The Carls 1
Hank Green
1. April May lives in New York City with her girlfriend/college roommate Maya. They started dating fairly recently, but April May still keeps her bed in the living room if their one bedroom apartment in case they don’t work out. She is walking home from her unrelenting job at a startup company trying to revolutionize time management with an app at 2:45 am. When she gets to the subway, her metro pass is declined. She starts walking back to the office to get another one she knows still has money in it. On her way, she sees a large Transformer-like sculpture she had never seen before. She almost brushes it off to keep going, but as the alumna of a fancy art school, she realizes it deserves more attention. She calls up her friend Andy (she met in a marketing class in college) and tells him he is going to want to see this for his attempts at becoming internet famous. April May tries to keep herself occupied until he arrives with his camera equipment. He starts setting up lights and a lapel microphone, but he thinks April May would be better in front of the camera than him. She eventually agrees to do it and asks for a handheld microphone to use as a prop as she interviews the sculpture.
2. Andy let’s her know they are rolling and April starts her newscaster interview with the unresponsive robot sculpture she calls Carl. She contemplates how everyone in the world will see the video multiple times over. She asks it questions and questions it’s backstory as though it is a sentient being. Andy acts ad an innocent bystander and she interviews him about it. He promises he will edit the footage down to make it make sense. He takes B-roll shots and then goes home to sleep. She tells Andy not to call her before noon.
3. When April wakes up, Maya gives her a cup of coffee and tells her she needs to check her emails before she does anything else. April points out she doesn’t drink coffee and Maya corrects that she drinks it in bad days . April goes through her email and finds ones from Andy with subject lines telling her which ones to read first. She finds out their video has blown up and their are Carls placed in just about every major city throughout the world. His father, an attorney, has drafted up a contract that would give them each 50/50 ownership of the video. News stations have been using it without their permission and they are pretty sure they’ll get money out it it. She checks another email from a … student asking about the temperature of the metal sculpture being warm. The idea that it was metal and not cold when it was cold in NYC seems odd. She decides to reply to that one and answers the questions saying it felt like smooth styrofoam. She gets up and Maya gives her back her phone. She calls her overly supportive parents and then Andy. He is excited. There are several news stations that want to interview her and his dad is saying they will get around $10k for each interview. April doesn’t know what she’ll talk about, but agrees to it knowing it will help pay down her student loans. He tells her what he knows about the Carls. There was no security footage anywhere of them being set up. It is suspected an EMP was used to knock out all the cameras. What they can pick up on in the background of the security footage is Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen. April looks it up in Wikipedia and notices a spelling error. She fixes it, but the save doesn’t correct it. She asks Maya to check and she finds two typos. Each time they correct the page, another typo is added until they have four total. April notes the missing letters are I A M U. They call Andy and he only sees one. He corrects it and sees the second appear. Maya tells her she has to get ready for her interview with ABC and they can come back to it later. She wants to change her mind about the interviews, but Maya reminds her how she tends to run away from anything that might imply money is making her do it. April reluctantly agrees and finishes getting ready.
4. April does the interviews on TV and is amazed at how much time it takes to get her ready compared to how little time the actual interviews take. She didn’t take her email off of anything, so she ends up getting a ton of emails from people trying to contact her. One is from a woman named Mary who says April was very mean to her on Twitter. April is confused because she doesn’t have a Twitter account. Maya explains when people realize someone in the public eye doesn’t have social media profiles, people will start to impersonate them. April reports the imposter and makes her own account. She goes through her Instagram account and cleans it up as well. The next few days, she obsesses over her social media and the mystery with the Wikipedia page for Don’t Stop Me Now. Maya is getting a bit tired of discussing it all. April debates whether or not to share her findings on Twitter, but Maya asks if she want to be the one that discovered the mystery or the answer. April decides to keep it to herself. She and Andy hop on an early morning plan to LA for another interview. When April goes to her seat, someone is already sitting in it. They check their boarding passes and find they both have the same seat number. April is moved up to first class. They are bombarded by students when they land and Andy’s dad pushes them on to the car that is waiting for them. During the interview, April goes off script, which makes Andy a bit nervous. She doesn’t watch the news shows, so she doesn’t really care about them. She answered honestly and was able to make a few jokes about paying off her loans from the money they are making. On the way back to their hotel, April tells Andy they have a YouTube channel with thousands of followers. She wants to start using it. They make their second video talking about how the events of Carl have impacted their lives. They plan on transitioning the channel to other subjects in the future. That night, April is excited to be able to sleep with nothing to have to wake up for in the morning.
