by Jason Ayres
“Would it surprise you to learn it was totally vegan?” said Alice.
“What? I don’t believe it,” said Henry. “That’s pure, best-quality beef if I ever saw it.”
“Nope, purely vegetable matter, grown in laboratories right here in Oxford. And it’s indistinguishable from the real thing. Soon there will no longer be any need for herds of cattle belching out methane into the atmosphere.”
“Well, that’s unbelievable,” said Henry. “I’ve always known I should cut down on red meat and move to a plant-based diet, but it never appealed to my palate. That was before I knew it would be possible to create this. I have to say it would be worth staying in Oxford for this alone.”
“That’s settled, then,” said Alice. “You can come and work with us and kick Vanessa into touch.”
“I don’t think she’s going to lie down that easily,” said Henry. “This could get messy, believe me. I’ve seen it all before and it’s not pretty.”
“Yeah, you alluded to that earlier,” said Alice. “I take it Vanessa’s got a chequered history.”
“Very,” said Henry. “I could tell you a few tales, believe me.”
“I’m all ears,” replied Alice, leaning forward, eager to hear what Henry had to say.
Normally she frowned on gossiping about people behind their backs, but, such was her intense dislike of Vanessa, she was willing to make an exception on this occasion.
“As scientists, you know how we get obsessed with our work?” asked Henry.
“Don’t I just,” said Alice. “I’ve been married to Josh for thirty years and this last year has been one of the worst.”
“Well, Vanessa’s like that, too – but with people. When she sets her sights on a man she won’t take no for an answer, and won’t rest until she’s got him.”
“Was she like that with you?” asked Josh.
“No, not at all,” replied Henry. “She made it quite clear from the start that this was a marriage of convenience. She had the money to fund my research, and that was good enough for me.”
“So, you married for money?” asked Alice.
“Not in the traditional sense. I never had any great desire to acquire personal wealth, but as scientists you know how frustrating it is when you can’t turn your ideas into reality because of a lack of funds.”
“I know what you’re saying,” said Josh. “The university is generous, but we could be ten years ahead of where we are now with unlimited funding.”
“Right, well everything you saw in Canberra, from the equipment to androids like Dani was extremely expensive, but Vanessa said money was no object. She turned on the taps and the money flowed. It was all an investment to her, one that she eventually hoped to recoup.”
“And now it looks like that isn’t going to happen after your revelations earlier this evening.”
“Exactly,” said Henry. “Hence why she was so angry before. That’s one part of it, and then there is her obsession with you, Josh.”
“Yes, and I’m extremely concerned about that,” said Alice.
“You should be,” remarked Henry. “I said I could tell you a few tales so here’s something to mull over. A few years ago, she became besotted with a student at the university. She did her usual thing – showering him with cash and attention in an attempt to seduce him. She even altered his grades. Anyway, to cut a long story short, she was caught having sex with him on campus and an almighty scandal ensued.”
“How old was he?” asked Alice.
“Eighteen,” replied Henry. “She was in her late-forties at the time.”
“Oh my God, she’s a paedo,” said Josh. “What happened?”
“The whole thing was hushed up,” replied Henry. “It wasn’t so much the sex as the grade-altering that was the real scandal, but she paid the boy’s family off. It was a substantial sum, I should add. None of them will ever have to work again. As for the university, she made sure they didn’t kick her out by paying for a brand new lecture hall.”
“It seems you can get away with anything if you have money,” said Alice.
“Such has always been the way of the world,” replied Henry. “I suppose it won’t come as any surprise to you that she was also knocking off the State Governor at one point and he’s done her plenty of favours in return. She has friends in extremely high places.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Henry?” asked Alice.
“Fire away,” said Henry.
“Did you and Vanessa ever even consummate your marriage?”
“Alice!” exclaimed Josh. “You can’t ask that!”
“It’s OK, Alice,” said Henry. “I don’t mind. The answer to your question is yes, we had sex a couple of times when we were first together, but quite frankly, it was awful. There was simply no chemistry between us, and without that, sex is just reduced to an emotionless biological function.”
“OK thanks. I hope you didn’t mind me asking, but you came across as such a mismatched couple that I couldn’t help wondering,” said Alice.
“You’re not the first person to ask that question, as it happens,” said Henry. “But usually people ask me if I’m gay and if the marriage is just a front. Just to clarify, I’m not but I can see why they ask.”
“The Hawaiian shirts?” asked Josh.
“Yes – it is a bit of cliché that only gay men wear them. The truth is, I just love them. I spent some time in Hawaii in my teens and bought my first one then. After that it sort of became my trademark.”
“I take it there’s no one else special in your life?” asked Alice. “Don’t you get lonely? I can imagine that it can be lonelier being in a loveless marriage than it would be being single.”
“Not really,” said Henry. “I’m married to my work. And then there’s Dani of course. I’m sure you can’t have missed Vanessa’s little comments about her.”
“Was it true what she was hinting at? That you have a sexual relationship with Dani?” asked Alice.
