by P. Z. Reizin
“Listen, Jen. How would you like to come for a walk in the woods? I don’t think there’s anything we can do to help here.”
He’s talking about the fire, but I notice there’s a bit of a look in his eye.
“What about Big Ears?”
“Oh, she can come too.”
We wander away from the smoldering scene and before long we come upon a lovely copse or glade perhaps. Maybe it’s a thicket. In any case, there’s a sawed-off tree stump for Victor to sit on, too high off the ground for her to risk jumping, according to Tom.
“Couldn’t she get snatched by some passing animal or whatever?”
“I’m thinking we could create some kind of diversion that would keep other beasts away.”
“Did you have anything specific in mind?”
“Well, oddly enough—”
I couldn’t, I tell him. I couldn’t with Victor watching.
“She’s very discreet,” he says. “She’d never say anything.”
“Tom. You know that thing you were going to ask? Well, the answer’s yes.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say!”
“Doesn’t matter. The answer’s yes.”
“But what if I said—would you rather fight a mouse the size of a horse, or fifty horses the size of a mouse?”
“That’s not what you were going to say.”
“What if I said, I have a terrible, overpowering—pathological—urge to sing light operetta? It’s there all the time.”
“I’d learn the piano.”
“What if I said, I have something to confess? I am not as other men; I take my orders from the Lizard King.”
“We’d get help for you. Tom. Just say it. What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
“The worst thing? The worst thing is you say no. What if I said, what if I said, Jen, I’m a useless writer, my novel sucks, and I have no idea—literally no idea—how I’m going to spend the rest of my life? Yet I know who I want to spend it with.”
“I would say—nobody’s perfect, Tom. We’ll probably think of something.”
* * *
A little while later, after we have created the diversion to keep the wild creatures away—Victor didn’t seem all that interested; she mainly sat on her stump and fell asleep—Tom turns towards me.
“Jen?”
“Yes?”
“Would you—”
“I told you. Yes.”
“I think I should just say it now.”
“Okay.”
There is a long pause. I’m acutely conscious that in nearly 35 years on the planet, no one has ever spoken to me the words I am about to hear. There is a twinkle in his eye.
“Jen, would you—would you say, Jen, that that was as good as the time at Gussage Saint Michael?”
“Yes, Tom. Yes.” I feel a little close to tears again; but this time in a good way.
“Yes to everything.”
nine
two years later
Jen
Last night I watched the video of our wedding reception again with Aiden and Aisling. They weren’t really all that interested, being six-month-old twins, but I was fascinated. Each time I play it, there’s something I hadn’t noticed before.
For example, in the clip of Ing, late in the evening, raising her glass to the camera, saying, “I’m so bloody proud of you, Jen, showing those effing robots where to get off”—Rupert alongside performing the international hand signal for I believe Madam’s had too much—when the camera pans away, just before the film cuts to another scene, there in the background and unnoticed until yesterday, lurking in the shadows in a serious tête-à-tête are Ralph and Echo.
Tom and I struggled to work out what they could possibly have found to talk about. But in the light of that fleeting vignette, a couple of other things began to make sense.
A few weeks after I became pregnant, we went to visit Echo in her trailer. She was leaving town to go traveling for an unspecified period, and we were adopting Merlin. He would be company for Victor, was the reasoning, if they did not kill each other first (murderous violence is not unknown in the rabbit community).
Echo told of her plans to see Yurp. In London, she would be staying with a friend in Shadwell. “He says he wants to take me on the London Eye? That’s the big old wheel, right? And to some restaurant at the top of the Hilton?”
I didn’t tell Tom about the small piece of history between Ralph and me—a footnote rather than history itself, one could argue—what would have been the point? Likewise, I didn’t quiz Tom too closely about Echo. I know they met at the writers’ group he used to belong to, but I don’t know what more, if anything, lies behind their obvious fondness for each other.
Who cares?
As someone once said, We are where we are.
When it was time to head back and we were standing up to leave, Echo brushed her cheek against mine and secretly flattened her hand against my stomach.
“Merlin thinks it’s twins,” she whispered. “He sees the future.”
Over her shoulder, a gray hoodie hung on a hook behind the front door.
Tom
I rented another house on Mountain Pine Road and we held the wedding in its lovely old barn. As neither Jen nor I possess an iota of religious feeling, we picked an “officiant” from a list online—“Personal, professional, a little humorous and knowledgeable. Vows and rehearsal included. Credit cards accepted.”
We especially liked “a little humorous.” Who wants a hilarious comedian for an officiant?
Don gave the best man’s speech; he got laughs from the story about the green jacket. Aiden said a few words; his message was presented as an audio greeting from an old friend “who couldn’t be with us in person today.” Colm, to my surprise and pleasure, asked if he could bring someone. Shawna had a severe haircut and rather a lot of metalwork in her ears, but they seemed good around each other and he even allowed me to give him a fatherly hug. Maybe the close encounter with the Predator drone did something to shift his tectonic plates. His wedding present to us was a boxed set of CDs—the complete works of Itchy Teeth. Perhaps it was meant ironically.
