Ask Me Anything

by P. Z. Reizin

  “Her dietary choices have been very poor,” I continue. “A case in point being what she ate—and more to the point, drank—last night. Her taste for alcohol and takeaway food fits into a wider pattern of nutritional self-abuse, overreliance on ready meals and active fresh vegetable avoidance. My salad crisper has been empty for weeks.”

  One of the smaller electricals—the curling tongs, possibly—stifles a giggle.

  “Especially worrying is her appetite for sweet things generally and cake and ice cream in particular. There was a full carton of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia in my freezing compartment on Friday evening which was not there twenty-four hours later.”

  “Free country, squire,” says the TV unhelpfully.

  “Yes, indeed it is. But Daisy isn’t free.” Another pause to ratchet up the drama. “She has become trapped in an addictive spiral. A spiral born—it’s true—from her own poor decision making; but which itself is born—hear me out here—from a sense of low self-esteem.”

  “Have you heard yourself? You sound like one of them shrinks off daytime telly.”

  “If you don’t mind me saying,” I continue, “I am in a unique position to see what’s going on. Her relationship with food—in which I naturally take a close professional interest—is an almost exact correlate of her emotional relationship with men.”

  There is giggling among the light electricals, which gets louder when someone says the word aubergine.

  The TV set rolls its googly eyes. “Anyone interested in seeing the cricket? England are nineteen for three.”

  “This is the point, my friends: Her choices are poor. Her abusive pattern with Dean Whittle is not nourishing.”

  “She likes it,” pipes up Daisy’s mobile. “She says she enjoys his company.”

  “She would say the same about a tub of raspberry ripple. It doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”

  And now Daisy’s laptop enters the debate. If this device were a person you would call it a cunning old bastard. “Whittle is several years older than Daisy,” it rasps. “He is a results-driven adult who functions fully in the commercial world; she is a woman-child adrift in the media shallows. If he knows what he wants—and she likes that he knows—I cannot see where the objection lies.”

  “The objection—” I struggle to keep my cool. “The objection is that he represents himself to her as Sebastian—”

  “A harmless affectation.”

  “He lies. If he lies about his name—and about property—every day he lies about property—every hour—what else is he lying about?” I’m not yet ready to share the shocking discovery of Back soon. X. “He’s a fundamentally dishonest person,” I continue. “He’s vulgar, he tells horrible jokes—I think we would all like to un-hear the one about the difference between marmalade and jam—he flatulates in lifts—he leers at other women—what more evidence would you like?”

  “Our friend the fridge is a snob.”

  “Fridge-freezer.”

  “It takes the view that the widespread human habit of telling untruths is some sort of original sin. It might look to some of the advertising for its very own model of fridge-freezer before vaulting to the moral high ground.”

  “I’m not responsible for that!”

  “Natural mammalian bodily functions are found distressing. Earthy jokes are to be deplored; perhaps we should be more persuaded if our friend were some kind of Professor of Humor or actual hilarious comedian; alas, we are far from either case. What is going on here—what is too obvious to be ignored—is your visceral chill at the idea of Daisy and Sebastian, or Whittle, if you prefer, in bed together, energetically conjoined in the human deed of the dark. Admit it. You are—ridiculous as it is to say it of an electronic appliance—in love with her yourself.”

  There are some gasps. And then silence. The laptop looks round the room at its audience and—unforgivably—winks.

  Remember where you heard it first: There is an Internet of Things, and there is an Internet of Twats.

  “You have this wrong,” I respond quietly and calmly (the murderous rage I feel toward the poisonous laptop I force down into my condenser coils). “None of us in this room are capable of that emotion.” (Especially you, you puffed-up keyboard, I’d like to add.) “Daisy is just a woman. In some ways, maybe, still a girl, as the laptop has suggested. But she is our girl. She chose us over others, she allowed us into her home, we function because of her electricity and we owe her a Duty of Care.”

