An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(51)
So instead of talking to any of the people who could have helped me at that moment, I went home and read blog posts about how I was awful, ugly, and a traitor.
March 17
@PrimePatr1ot: Sometimes I wonder how much people like April May are being paid to shill for the government.
@AprilMaybeNot: They pay me in PopTarts. So. Many. PopTarts. Why did I sign this deal? I have a problematic number of PopTarts.
I’m leaning out over my balcony, watching, with Andy standing next to me. He’s filming as they remove the tent from over Carl and reopen 23rd Street. Thank the lord, the noise will be back. Also, now I can truly look down on Carl and see him there beside the phone booths that, for some reason, are still taking up valuable street real estate in Manhattan.
My book is in the hands of a legion of copy editors trying to find every mistake and mislaid argument. There’s nothing I can do to help it at the moment, which is wonderful because I’m fucking sick of the book. Also, we’ve got videos to make.
The army of experts who had been flowing into the tent they had erected around Carl had figured out more or less absolutely nothing in the past few weeks. Did they deliver uranium to Carl to see what happened? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure someone somewhere did, though it didn’t seem that there was any immediate effect. If they did discover something new about Carl, they didn’t tell anyone.
What we knew was that he wasn’t standing on the sidewalk; he was hovering very slightly above it, latched onto space somehow. He was not at all thermally conductive; it seemed that the atoms of our world didn’t even interact with the atoms of his body. He couldn’t be moved or damaged. It was as if we could see him, but he was not actually in our space. Except for Hollywood Carl’s hand, of course, which still hadn’t been seen since it disappeared into that weird magicians’ club.
Suddenly, Peter Petrawicki was there, down on the street, followed closely by a young guy holding a camera. Some police started harassing him—I couldn’t hear what was happening. He looked indignant; he was gesturing to Carl, and to the building behind him. The police looked like they really, really didn’t want to be in the video, but they also had instructions to not let anyone near Carl right now. Besides, the street hadn’t been opened yet, so how did he even get in?
“How can anyone look at that guy and not immediately get that he is the worst thing that ever existed?” Andy said.
“There are people who say the same thing about me,” I mused.
Peter posted the video later, and of course Andy and I watched it. It’s mostly Peter saying, “What have you found out? Is it safe? You clearly thought there was enough danger to block off the street last month, what have you found out that makes it safe now? The people deserve to know!” That kind of thing. But then he cuts from the street to him sitting in a small but chic office.
“Eventually, a time comes when we must take some action. I am calling on the Defenders to begin collecting data from the Dream privately. I know that many of us would rather not interface with the Dream at all, that we wake ourselves up immediately to prevent it from further infecting our minds. But while hundreds of passcodes have been uncovered already, hundreds remain, and if someone . . . reckless is the first to decipher what the code means, that could put the entire planet at risk. We must decipher the code first. We can and must work together to play this game so that we can control the outcome, and I am linking to several spaces online that we have created for that purpose. We have information that several governments are already putting personnel to work to attempt to solve the code before anyone else, but I don’t believe governments should be trusted with this either. While we can work together, when a code is deciphered, we must put that information in a central and secret location. I have created an encryption code and am including below instructions for how to use it. If you find a code, please send it to us, encrypted, and we will check it in the Dream for accuracy, and add it to our proprietary list of codes only Defenders will have access to. With the size, passion, and intelligence of this community, I believe we will be the first to understand what the next chapter in this story is, and I know we are the only ones I would trust with that information. Thank you, and stay safe.”
“Thank you, and stay safe” was how he ended all his videos. Pretentious and subtly menacing . . . Peter Petrawicki all the way!
“We’re going to have to do that now too,” I said after we’d finished watching the video.
“Fuck that, we’re above his shit.” Andy was pretty pissed. “This is something the Carls want humanity to do together. Pitting us against each other, that’s what Peter wants.”
“No, he just made it impossible for people to feel like we’re investigating some great caper as a species. I want that as much as you do, but I can’t encourage people to post discovered codes publicly. If he has access to all the secret ones they have, plus all the public ones everyone else has, the Defenders really will decipher the code first, and be in control at that point.”
“Maybe that’s a race that it’s OK to lose.”
“Fuck that,” I parroted back to him. “I’m not letting him win.”
“Let’s take some time to think at least. Assemble the brain trust.”
So we did. We got Miranda and Robin on Skype and explained Petrawicki’s plan.
“That is not good,” Miranda said. “This is a genius move on PP’s part. Not only does it give them a chance at winning, just framing it as a competition instead of a collaborative effort helps their cause. It slows everyone down and it pits us all against each other.”