“Aliens? Wow.”
“You bet’cha.”
“That’s Tim-ism number twenty-three.”
“Hail to Tim-ism number twenty-three.”
“Thank you.”
“It was this great big invasion, the sky filled with hundreds of thousands of these spaceships, like a huge flock of birds that covered the sky. Everyone was scared and people started rioting.”
“Why do people always riot every time anything different happens?”
“I know. And where are they storing all those petrol bombs?
“Anyway, it turns out that it’s not an invasion after all. They’re our creators, they made us.”
“So we didn’t evolve?”
“It’s a dream, Tim.”
“Sorry.”
“They told us that we were a failed experiment. They made us wrong; they hadn’t equipped us with minds strong enough to handle all the complexities of living together – as a society, as family units, as... as, um... mating partners.
“And they had left a long, long time ago, assuming that we would just die out, naturally like. Or just, you know, never really amount to anything. But they had picked up our old television signals beamed out into space and, curious, had come to find out how the hell we had survived. Imagine their shock when they found out what we had become.”
“Not as inadequate as they thought, huh?” I said.
“No we were... we are. There was no mistaking it, they said. Our brains just simply weren’t enough to balance all the pressures of living in the society that we had created. The emotional strain of loving, of needing to be loved, of needing to feel important and find identity. Just being around people, living in the proximity that we do, it should have driven every single one of us totally nuts, so that we either broke down completely or tried to kill each other, or ourselves.”
“So why,” I asked, “why haven’t we done that?”
“They were pretty stumped at first. They said that they had created another race after us, somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, and that they had got it right that time, making a race that went on to build a perfect society with no crime or conflict. They were a people without any of our mental health issues, reasonable beings who suffered no ego or selfishness.
“In other words, we were without a doubt the failure that they had thought we were. But still that question remained: how had we survived, how had we conquered a whole planet and fought through our conflicts to build all that we had built? How had we got into space and even managed to tap the resources of other planets?
“And then one of them came up to me. He was tall and slightly built – humanoid, of course. His skin was greeny-grey, just like the ones on TV.
“ ‘This one,’ he said to one of his mates, ‘There’s something wrong with her.’
“His mate came over and looked at me. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘she has machines in her head.’
“ ‘No,’ said the first one, ‘that’s not what I mean. Look at the others, and then look at her. It’s not what she has that is extra, it’s what she hasn’t got.’
“The second one did as he was told and looked back and forth between me and the others around me. Suddenly a look of understanding came over his face. ‘She doesn’t have the light,’ he said.
“ ‘What light?’ I asked desperately. ‘Tell me, what don’t I have?’
“The first alien asked me my name and I told him. ‘Mina,’ he said, an apologetic tone in his voice, ‘I’m afraid you don’t belong here. You see, the planet – Earth – has kept everyone else alive. It has... patched up our bad work by putting something in every one of them, a sort of light or energy that, most of the time, is enough to keep them from losing their senses. Like a mother, it has given something from itself in order to keep its children going. And when its children die that light returns to the Earth ready to keep another of its children from the dark abyss that is their imperfect mind.
“‘But you’re not one of its children, Mina. I’m afraid you have no light in you... you have no soul.’
“And that’s when I woke up.”
And then you just smiled at me, a smile so like an apology that even now, all this time later, it makes me just want to cradle you in my arms. But words... I had none that were worth anything. All I could think of was you tasting the rain back by the bridge.
Soon we reached a café/restaurant place at the end of the parade, with tables and chairs outside – I can’t remember the name...
...Really? Oh dear.
...called ‘Luigi’s’, and you had decided that just because the rain had stopped it was a good reason to sit outside. You took your pick of the empty tables and their wet chairs while I went inside to get a couple of drinks.
When I came back out again you had been joined at the table by a grey-haired, middle-aged man who I can only describe as looking like ‘a well turned-out tramp’. As I guess many men out and about with their honey in the dangerous outdoors would do in this situation, I instantly assumed the worst – that you had been accosted by some psychiatric escapee. How sexist and Neanderthal we men still are, because, however crazy-looking, my fighting instincts (which could mostly be felt in my bladder and bowels) would never have been so raised if you had been talking to a woman.
But, as I approached, it seemed that your conversation was very much two-way; either that, or you were getting better at feigning interest in people. Do you remember? Feigning interest was a skill you took some time to learn. I lost count of how many times you just walked off while I was talking to you.
...“So you see, Mina,” the man was saying, “they took away the whole reason for the holiday. What’s the point?”
“To sell things?” you asked.
“That’s absolutely right!” the man exclaimed, as if you had just solved the meaning of life, the universe and everything. My Neanderthal eyes saw a confidence trickster, or possibly some sleazy old guy who was a bit of a lothario twenty-five years ago and thought he could rediscover the glory days with my girlfriend. Not on my watch, buddy!
“Hi,” I said – somewhat pointlessly and to no one in particular – as I reached the table.
You looked up at me and I saw that whatever you were talking about had you excited and, for reasons a man who was more worldly in the arena of relationships might have understood, it upset me.
“Tim!” You beamed sweetly up at me and I should instantly have felt guilty about my thoughts, but didn’t. “This is Rupert...”
“...Gardner,” the man finished, offering a rough-skinned hand that dwarfed my own. I shook it, not man enough to at least act according to my feelings, however unreasonable they might be.
“He’s a man of God,” you finished off.
Woo, woo, woo, woo! Went the imaginary warning siren in my head. Put the crazy man down, Mina, and step a-way from the table.
