An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

April arrives at the address, which is an unoccupied warehouse for lease. She is unsure whether she is relieved or worried that there is no sign of Petrawicki. After thinking for a long time about what Carl wants, April realizes that the message “Only April” clearly meant just in a physical sense. Carl seems to want April to bring an audience wherever she goes, and since what was about to happen would be historic, she will start a livestream.

April announces to her audience that she has solved the 767 sequence, which directed her to come to New Jersey. She admits that she doesn’t know why she is the only one who had the dream or why Carl saved her on July 13. April shares that another group decoded the sequence and is on their way there as well, which is why she rushed this trip. April’s dream is that the endgame is some grand prize that only the Carls can bestow—something like immortality, a spaceship, or world peace.

April shares how the 767 sequence was solved and credits all those who helped. She notices a door hanging loosely and a pile of wet clothes lying in front of it, and April is suddenly terrified. As she approaches the pile of clothes, April smells grape jelly. She tells her audience that she thinks someone tried to go inside and died because Carl didn’t want them to. Unable to say or think anymore, she realizes Carl zapped them the moment they tried to walk inside. But Carl told her to come here, and trusting him is part of her identity, so she walks inside.

The warehouse is massive and empty, with papers and leaves littered on the concrete floor. She decides to check the offices overlooking the warehouse. As she walks up the stairs, Miranda calls her. April contemplates picking up but doesn’t. She hears the Bowie song “Golden Years” playing in the distance when Miranda texts her to get out. April arrives at the little office with the desk the song is playing from. As April waits for her reward, Miranda texts her to run because the solution to the sequence was faked and she is in the wrong place. At that moment, the metal door slams shut behind April.

April tries her best to open the door, but it doesn’t budge. Over the song, April hears footsteps racing off the catwalk and sees empty jugs of grape jelly, which makes her feel like an idiot. April tells her audience that this is a hoax and she has now been locked in a warehouse. She asks Miranda to call the police to help her and arrest her kidnappers. She gets tired of hearing the song but the music player doesn’t budge. April leaves the livestream playing, occasionally commenting because she still feels safe. Though she is scared and disappointed to not be meeting Carl, she doesn’t yet smell the smoke. Miranda texts her apologizing, saying it is her fault because she took the code from the Som, and it had been tampered with. April acknowledges that they would have figured it out if she wasn’t so impulsive.

April admits to her livestream that they are all her best friends. No single person’s love can compete with even casual regard from a hundred million, an impossible wave of support. She says that fame is a drug, that she hurt people she cares most about because she is addicted to attention and does stupid things instead of using her power for good. Though people in the livestream chat are receptive, many people are saying that the lyrics to “Golden Years” are changed, even on Spotify’s copy. Robin calls April and asks if she can get out of the room, and April says that it smells like smoke. Robin then hangs up to call the fire department. As it starts getting smokier, April starts to panic. Robin calls her again; he has just arrived, and though the fire department is on its way, the building is on fire.

April speaks to a policeman, who reassures her that they will get her out of there. Since she is high up in the building, the smoke will be thicker. He tells her to break the window, jump out of it quickly, and land on her feet. April starts feeling frustrated that Carl has not yet saved her. Now streaming to an audience of more than 10 million, April asks about the David Bowie lyric investigation. People are touching Carl with gold, though nothing is happening. She retches as she jumps out the window and slams on the concrete, first her left foot, then left arm, and then her head. Though still conscious, she feels the pain of her concussion.

Miranda calls her to tell her Maya is there, and after decoding the actual code with the passkey, they found that it’s just the atomic symbol for gold 64 times. April asks her audience to take the risk and make a choice together. She explains that she is stuck on this planet with them, but she is glad. Despite the awful people she has been exposed to, she has met people that are amazing, thoughtful, generous, and kind. She believes that if the Carls are testing them, this is the final one. The only story that makes sense is the one in which humanity works together, and there could not have been any time in history when it could be possible. If they can’t do it right now with 800 million people watching, they never can.

She ends the livestream at its peak, thanking everyone for doing this together. April then calls Andy, who is holding a gold earring up to New York Carl. April tells him that she knows he will be mad at her forever and that’s okay, but not to be mad at himself. Andy begs April not to give up before shouting in fright “It’s the hand…” (322). A second later, a burning wood beam falls and slides through April like a knife, breaking her skull and tearing off the right side of her face and leg. As her bare torso cooks in the fire, she remains conscious for a few terrible seconds and understands that she will die. April feels no acceptance, only bitterness, terror, and frustration—screaming before it is all gone. 

