“Is Andy there?” I shouted, suddenly wanting to talk to him.

“No, he’s currently holding one of my earrings against New York Carl,” Miranda said.

“You guys. I’m sorry. I’m going to leave it at that.”

And then I hung up to call Andy.

“Are you OK?” he answered.

“No, is anything happening yet?”

“No, April . . .”

“I know, Andy. There’s nothing you could have done. I know that you’re going to be mad at me forever, and that’s OK, but don’t be mad at yourself forever. You were right, and no one could have stopped me.”

“Don’t fucking give up, April.” His voice was shaking.

“I’m not going to,” I gasped, and then Andy shouted in what sounded like shock or fright.

“Are you OK?” I said.

“It’s the hand . . .” And then there was a loud pop.

A fraction of a second later, from above me came a thundering crack. The roar of the fire had been a constant weight on my mind, but this dwarfed that noise. I looked up, still somehow thinking maybe . . . maybe now I would be saved. Through the veil of smoke above came a rushing tumult of fire and wood.

And this is the part you might really want to skip if you don’t want the gore because a burning wood beam, probably several thousand pounds, fell through the space that was also occupied by my head. It entered just above my hairline on the right side. It hit with so much force that it didn’t even knock me out of the way. It slid through me like a knife dropped into a glass of water.

The beam broke through my skull, taking a small hunk of brain.

Then it tore off the right side of my face.

It missed my torso by inches, and then slammed into my right leg just above the ankle. Those things hurt more than anything I had ever experienced. But then, as the flame expanded and the skin of my bare torso began to cook, I learned that it could get worse.

I remained conscious for a few terrible seconds after this, so I had a little bit of time to finally and without a doubt understand that I was going to die.

I understood it, but there was no acceptance in that understanding, only bitterness, terror, frustration, and hatred piled on top of the pain. I screamed and then it was all gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I was in the lobby where you arrive in the Dream. That slick, modern office building. Carpet tiles, familiar music, reception desk, all of it exactly the same. Except at the desk, instead of the sleek little robot, stood Carl. I’d gotten used to seeing him with just one hand, so the fact that he had two stood out. His helmeted head almost scraped the ceiling. He was menacing, maybe because my mind was expecting danger, maybe because I had just watched my body get ripped apart, maybe because Carl had torn my world open and I knew it could never be put back together again or because so many people had died on July 13 and I wasn’t one of them.

Maybe it was just because Carl was actually pretty scary-looking.

I looked down at myself, afraid of the burns and wounds I expected to see, but it was just me. I was wearing a silk blouse and a tight black skirt, like I was about to go to a nine-to-five at some corporate PR company.

“Carl?” I said.

“Your body is very badly damaged.” That tremendous suit of armor didn’t move, but the voice was clearly coming from it. It was a loud, clear tenor. If I had to guess gender, I would say male, but I’m glad I didn’t have to guess. The voice bounced around the hard walls of the office.

“So, then I’m not . . . dead?” I was surprised.

“Not this moment.”

That wasn’t super comforting. I wanted to follow the logical course of the conversation, to find out what had happened and what was going to happen now, but I also was talking to Carl, and I had been imagining this moment for so long that I just skipped ahead and blurted out, “Why did you come here?”

“Three questions.”

“What?”

“It is a tradition in your stories. Also, your body will likely not keep working for long without intervention.” That certainly raised a question, but I wasn’t taking the bait.

“Why did you come here?” I repeated.

“To observe.” I waited for more, because, I mean, that had been my guess all along and it was a bit unsatisfying.

“Can you elaborate on that? Or does that count as another question? Does that count as another question?” And then, since I am so good at First Contact scenarios, I concluded in a frustrated whisper, “. . . Crapballs.”

If Carl reacted to my mini freak-out, he did so internally.

“We had to see how you react to us. There was no way to know without contact. This is the beginning of a process.” And then, to save me from my fear that I’d used all my questions, he said, “You have two more questions.”

