Wow!” my dad said.

“April, honey, do you think that maybe she was right about you—”

I didn’t let her finish. “Yes, Mom, I do. I really do.” I was feeling properly chastised. I had crossed a line and I was finally starting to understand that. “I’m sorry, it was a dumb risk. I wasn’t thinking. We all got ourselves worked up and excited by the mystery of it all. I’m sorry if I freaked you guys out.”

“We’re just glad you’re safe, April,” my dad said.

“Yeah, I know, Dad. You guys are great. It’s just all really exciting. I mean, the president! This is pretty weird!”

“April . . .” My mom’s tone did not reflect my excitement. “Do you think maybe there are . . . good reasons to be worried about this Dream?”

That slowed me down. I mean, I am not a neuroscientist or whatever, but I was aware that a dream shouldn’t be able to be passed from person to person. And people on the news were already talking about how the Carls had clearly altered the brains of humans, which was not a simple intrusion. It was significant. It was scary.

“Have you guys had it yet?” I said.

“No, not yet.” There was a little apprehension in my dad’s voice.

“It’s not scary. If anything, it’s fun. I think Carl is trying to give humanity a project to work on together. Maybe they’re testing us to see if we can cooperate.”

“How long until it’s everyone?”

“I don’t know, Mom, but it’s not something you should be scared of.”