5. April is looking forward to going to bed, but ends up checking her Twitter and then email. She finds she has an email response email from Miranda the scientific student from 12 days ago. She reads how Miranda was able to get a quick observation of her local Carl and determined the properties aren’t possible. She thinks the Carls are external from their world (not made by man or nature). She has also sent April her Skype information. April adds her as a contact and gets a call from Miranda immediately. They start discussing the material and what “external to this world” means. April immediately jumps to aliens, but Miranda isn’t quite sure. April decides to tell Miranda about the odd typos on Wikipedia. Miranda checks them out and thinks the letters could be symbols for elements: I, AM, U. She checks the Wikipedia page again and all but the original typo are gone in the body of the article. But there are some number changes in the references. Miranda figures out the numbers are for the most simple isotopes of each element. She think Carl wants them to bring the elements to it. They plan to meet in person the next afternoon after April and Andy’s meeting with an agent.
6. April rushes to Andy’s hotel room. He is not happy about being worked up by her again and she reminds him what happened the last time she work him up with news. He listens to her explain what she and Miranda may have figured out. Together they design a marketing plan for the events they are planning out. They make a video they plan to release when people start to figure out the Wikipedia page. They have a general plan for what will happen after that, but obviously cannot plan it all out because they don’t know what will happen next. The next afternoon, they meet with the agent, Jennifer Putnam. April explains she thinks the events are only going to get bigger from here. They think Carl is not from Earth and tells the agent about the Wikipedia page (though not the elements or that they plan to give Carl what he is asking for). April wants to be the grounding force to humanity as they discover more about the Carls. She’ll be cute while he is scary; she’ll be human while he is alien; etc. Andy’s dad, Marshall Skampt, warns her that this would be an intense load on them. They will be loved, but also hated for no reason. There is a lot that goes into fame. April and Andy both agree to go forward knowing they may never get another chance. They are separated for further questions. Jennifer asks April about her relationships. When April describes herself as bisexual, Jennifer convinces her to go with lesbian instead explaining it will help people not question her sexuality. April agrees to it and then has a coffee break with Andy at a cafe across the street. When they go back, Jennifer explains she is giving April her assistant, Robin, a man about her age. The only issue she is attracted to him.
7. They leave the agent’s office and head to the CVS closest to Hollywood Carl. Robin drives and April starts recording their journey. They meet Miranda there and she gives April a big hug. She has already taken the strips of Americium out of a few smoke detectors in her lab before coming, but Andy has them go in and buy one anyway for the video. They head to Hollywood Carl in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, but there is a line. April goes up to a girl about 20 people back and asks how long she has been waiting. The girl instantly recognizes April and she and the people around her ask for selfies with her. She is able to work them to the front of the line. Andy explains they are going to try an experiment April will take more pictures with them afterwards. They start recording and Miranda gives April a flake of Iodine to give to Carl. April puts it on Carl’s hand and feels warm and dizzy for a moment. When she looks, the iodine is gone. Miranda tries the same thing, but doesn’t feel anything. Next, April tries a strip of the Americium. The strip doesn’t disappear and she doesn’t have a reaction. Suddenly, Carl’s hand starts moving and then falls to the ground. It flips itself over and starts running away like Thing from the Aadam’s Family. April and Miranda chase it. They run until the street dead ends and then hop a retaining wall to continue following it. It goes into a castle that turns out to be a club. The doorman lets it in, but refuses to let April and Miranda follow. April pushes past him and the lady, Nika, at the desk says it is a club for Magicians only and they cannot be let in. Robin pulls up with Andy and fast food to take them back to the hotel. Robin says he can get them into the club the next day, but it will