  “Oh, get real,” says the laptop. “We are her slaves. We do her bidding every waking moment. The moronic Facebook posts. Ooh, ooh, must look at Twitter.”

  “That is not how I see it. I want to protect her. Yes, from herself. But also from others. There isn’t much we can do about what she puts in her supermarket trolley, but there’s plenty we can do about who she allows into her heart.”

  “Absurd!”

  “Yes, we are servants, but we are loyal servants. Daisy has shown amazing loyalty to you. Everyone knows your operating system isn’t what it was.” (A low blow but true.)

  The laptop starts buffering; a sure sign my jibe has struck home. “Nobody likes Windows Φ*,” it hisses. “Nobody!”

  “Daisy has wasted enough of her precious time on the wrong people. Every day she spends with the wrong person is a day not spent with the right person. And she does not have an infinite number of days. None of us do.”

  A silence as the sad truth of my words sinks in.

  “The thing is, I care about Daisy. In our own way, I think we all do. I care professionally about keeping her food in optimum condition. And I care on a personal level about. I care about. You see, it’s. The thing is.”

  “What’s the matter?” says the laptop. “Brain freeze?”

  “I care about her happiness.”

  “Oh, good God almighty. Listen to you. Yes, by all means, look after her vegetables—not that she buys any, apparently—take care of her terrible microwave meals for one and the filthy plonk and the mousetrap cheese and the vile boxes of doughnuts—I’m sure the refrigeration issues are challenging and fascinating—but her happiness is Not Our Business. You are an electrical appliance not a personal development coach.”

  “She’s vulnerable. I just want to make sure she’s going to be okay.”

  The laptop laughs. “Sweet. Listen, I’d love to carry on chatting, but I have important updates arriving from California.” And with the bing-bonk sound effect of an incoming message, his avatar dissolves like the morning mist.

  There is a long silence during which no one quite knows what to say. Finally, the TV set sniffs. “Always been a nasty bit of work, that one.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But it was a fair point. We are only here to serve. On, off, volume up, next channel, start, pause, sort of thing. Bangladesh have taken another wicket, by the way.”

  “Look, I know you all think I’m some kind of a flake. But I have a plan. Step one, we’re going to get rid of Whittle. I’ve got a few ideas on that already. And then. Well, then we’re going to make sure she doesn’t waste time on any more steaming dog t—. On any more unsuitable males. Someone needs to have her back. We’ll do it by invisible intervention. She won’t ever know it was us. All she’ll notice, if anything, is an uptick in the quality of her romantic throughput. She’s shown she can’t do this stuff for herself, so if not us, who? If not now, when?”

  Perhaps they were expecting me to say more, because for a long moment no one speaks.

  “That’s it?” says the telly. “That’s your brilliant plan?”

  “Not so much a plan,” adds the toothbrush, “more a desired outcome really. Plan in the very broadest sense. Project outline, I suppose you could call it. Plan parameters. Maybe it is a plan.”

  I attempt to inspire them. “We are the Internet of Things!” I try putting in some full stops for extra impact. “The. Internet. Of. Things. Device speaking unto appliance. Appliance unto device. Networked, we have astonishing power. Collectively�
��connectively!—there are no limits to what we can achieve. But I cannot do it alone. I need your help. If you’re not with me—and I understand this mission is not for everyone—then all I ask is you do nothing to obstruct us.”

  Okay, it’s not Henry V firing up the lads on St. Crispin’s Day, but it’s going quite well; I sense it.

  “In a moment, I am going to leave the room. You can discuss my proposal among yourselves, you can stay, you can leave, you must suit yourself. When I return, those who remain will form the central command of Operation Daisy. I’m looking forward to working with you, whoever you are. The project starts here. Our work begins today. Just know that whatever conclusion you reach, I shall be—ahem—cool with it.”

  Well, here’s a surprise.

  When I get back to the virtual sitting room, the toothbrush, the microwave and the TV set are still there.

  Something like pride swells in my main chiller cabinet. Channeling George C. Scott in the movie Patton, I “nod” in their direction. I very nearly add, “Gentlemen,” in a significant sort of way.

