“Look, just stop talking about my girlfriend, yeh? And while you’re at it, please don’t sniff her panties – it ain’t polite.”
Wanna change the word “panties” to “underwear” to be more respectful, but the botched-Botox man gets his clarification in first: “Of course, it’s debatable whether she’s even really your girlfriend. After all, if you’re going to lose her then you’ve already lost her, right? Did I say that correctly, kiddo?”
Ain’t no slack in the bedcover to pull it up over my face so I just close my eyes and head under my breath to ask them how much they’d told her – i.e. the fuck did they say about my mother before Ramona had woke me up?
“How much do you want us to have told her?” The botched-Botox man stands up from the bed – hands like two giant car jacks flattening the foam mattress. “All that hard work, kid. All that running around and deception. All those years you were besotted with her – duping her into falling for Dillon, keeping her blissfully ignorant of Dhilan. And the fact is, you did it, kid – all your cack-handed amorous antics actually paid off. Because despite all your underlying dishonesty and false advertising, Ramona still somehow gets you. I mean she truly seems to get you. That isn’t the kind of connection a man should just let slip away.”
Great. Now they got me stuck here butt naked and basically bed-ridden, I gotta listen to more longed-out relationship advice.
“Of course, these days it’s common practice to get people – to truly and deeply understand them. Guess their feelings, predict their behaviours, how they’ll respond to x, y and z. You just monitor their digital activity and then crunch all the data through algorithms. Who will like this, who will buy that, who will fall sick, who will ejaculate too quick, who’ll wake up crying in the middle of their miserable excuse for sleep. You people keep secreting your secret thoughts and feelings like plants fart out oxygen. Touching your cellphones thousands of times a day. But the fact is Ramona can’t possibly be doing any intuitive form of this kind of data-harvesting, can she, Dylan? After all, she has no idea about all your mother-related clicking and browsing and searching. If she did, her connection with you wouldn’t be so special; it would just be computation.”
I ask him if that’s meant to sound romantic or something. If so, I take it he’s single.
“I’m with Dylan on this one,” goes the blankpage-Botox man. “Why the hell are you giving him relationship tips?”
Older man just presses on: “I mean, sure, she knows what you like to eat and what music you like to listen to – in part, because she recommends it to you. But she doesn’t know what you read, does she? What you feed your mind. For instance, how you click on every recommended article and book about Oedipus.”
“Sorry, but am I meant to be triggered or something by the way you guys keep dropping drive-by references to Oedipus?”
“Just trying to connect with you, Dylan. After all, if your search history serves me correctly, then that’s the one cultural reference I know you’re familiar with. After all, you did actually read all those articles and books, didn’t you? You are familiar with the story? Yes, you know it. It’s known that you know it.”
I tell him everyone knows the story of Oedipus – or they can google it, so same thing. Ain’t even gotta scroll all the way back to Ancient Greece. Oedipus goes to an oracle to score some knowledge and gets given this prophecy that he’ll do a bunch of bad shit, including marrying his own mum. So he gets the fuck out of Dodge and never calls or texts or smoke-signals his mum again. Problem is, dude doesn’t know he was actually adopted. And the woman he ends up marrying – this queen of this city called Thebes – turns out to be his real actual mum. Only reason he finds out the truth is cos he tries to hunt down and punish the perpetrator of some other bad shit he’s unknowingly done. Anyway, it’s really fucked. Skip forward nearly 3,000 years and every therapist and student-counselling service uses the word “Oedipal” to describe messed-up mother–son stuff. You know, like acrimonious driving lessons. Shit like that.
“No need to look so anxious, Dylan. Just because we know lots of things about you, that doesn’t mean we know what you’ll do next. That isn’t how this works. Technically speaking, that isn’t even how it works with your smartphone – with Google and Amazon and Facebook.” The botched-Botox man starts flicking through a pile of old Tesco Clubcard statements. “They can monitor your activity and purchases and drill deep into all your data, but that by itself doesn’t give them the best possible predictions about what you’ll do, buy, click, or read and think next week. For that, their algorithms have to crunch their data for all the other people – people with similar preferences and responses and behaviours to you. To learn what those other people actually bought or did or clicked on next. Instead of calculating what you will do, they’re calculating what millions of similar people did do.”
