I was caught a little off guard, worried why she thought I was the right person to ask.

“Um …” I didn’t even know what the Premium version had in store, but I was deeply attached. “It will be extremely hard because the people who are using Altus’s service love it a lot. Even if we destroyed their whole system, I think people would rebuild it,” I said, trying to sound like I wasn’t one of those people.

“How would you feel if we destroyed Altus?” Maya asked, seeing deeper into me than I would maybe have liked.

“I’m not sure if we can,” I hedged.

“We must,” said Carl.

And then Maya, April, Robin, and Carl were all looking at me. Every one of them showing me some mix of hope and fear and frustration.

“Andy,” Robin said, his voice strong.

I looked from him to April and saw an anger there I hadn’t expected.

Maya took over, seeing the dangerous ground we were on before I did. “Peter Petrawicki and Altus are not two different things. I understand looking at things from thirty thousand feet or whatever, and understanding the magnitude of the challenge is great, but Altus isn’t salvageable. It’s rotten to the core.”

I finally thought of how my hesitation must look through April’s eyes. To come back and find that her best friend was enthusiastically enjoying a creation of the man who might be most to blame for her murder.

How had I ended up here?

“Of course we will,” I said, fully chastised. “We’ll take it down and I’ll love doing it.”

Relief spread over April’s face, but I caught a hardness in Maya’s eyes.

“What tools do we have?” April asked.

“Well, since we’re sharing secrets, I have a few. I have a large social media following, and a lot of people listen to me. I’m also on track to be one of the first fifty people with access to the Altus Premium Space. I also am one of only a dozen people who collaborate on an anonymous video journalism channel called The Thread that reaches tens of millions of influential people.”

Maya gasped at this. “You’re The Thread?” she said, almost as an accusation.

“No, The Thread isn’t one person. It’s a group of people. I was invited in, and we construct the content together. I have no idea who is in charge—everyone is anonymous. Only one person knows who everyone is, and no one knows who they are.”

“That’s a big fucking deal, Andy,” she said.

“Well, I have one more thing on the list, which is that I have a hundred fifty million dollars.”

Everybody’s eyes got big then.

“What the hell have you been up to? And what is The Thread?” April asked.

“Jesus, all I did was find April,” Maya said.

I looked at Carl, who blinked very slowly and then said, “I gave him some very good investment advice.”

“I FUCKING KNEW IT!” I said. “Can I tell them?”

“Yes,” they said.

“Carl here has been dragging me around by the dick with a secret, all-knowing book.”

“Oh. Yeah, I got a book too,” Maya said.

“Me too,” Robin added, holding his up.

“Fuck! Why were you giving us all books?” I said, staring at the monkey. They looked unfazed.

“You will continue to get them. They are the best way for me to communicate without the possibility of detection,” they said.

“Well, I hope you know it was completely terrifying,” I said. And then, turning back to the topic at hand: “So I have a hundred fifty million dollars, access to The Thread, potentially access to the Altus Premium Space—what do you guys have?”

I had tried to gloss over my status inside of Altus, but I couldn’t lie about it either.

“So you’re going to be one of the first people to really know what Altus is?” April asked.

“Maybe. I hope so.”

She thought about it for a moment and then said, “That’s going to be extremely powerful. Andy, I have to ask you to do something, and it’s going to suck. I want you to go all in on Altus. I want you to be a champion for them. People are going to hate you for it, but you will be our inside man. And when you turn away from them, it will matter because you believed in it.”

I let out a long breath. This was exactly what I wanted to do, but I didn’t want them to know. “But, Andy,” Robin said, ever the clear thinker, “if you do that, you have to know that you’re going to get sucked in. And you can’t let yourself forget why you’re doing it. OK?”

“I can do it,” I said, relieved that it seemed like I was going to get to keep my friends and my Altus habit.

“So what are our other assets?” Robin asked.

“Miranda is in Val Verde right now, though it’s not easy to talk to her,” I said. “Maybe we can count on her for something at some point.”

April added, “And we have an artificial intelligence that can inhabit a monkey. That has to count for something.”

“You’re forgetting something,” Maya said, like it was something really obvious.

“OH!” April said. “Yeah, and I can Google stuff with my mind!”

I just stared at her.

“Also, the special skin, it seems to be very strong. I punched a hole in a car. Also, when Maya got shot, it healed her.”

I stood up from the couch. “What? Go back! Go slower!”

So she did. She told us the whole story and it took a long-ass time, but it was a good story, so no one minded.

At the end, April listed our assets out loud.

“So we have a hundred fifty million dollars, a sentient monkey who is also a superintelligent alien AI, access to a massively influential anonymous video-essay platform, a mole in Val Verde, a high-level Altus user ready to turn his coat when needed, and a woman with superstrength who is capable of Googling things with her mind—that’s me.”

“I mean, that’s pretty good,” I said, “but I don’t know how it helps us take down Altus.”

Maya looked at April, and April looked down at her lap. “I guess I also have what I’ve always had,” she said, a little sadly. “An audience.” I didn’t even notice that Maya had been holding April’s hand until she let it go.

Nothing is inevitable.

APRIL

Andy didn’t want to leave us, but the sun went down and Carl told him he had to go home and sleep in his own house. And so, eventually, Maya and I were left alone to squat in a four-thousand-square-foot high-rise apartment with our pet alien monkey.

It felt wrong, to be sure. It felt like both trespassing on whoever owned the place and trespassing on society for enjoying something so decadent. Did I take baths in the giant soaking tub with a view of both the Hudson and the East River (and everything in between)? Yussss. But I had complicated thoughts about structural inequality while I did it.

Maya had set Tater up in the nicest spot in the house. We certainly didn’t need the sunlamp anymore. Suddenly the tiny leaves were flourishing. It was the only plant in the whole place, which I guess made sense for a vacant apartment.

Andy had brought us a computer, and apparently Carl didn’t have any problem hacking the Wi-Fi, because it was on immediately. But that didn’t mean that I wanted to hop back on social media. I mean, I did, but also I did not.