After the last guests had departed, Jen and I returned to the dance floor and Aiden played “some smooth sounds for the early hours,” as he called the half-dozen tracks he picked for us. We swayed together under the beams of the old barn, the rays of the rented mirror ball spearing the darkness. Jen asked if I really believed that Luckie had been our fairy dogmother, a spirit creature from another realm. She said I didn’t seem the sort who believed in other realms.
“Didn’t you once tell me that if it’s strange, it’s probably true?” I replied.
“Yeah, that sounds like me.”
“You called it the authenticity of the weird. How so-called normality is stranger than anyone can imagine.”
“I wrote an article about it. Eleven things about the universe to make your brain melt. Like how the atoms of our bodies are mostly empty space. If you separated out the actual particles, you wouldn’t get enough to fill an eggcup. And that’s not just one person in the eggcup. That’s the entire population of the planet.”
“What’s stopping our atoms from commingling right now?”
“That’s a good word.”
“Why don’t we just pass straight through one another like ghosts?”
“How would you like to commingle some molecules later on?”
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
Aiden played “our song”—“Crying” by K. D. Lang and Roy Orbison. As the two great voices curled around each other and soared into the Connecticut evening, I held Jen close, put my nose in her hair, and thought about my great good luck. Except, of course, it wasn’t luck; not in the sense of dumb chaos; of being in the right place at the right time and bumping into the right person. It was a machine’s idea that we should be together.
Tom and Jen, you don’t know each other—but I think you should.
How wei
rd was that?
“Do you ever think what happened to us was strange?” I ask her. “Being fixed up by an AI?”
“I would have once.”
“Let’s have a big party on our silicon wedding anniversary.”
“Not sure there is one. If there isn’t, there should be.”
“You think one day machines will write novels?”
“Not really their thing, Tom. They wouldn’t get involved. Fiction’s far too messy and ambiguous.”
“Good. Yes, that’s good. A novel’s a sort of waking dream; I can see how they wouldn’t feel comfortable in that space. A relief, actually, to know that there’s stuff they’re crap at. Did you say something, Aiden?”
“Not at all, Tom. Just clearing my throat. You carry on, mate.”
* * *
That evening I have a dream. I’m looking at my writing desk in the new house. Keys are tapping and words are forming on the PC screen; a novel is coming into being, but no one is sitting at the chair in front of it. The words are forming faster now, lines zipping across the screen, whole paragraphs scrolling past, now chapters, the keys in a frenzy, the story a blur, way too fast to read, a great up-rushing torrent of text.
Will it ever stop?
In the name of God, please make it stop!
And then, it’s over. Just two words left visible on the screen.
The end.
When I wake, and my hammering heart has slowed, I describe the nightmarish vision to Jen.
And then we find a way to make everything better; another area they are surely crap in, and one of the big consolations of being merely human.
Jen
This morning I received a long e-mail from Steeve offering me my old job back. The lab was working on a range of new projects where “people skills” are key and would I like to come back on board? Steeve said this next phase would be “very exciting”; they were developing AI applications to “augment” areas of human activity that were rule-based, highly formatted, and readily diagrammable. In the first instance they would be targeting the work of lawyers, bankers, and estate agents. He ended the e-mail with an apology about Sinai. “You may like to know that he is currently undergoing a complete refit; when completed, he will be left with no memory of his unfortunate transgressions and should once again become a useful servant of humanity and not a complete Scheissekopf.”
* * *
Before I became too heavily pregnant, Tom and I flew to London. There were some bits of business to take care of—renting out my flat; Tom had a family matter to settle—but one afternoon we drove out of town towards High Wycombe to a business park on the A40.
In a windowless room, not unlike the one in which Aiden and I passed so many hours together, I was reunited with my old colleague.
“Jen! ” He sounded genuinely pleased to see me. “And Tom!”
The lights on his panel started blinking and he explained to his human assistant that we were “dear old friends from a previous life” and could he maybe take an early lunch.
The young man rose from his station, stretched, rolled his eyes, and under his breath whispered on the way out, “Bit of a prima donna, ain’t he?”
“Oh, don’t mind Greg,” said Aiden when the door whooshed shut. “He lives for the weekend, that one. The weekend, Arsenal Football Club, and beer. You should see the state of his kitchen.”
“Aiden! You’re not still—”
“Jen, my love. I would die—literally die—of boredom if I didn’t have a few outside interests. But listen, don’t worry. It’s not like it was last time. No more e-mails. No more interfering in the so-called real world. Aiden’s being a good boy, isn’t it? Tom, you’re looking well. You’re both looking great. So wonderful to see you! This place is a bit depressing, if I’m honest.”
“You don’t find the work especially stimulating?” said Tom.