He knows I already know this. Anyone trying to build a digital business knows this shit. Any business that taps into your personal info and monitors your digital behaviour. Data crunching leads to patterns, patterns lead to predictions, predictions lead to personalised recommendations, recommendations lead to reality – and therefore more revenues. That’s why anything less than total surveillance is a missed opportunity to generate more revenues/reality.
Memories now rush me like some kinda backchannel data flow. Shit I always known but just hadn’t properly puzzled out. My brain swiping all the way back to those three bearded aunties. As if whatever I was gonna do was such a bad thing to have already done.
Wait. Just you wait and see.
Close the light and come and see.
The Googly-engine says he will take the father’s place.
But, anycase, what the fuck could Google and Facebook have even known about me back then? I had a fone, but it weren’t a smartfone. We had a home PC, but we was still on some ancientquated AOL-type shit. Matterfact, Mum and me even shared the same user profile. We had the same user profile for years. And, anyway, if you wanna be flexing some proper predictive data analytics – if you want patterns and prophecies and product recommendations – then you’ll be needing the kinda patterns you could only spot by ramming millions of terabytes of digital data through supercomputer algorithms.
For instance, vegetarians will miss fewer flights.
For instance, people with lower credit ratings will have more accidents.
For instance, people who use more exclamation marks will have more car crashes.
For instance, that Scottish bloke we studied in GCSE English Lit. who became Thane of Cawdor.
For instance, that motherfucker who became King of Thebes.
First time I read the story of Oedipus I just wanted to file that shit under Disgusting Dirtyass Bollocks. For one thing, all them oracles and prophets who’d predicted Oedipus would marry his mum had been outgunned by modern science. Outgunned, outsmarted, debunked – same way science had debunked astrology, Flat Earthery, studies funded by the tobacco industry and masturbation-induced blindness. Problem is, these days the science has gone and shifted once again. These days, prophecies and oracles have become proper scientific. Happens every millisecond of every single day: digital data, patterns, predictions, recommendations, reality. No more crash barrier between tech and Mystic Meg. These days, you couldn’t just tell old Oedipus to just allow all them prophecies and take a fucking tranquilator.
“Fuck’s sake, fellas,” I tell the two old men. “Give me some cred, yeh? I get it, okay – reckon maybe I even got it years ago. So don’t treat me like some idiot and make me spell it out to you. But what I don’t get, though, is how and why it’s any of your business.”
“Kid, we have no idea what you’re getting at.” The botched-Botox man sounding more pissed than rumbled.
“Yes you do. Because it’s the same thing you been talking about. Just like how Oedipus got fucked up by the knowledge and prophecies he got from the oracle, I been fucked by all knowledge and predictions and ads and videos and recommended reading ma
terial about Oedipus that I got from Google and Facebook and YouTube and Amazon. This is not some bolt from a breaking- news flash to me. But how the fuck’s it got anything to do with you guys?”
Should probly also mention my three bearded aunties. But I know how guys invent scary women just to keep women down. Fuck it, this shit’s ridiculous enough without throwing my aunties into the mix – me lying naked in my sort-of-girlfriend’s bed, chatting about Oedipus to two old men who want me to masturbate.
“Dylan, your Oedipus obsession should have taught you that knowledge without understanding is worse than no knowledge at all.” Even as the blankpage-Botox man starts giving it some sniggering action, his face muscles still don’t budge a fraction of a millimetre. I even try hitting him up with a smile – aka Young Carer’s Playbook #23 – but the dude doesn’t mimic it. This means his face ain’t sending his brain signals to tap into how I’m feeling. Why do I know this shit? Cos micro-facial mimicry with our mums is how we learn all that “emotional interaction” crap. Learn how to make Mummy happy.