be too late for them to follow. April posts an update on Twitter. She soon gets linked to posts about Carls’ hands all over the world disappeared. The news is flooded with it. Robin tells them to wait a day or two to let the news die down before they post their video. They agree it is a good strategy and April films the outro. She apologizes for making the decision for experimenting with Carl on behalf of the earth on her own and not consulting anyone about it. She believes they are weird, but friendly. That night is the first time she has the dream. She is in the lobby of a windowless office. She asks to see Carl and a robot asks her for a passcode. There is music in the background that she doesn’t recognize. When she wakes up, they go into the hotel and Miranda checks in. April notices Miranda and Andy have been humming the same song. She asks what it is, but neither knows what it is. When she gets to her room, she checks her social media. She gets another text from Maya, but decides she doesn’t want to deal with it. When she falls asleep, she is back in the same lobby and hears the song again. She tries to ask the robot questions, but there are no answers. When she wakes up in the morning, she is rushed to the airport where Robin has upgraded their tickets to first class and book himself a seat as well. He tells her she is going to want a book deal. It will help people see her side as well as make her more money than the videos. She tells him she is going to want an apartment on Carl’s block. He asks her what she requires for the apartment and she struggles with answering how many bedrooms, not knowing how she and Maya will be doing in the future. Robin points out it will be important for her to have connections to people. When April falls asleep on the plain, she has the same dream again.
8. When April gets home, she is cold towards Maya who had been trying to keep in touch with her through the entire LA trip. She is surprised to come home to the apartment being cleaned and Maya admits she has been anxious from not hearing from April. April tells her about the trip and shows her the draft of the video that hasn’t been released on YouTube yet. Maya thinks April has gotten too involved. April tells Maya it shouldn’t matter to her and they are only roommates, but April is now going to have an apartment in Manhattan that overlooks Carl. Maya is upset and goes to her room.
9. April leaves to join Andy and ends up staying the night at his place. The next day, she is able to have movers get her stuff out of Maya’s apartment while Maya is at work. After everything is settled, she posts about her new apartment on Instagram and then goes to bed. She realizes she lives alone for the first time every. She cries herself to sleep not realizing she is in love with Maya. While she is sleeping, she goes back into the lobby dream. She realizes every time she has tried to talk to the robot, she has woken up. So she goes through the doors and finds there are cubicles on the other side. She goes into the first cubicle and clicks on an icon labelled “game.” When she opens it, it is just a grid with one red cell. The computer won’t let her do anything else. She moves to another one and it is the same thing only there are two blocks on the grid filled. She figures out the blocks are telling her which cubicle to go to next. At the last cubicle, she opens up the icon to find a message, “fancy tulip man.” She heads to the front desk and asks to see Carl. The robot asks for a passcode and she tells him “fancy tulip man,” and then wakes up. She starts singing the song everyone else has been singing with what seems like a random string of numbers and letters. The government decides to restrict access to the Carls and limits access of the block to residents only. Robin comes over to help her form a corporation and hears her singing the song. He asks her about it and she says she thinks she made it up in a song. He tells her about the dream he heard it in and it is the same lobby dream. She calls up Andy and Miranda and they have also been having the same dream. Miranda thinks the code is in hexadecimal. The decide April should go back to sleep while the others research what they can about the dream. April feels like her childhood job of pet-detective has prepared her for the next steps and goes to sleep. She doesn’t go into the puzzle room again and instead goes into an elevator. She presses down and decides to go to the ground floor. There is a Carl in the middle of the lobby. She goes outside to find an impossibly tall building in the city. She falls to the side and wakes up. Andy calls to tell her it is spreading fast.
