It took my eyes a solid moment to adjust to the darkness of the warehouse. The room I had entered was massive and empty. Dust floated inside the slices of light that fell through the few windows that hadn’t been boarded up. Papers and leaves littered the concrete floor; a few bits and bolts of metal shot through that floor that I assumed were used for whatever manufacturing had once been done there.
“Well, it appears to be a giant empty warehouse,” I said quietly to the livestream, feeling a bit let down. The entire lower level of the building was one open space, and there was nothing in it. There was, however, a metal-slatted staircase that led up to a second level that appeared to house some offices with windows that overlooked the warehouse floor.
“I’m going to go up these stairs to check out the offices.”
The stairs clanged as I walked up them. I kept a tight grip on the railing with my left hand while broadcasting my progress with my right. The connection had remained solid—I was broadcasting in HD to the whole world.
My personal phone, the one I wasn’t using to livestream, buzzed in my pocket. I dug it out as fast as I could and saw that it was Miranda. Wasn’t she watching? Didn’t she know I couldn’t take a call right now? I was contemplating answering the phone when I heard it, playing off in the distance.
“Do you hear that?” I asked the livestream.
I’ll stick with you baby for a thousand years, nothing’s gonna touch you in these golden years.
It was the first sign of anything unusual inside the warehouse, and boy, did it seem like a solid clue. I stopped paying attention to anything. “That’s the song. It’s ‘Golden Years,’” I said to the stream, and I started walking faster. By now, my audience was a couple million people strong.
I half expected the stream to die, whether from supernatural intervention by Carl or the sheer load on the world’s servers, but apparently it held. The music kept getting louder.
A text notification popped up from Miranda: April. Get Out Now.
I saw the notification fly up over my screen, but my brain refused to accept it. What was she getting at? I looked up and I was already there anyway. A little office to the side of the catwalk. There was a desk, and from it came Bowie’s voice.
I waited for the magic to happen, for my reward, and then another text appeared: Run
And still, I stood there.
Don’t cry my sweet, don’t break my heart. Doing all right, but you gotta get smart.
As I stared dumbly, another text arrived: It was faked. It’s not real. It’s the wrong place.
I turned just in time to see the huge metal door behind me slam shut.
There’s my baby, lost that’s all. Once, I’m begging you, save her little soul.
You know I’m a damn fool.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
This chapter is going to contain some graphic violence. I will tell you when it’s coming. I will not be offended if you skip it.
I immediately shot myself at the door, but it didn’t budge. I slammed on it, shouting, “WHAT THE HELL!”
There was no response.
Faintly, over the sound of “Golden Years,” I heard footsteps racing off down the catwalk. I didn’t understand how any of this was possible until I saw, on the floor next to a filing cabinet, six large empty plastic jugs of Welch’s grape jelly. That achieved what I assumed was the desired effect: making me feel like a damned idiot.
“Well,” I said to the livestream, panting with fear, “things have taken a turn for the worse. I have been informed that this was a hoax, and not real, and now I have been locked in a warehouse in New Jersey, and, Miranda, as I’m sure you are watching, please call the police and send them to me because I am stuck in here. Also, if they could arrest the dickholes that just kidnapped me, that would be grand.”
I searched around the room for a bit and came up with nothing that could maybe be used as a pry bar. I slammed the door with the desk chair a couple of times, then with one of the metal drawers from the desk, but that barely even dented the door.
Eventually, I got tired of hearing “Golden Years,” so I tried to turn off the little music player that it was tinnily streaming out of. No matter what buttons I hit, it did not turn off.
“In every town around the world, each of us must be touched with gold. Don’t cry my sweet, don’t break my heart, I’ll come runnin’ but you gotta get smart,” David sang.
I left the livestream going as I did all this, occasionally commenting to it because, at that point, I felt pretty safe. I’d gotten word out to the world at large, and though I was pretty scared and extremely disappointed not to be meeting Carl or whatever, I hadn’t smelled the smoke yet.
Another text came in from Miranda: I’m so sorry. Oh god, April, it’s my fault. The code had been tampered with. It was sitting on the Som in an open page, anyone could edit it and I just didn’t notice that someone had.
I texted her back, still streaming as I did it: It’s OK, I’m fine. If I wasn’t such an impulsive ass, we would have figured that out. I made you rush.
I put the chair back behind the desk and set up my phone so it could see me from a not-terrible angle.
“Well, I know most of you have already checked out, and I’m terribly sorry for wasting all of your time today. Hopefully, if it’s all right with you, we can hang out until the cops bust me out of this creepy room. Because, let’s be honest with ourselves, you’re my best friend.
“Oh, not any one of you. And certainly not the ones I actually know and love. Not the ones who have tried to be my friends. Not my brother. Not my mom. Not any of the guys or girls I’ve led on, lied to, cheated on. You. You mass of humans who I know nothing about, you are my best friend.
“And you know why? Because you like me, and no single person’s love can compete with even casual regard from a hundred million. That impossible, inhuman wave of support. Not inhuman because you aren’t humans, inhuman because no human is designed to process it, to understand it. Fame is a drug, and as I sit here in this gross little smoky-smelling room, trapped by some unknown prankster, I know that earlier today I was . . . I was really mean.
“I was a bad person and I hurt a lot of the people who I care most about in this world because I am addicted to attention. I do things that are bad for myself, and my friends, and my health, and my world so I can get more power because I think I need that power to do good things. But then I just do stupid things instead. And I’m streaming live so I can’t edit this or take any of it back. So thanks for listening. I really pretty much hate myself right now, thank you for being my friend.”
Everyone in the livestream chat, which had now dwindled enough that I could actually read some of what was being said before it flew by, seemed receptive to my monologue.
I tended to keep one eye on the chat anytime I was streaming, and while you can’t always read every word, you can get an idea of what people are saying, and if there’s something they want you to see, people will copy and paste it over and over to get your attention. In among the well-wishes and kind thoughts, I saw a word I didn’t expect popping up over and over: “Lyrics.”
I scrolled up the chat to see what that was about.
Ginny Di: What were the lyrics again? Touched with gold? I know that song, it’s definitely not in there.
Then a few threads of support, then:
Roger Ogden: I just re-listened like twelve times. It sounds like “In every town around the world Jesus must be touched with gold.” But wtf? It’s super hard to hear over April talking though.
“So some people in the chat are saying that the words to ‘Golden Years’ have changed? I’m going to stop talking so that you all can just listen.”
We had proved, over and over again, that thousands of people solving a puzzle are a lot better than one. But good lord, was shutting up for five minutes hard!
My personal phone rang—it was Robin. I didn’t want to answer because it would interfere with everyone listening. I just kept scrolling through the chat. They were transcribing the lyrics, which made it more or less impossible to read anything in real time. But then I saw this:
Lane Harris: Guys, the lyric changes happened on Spotify’s copy too! Everyone can hear them.