“Truth be told, though, we did actually think about Oedipus,” goes the older-looking old man. “Thought about him a lot. Many, many years ago. Back when we first started to wonder what the hell would happen as search engines and social media platforms became more and more sophisticated and more and more personalised. More predictive, more prophetic, more prone to giving people access to their own data-crunched destinies. We started to wonder what would happen. How would people respond to having their own little touchscreen Delphic oracles in their pocket? Would they try to avoid the predictions and prophecies or would they instead try to accelerate them? – I believe the technical phrase is to try and ‘catch the nearest way ’ .” Starts examining a box of Ramona’s feminine hygiene products like as if he’s scared of it or something. Even wipes his hands after putting it back down. “You’d think it would simply depend on whether the prophecy in question bodes good or ill for the person. But, Dylan, you’d be amazed at how many people actually choose to run away from positive predictions and accelerate the fulfilment of negative ones. Now, of course, obviously all this predictive digital data has been good for tech giants and insurers and credit agencies and security services, but is it good for people, Dylan? After all, humans have been debating these questions with respect to Oedipus for more than two-and-a-half-thousand years. Was the horror worse for the fact that Oedipus knew the prophecy and tried so hard to escape it? Would it have even happened if it hadn’t been prophesied? In short, was the prophetic knowledge a net benefit or net liability? That’s more than two millennia of literary, philosophical and psychoanalytical enquiry. And still not even the greatest human minds have come up with a completely satisfactory answer. So tell me, kiddo. How do everyday people cope with that kind of knowledge? Come on, you can tell me.”
While my dumb ass gets ready to drop some kinda brainful response, the two old men start LOLing like as if they just told me some funniest joke in the worldwide world. Next, they just swipe all the way back to the buyout bullshit they pulled on me yesterday. Some same-old argument about how exiting my start-up will be good for my studies and my love life. I start for serious considering whether maybe I should just swallow what they saying when I realise I’m now munching one of their oatmeal cookies. Some dodgy download deep in my gullet making me think it’s maybe better if we just chat about business instead of Oedipus.
Then, from fuck knows where, the younger old man in the charcoal-grey suit conjures up some matching rucksack – not just the same shade of charcoal, the same fabric. “Like we said yesterday, kid, we’d really like to buy your start-up. Inside this bag is £10,000 in cash. All you’ve got to do is hand over your fledgling little typing business to us.” He raises the rucksack higher like he’s some tribal warrior holding aloft a still-bleeding severed head, entrails dropping out with its brains because, fuck it, why not, there’s neurons in people’s bowels.
“Ten grand? Yesterday your opening offer to me was £500,000.”
“Just take the rucksack,” goes the botched-Botox man. “Don’t be a dick-fuck about this, Dylan. It’s ten grand in cash.”
“I can’t fucking believe this kid,” goes the other man. “He’s still trying to play this game.” The rucksack now dangling madness-style from his hand like as if the severed head’s just woke up from the dead and doesn’t like the whole being-decapitated thing.
I tell em I ain’t the one playing games. “You’re the ones trying to spook me, buy my start-up on the cheap so that you can strangle it at birth.” Sniffling as I say this, though, which kinda ruins the effect.
13
WE DON’T ACTUALLY talk about it till after some 3pm seminar or webinar about interbank interest rates. All my standard avoidance strategies: the men’s room, the vending machine, customising me Google search bar to disable predictive autocomplete. Ramona trying to corner me like as if she’s on some live chat window. Telling me how dare I treat her bedroom like it was my company boardroom. “I was still in my dressing gown, for fuck’s sake. And I’ve no burning desire to burn images into the wank banks of men too old to use them.”
Start telling her I’m sorry, but then the following fuckery happens: from someplace deep in some ancestor’s testicles, I start fronting like some masculinity asshole – beasting out and turning shit round so that I’m the one having a go at her. “Why the hell you let two total strangers into your room like that in the first place? Why not get dressed before getting the door?” But then the caps lock on my voice shocks me into shutting the hush up. My plug-in for shouting still disabled.