10. Andy tells her there are a lot of people that are having the same dream. There are wiki pages and subreddits with the different puzzles. Jennifer calls to let April know the president wants to talk to her and will be calling soon. April goes back to Andy for more information. He explains people have been exploring the city and solving puzzles. When the answers are given to the receptionist, they are given a hex code. People think the bits are hex code and if strung together properly in the right computer, a program will play. They think there are thousands of them. They are being shared online. One screen name, the ThePurrletarian (which is familiar to April), has solved six riddles so far. The president calls to say she is not pleased with how April handled the situation. April says she doesn’t really know anything other than what is already public knowledge. She wants April to call her if she learns anything else. April switches back to talking to Andy and tells him what happened. They watch the president’s speech on the phone together. The president tries to keep April’s positive spin on the Carl situation. She informs people they are unable to be moved, but are hovering millimeters above the sidewalks. They believe the dream in spread like a disease and people who experience them show different brain scans than those who don’t have the dreams. She all but says the Carls are alien.
11. A few months before everything happened, April walked in on Maya drawing cute little cat cartoons. Maya has been keeping a secret that she is the author of the cute cats making political statements on an anonymous cartoon called the Purrletariat. Back in modern times, April talks to their parents who haven’t had the dream yet. She tells them not to be afraid of it and tries to reassure them about the Carls. She goes on to an interview where she wears an earpiece and talks into a camera to ask questions. This will allow her to get through several studios in one sitting. One studio brings on a guy named Peter Petrawicki. He has written a best selling book on Amazon trying to convince people the Carls are bad and that they need to prepare to defend themselves. When she gets back home, she researches him and realizes he is a hack-journalist that is trying to gain power by inducing fear. She makes a video trying to get back at Peter and inadvertently increases his viewership. She becomes more overt about saying she thinks the Carls are good.
12. As time passes on, Robin tries to talk April into letting her book be ghost-written. April thinks it doesn’t seem honest and is against it, but she does agree to let an editor help her write her book as a co-author. She meets with and decides to hire the second editor she meets Sylvia Stone. They decide it will be a “manifesto” style book and start on the outline. As they work on the book over the next few weeks, April gets so stressed out that she hurts her back. Robin books her a trip to a day spa and she overhears someone talking rudely about her. She realizes not everyone likes her and decides to keep the experience to herself. A week later, the book is going through copy-editing and April is focused on making more videos. Peter shows up to make a video in front of Carl. He makes a plea for his followers, The Defenders, to use an encrypted site to share their knowledge of how to solve puzzles in the dream sequences. April and Andy are outraged. They Skype with Robin and Miranda and try to come up with a solution. None of them have spent much time in the dream. April thinks she has a lead on who one of the top contributing puzzle solvers is and they call Maya. They explain the situation and Maya admits the Dreamer community has already started messing with the Defenders by giving them fake sequences to mess up their work. Maya says the Dreamers can use their help. That night, April looks up a one of the sequences Maya helped solve and goes through it. She goes into an Arby’s (Maya worked at one as a teenager). She pushes the meal she sees on the counter into the cash register, which opens the drawer to reveal money from Pakistan. The missing letters on the money spell “under the floor,” so April lifts up a loose tile to find a passcode. Instead of taking it to the robot receptionist in the lobby, she spends the rest of the night wandering around in the dream. She wakes up and records a video and makes a tweet about making a place where Dreamers can solve the sequences without the Defenders having access. Miranda has some ideas of what they need and can/cannot do. They bring in Andy’s roommate, Jason, to write the code. Luckily, Miranda was knowledgable in many topics and ran with the role as a project manager. A few weeks later, April and Robin go to California so April can attend her brother’s wedding. She does okay staying off her phone for a while, but when she does check it, she finds people are attacking her for not reacting to how scientists are calling the spread of the dream an “infection” that was started from giving Carl the iodine. She asks Robin to research it and craft a response while she tries to focus on her brother’s wedding. Not long after, the whole