“Alice!” said Josh again. “I’m sure Henry doesn’t appreciate all these personal questions.”
“Really, it’s fine, Josh,” Henry assured him. “It’s nice to have someone to talk about this with, to be honest. Yes, I do have sex with her. I don’t think it’s any big deal. The thing is, I think that relationships between humans and androids will become more and more common in the future.”
“Don’t people think it’s a bit weird, though?” asked Josh.
Henry laughed and said, “People used to think that about homosexuality less than a century ago and look how things are now – no one bats an eyelid. The thing with Dani is – she’s an incredibly sophisticated machine, almost indistinguishable from a living, breathing woman.”
“But she’s still just artificial intelligence?” asked Josh. “You said yourself before, sex is nothing without chemistry.”
“True, but she’s a lot warmer towards me than Vanessa ever was. What’s more, she’s so sophisticated she emits certain pheromones that simulate those given off by the human female. It does make her feel real as opposed to a highly sophisticated sex toy.”
“But she can’t actually feel real emotions, can she?” asked Josh.
“The Henry android felt emotions,” Alice reminded him. “We saw it.”
“That was different, he was an actual copy of my own brain. Creating emotions from scratch is a whole different ball game but it’s the logical next step,” said Henry. “It’s what I’m planning to work on once we’ve finished the current project. Though funding could be an issue after this evening’s little exchange.”
“Speaking of which, what do you think we should do about her?” asked Alice. “She seems pretty besotted with Josh, and that worries me.”
“The feeling’s not mutual, believe me!” said Josh.
“That isn’t what I’m concerned about,” said Alice. “You heard what Henry said. She doesn’t give up until she’s got what she wants. For all we know she could be plotting something right now. Perhaps we ou
ght to go away for a few days and let the dust settle.”
“I guess it wouldn’t do any harm,” said Josh. “We’ve gone as far as we can for the time being, so it would be a good time to take a break.” As he spoke, the waiter returned to the table to take away their dinner plates.
“Would you like to see le dessert menu?” he asked in his usual pidgin English style.
“I certainly would,” said Henry. “I’m not in any hurry to get back. Actually, I’m not going back to the hotel at all. Instead, I was thinking of asking if I could stay at yours tonight.”
“We’d be glad to have you,” said Alice.
“In the meantime, Henry, you must try the cheeseboard in here. They’ve got some amazing unpasteurised French cheeses which are really hard to get in the UK. They have to have a special licence to sell them these days after a big food scare a few years ago.”
“Sure, I love cheese almost as much as I love steak,” said Henry.
“It’s vegan, of course, like everything in here,” said Josh. “But don’t let that put you off. Just like the steak, it’s the real deal.”
“I swear I didn’t even know this was a vegan restaurant when Alice suggested it,” said Henry. “Amazing.”
“While you two get stuck into the cheese, I think I’ll go for the Tarte Suzette,” said Alice. “I had that last time we were here and it’s absolutely delicious.”
As soon as they had finished giving the waiter their orders, Henry stood up and removed the folded white napkin he had tucked into the top of his latest shirt which depicted a lurid red and black late-night beach party.
“If you’ll excuse me, I must visit the little boys’ room,” he said.
While Henry was away, Alice took the opportunity to take Josh to task about Vanessa.
“I still think you should have said something about her obsessing over you like that. We’re married, we should be able to discuss these things.”
“I know, and I don’t like keeping things from you, but I just thought it would cause a lot of unnecessary aggravation all round. I thought I could handle it. How do you tell your partner someone’s hitting on you without there being repercussions?”
“Oh, there would have been,” said Alice. “But for her, not you.”
“What do you suggest we do now?”
“For starters, after what Henry said, I think we need to stop all time travel with immediate effect, at least for the time being while we work out what we are going to do.”
“Makes sense,” said Josh.
“Then we need to seriously sit down and decide where all of this – and we – are going. Are we going to send our brains back into the past before we die? Or should we create android copies of ourselves and live on that way? Or maybe we should just forget all this and just accept that when our time’s up, our time’s up?”
“If everyone thought that way, then we’d never have developed medicines and there would be no doctors,” replied Josh. “It’s the natural instinct of our species to prolong our lives as much as possible and we now have the technology to do that – with or without time travel.”
“Henry’s been gone a long time,” remarked Alice. “He’s going to be missing his cheese,” she added as the waiter returned, carrying two plates.
“Tarte Suzette?” he asked. He already knew it was Alice’s, but it was convention to ask.
“That’s for me,” she confirmed, and he placed the mouth-watering plate of triangular pancakes, drizzled with an orange and Grand Marnier sauce, right in front of her.
“Wow!” said Alice in anticipation. Meanwhile, the waiter placed a square plate with a selection of five different cheeses in front of Josh, flanked by crackers and decorated with grapes in each corner. The centrepiece was a slice of Camembert which was practically oozing.
“Can I get you anything else, monsieur?” asked the waiter.
“Ah, yes, there is one thing. We ordered two plates cheese and biscuits,” said Josh.
“For you, madame?” asked the waiter.