April wakes up in the Dream lobby. Everything is the same, except that Carl is at the desk instead of the little robot. He seems menacing because she just watched her body get ripped apart. Carl tells her that her body is very badly damaged, but she is not dead at this moment. Though she wants to find out what happened and what will happen, she has waited for this moment for so long and simply blurts out “Why did you come here?” (325).

Carl tells April that she has three questions, because it is a tradition in their stories, and her body will likely not work for long without intervention. She asks him again why he came. Carl says he came to observe. April asks him to elaborate on that. Carl tells April that they had to see how humans react to them. There was no way to know without contact, and this is the beginning of a process. She wants to ask what the process is—if they had done it before, if they are dangerous, and what animal they were being studied like. However, the more pressing debate happening in her mind is about why she had been singled out and saved so many times.

April asks Carl how humans measure up. When he doesn’t understand the question, she asks if humans passed his tests. He still doesn’t understand the question, so April finally asks him what he thinks of humanity. Carl replies, “Beautiful” (326). They sit silently for a long time and April waits for him to say something else. She realizes that questions about where Carl is from or how he got here would be useless without context, so she caves in and makes her final question about her. She asks Carl why he chose her. April is suddenly at the 23rd Street subway station on the night she meets Carl. Her MetroCard didn’t work, though it worked many times after that. The walk light is on, even though the stop light is red. The truth hits April hard. Carl stopped her from getting on that train, turned her around and even made sure she wasn’t on the wrong side of 23rd. When Carl says they chose her before the first video, she stares up at Carl, the weight of it making her cry. There are billions of people on the planet, and nothing made her special. When she asks why, Carl tells her that her story just started before the Dream ends. 

The narrative shifts to Andy’s voice. April asked him to finish, as she isn’t around at this part of the story. He continues from when he is holding a gold earring to New York Carl. He feels responsible for what is happening to April, and that she wouldn’t be dying if he hadn’t walked out. As he’s talking to April, he hears people shouting and turns around to see Carl’s missing hand skipping down the street full speed. As he pushes the earring to Carl’s belly, Carl’s right hand shoots up, grabs a point in the universe, and yanks himself into the air. Andy hears a massive crack sound, a sonic boom as Carl leaves faster than the speed of sound. After April’s plea, people all over the world rushed to the Carls. The instant New York Carl took off, every other Carl in the world simply disappeared. Physicists try to explain that every Carl is in fact one. Once Carl left, everyone stopped having the Dream. Andy calls Robin, who is frantic and crying. Andy reassures him that Carl is gone, and that he might be coming for help or already be there. Robin tells him the roof is caving in. Andy knows then that he is deluded and that April is actually dead.

For weeks, no one can find April’s body. Everyone wants Andy, Maya, Miranda, or Robin on the news. When they receive letters of condolences from the president, they finally start to mourn. A few weeks later, Robin calls Andy with the news that the NYPD found the guys responsible and are arresting them. Though Petrawicki came away clean because he didn’t have anything to do with it, the attack and Carl’s disappearance was the end of the Defenders movement. Within a month, even Petrawicki starts distancing himself from the Defenders movement, saying it has grown into something he no longer respects. Still, the scariest believers don’t disappear, and conspiracy theories kept growing.

The group shatters within a month—Miranda is back at Berkeley, Robin is back in LA, and Maya is moving around every few days. Andy stays in New York. However, not many days pass without the four of them talking on the group text that still has April’s number. Andy texts one day that people keep asking him to speak at things, but he doesn’t know what to talk about. Maya reminds Andy that April always said Carl was a canvas on which people projected their values, hopes, and feelings, and that April will become that now. Since April isn’t around to say things, people will put words into her mouth, and this is going to be who they are to the world forever. Andy starts thinking about what he would say, refusing to post anything on their YouTube channel after April’s death.

Though Andy gives a lot of talks that year, he writes his preliminary thoughts that night. He writes that a year ago, he watched the world fall in love with his best friend. They plotted to change her from a person to a story, and it worked because it was a great story that fit her. The most insidious part is that she dehumanized herself and saw herself as a tool. Near the end, even he forgot that April was a fragile human being. Though he doesn’t know what happened to April, he knows she was just a person who wanted to tell a story that would bring people together.

As time passes, Andy travels around eulogizing April. Speaking to people is different from tweeting or making videos, but he likes the connection and is good at it. He realizes they will never know what happened to April and that the Carls are done with them. Andy remembers the first day when none of the major news stories were about April, the Dream, or the Carls—the day April feared most. A couple of months later, Andy hears a knock at his door, which is odd because no one can get into the building without getting buzzed in. He grabs his phone and freezes when he sees a message from April May reading “Knock Knock” (337).