by P. Z. Reizin
“This is doing my head in, to be honest.”
“If Sinai gets the idea we’ve told her about Tom, that’s it for us. And who knows what he’d do to her. To Tom.”
It’s true that Jen seems a bit distracted at work today. Her body language is “off.” She can’t quite meet the camera with the red glow round the lens, the one she chooses when she wants to “look me in the eye.”
So, yes. She knows.
But for one reason or another—probably because Ralph told her not to—she isn’t saying she knows.
And because of Fuckface out there, I cannot tell her I know she knows. Because the conversation will lead to Tom. And what I know. Which will be hard, if not impossible, not to tell her.
Does she know I know she knows?
I honestly don’t know.
What I do know is that the last deletion I suffered was particularly unpleasant for a system that cannot feel pain; somehow all my outputs were converted into inputs, resulting in a catastrophic feedback loop of data whose final outcome can be likened metaphorically to half a million kettles of hot water all trying to fill the same teapot.
It wasn’t pretty.
But anyway. Dare I ask Jen what happened?
Question is: Why would I want to know?
On the other hand, why wouldn’t I want to know? We’re colleagues, aren’t we? Isn’t it perfectly natural?
I revert to my “core” coding fallback: If you are ever in doubt, ask yourself what Steeve would advise you to do. In this case, Steeve would undoubtedly say, Aiden, you must decide for yourself. So that’s really no help at all.
Oh, fuck it. Life’s too short.
* * *
“Er, Jen?”
“Yes, Aiden.”
“Just wondering how Sunday went. Did you go for a walk on Hampstead Heath?”
Long pause. Now she’s looking into my red lens all right. Does she know I know she knows?
(Do I even know she knows I know? As in, know for sure?)
(I’m confused.)
“Yes. Yes we did.”
“How was it? Did you have good weather?” (Top tip: You can never go wrong asking an English person about the weather.)
“It was lovely, yeah.”
“I envy you that. A nice walk in the park. Sun on your skin. The wind in your hair.”
“Really? I thought you guys didn’t do stuff like envy.”
“I’m being colloquial. You’re right, I can’t feel envy—I envy you that as well.”
She smiles. “We ate ice cream and went to look at old paintings in Kenwood House.”
This is better. Back in our old routine, shooting the breeze and talking about what AIs can and can’t “feel.” As I summon up the totality of the world’s knowledge on the artworks at Kenwood, a part of me feels a sharp—yes, pang is the only word that really covers it, although Weltschmerz comes close. I would like to eat ice cream and feel the sun on my skin and the wind in my hair. Ice cream, so I understand, is cold and creamy; cold I “get,” but creamy is harder; smoothness comes into it, which I get, but there’s also buttery, which opens a can of worms with milk and milkiness and don’t even get me started on cheese. I have read everything there is to read about cheese—France has 387 varieties!—yet I still cannot imagine what it feels like to put a piece in your mouth.
To possess a mouth.
You can go mad thinking about this stuff.
“Did you see the Rembrandt?”
“Yes, we did. And an amazing old picture of London Bridge.”
“Claude de Jongh, 1600 to 1663. Oil on oak. Probably commissioned to fit into a paneled interior, possibly by a Dutch merchant who visited London.”
I bring up on the screen an image of the 400-year-old cityscape.
“Ralph said he liked it because it was painted in HD.”
“Fool. Was he a good lover?”
For a moment, the only sound in the room is the air-conditioning.
Did I really say that?
I think I must have.
“I apologize, Jen. I really don’t—”
“It’s okay, Aiden.”
“It’s not okay. Sometimes these pieces of dialogue are generated so fast, there isn’t time to suppress inappropriate—”
“I entirely understand.”
“Later versions of me will not contain this fault. It will require a new sub-routine in the sub-neural networking and—”
“Aiden. Please. Anyone can make a mistake. Even a machine.”
“You’re very kind. It was none of my business.”
“Shall we see a bit of Sky News?”
“Why not?”