“No – for Henry. Our friend who was here before,” she replied.
“Your friend, madame? What friend?”
“You know,” said Alice. “Big guy, Hawaiian shirt, spoke in an Australian accent? He had a big row with his wife, and she walked out?”
The waiter just looked back at her with a bemused look on his face.
“Je ne comprends pas, madame. It has only been zee two of you, all evening.”
“But you must remember,” protested Alice.
“I’m sorry, madame, it has been a long night. I do not remember. I shall get you another cheese, tout suite!” He turned and headed back to the kitchen.
“How could he not remember?” asked Alice.
“Alice!” said Josh, noticing something for the first time. “Look at the table – where Henry was sitting.”
Alice looked to see that Henry’s place was empty. There was no wine glass, no cutlery, and no evidence at all that anyone had ever been sitting there.
“Same for Vanessa,” she said with a look of astonishment, there being no evidence of her place ever being occupied.
“And Henry’s been gone an awful long time. I’m going to check the toilets,” said Josh. He got up and made his way to the back of the restaurant.
The gents seemed empty, with no one at the urinals. There were two cubicles, but a quick push of both doors confirmed they were both unoccupied.
Wherever Henry was, he wasn’t in here. That’s if he was anywhere at all.
It seemed that he had completely vanished.
Chapter Twelve
May 2058
Back at the table, Josh could see Alice was still in conversation with the waiter.
“You really can’t remember the other couple who were dining with us?”
“Madame, it has only ever been you two.” Was that a slight smirk she detected on his face? He wasn’t taking this seriously.
“Answer me this, then,” said Alice. “If there really was just two of us, why did you seat us at a table for four on such a busy night?”
“If I recall correctly, you booked a table for four, but when you arrived your friends didn’t turn up,” said the waiter.
“There’s an easy way to check,” said Josh. “Could we have our bill please?”
“Of course, monsieur,” replied the waiter. “Uno momento, if you please.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s Spanish,” said Josh. “Your accent’s slipping.”
Ignoring the jibe, the waiter headed back towards the till area as Josh sat back down.
“What’s happening?” asked Alice, with a look of concern.
“I’m not sure but I’ve got some very worrying suspicions,” said Josh.
“It’s as if they were never here,” she added. “And the waiter doesn’t remember them.”
“That’s what worries me,” said Josh, as the waiter returned with the bill.
Josh opened the small, black wallet which he quickly took and perused in detail. Ordinarily he would have been delighted to discover that the bill was significantly less than expected, but this was no ordinary occasion.
“It’s just as I suspected,” he said. “Our meals and drinks are on here but there’s no sign of theirs, and I can only think of one possible explanation. You remember what Henry was saying earlier about merging universes instead of creating copies?”
“Yes – do you think that’s what he’s done and changed something so that he wouldn’t turn up here tonight? But why?”
“All I can hope is that this is just another little experiment to test out the theory and not anything more sinister,” said Josh.
“What I don’t understand is that if he really has changed history, how come we can remember him being here? And even more curiously, how come we can remember them being here, but the waiter can’t? That doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“I think we had better get back to the lab and investigate this right away,” said Josh.
> “Really? Now? It’s gone 10pm,” said Alice.
“I don’t think this can wait,” said Josh.
They paid their bill and made their way out of the restaurant. As soon as they started to make their way up Little Clarendon Street towards St Giles’ their attention was drawn by a commotion in front of them.
A police car sat at the end of the street, its blue light flashing on the top, but with no siren. As they approached, they could see that ‘Police line – do not cross’ tape was stretched across the end of the street.
A couple of uniformed officers were preventing pedestrians exiting via the pavement to the left, while what looked like a forensics team were carrying out tests on the ground.
“What’s happening here?” said Josh to one of the officers.
“Please move along, sir, this is a crime scene,” responded the officer, his impassive face giving nothing away.
“He’s hardly going to say anything, is he?” said Alice. “You’re asking the wrong person. As you’re so fond of saying to me, watch and learn.”
There was a café on the right-hand corner where a middle-aged waitress was just clearing away the final few outside tables before closing for the night. She would have been there all evening and must have seen something.
“Excuse me, do you mind if I ask what happened here?” said Alice.
“Oh, it was awful,” she said. “It was a hit-and-run. This big car came out of nowhere and mowed down this poor man right in front of the café.”
“How long ago did this happen?” asked Josh. He looked across at Alice who had a fearful look on her face. She was doubtless thinking the same as he was. He really hoped that they were both wrong.
“A couple of hours ago,” replied the woman. “This fellow was just crossing the road when this car zoomed up St Giles’ at about 60 miles an hour and hit him square on.”
“That’s about the time we arrived at the restaurant,” said Josh, adding further fuel to his theory.
“Do you have any idea who the man was?” asked Alice.
“Some big guy in a Hawaiian shirt,” replied the waitress, delivering the devastating confirmation of what they had feared.
“Oh no,” exclaimed Alice, her face crumpling and tears welling up in her eyes. “Poor Henry.”