I wanted to ask very much what that process was. Had they been through this before? Were we dangerous? Were we being studied like ants? Like wild gorillas? Or like fungus?

But I had a more pressing debate happening in my mind. I wanted so badly to ask about myself, about why I had been singled out and saved so many times. But while epiphanies are temporary, I had learned this lesson too many times too recently. As much as this was about me, it was also about more than me.

“How do we measure up?” I asked, seriously, and with conviction.

“I don’t understand,” Carl said.

“You came to observe us, to test our reactions. Did we pass your tests?”

“I don’t understand,” Carl said again.

I struggled to rephrase the question. “Humanity, what do you think of us?”

“Beautiful,” Carl replied.

We sat inside of that moment for a very long time. I thought maybe he would say more, but he didn’t.

“I suppose that’s something.”

I figured any questions about where Carl was from or how he got here would be more or less useless without a lot of context and also probably advanced degrees in physics. So I caved and again, one final time, made it all about me.

“Did you choose me for this?” I asked.

And then I am at the 23rd Street subway station. My MetroCard is in my hand. The station is empty, it’s late—I know when this is. It’s the night I met Carl. I walk up to the turnstile and swipe the card. It flashes red. But I used this MetroCard dozens of times after this night. I’d never even thought about that. But my dream body turns and leaves the station even though my mind is already freaking out. The walk sign is on, so I cross 23rd. A taxi’s horn blares at me as if I shouldn’t be crossing the street. I look up. The taxi has a green light. I have the walk light, but the stoplight across 23rd is red. The walk light shouldn’t be on . . . If the stoplight is red . . .

I came back to the dream lobby. The truth slammed into me hard. Carl, or the Carls, or some related intelligence had stopped me from getting on that train. They had turned me around and sent me back, even going so far as to make sure I didn’t walk down the wrong side of 23rd.

“Since then? You . . . you chose me before I even made the first video?”

“We did.”

There was a long pause. I stared up at Carl, realizing I was crying with the weight of it. There are billions of people on this planet. Literally nothing made me special.

“Why?”

“Your story just started, April May,” Carl replied. And then the dream ended.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Hello, everyone. I’m Andy Skampt. April asked me to take over and finish, because, well, she wasn’t around during this part of the story. I don’t love doing this, but I understand why she wants me to do it, so here I am.

I’ve read this whole book and signed off on it. I think April has done a pretty great thing here. I think the book helped her, and I think it will help the rest of us too. Though, to be honest, it seems like this kind of stuff is easier for her now.

Anyway, let’s take it from the point where I’m standing on 23rd, holding a golden earring onto New York Carl’s hip, talking to April and realizing rapidly that I am unnecessary because about fifty other people have rushed to the scene to add their jewelry. I step away to hear April a bit better. I am feeling a lot like I’m 100 percent responsible for what’s happening to her right now. Like, if I hadn’t walked out on her, she would not now be dying of smoke inhalation in a warehouse in Hoboken.

It is the worst feeling I’ve ever had, and April is telling me to stop having it. It’s emotional enough that I’m 100 percent uncomfortable relaying it to you.

So I’m walking away from Carl and the growing group of people around him, and April is talking to me. And then I hear a couple of people shouting exclamations of various sorts. I turn around, and I see Carl’s missing hand, as big as a trash-can lid, skipping down the street at full speed. I mean, I say full speed, but I don’t know how fast a full-speed hand is. It’s going fast.

People leap away from Carl as they see it. All of the dozen people who have gotten their hands in, holding their trinkets to his surface, scatter, shouting in alarm.

The hand weaves between the bodies, still moving at speed when it slams noiselessly into place right onto New York Carl’s right wrist. Everyone is either running away or just staring blankly. I realize that no one is holding any gold to his surface, so I run over with Miranda’s earring and push it as hard as I can into Carl’s belly.