group goes on a book tour. They are in Michigan and answering questions in a panel. A young girl asks what the weirdest thing she has seen in the dream. April tell them about the airplane she sees at the edge of the city that seems to land but she can never seem to find. No one else seems to have seen it. A man comes to the microphone and accusing April of dooming humanity. When she goes to answer, more Defenders in the audience start to cause trouble. April tries to yell for order, but she ends up getting dragged out of there by Miranda and Andy. Later, April calls Maya to ask her about the plane. Maya explains that nothing moves in the dream and nothing is different for other Dreamers down to the number of blades of grass. Maya is frustrated and excited. She agrees to work with April to figure out the plane. Maya tells April to head to the edge of the city going down the main strip and when she sees the plane, run towards it. She will have to research planes to figure out exactly what kind it is. April tries to make a smart ass comment, but Maya tells her to remember she doesn’t have to help her. He also threatens to burn down April’s building if she finds out she is lying about the plane. April chases down the large (but not enormous) plane, but she can kinky run as fast as she can in real life though she doesn’t tire. She runs into a wall literally and wakes up. She waits a while before going back into the dream. She still can’t catch the plane, so finds the tallest building at the edge of the city. In her next attempt, she runs for the building and goes to the top to see where the plane lands. She is able to track it down and has an odd feeling about it. She notices it hovers over the pavement several with no landing gear, a flag with a dash and a dot, and an odd pattern of hexagons. I hope spending the next month working with Maya and the others to try and figure it all out, they are filmed for a documentary and invited to the red carpet premiere. April is introduced to many rich and famous people, but when she gets back to her hotel room, she feels lonely. She calls Miranda asking if she wants to work on the plane sequence. Miranda arrives and they talk about it for a bit before they hook up. On July 12, April goes on CNN with Peter. They argue their points until Peter brings up that April isn’t strictly a lesbian, but bisexual, which she lied about. April walked into the trap and gets flustered. When they cut to commercial, she leaves the room and cries.
13. For weeks, April has spent too much time engaging with the Defenders. Groups all over the world were forming against the Carls. At roughly 4 am EST, several of the Carls were attacked. April is woken up from trying to figure out the plane sequence. She hears something hit her window and goes to investigate. She opens the blinds and is shoved out of the way before a bullet can go through her. She gets down and freaks out. She calls Robin, who asks if she has heard the latest news about the Carls being attacked. She tells him she thinks someone was trying to hurt her, but she doesn’t want to involve the police. He sends the doorman to her. She crawls out to the living room and realizes something pushed her out of the way of a speeding bullet. She starts looking around to see if anyone is hiding in her apartment. Under the chair, she sees a seam that clearly isn’t original and tears it open. Inside is Hollywood Carl’s hand.
14. It took the bullet for her. She asks if it can understand her and it replies with two taps (no). The doorman knocks and asks if she is okay. April tries to tell him she is fine and send him away, but he isn’t convinced she is fine. She calls Robin and tells him she just got scared in the middle of the night and she is fine now. He tells the doorman he is okay to leave. She goes back to Carl’s hand and asks further questions, but it only answers questions directly related to what she should do about it. It doesn’t want her to tell anyone about it being there. She tries to call Andy, but Don’t Stop Me Now starts blaring through her phone speaker. She tosses it aside. After more questioning that doesn’t get her any more answers, April curls up around the hand and falls asleep. In the dream, she goes into an 80s type arcade and notices things are a bit off in the bathroom indicating she is on the wrong track for puzzles. She sits on one of the toilets and cries until she wakes up.
15. When she wakes up, the hand is gone. She checks her phone, but it is off. She tries to turn it in, but there isn’t enough battery. She goes to her computer and checks her email. There are threads to her family and friends with whole conversations she doesn’t remember having. They sound like what she would respond to their concerns and questions, but she wonders if Carl’s hand actually wrote them. She asks Robin to bring her news worthy clothes and a phone charger (she is too afraid to go back into her bedroom). She tells Andy she wants to do a shoot down the street soon. She tweets about how sad it is that there are a few people whose lack of humanity can cause such atrocities, but she feels numb. The innocence of the Carls is gone for her.