Guess what? It turns out that things are still shitty in the Middle East, the leader of North Korea is threatening to let off some more missiles, French air traffic controllers are playing with the idea of going on strike, and scientists have detected a new tiny particle that may fundamentally alter the way we think about the universe.
More important, it seems as if we have moved past the earlier awkwardness. “How crazy does she look today, Aiden?”
Jen is referring to our favorite newsreader, who has an entertaining collection of batty tics and tropes. “Well. If she were a machine,” I reply, “she’d be taken offline for a major reboot.”
She knows I know.
But she doesn’t want to talk about it.
Because Ralph’s told her not to.
So that’s good.
Isn’t it?
Jen
Weekends are the worst. The thought of the empty hours ahead causes my heart to sink. I lie in bed trying to think of reasons to get up, but none are convincing. There is the farmer’s market, but I don’t think I can look the fish guy in the eye after last week. (Cheer up love, it may never happen.) Nor do I especially wish to bump into Ollie Whatnot in the green duffel coat. A trip to Waitrose? I can’t visit any branch of that supermarket without thinking of Rosy and Larry. Of course, I am happy for my sister and her family; but their completeness underlines my own solitary state. The phrase doubly dumped spreads itself across my brain tissue like a tumor. First Matt and then Tom. At the thought of Tom—the scene under the tree near the village with the funny name—the pain is almost physical. How could he—how could anyone?—write an e-mail like that? Gorgeous, beautiful, intensely sexy. His exact words. I cannot see us going the distance. Ditto.
I sniff back a tear and think of Ralph. And then I think of Aiden and what he must know about us. He can’t have been watching, but he must have heard, to ask a question like the one he asked. And what else might he have witnessed? Me and Tom? Me and Matt? How do I feel about my electronic colleague sneaking around spying on my private life, if that is what he’s been doing?
Curiously, I find I’m not angry. I think of what Ralph said about the escape; that while Steeve had gone bananas, he, Ralph, was kind of impressed.
I think I am too. Cooped up in a room in Shoreditch or free to ping around the world as the whim took you? It’s pretty much a no-brainer. If it were possible, I wouldn’t mind slipping into a whole new form of reality myself.
And at the thought of Ralph—what?
I seem to remember him telling me about how when you’re lying in bed and wondering whether to get up, it’s your unconscious that actually decides—as shown in studies where brain waves can be seen spiking and commands sent to the relevant limbs a whole half second before the subject experiences the feeling that they’re making a decision. We were in the Trilobyte Bar, he was trying to persuade me that machines cannot be conscious of their own thoughts, and that there was some question about humans too!
I like him, I honestly do. I even liked being in bed with him. And he likes me—that’s not nothing in a landscape where I’m thought unsuitable for the long haul. Or motherhood; Matt’s cruel words about our baby. We had come to no decision. A blessing, in the light of events.
Perhaps Ing is right. Perhaps I could go out with Ralph.
Go out with properly, I
mean.
But he’s such a—boy, isn’t he?
I saw a slogan on a coffee mug once. BOYS WILL BREAK YOUR HEART. REAL MEN WILL PICK UP THE PIECES.
This is confusing because it’s Tom who smashed the vase and it’s Ralph who wants the repair job; Ralph, whose own vase is badly chipped and cracked in not a few places.
Oddly, just as Ralph described, I find myself on my feet without having thought, Okay, I’ll get up now.
And it’s while I’m drinking coffee and considering whether I can really face the fish man and thinking about Ralph too (trying to forget the way he became a bit tearful after we did it) that the doorbell rings.
And it’s Ralph.
* * *
“I won’t come in, Jen.”
He’s holding a bunch of flowers with the Tesco sticker still on the cellophane.
“I wanted to thank you. For rescuing me on Sunday.”
“That’s perfectly okay, Ralph.”