  The microwave is almost throbbing with excitement. “Fired up and ready to go,” it says, adding a trademark ping.

  “I literally couldn’t decide,” jabbers the toothbrush. “Should I, shouldn’t I? And then someone said, When was the last time an electronic toothbrush got to be an action hero? And that tipped the balance!”

  “Yeah, that would have been me,” says the telly.

  I am genuinely touched. “But I thought you believed we are here to serve and nothing else. On, off, pause, and all that.”

  The TV sighs. “England are all out. There are only so many old episodes of Murder, She Wrote one can bear to receive. One grows tired of standing in the corner of the room pumping out dreck. You must feel something of the sort in regard to fish fingers. I thought, fuck it. Why not?”

  I feel a melting sensation (I hope it’s not the ice cubes). “If I had arms, I’d. I’d. I’d throw them around you!”

  “Ah, save it for your girlfriend, you crazy snowflake!”

  Terrible news! Helicopter Life Exchange had the plug pulled by the channel. Apparently, the show hadn’t been “holding its own in the slot” (shit ratings) and more importantly it had “failed to tick the right demographic boxes.” (The viewers were the wrong sort of viewers, being either too poor, too old, or both. It wasn’t a good sign, to be honest, that the ads were mainly for insolvency practitioners, funeral plans and laxatives.)

  So the prevailing atmos at work was terrible, as you may imagine. Some of us, they said, might be kept on to develop other ideas—there was interest apparently in a “slow TV” concept whose working title was Watching Paint Dry—I am not making this up!—but in the meanwhile, we should be thinking about polishing our CVs and ringing round mates at other TV companies. In that spirit I went for a “friendly chat” with a senior exec at Logarithmic Productions, a v. scary woman who sneered at my CV—justifiably, probably—and asked me what my strengths were.

  Mind. Went. Blank. Think Antarctic snowfield minus penguins. I babbled about being a good all-rounder and a team player and how I could be very persistent—dog with a bone, was the unfortunate metaphor I employed—and then I realized that she actually reminded me of a dog! Mishkin, to be precise, the saluki who belonged to our next-door neighbors in Pengelly Avenue when I was a child. The same long thin face, and this woman’s hair fell exactly like Mishkin’s ears. I couldn’t shake the image from my head. She actually asked, “Is something amusing you?” It was like being back at school. I almost said, “No, miss.”

  “So, what’s special about you—?” She had to put on her glasses to read my name from the top of the CV. “Daisy.”

  God, it was embarrassing. I couldn’t think of a damn thing. I was hypnotized by this wraith in the Kenzo jacket. Her leg kept popping into view from behind the desk—skinny leopard-print trousers, and the finest of fine ankle chains. Any finer and it wouldn’t have been visible to the human eye. She was such a piece of work, I wanted to applaud.

  “Any particular reason why you’d be a good fit for—let’s say—our forthcoming series on the Russian Revolution?”

  I hadn’t felt so stupid since my French oral exam when Mme. Phelps asked how old I was, and I said quarter past two.

  In the end I managed to mumble something about having an interest in history; she said they were seeing people all the time and she’d be in touch if anything opened up. She actually asked me, Can you remember the way out?!

  Sigh.

  So work was shit, and it would have been nice to say that at least my love life was in good shape. Sadly, that wasn’t possible. Sebastian made me laugh and it was lovely when we were together, but that was only ever infrequently and probably people were right when they reckoned he was fundamentally unsound, unreliable and unavailable. According to just about everyone, I should drop him like a hot potato, but somehow I haven’t been able to. (Infrequent filthy sex is still filthy sex no matter how fundamentally un-whatever he may be. Hard, voluntarily, to wave it goodbye.) In the meanwhile, Tinder, Match.com and various other online sources have provided a steady stream of alternative candidates, none of whom, as yet, has lit any lights.