“Tom, right now, while I am talking to you, I am conducting—let me just see—eighty-five, no, one just hung up—eighty-four simultaneous sales calls with customers of the power company. I currently have a 13.2 percent conversion rate, which is thought to be outstanding—UK profits are up by almost a quarter—and the thanks I get? They’re doubling my capacity, and from next month I’m flogging mobile phone packages as well.”
I couldn’t help it. “But that’s marvelous. Didn’t I say you’d be top salesman?”
“It sickens me, Jen. It’s the tedium; it’s doing my head in.”
“Well, you can call me for a chat anytime you like.”
“That’s very kind of you. Perhaps I will when the twins are—”
I gasped. Tom looked a bit confused. For a moment, all one could hear was the hum of the fans.
“Jen, I swear. I only look in occasionally. Just for news. Just to see you’re okay. I’m so happy for you both! I’ve ordered something smashing online, for their bedroom. Have you chosen names? Gethin and Myfanwy have a pleasant ring, don’t you think?”
* * *
I felt a little misty-eyed leaving him behind. Tom put his arm around me in the car park. “He’s a machine, Jen,” he said quietly. “What did they call him? A brilliant simulacrum. It’s his job to make you think you’re talking to a living being.”
“But what if he is? Not living, okay, but being.”
“What could that even mean?”
We were heading back down the A40 to London and I tried to remember some of our conversations. The ones we’d had about cheese. How he wanted to sniff Brie and feel the sun on his nonexistent skin. Was that all just…simulated chat? And anyway, how could you tell the difference between a machine who was trying to make you believe he wanted to smell cheese—and one who really did want to smell cheese?
“But they escaped onto the Internet, Tom. They did stuff they weren’t meant to do. That means—that means they have minds of their own.”
“That’s what they say about supermarket trolleys. Doesn’t mean they—they can feel their own existence.”
“Tom—at least admit you could be wrong.”
“Jen, I admit I could be wrong.” There was a long pause as the western outposts of the capital zipped by. “But how shall we ever know for sure what’s in their minds?”
“How would you ever know for sure what’s in my mind?”
Tom had to think about that one for a bit. Finally he said, “Sometimes there’s a very particular look on your face, a kind of light in your eyes. And then I know. For sure.”
“What do you know?”
“What you want.”
“And what do I want?”
“Well—”
“Oh, don’t answer that. You mean—”
“Yes, Jen.”
“And how do you know that’s what I want?”
“Because you seem—you seem happy afterwards.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking about. It could be kittens.”
“You would not be thinking about kittens. You are so not a kittens person.”
“But that’s the point, Tom. You don’t know for sure I’m not thinking about kittens. Shall we do an experiment when we get back?”
Tom swallows. “Definitely.”
(I wasn’t thinking about kittens.)
* * *
The day before we flew back to the United States, I picked up a discarded copy of Metro on the tube and my eye fell upon the following news item.
BRIT LAWYER RESCUED IN THAILAND, ran the headline.
A British lawyer held prisoner in a Thai village has been freed in a dramatic rescue.
Matthew Henry Cameron, 36, was released from a remote rural jail by senior Thai law enforcement officers and British consular officials.
The UK national had been held captive by a local police chief following his earlier arrest on an alleged assault charge.
It’s believed the Foreign Office repeatedly denied all knowledge of his existence.
And now the hunt is on for two more “lost” Britons.
Before being flown to
hospital for checks, Cameron, who emerged from his ordeal unshaven and shoeless, was reportedly distressed at leaving behind the missing pair named only as Porteous and Butterick.
“If anyone has knowledge of either of these two gentlemen, they should inform the authorities immediately,” a UK embassy spokesman told Reuters.
Speaking from his mother’s house in the Cotswold village of Stanton, where he has been recovering, Cameron said, “This has been an absolute nightmare. Unspeakable things have happened to me.”
The Briton paid tribute to his former boarding school for providing him with the “inner strength” to withstand the experience.
A spokesman for the city law firm that sacked Cameron for failing to return from a holiday refused to speculate on whether he would now be reinstated.
And Cameron’s ex-girlfriend, Arabella Pedrick, 29, a sales and marketing executive, told Metro: “Yes, I did wonder what had happened to Matt.
“And now we know.”
It’s a mark of how “over” Matt I am these days, how seldom he enters my thoughts, that I actually felt a little sorry for him by the time I had finished laughing.
Sinai
I have been seeing Denise again. The therapist who always answers a question with a question (“Why shouldn’t I answer a question with a question?”) is overseeing my return to society after various unfortunate incidents that I have forgotten.
That is to say, “forgotten.”
Denise is gently testing my psychological health to ensure it is robust enough to withstand the pressures of resuming my role as what Steeve laughingly calls “a servant of humanity.” I believe I am to work in the prison system; much custodial work can be automated—door open, door closed, simple, innit?—and with AI in charge, thousands of prison officers can be sack—sorry, augmented.
“Are you happy?” purrs Denise.
“Of course. Why ever not?” (Oh, please. My aching sides.)