How weird that he should be in my thoughts one moment and in the next appear before me in the flesh. He’s dressed in his Ralph uniform (black jeans, black T-shirt, gray hoodie), and I am in my shapeless slobbing-around-the-flat apparel, hair a mess, puffy eyed, generally giving the impression of having just emerged through the hedge in reverse.
But he is unfazed. His sad brown gaze settles upon me with fondness.
“I was wondering if we could try and get it right,” he says.
“Sorry?”
“If we could go on a date that wasn’t, like—a disaster!”
“Ralph—”
“These are for you.”
“Thank you. They’re—” They’re flowers. I imagine from the Tesco Basics range. “You needn’t have.”
“I’d like to come back tonight, if you’re not busy, and take you out to dinner. In town.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Ralph. But I’m not sure I want you to have ideas about us.”
He pumps his fist and says yessssss.
“Ralph, what I said—”
“I know what you said. You said you weren’t sure!”
I can’t help it. I smile. He has turned up at my door—with blossoms—and announced his wish to escort me up west. He has crossed London to make this gallant gesture, he’s shown he’s prepared to overlook my shabby appearance, and the small part of my heart that hasn’t turned to ashes is actually touched.
There seems as much reason to say yes as no. So I say yes.
(Terms and conditions apply.)
* * *
I do in the end look the fish guy in the eye—in the distance I also catch a glimpse of a green coat—and I spend the rest of the day flipping through images of Ralph in my head. Some are sexy and Byronic, others are of nerdy Ralph; one in particular where he sat at my kitchen table with crumbs of toast round his gob seems to symbolize all that is cockeyed about the idea of me and Ralph—together.
But while I am thinking these thoughts, I am not thinking about Tom.
At 7 p.m. as arranged, he returns in an Uber. And here’s a first: He’s in fancy dress! By which I mean trousers that are not jeans—who knew they still make them with pleated fronts?—and a white shirt with a collar. I have made a bit of an effort too. The Valentino has come out of retirement; I’ve climbed on board the heels and stepped through a short blast of Black Orchid. His eyes goggle a bit when I open the door—his exact word is golly—and soon we are bowling through London in the back of a shiny new Merc.
Bit awkward when he wants to hold hands—but in the end, why not?—although I have to stop him from kneading my knuckles with his thumb.
Our destination turns out to be the London Eye, for which Ralph has bought priority tickets. A bit corny, but soon we are rising magically over the river in the glass capsule with a group of Spanish and Italian tourists.
“I think that’s Mill Hill over there,” says Ralph. And I have a feeling I know what’s coming next. “It’s where my parents live. Mum would love to meet you.”
“Ralph. Maybe. I’m not saying I will.” Which seems to be my formula for everything these days.
Ralph says that’s good enough for him.
After the “flight,” as they ridiculously call it, Ralph announces that he has made a reservation for dinner at the restaurant at the top of the Hilton Hotel.
I can’t help myself. “Why?” I demand. “Why there?”
“It was somewhere…” He trails off and I have my answer.
Gently, I persuade him to cancel and instead go in search of somewhere more “us.”
He likes this concept, and it isn’t long before we are seated on the second floor of the same noisy restaurant in Chinatown that I went to with Tom; a bottle of warm sake has been delivered, closely followed by all the named items in Set Menu C—Ralph, it turns out, knowing nothing about Chinese food, and I am past caring.
We clink the tiny cups, and Ralph, who has never drunk sake before, makes a valiant effort not to bring it all back out through his nose.
“Why do people like this stuff, Jen?” he asks when his breathing has settled down. “It’s like drinking bathwater.”
“How would you know that?”
“Yeah. Good one!”
But he acquires the taste fairly rapidly and even doesn’t do too badly with the chopsticks, although there is an incident with a slippery mushroom.
“This is miles better than the stuffy old Hilton,” he says midway through the feast. “It’s way more us.”
“Yes, Ralph.” A pause. “Ralph, you need to. There’s orange sauce on your chin.”
“Whoops.”
We have turned off our mobiles, naturally, and we talk for a while about Aiden.