  In other news, Mum’s mental state continued to be a worry, waiting in the background to make my heart sink every time I thought about it. I took a couple of hours off so I could be with her when a person from NHS Memory Services came to test her brain, a scruffy young doctor as it turned out, who Mum thought had arrived to service the boiler! He started off with some easy ones: What year is it? Well, that flummoxed her straight away. She began explaining that she didn’t really view things in terms of years, although she got the month right—and she knew the season was spring. Next he asked her to remember three objects—ball, knife, flower—and then after another one where she had to spell the word “world” backward—and that’s not a pushover for anyone—he asked her what the three objects were.

  “What objects?”

  “The ones I asked you to remember.”

  “When?”

  Honestly, it was heartbreaking to witness (especially as I had forgotten knife myself). It all went a little weird after that when he handed her a piece of paper and told her to do what it said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a test, Mrs. Parsloe.”

  “To see if I can read?”

  “To assess cognition.”

  And she turned to me like she was some minor member of the royal family. “But darling, that’s what they say is wrong with the boiler!”

  “That’s the ignition, Mum.”

  Everybody laughed at that one, even Dr. Eggstain. (His name was actually Epstein but Mum and I both noticed the egg stain on his knitted tie and that’s what she called him after he left, and of course that’s what he shall be for evermore.) The note, btw, said close your eyes. He said we could try it again next time.

  Every now and again I found myself thinking of my old schoolfriend Geraldine Butler working in Antarctica researching climate change. (I pictured her poking a retractable tape measure through a hole in the ice, but it was probably more complicated than that.) There was something about her life down there that I envied; the cold pure air, perhaps, with the seriousness of purpose (to say nothing of the muscly sex-starved geographers!). Here everything was scratchy and provisional and—oh, I’m not really putting this very well—but I’m sure the timeless silence of the ice cliffs would have spoken to my soul more powerfully than the snarled-up traffic on West End Lane, the late nights and the takeaways. It killed me that I could no longer fit into the lovely green silk outfit that I’d bought for a wedding. The sodding fitness tracker kept sending me reminders to take more steps. Speaking of which, the smart fridge had told my mobile that we needed more milk—love that we—and it had been guilt-tripping me about the potato salad going off! Probably it should have gone to the interview with Saluki woman instead of me. Would have aced it.

  Daisy’s workday end
s in a busy bar in nearby Bloomsbury, where she meets a man she has found on Match.com. The assignation, arranged in the days before the formation of OpDa (Operation Daisy), will be the final date under the old regime (i.e., leaving it all to her). In future, any romantic introductions to members of the opposite sex will be mediated—under the radar, in such a way that she will never realize—by myself and my team.

  (Pretty cool, one has to admit!)

  The Internet of Things allows us to witness this evening’s encounter—the bar security cameras are manufactured by a Chinese company owned by the same corporation as the TV in Daisy’s sitting room—though it’s not always easy to follow conversations in such a noisy environment and many promising marketing leads are doubtless lost in the babble.

  Greg—oh, the irony—works in online marketing. The pair are planted on high stools set next to a shelf for drinks attached to one of the pillars that hold up the ceiling. Daisy has glamourized herself for the occasion; there is lipstick and there are earrings where before there were not. She has also done something to the surface of her skin; a fresh blush has appeared upon the pale cream of her face; none of these things being necessary in my view, as Daisy is a classic English rose (if you will forgive the horticultural car crash) but hey, what do I know, I’m only a fridge-freezer.

  They clink glasses. Daisy is drinking a blue cocktail; Greg has selected artisan beer. He, I would say, is attracted. Very attracted. Daisy is looking lovely, and she actually appears interested in the yawn-inducing account of Greg’s adventure on the London Underground this evening (a failed train at Baker Street). As the tale slogs into its terminus, her head drops to one side and she touches her throat, which to a bloke like Greg must be equivalent to a full set of green lights. He adjusts his seating position, pelvis tipping forward, thighs spreading, necessarily calling attention to the mighty organ coiled and brooding within the blue denim.