“But they’re changing our brains. They changed your brain already, right? Like, this Dream doesn’t act like normal dreams. What if it changed you more than you think it did?”

That was indeed a scary thought, and hearing it from my mom rather than some internet troll made it seem a lot more real and a lot more worrying.

“I don’t know, Mom. I know that if the Carls wanted to hurt us, they probably would have just hurt us. I honestly don’t know more than you, but I . . .” I didn’t want to say the thing I was about to say, but I had started, so I said it anyway: “I guess I just have faith.”

“April,” my dad said, “I know you have an awful lot of work to do. And I know that you never stop when something isn’t done. That’s something I’ve always respected about you. But take some breaks, honey. Call us. Spend time with Maya, just take a walk sometimes.”

“Oh, Dad, Mom . . . Maya and I, we broke up.”

And here it was all again, confronting the reality of my idiocy and uselessness. Just in that moment when my dad was being very kind, I had to remind him how screwed up I was.

“Oh, honey.” My mom now. “We’re so sorry. You don’t have to talk about it now.”

They knew me well enough that they wouldn’t push for the story. They knew what had happened. Not the details, but that I’d cut a string if I ever felt it holding me back. They didn’t like it, but they weren’t going to fix it.

Eventually my dad said, “Tom’s wedding is coming up, we’ll have a nice long chat about all of this there. We’ll make some time. It doesn’t have to all be about him. We love you, April.”

And then my mom added, “Call us!”

* * *

—

    After that, I lowered myself into the news storm. The president hadn’t mentioned me by name in her speech, but there was reference to my work. I was now inextricably linked to this story. Not because I discovered Carl, and not because I was the first person with a following to come out and say he was an alien, and not because I seemed to be the reason his hand fell off and ran across Hollywood, but because I was all three of those things.

Robin sent a car for me and I went to a satellite studio. From there, video of me sitting in front of the Manhattan skyline could be beamed to any show anywhere. A producer guy told me whom I’d be talking to and where, and a little earpiece was my only connection to those people. It was a step up in quality from Skyping in, and a step down from being there in the studio. This way, though, I could be on every news program that mattered on both coasts without leaving the room.

As this was the biggest story of all time, absolutely everyone was available to talk, and I got put on panels with them all, whether we had anything to do with each other or not. I talked to retired generals, physicists, sleep psychologists, neurologists, actors who had played aliens in movies, famous science communicators . . . Everyone wanted a piece of this story, and the news shows were building panels out of the biggest names, trying to one-up each other.

So yes, I talked to a lot of fancy and famous people that day and I felt surprisingly comfortable doing it. There was only one interview that was decidedly unpleasant.

News anchor lady: “Joining us today to talk about this remarkable news, April May, discoverer of New York Carl”—I waved—“and Peter Petrawicki, author of Amazon number one ranked Invaded”—he nodded.

“Peter, let’s start with you. The news about Carl has been out for only a few hours, but you already have a book climbing the charts on Amazon. How did that happen?”

Petrawicki was beamed in from somewhere else via satellite, so he appeared in the little on-screen box next to mine. He looked exactly like every guy I had ever seen walking down Wall Street at lunch: midforties, dark hair, tan, white teeth, gray suit, light blue shirt open a couple of buttons, no tie. If he was going for any particular look, it was “exactly average.” Of course, I couldn’t see him then. The entire show was just voices in my ear.

“Well, just like April here, I felt it was becoming more and more clear that something odd was going on and the number of explanations that made sense was getting pretty thin. Obviously I don’t talk about the president’s statement in my book, though I’m already working on an updated version, but this seemed like the story of the century, and I felt like I had an obligation to bring some truth to the table.”

“And, April, what do you think of Mr. Petrawicki’s assertion that the Carls are potentially a threatening and invading force?”

You can see on the tape that this completely blindsided me. The correct response, now that I know my way around every potential interview environment, would have been to say, “I don’t know anything about what Mr. Petrawicki is working on, but . . .” And then I would just say what I wanted to say. Instead, I reacted defensively.

“I think it’s foolish.” And then I paused to gather my thoughts a bit, but before I could continue . . .

“It’s foolish? Is it foolish to consider the security of Americans when a far more powerful force suddenly appears in our cities? A force that has now gone underground and is roaming around who knows where? A force that has not just invaded our cities but now our minds? You think a little caution is foolish?”

If I was supposed to respond, I was not able to. Thankfully the anchor took over for me.

“But, Mr. Petrawicki, what do we know about the actual intentions of the Carls?”

“We know they are wearing armor, we know they came unannounced, we know they’ve violated international and domestic law, we know they have asked for radioactive materials, one of which was provided for them by our guest here.”

I froze up. I wouldn’t have been more still if he had been holding a gun to my head. I shot a quick “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS GUY” glance at Robin, but he gestured to me to keep my eyes on the camera. Looking away makes you look weird.

Again, the anchor chimed in, “Yes, April. That does seem like it was quite an extraordinary step for a private citizen to take.”

Thankfully, I was prepared for this question.

“Americium, the element we provided, is a common household product. We purchased it at the CVS just down the street from Hollywood Carl. It’s radioactive, but so is the sun. I agree, we got too caught up in the fun, though. We should have presented our findings to the government to let them decide what to do with the information.”

This was the talking point we’d decided to go with. If you were watching the interview (which I watched several times in later days), you would have seen Petrawicki with a look on his face like, “Yeah. Duh, you also should not have been an idiot, snotty, shitty little know-it-all brat.”

The anchor took over again.

“The president seems to think the Carls pose no threat—”

I was waiting for the anchor to finish her question, but Peter just picked it right up.

“I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but you and I know exactly as much about this as the president does. It serves her purposes for us to believe these things peaceful envoys. But why, in the face of this immense threat, would we assume the best? Wouldn’t it make more sense to exercise even a little caution?”

“It seems to me,” I said, “that if the Carls wanted to hurt us, they’re powerful enough that they could just wipe us off the planet.”

“So you would suggest, what, that we just lie down in the face of their great power and let them do what they will?”

“No . . . I mean . . . there is nothing threatening about what they’ve done. They’re sculptures, they visited every place equally, and they’re providing games to play in our dreams.”

“Again, you have no idea. No one has any idea what their intent is, where they’re from, what they want with us. But I can tell you that in the history of our planet, advanced civilizations meeting less-advanced cultures doesn’t usually end well for the less-advanced people. No, that’s not a tendency, it’s a rule, a law. The president and every citizen in this country has an obligation to consider this threat.”

“And what would that look like?” the anchor said.

“This is America. We have never been scared away from a fight. When we are pressured, that is when we are greatest. That is when we accomplish the most.”

“That’s all the time we have. After the break . . .” And that was it.

“Next interview, KCKC, radio interview in ten minutes,” the producer said.

“Who the FUCK was that guy,” I said, tearing my earpiece out.

To save you the scrambling Robin and I did to figure that out before the radio interview I had in ten minutes, here’s what we discovered.

Just like me, Peter Petrawicki was in demand. His book, Invaded, was more like a blog post with cover art. It was twenty pages long, and he’d update it whenever there was new news. It was only available online, but it was the top-selling book on Amazon. It was three dollars. It was also the only book about Carl in the whole world, so that helped. He’d had guest columns in a few papers, mostly conservative-leaning. He’d been doing the news circuit since his book came out, which was the day after the Hollywood Carl video.