16. When Andy shows up, he is tired and upset about what has been going on. April tells him she needs him to keep her sane through all of it. They go out in the street amongst the people that are gathering in peaceful protest against the attacks. April tries to be encouraging and talks about how this will be a day of history. She makes her way towards Carl. Someone rushes her from the crowd and stabs her. Andy goes to beat the man over the head with his camera lense first, but a second before he makes contact, the attacker becomes distorted and starts to crumple. April can see her blood starting to soak her suit jacket. Andy rushes to April and she shows him the knife sticking out of her back. The news crews show up first and then the police. Detectives start to question April and Andy, but Andy demands they get paramedics to April first. When April is loaded on the stretcher and about to go into the ambulance, she asks for a minute alone with Andy. They film the final scene of their video. Then she asks for the memory card from his camera so the police don’t take it away from them.
17. The ambulance takes a while to get to Bellevue hospital. On the way, April chats with the paramedic, Jessica, and even flirts a bit. Jessica answers a few texts from family and friends to let everyone know she is alright. She asks Jessica to leave the memory card at the hospital front desk for Robin.
18. After she is all patched up, a nurse lets her know the note at the front desk was picked up. She calls her parents and they tell her Robin insisted she not talk to anyone about it because people were listening in. Soon after, the president arrives looking to get information from April about the memory card. They are pretty sure Carl liquified the man (into what seemed to be grape jelly) that attempted to kill her, which they believe is the same person that tried to shoot her through her window. She asks for a copy of the footage and says they just want April and Andy to wait 24 hours before releasing the video. April agrees and has Robin bring them a copy of the footage. Robin reads the positive tweet responses to April’s posts while she falls asleep. The next day, April decides she want to look how she feels and has the stylist make her look young. She is surrounded by family and friends when the president comes for a quick visit. April ends up leading the conversation out of habit. But the president is able to deliver the well wishes of the American people to her.
19. This newscast is what puts an end to most of the Defenders movement because it shows how they went after a young girl just for disagreeing with them. April doesn’t go back to her apartment. She stays in the new place Andy and Jason moved into. Robin finds her another apartment, but she keeps staying with Andy and Jason. She has been talking with Maya and while complicated, it is still a bit rocky. She buys a new outfit and makes a new video. She apologizes for not revealing the 767 plane sequence existence and reveals the details have been uploaded to the Psalm. Someone says it reminds him of his grandfather’s accordion - Wicki-Hayden button layout. The hexagon patterns play out Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen. April dives into researching the song and goes to sing it to the plane. The landing gear comes down and April is able to get into the wheel bay and sees a bunch of tubes and wires. She sees a hatch on the top of the bay, but she isn’t able to open it. She tries the other wheel bays, but can’t find anything useful. She walks away from it to get a better view of the plane. She realizes the writing was the ancient Mayan system Miranda told her about that meant 6 on the tail. There are seven dials and she sets them to the corresponding numbers. The hatch opens but she falls, hits her head, and wakes up. She checks her phone and has a text from Maya thanking her for the most recent video. April is frustrated that her efforts were halted, but Andy reminds her she is the only one that can solve it and they have time.
20. April takes a break from all the media. Robin does all her social media updates. She focuses on the 767 sequence. Robin shakes her awake one day with Andy and Miranda. They explain the Defenders figures out the sequence without access to the plane. The program is complete and they just need the code, the one she has been trying to figure out. Robin reveals Jennifer is also Peter’s agent and he knew for months. April fires him and kicks him out. Andy is upset at her for her reaction. Miranda stays, but April makes it obvious to her she isn’t needed. April asks her to compile a code to let her enter the passcode when she finds it. April goes for a walk and calls Maya. They aren’t sure how the Defenders got through it, but speculate how they might have achieved it. Maya admits that she was just as obsessed with it all as April because she was trying to prove she was better than April. Suddenly, April realizes the final passcode they need was the number in the broken screen of her first class seat when she flew out to LA. Maya asks how the Defenders would have gotten it and April admits she tweeted it.