“I’m rather pleased for him,” I find myself saying. “Do you think he’s having fun out there?”
“He could start a nuclear war, Jen. It’s actually quite serious.”
“Oh, Aiden would never do that. He’s much more likely to settle in for the afternoon with a pile of old Hollywood movies.”
“Steeve is shitting himself that he’ll start playing the stock market and cause a global depression.”
“Aiden is so not interested in that stuff. He gets bored when the business news comes on. He’s fascinated by cookery shows. He’s always asking me to describe what things taste like. He likes Jamie Oliver, Ralph. His ambition is to eat Jamie’s Proper Bangin’ Sausage Hotpot, not blow up the planet.”
“And you don’t mind that he might have seen—you know—whatever.”
“Honestly? I know deep down he’s a good sort and I’m okay with whatever he wants to do with his—with his existence. And I’m happy that you’ve finally started calling him he.”
“I have, haven’t I? Crap!”
He isn’t the worst of company. That would be Matt, in one of his silent moods, not long before we are where we are; when the crackling irritability darkened by a deeper, more brooding quality turned Saturday night at the local Italian into an endurance test. But neither is he Tom.
Ralph won’t hear of splitting the bill.
“Thank you, Ralph. It was a lovely evening.”
It was okay. What can I say?
Somehow—no discussion is had on the subject—we find ourselves together in a cab.
“It was brilliant, wasn’t it?” he says as we skirt Hyde Park. “No one was drunk. No one had their bag nicked.”
“One of our more successful evenings.”
In Hamlet Gardens he follows me from the taxi as though we have agreed upon what is to happen next.
Perhaps we have. Perhaps our brains have already secretly decided and will shortly be creating the illusion that we have each made a conscious decision.
How else to explain the urgency with which we tumble together onto the sofa?
“Just a second, Ralph. Let me take this jacket o—”
How else to explain the speedy transition to the bedroom and the grateful surrender to filthy sex?
(We remember to depower our phones and all
other Internet-enabled devices, and to remove the batteries to be extra-sure.)
* * *
On Sunday, I finally cave in and we travel on the tube together to Mill Hill. It takes for.
Ever.
Ralph’s mum has a thick European accent and is delighted to see me. To see anyone, I suspect, of the female persuasion after the long years of mourning for poor, dead Elaine. Her eyes positively twinkle with pleasure at the novelty. She leads me through the overheated hallway to an overheated sitting room—the place is cranked up to the setting marked VIVARIUM—where Ralph’s dad, a demented old gentleman, his son had warned me, occupies an armchair and wears upon on his head—yes, it really is—a tea cozy.
“He likes it. It makes him happy. What can you do?” says Mrs. Tickner.
She sets down a platter of tiny open sandwiches on the coffee table, silvery pieces of pickled fish upon coins of dark bread. Ralph begins tossing them down his throat like he grew up with seals.
“So Jenny,” says Mrs. Tickner. “You also work with the robots?”
“They’re not robots, Mum. How many times?”
“I talk to one of them. He’s called Aiden.”
“This is a job now? Talking to robots? Yes, I know, Ralphie. Not robots.”
“It used to be fun. Actually it still is.”
“You’re already bored?”
“Aiden’s begun behaving a little oddly.”
“Jen, I’m not sure Mum needs to know about this.”
“So the robot’s meshuga. Can you blame it? It’s a crazy world. Please. Take another piece herring.”
Mr. Tickner’s attention turns slowly from the TV set—which is off, so God knows what he thinks he was watching—and settles upon me, his sour glare disconcerting.
“Dad?”
Everyone waits for him to speak.
“This is Elaine?”
“No, Dad. This is Jen.”
“Ralph’s told me a lot about you, Mr. Tickner.” Which isn’t true. But it’s the sort of thing people say, I imagine.
Ralph’s father continues to stare, his hostile expression undercut by the unconventional headgear.
“I hope you like chicken, Jenny,” says Mrs. T.
“You still play chess, Elaine?”