An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(39)

Anyway, I gave up. I decided that this dream was dumb and I was going to wake up and end it. The way I’d done that in the past was to talk to the robot in the lobby, so I headed back. Just as I approached the door, I turned around to give the room one last look, which was when I saw it.

The cubicles were laid out in a six-by-four grid.

From there, it was pretty simple. The grid showed the location of the next desk it wanted me to go to. The orientation was clear from the red-block desk, so I just went to the one represented by the blue block. Voilà, an orange block appeared, I went to the orange-block desk, then purple, then green, then pink, then red, and soon I had visited every desk but one.

So I sat down at it, thinking maybe something fantastic would happen. But it didn’t. I just opened up the file, and instead of the grid was a phrase: “Fancy tulip man.”

I pretty much ran to the front desk. Was I going to meet Carl? Was the robot at the desk going to give me some grand reward? Had I moved past the first test of the Freddie Mercury Sequence only to solve another test so quickly?

“Hello,” it said as I approached.

“Hello, yes,” I blurted. “I’m here to see Carl.”

“Do you have a passcode?”

“Fancy tulip man.”

And I woke up. Pretty furious. Of course it had been nothing—why would it be anything else? It was a dream. I was exhausted both physically and emotionally. My life had been turned inside out and upside down and then blended, spiced, spliced, and rebranded. Of course I was going to have weird dreams. And on top of all that, I was singing that damn song. Except now it had words: “Six, seven, six, four, five, F, zero, zero, four, D, six, one, seven, four.”

I went to sleep singing the song, knowing it was absurd, but too tired and disappointed to care.



* * *



—

The next morning the federal government announced that they would be restricting the area around all the Carls in the US, citing a very vague, low-level public health concern. The entire block was to be restricted. The federal government was going to be paying all the businesses there in the meantime to compensate for their losses. Only people who lived on that block would be allowed in (which, hooray, included me).

They did not, however, confirm that Carl was an alien.

Nonetheless, this set off a huge round of speculation, and as I was the closest thing to a Carl expert, my following exploded every time I posted something even semi-sensical about the situation. I was calm and carefully laid hints that I knew more than everyone else, even though, at that point, I had pretty much spilled all the beans . . . all of my beloved and terrifying beans. A piece of advice: When you have beans like the ones I had, you should probably be more careful with them than I was.

But then, suddenly I got some more beans.

Robin came over that morning to try to help me understand why I needed to form a corporation. It was all taxes and liability and insurance and mortgages, and I hated it all so much. I was humming under my breath while trying to not think about literally anything else when Robin stopped talking and started staring at me like my skin had turned purple.

“Where did you hear that song?” Robin asked. This was unusual for him. He seemed pretty driven to keep our relationship professional, so I was a little taken aback that he’d ask a question that wasn’t relevant to work.

“Honestly? I think I made it up during a dream. It’s weird, right?”

If my skin was purple before, Robin was now looking at me like it was made of molten lava.

“Are you OK?”

“Can you tell me more about this dream?”

“I mean, yeah, it’s weird. I’ve had a similar one four different times. I’m in the lobby of a weird fancy office building . . .”

And then he finished for me: “. . . and there’s a robot receptionist, and there’s a weird catchy song playing, the song you were just singing.”

“How did you do that?”

“I’ve been having that dream for days, April. Every time I try to talk to the robot . . .”

And then I finished for him: “. . . it asks for a passcode, and if you don’t have one, you wake up.”

“If you don’t have one?”

“Yeah!” I got excited. I knew more than Robin. “I solved a puzzle in the dream, and it gave me a passcode. I went to the receptionist, and I came away singing, ‘Six, seven, six, four, five, F, zero, zero, four, D, six, one, seven, four.’”

“That is . . .” He didn’t need to finish.

“Andy and Miranda!!” I shouted.

“What?”

“Andy was humming the song when we were in LA,” I said as I was getting out my phone to call. It rang twice before he picked up.

“April,” Andy answered.

“Hold on, I’m going to add Miranda to the call.” I did.

“Hello?” Miranda asked.

“Hey, guys, have you ever had a dream where you’re in the lobby of a fancy office building and there’s a robot receptionist and it asks you for a passcode and there’s catchy lounge music playing?”

It was very quiet.

“That’s . . . ,” Miranda said.

And then another few seconds passed before Andy said, “April . . .”

I kept not talking while they processed.