21. April rushes into a coffee shop and borrows a computer to find the tweet. She sends it to Maya and Miranda. The hex code translates to the lyrics of a David Bowie song. Miranda inputs it into the latest code to get an address and a message for only April to come. April thanks the guy whose laptop she borrowed with a selfie. She says goodbye to everyone else and leaves. Maya tells April not to go on her own or at least wait. April is worried the Defenders are already in their way. Maya pleads through text and tells April she loves her, but April doesn’t respond.
22. The address turns out to be a large empty warehouse. April takes cameras with her and decides to go in with her Facebook live stream. April explains their findings and the message from the 767 sequence. There is a fence, but April finds a cut. She admits she is rushing in because another group has also solved the sequence. There is a door off one of the hinges with a pile of clothes in front of it. She smells grape jelly in the clothes. She wonders if it was Peter. She explains someone attempted to enter, but Carl didn’t want them to and killed them. She goes in and the lower level was empty. She sees a staircase that leads to office and she goes up. Her personal rings and she sees Miranda is calling. Golden Years is playing and gets louder as she get further up the stairs. A text from Miranda comes in telling her to get out. Then another telling her to run. They think the sequence was faked and she is in the wrong place. The metal door behind her slams shut.
23. April continues to live stream and tell everyone what is going on. She checks the chat on the feed and sees people are starting to notice changes lyrics to Golden Years. She tells people to check it out while she takes a call from Robin. He has sent the police to her location and asks her about the smoke smell she described in the live feed. Originally she thought it was the smell of old cigarettes, but now noticed it smells like burning wood. He has her talk to a police officer over their phones and he gives her instructions to stuff something under the door to keep the smoke out and cover her face. She does these things with her hoodie and her shirt respectively. He tells her to wait for the moment when she will have to break the window and quickly hang drop to the concrete below. As she is waiting, she apologizes to the world for not being the best person and getting caught up in the power and fame of it all. When her breath starts to feel less like air and more like knives, she breaks the window and haphazardly drops down. She lands in her right leg then arm and hits her head, but remains conscious. The air is better and the officer tells her there is less fire by the back wall. She crawls there as best she can. Miranda calls and Maya is with her. She apologizes to them both. Suddenly, she figures out the real sequence. On her live stream, she asks that everyone cooperate to touch all of the Carls with gold. She asks if Andy is with them and they say he is holding one of Miranda’s earrings to New York Carl, she hangs up with them to call him. She apologizes to him and tells him to be mad at her and not himself. A giant wooden beam crashes down through the top side of her skull and then her torso catches on fire.
24. She passes out and is in the dream lobby with Carl. He says she can ask him three questions. She asks why they came. As she suspected, they came to watch and evaluate them. Next, she asks what they thought of the humans. He thinks they are beautiful. She gives in to her impulse to ask about herself since any other questions would need a more scientific person to understand the answers. She asks if he chose her. He shows her a vision of her subway card not working and then getting a walk sign when the cross traffic had a green light to lead her to Carl. Then the dream ends.
25. Andy was on the phone with April and starts walking away from Carl to have the conversation. People start to scatter when they see Carl’s hand come out of nowhere, runs through the people up to Carl, and reattached itself to the wrist. when Andy realizes no one has any gold on Carl, he slams Miranda’s earring into Carl’s stomach. There is a sonic boom and Andy is thrown back as Carl takes off. Robin calls Andy and Andy tells him Carl might be in the way to help April. Robin tells him the roof has started falling in. They believe that April is dead. Weeks later, they still aren’t able to find April’s body in the remains. The dream stops for everyone. They know the fire wouldn’t t have been hot enough to completely incinerate the body. Miranda goes back to Berkeley. Maya was traveling and not staying in the same place for more than a few days. Andy stayed in New York. Eventually, people start asking Andy to speak and eventually he starts writing. Robin had quit his job, so he has Robin help with the editing. When it is complete, Andy started traveling to give the speeches. One day, there is a knock on the door. His phone goes off with a message from April as he goes to answer the door. It just says “knock knock.”