Warren, Vermont, barely existed. It felt like a perfect hiding spot. I had convinced myself that if we got completely off the grid, not only could we hide from the authorities, we could also hide from Carl. That’s why I liked a middle-of-nowhere cabin on a road that didn’t go anywhere with no Wi-Fi and no cell phones.

The thruway sliced deceptively past Warren, making you feel as if the town hadn’t even happened. But if you pulled off at just the right moment, you’d find yourself in a downtown with a general store that doubled as a gas station that advertised 99-cent video rentals. The only thing that was important to me right then was finding someplace in the world that felt even a little bit safe.

Maya paid for the cabin with some of the cash I had stolen from the ATM. It was part of a larger hotel complex that seemed to mostly be there for vacationing skiers. It was beautiful and calm and it backed right up to a stream.

As I watched her begin unpacking our bags, the same feeling I had felt when I first pounded down the door and saw Maya rippled through my brain. I had been so scared and angry, and when I saw her, for a fraction of a moment, I was intensely happy. But then it ended, and my emotions returned to their smooth, glossy tranquility. I was ready to hide there forever.

If only.

The cabin had a little kitchenette/living room, separated from the single bedroom. I was sitting on the couch when Maya came back from the little general store with some snacks.

“So …” She sat down. I could see her trying not to look too long at my face. “You’ve been gone for six months. It’s a long time. A lot has happened. Do you want me to catch you up?”

I looked up at her and said, “Andy has been touring the world trying to carry a positive message even as the world is having a harder and harder time holding on to one. Robin is now Andy’s assistant, they’re becoming good friends.”

I took a breath and took in Maya’s face. Her beautiful, confused face.

I continued, “Miranda has left her lab at Berkeley for a job at Peter Petrawicki’s new start-up, which has just launched its pilot project, a kind of full-body-immersion virtual reality. You, well, it seems like you’ve been spending a whole lot of time on the Som searching for me. I do not understand how you found me. There’s a scavenger hunt called Fish, it has something to do with Altus, and it’s somehow being weaponized against us.”

“How in the name of Jesus did you know any of that?” Maya asked.

“The same way I knew those cops’ wives’ names. Carl didn’t explain it to me. I lost it and ran.” I didn’t tell her that the real reason I lost it was that Carl had also replaced the parts of my brain that made decisions and taken away my emotions.

“Ask me a question I don’t know the answer to,” I told her.

“Uh, what is the capital of Thailand?”

I formed the thought in my head. I know the capital of Thailand, don’t I? I just can’t quite think of it …

And then—fwop—a little toothpick tapped the back of my eyeball and suddenly I knew. The smaller the request, the smaller the pain. But even the big dumps I could clench my teeth through now. On the drive I’d asked for the top story in the Washington Post, and the full text was suddenly in my brain. I didn’t understand it until I thought about it, though. It was like I had a memory sitting there waiting for me to remember it for the first time. The launch of Altus hadn’t made the top. Instead, the story was about the international climate talks that had been happening in São Paulo, and how they had completely fallen apart. I asked for the second story; it was a follow-up on a recent bombing that targeted the president of Afghanistan. The third-highest story was about an economic report that pointed to looming recession. People weren’t buying cars, and builders weren’t building homes.

“Bangkok,” I told Maya.

“Did that hurt?”

“A little. It seems like I’m getting better at it. I did it a lot while you were driving. I just kept asking, and I kept getting answers. Things in the world are pretty fucked-up, aren’t they.”

“We just couldn’t hold it together without you,” Maya answered.

Ever since Carl told me about my brain, I hadn’t felt like much of a human, but seeing Maya there, with that look of desperation on her face, I decided that I could at least act human.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“April …” She moved from the chair over to the couch. “April, I did it. I found you.” She leaned into me and said quietly, “I found you.” I reached my arms around her and held her. Not because I wanted to, but because the part of my brain Carl had built told me it was the right thing to do.

But then it started to feel right. Her short hair tickled my nose, and my hands, both real and new, pushed into her tummy, and it felt as right as anything ever had. But then she pushed away, and the look she gave me was hard.

“I’m going to need you to apologize to me,” she said. “Not right now. You need time to think about what you’re going to say, because if you do it wrong, I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive you.”

“That’s terrifying,” I said with a stab of fear, almost as big as the one I’d felt as I initiated a fistfight with two police officers. I still wasn’t sure how I had beat them both.

“But in the meantime,” Maya said, pulling a DVD out from underneath the pile of snacks, “I have acquired the best thing created in 1993.” It was Pauly Shore’s Son in Law.

I smiled, and I really was happy, just not as happy as I knew I should have been.

I can’t remember this conversation without smelling that cabin. Popcorn and dust and wood and old paper. We were there for such a tiny amount of time, but it seems so sharp to me. Just those first moments of not being alone anymore, even if they were tense, and even if I was still very lost. Son in Law is ruined for me forever; it will only ever be about those moments, doing everything I could to ignore the fact that a space alien had told me I was the last, best hope for humanity’s survival. I’ll never be able to watch a Pauly Shore movie again without reliving what was about to happen.

“Jesus Christ!” Maya shouted from the kitchen, where she was popping another bag of popcorn.

I stood up so fast the chair I was sitting on flew back. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know, it’s nothing. I … I just saw, like, the biggest squirrel I have ever seen in my life out the window. It’s fine,” she breathed. “It just scared me.”

“How certain are you that it was a squirrel?” I asked, trying to sound very serious.

She laughed.

“I’m not kidding.”

“I mean, I don’t know, it didn’t really look like a squirrel, but it was small and fuzzy.”

“Could it have been a monkey?” I asked, starting to slink toward the door.

“I mean, sure, maybe, I haven’t seen many monkeys.”

“Fuck … FUCK!” I said.

“What?”

“There are things I haven’t told you. I think it might be about time to explain,” I said, and then I jerked open the door.

A man jumped back from the doorway. He was wearing tight blue jeans and a red plaid shirt. His hand went to his waist, and he pulled up a gun.