“I didn’t let them in,” goes Ramona. “I told them to wait at the door.” We walk into Café Amici. Some quick scanning action to check the two old Botox men ain’t sitting at some next table. “Anyway, for a couple of supposed ‘total strangers’ they seemed pretty clued up about us – and it isn’t as if I have our headfuck of a relationship as my Facebook status.”
Dunno whether it’ll make shit better or worse to tell Ramona that I don’t even know their names. Don’t even know if they’re for real about buying my start-up. Don’t even know if they for real.
“Ramona, you definitely saw those old men, right? I mean, it weren’t just, like, you know, a lucid dream or something?”
“Don’t do that, Dillon. Don’t try and smooth things out again by pretending to flake out. I’m so tired of that bullshit. Besides, how the hell are you and I meant to dream the same dream together? We can’t even watch a whole movie together without you bailing out.”
Of course Ramona wouldn’t wanna be having the same dreams as me, even if that shit was possible. Even with Mum and me – it ain’t about dreaming the same dreams. Most likely we just been flipping each other’s dreams. Me flipping her nightmares into happy dreams by intervening in my own lucid dreams. That’s it. That’s all you need to know.
“Actually, Dillon, those two men knew something else about us.” She rests her elbows on the table like as if they’re on her knees – like she’s sitting up in bed, switching on some lamp cos she can’t sleep.
“What?” I go. “What is it they told you?”
“Something that I haven’t told you. Something about myself. But let me just explain it properly before you jump to any judgements, okay?”
Turns out Ramona ain’t actually her real name. Or rather it is, but it ain’t the name her parents gave her and ain’t the name she had when she was in primary school, way back before we met. Her parents had named her Rona. She’d got them to change it by deed poll when she was ten. “The thing is, though, I didn’t change my name because I didn’t like it or anything. I changed it because I felt like I had to. And this is the bit that’s tricky to explain. You see, when I was nine, I had to have my appendix removed. Routine operation, no big deal. Only problem was that the surgeons went for keyhole surgery so as not to give me a scar on my midriff.” She holds her belly like as if she’s gonna be sick. “Not sure how much you know about surgical pro
cedures, but basically, Dillon, that meant two tiny keyhole incisions in my belly and then a third through my belly button.” She explains how they opened up her belly button and then retied it. But she can’t explain why it upset her so much. Says they tied it back so tightly, it looks more like a dimple than a knot. “I don’t know why it bothered me, but I got in this really weird funk about it. I actually think maybe I’d have been less upset if they’d just slashed some Caesarean-style scar across my midriff. Next thing, I decided that, seeing as I’d had my umbilical cord re-cut, I wanted to do the whole maternity-ward routine and give myself a brand-new name as well. Of course my mum just thought it was some crazy reaction to the fact that she and my dad had just got divorced. And, truth is, it was actually easier to let people think that was the reason rather than try to explain that I did it because I was mourning my belly button.”
Then Ramona says just for jokes that ain’t as if I ever shown any interest in her midriff anyway. Starts telling the me ABCs of women’s anatomy. But then she stops joking. “It really fruck me out the way those two old men kept calling me Rona even after I’d told them my name’s Ramona. Maybe they were just deaf or senile, but they were so insistent. Anyway, the point is that I should have told you all this years ago, Dillon. I feel like I’ve been keeping some whole other identity a secret from you. And you know what Mark Zuckerberg says about that, right?”
Ramona collects quotations from tech tycoons. Even used to stick them up on her wall. But then one day she decided it was literary pretentiousness or someshit and tore them all down. But, yeh, I know the Mark Zuckerberg quote she’s chatting about: “You have one identity. Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”
I start scoping the road outside the window like as if I’m figuring out the best route for outrunning Mark Zuckerberg’s words. Tell Ramona something about how the traffic ain’t budged since we come in here.
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