“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” I said, knowing she would need to be alone.
Five minutes later, I returned with a whole roll of toilet paper, knowing we’d both probably need it. She was holding the phone to her ear, saying, “I’m so sorry, Mama, I’m so sorry.” She was repeating it over and over again, crying but not sobbing. The sobbing I could hear coming from the other end of the line.
“I’m really OK,” she said, looking up at me. “Carl took me and they rescued me and it took a long time for them to fix me, but I’m better now.” I knew April didn’t believe that all the way, but that didn’t matter.
I sat down next to her and placed my hand on the middle of her back. I couldn’t hear the other side of the call. Her dad was talking; her mom was crying.
After a while she sniffed and said, in a clear voice, “Maya is here with me. I’m not alone. We have a couple things we need to work out. We can’t see you now. If it wasn’t important, I promise I would be there.” She paused for a moment and said, “No, I’m sorry, the internet isn’t good enough here for FaceTime. I’ll send you a photo of me and Maya. My face is . . . it’s a little different, because of the fire. But I’m OK. I’ll be OK. As long as I have you guys, I’ll be OK.”
April May has done some buck-wild shit in her life. She has done big things and brave things and impressive things, but I was never prouder of her than I was right then when she told her parents that she needed them.
“OK, I’m sorry I can’t see you now. But soon. And I’ll explain everything. And you’ll be proud of me, I promise.”
They talked for a little while longer before she thumbed off the phone and then turned to me. Only half of her face was wet because only half of her face made tears. I reached out instinctively to wipe them away because that’s just who I am, and then she collapsed into me.
“That was really hard,” she said.
“I know,” I replied, wanting to say more but not wanting to mess up this moment.
And then she let me go and looked me in the eyes and said, “What do you think of my face?”
“You’re still beautiful,” I said, doing my best not to look away.
“I need you to be honest.”
“You’ve always been a realist about the way you look. A lot of the women I know, they’re beautiful and convinced they aren’t. You have the confidence with the beauty. It’s . . . attractive,” I said.
“But?” April prompted.
“But, OK, to be real with you, it’s a little . . . not scary. It’s intimidating . . . a little.”
Her head tilted forward, her hair falling over her face. I fought to give her the space to talk, and eventually she did.
“I was never proud of being beautiful,” she said. “I just knew it was a thing, and I knew it made people treat me a little differently. Maybe a lot differently sometimes. Sometimes I resented it, even. And then sometimes it was a tool, and at least it was useful.” Then she looked up at me and said softly, “But I don’t want to be scary.”
“It’s not scary,” I said honestly. “It’s just . . . intense. Though with you looking at me through your hair like that, it’s also sorta adorable-puppy at the same time.” I smiled.
She smiled too. Oh god. That smile. I wanted to kiss that smile.
I was rescued by a monkey.
“We need to start getting ready to leave this place. I have set up a new home in a suitably unpredictable location, and we need to go there now.”
“Now like I’m going to get shot again, or . . .” I asked, only half joking.
“Now like there are going to be about two hundred students in this building in four hours, and if they see you, my brother will know where you are and then, yes, someone will probably shoot you soon after that.”
I guess I wasn’t even half joking.
Internal Communication from Peter Petrawicki to All Employees
Hello Everyone,
This might come as a bit of a surprise to some of you, and as always I apologize that we have to be so secretive here at Altus, but eight days ago, Altus’s Open Access software was released publicly to the entire world. Anyone with access to a headset was able to find their way into the world of the Open Access Space that most of you are already so familiar with.
First, we just want to thank everyone who worked extremely hard to hit this very aggressive launch target, and managed to pull it off entirely seamlessly. It’s an accomplishment that many did not think was possible, but we did it, because we are extremely good.
Soon, the fifty users who have earned the most AltaCoin by selling objects they created will be given access to the Altus Premium Space. Very few of you even know about Altus Premium as it has been a highly protected project, but it is going to launch very soon. There isn’t really a good way to explain the Premium Space, but guess what, all of you will have access to the Premium Space on your existing headsets starting tonight between 9 P.M. and 6 A.M. Use of Altus Premium mimics the effects of sleep, so don’t worry too much about logging off.
An additional note. Altus, having proved its technology in such a fantastic way, has just raised $2.5 billion in Series C funding that values the company at over $500 billion. This isn’t just the fastest a company has reached a hundred-billion-dollar valuation, we hit a half-trillion-dollar valuation faster than Facebook reached a billion-dollar valuation. Each of your hiring
