An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(18)

“So you are saying Carl is a space alien!” I started to freak out again.

“No, I . . . I don’t know, April! It’s exciting, but space aliens are a very specific explanation for a very broad circumstance. There’s more to the universe than humans and aliens. Maybe they’re made by humans but sent from the future. Maybe they are a kind of projection through space-time. Maybe they’re proof that our universe is a simulation and someone is changing the code. Mostly, I don’t pretend an explanation is correct just because I haven’t thought of any others that fit with current data.”

She seemed very sure of herself, even if she looked a little timid and freaked-out talking to me.

“Well, Miranda, speaking of the current data. We haven’t told anyone about this, but there’s more.”

Her eyes, impossibly, got bigger.

I took her through the procedure of the Wikipedia clue.

“This is deeply impossible,” she said after we had gone through the whole sequence, “and nonsensical as well. I-A-M-U.”

“I know. I’ve been racking my brain over this for days, so I don’t expect you to—”

“Elements,” she interrupted.

“What?”

“Elements. I, Am, U—those are all elements. Iodine, americium, uranium.”

“OK, that’s another lead to add to the fifty-mile-long list of guesses as to what this might mean.”

She looked a little dejected, and I felt bad for immediately dashing her first try at explaining it. I mean, of course Miranda would find a sciencey explanation—she did sciencey stuff. So I said, “I mean, that’s interesting, though—we hadn’t thought of it.”

Her smile came back.

“So does this Wikipedia thing make . . . your hypothesis more or less likely? Also, is there a time when we’re going to know for sure?”

Her eyes shot around in thought for a moment before she said, “The Wikipedia thing is weird, but less weird than the material thing. But maybe that’s just because I don’t really know that much about how the internet works. I’d have to talk to someone who knows things I don’t know. But the material is not only unknown technology; according to my understanding of physics, it’s not possible. And your second question is a great question. I don’t know when we will know for sure. Maybe never. Sometimes there are mysteries that linger for centuries. So I don’t know. I just can’t fathom another explanation.”

We sat there and stared at each other for a long time before she got too uncomfortable and just said, “So . . . uh . . .”

“So do you suggest operating under the assumption, privately at least, that Carl is . . . external?”

“It’s hard to say, right?”

“It is.”

Saying that felt weirdly like cursing in church. I wasn’t quite in shock; I was more feeling like I must be an idiot for even listening to this.

Miranda continued. “Sometimes we have to do that. Sometimes we have to go with an imperfect theory and . . .” She got quiet and her eyes unfocused and moved around the room. I stayed quiet because it seemed like if I said something I would be interrupting something intimate and sacred.

“April, what if Carl’s asking for something? Like, they want us to bring them things. None of those elements are abundant. Maybe they need something!”

I was, to be clear, completely clueless. For Miranda, things appeared to be crashing into place faster than I even got my mind around the fact that this might be a for-real thing that Carl was doing. That Carl was alive. That Carl was . . . external. I did my best to keep up.

“But, well, we’re not going to be able to give Carl uranium.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s uranium. Doc Brown tried to get some and the terrorists shot him.”

“That was plutonium, and in any case, it’s all a matter of quantity. Iodine is easy—we’ve got that in the lab. Uranium I don’t have, but you can buy unrefined uranium ore on Amazon—it’s not dangerous unless it’s purified. Americium, though, I don’t know much about. It’s transuranic, so radioactive and rare. I’ll have to do some research. Quantities and purities are the hard part with rare stuff.”

She fired this all off at rapid speed, and as soon as she hit “do some research,” I could hear her typing while she talked.

“OH! I’ve got a lead on americium,” she said after a tiny pause. “It’s in most smoke detectors, so you can literally buy it at Walmart.”

“Miranda, is it possible that Carl doesn’t want uranium? I’ve already started to get questions from people who think that they’re dangerous. Probably wouldn’t be good for their image if they’re searching for radioactive materials.”

“I mean, I dunno, it was just a thought.”

I felt bad for throwing a wrench into her beautiful brain machine, though I did kinda want to slow the conversation.

“I mean . . .” I wanted to encourage her. She was hard not to like, almost like a kid. A genius kid. “It could be. I just thought maybe we should be a little surer before we start stockpiling uranium.”

Again, she was typing while I was talking.

“Oh god,” she said, seeming scared. And that made me scared. It was the first time I thought maybe the Carls were indeed here to hurt us. Like she had discovered that mixing americium, iodine, and uranium would make a bomb that would destroy the earth.