“Oh,” was all I managed, but I think at least Rupert picked up on my tone. I thought he was about to say something, maybe to qualify your rather bare description, but you spoke again before he could.
“Tim, why didn’t you tell me about X-mas?”
“Tell you what?”
“And Hot Cross Bun Day, and Egg Day?”
I was struggling. “Er... that they were holidays? No, nope... that’s silly, you know they’re holidays.” When I flounder, I flounder fully. “What?”
“That they used to be religious holidays.”
Still not really with you. “Because... I didn’t... really... think it mattered...?” I actually looked across at the crazy religious nut for help, but he just looked back at me with that annoyingly docile smile that those religious types always seemed to carry around with them – like a mask to hide true blood-and-guts emotions, so I had always thought.
“Didn’t matter?” you scoffed, seemingly a roll of the eyes away from exasperated. “What’s the point of a holiday like X-mas when the reason behind it has been forgotten?”
“Presents?” I tried. I swear it was abo
ut half a millisecond after my mouth had finished that my brain returned with the results of the ‘Is that a clever thing to say?’ test. The, ‘Have I just heard this?’ query was another second or so behind and, to be honest, should probably have gone first.
Maybe worse than exasperation, you didn’t say anything at all, just looked... I don’t know, maybe a little embarrassed.
“So,” you carried on to the old guy after an awkward moment of silence, “you were saying about your meetings?”
“Yes, every Tuesday is the open session, then I run smaller, more private sessions on Thursdays – and Fridays, if need be – at my house in Alphington.”
House or ‘squat’?
He passed you a flyer – a paper one at that – from a whole bunch of them which had suddenly appeared in his hands like a magic trick. “You should come, Mina,” he said. Then, with the briefest of glances, like an afterthought, “And you, Tim.
“No pressure to join, we’re not after your money, or anything; just come and see if there’s anything you like about what we do.”
And then I said it, and I still can’t think of it today without sickening knots gathering in my stomach:
“Oh, you won’t want Mina, Rupert. She’s not human.”
I could feel your disbelief beside me, but all I saw was Gardner’s face, hardly appearing to register my statement, but seeing, judging and condemning my crime at the same moment. “We welcome all,” he said. “All are one under God, and we are all his children.”
Then he nodded us farewell and was on his way.
* * *
Chapter 11
“Leave me alone, Tim,” you called out from the bedroom, your tone more weary than angry. It was condescending and pulled at my temper a little, despite the fact that I deserved it – and worse. But I’ve always known where I stood with angry people; it’s the aloof ones that scare the shit out of me. I could have handled you screaming and slamming doors, but just don’t act like you’re better than me.
If it’s any consolation, I really felt like crap... sick inside, you know? It wasn’t like we hadn’t had the odd argument in the past three years; not many, but we’d each managed to piss the other off on occasion. How can loving someone ever be passionate if you don’t understand what it’s like to feel angry towards them? I’ve never wanted to sleep with someone perfect, with an angel, I want someone flawed... like me. I want someone real. And despite what I had let come out of my mouth, caught off guard in a moment of jealousy and insecurity, you’re so very real. And your flaws are as beautiful as the flaw at the heart of a crystal. For all the perfection around it, as you stare at the crystal it’s the flaw that sucks you in every time.
“Why did you never get the girls you wanted?”
You were in the doorway to the lounge. Maybe five minutes had passed since, out of ways to say that I was sorry, I had left you in the bedroom and gone down to the lounge to consider whether I should start cooking dinner. If I made your favourite omelette it might possibly make a peace offering of a sort. Head in my hands, I hadn’t heard you come downstairs. For some reason you were dressed for bed, though it wasn’t even seven yet.
“Huh?” I replied, completely caught off guard and taking a moment just to register your words. Piecing the question together, I instantly saw the possibility of how this sort of question could be the first step of some damning criticism. ‘You’re too selfish childish insecure shallow boring petty insensitive (delete in the unlikely event of it being appropriate) for anyone to want to be with you. Please take me back to CyberG because I’d rather be anywhere than somewhere with you.’
Of course, that wasn’t the worst thought – the idea of you saying that. The worst thought was me being only slightly better than CyberG and never knowing it. The idea of you ‘putting up’ with me because you had nowhere else to go. I remembered again telling you that you never had to love me, but now that you did love me – or, at least, I thought you did – I had no idea how I would handle finding out that you didn’t love me, or you falling out of love.
But these were all ridiculous thoughts – my mind run amok as it naturally tends to, my emotions hiding amidst the fires of chaos so that you can’t see the redness of my face. You were angry and had every right to be.
“The girls that you didn’t get, the ones that meant you got me. Why did you never get them?”
“What girls?” I asked, maybe playing dumb a little.
“I don’t know. At parties or at work, or at the shop. Wherever you went before I came along.” You still had that same condescendingly weary tone in your voice. “Why did you have to get me; why don’t you have yourself a ‘real’ woman?” I didn’t miss the none-too-subtle inference.
How much did I not want to talk about this right now? There’s nothing like exposing your most embarrassing weaknesses to someone who’s pissed off and currently holding a dim opinion of you. But if it might be the road to forgiveness... I still wanted that more. I just wanted it gone, erased from our memories, and you and me curled up together on the sofa.
“I don’t know. Because... I couldn’t talk to them, I guess.”
“Why not?”
“I suppose I never seemed to have anything to say.”
“That’s bollocks,” you laughed, with only a smattering of mirth. “Total crap. You’ve got plenty to say.”
“Never...” Strange how some things always hurt. It seems that I have dozens of ways that I can feel which come under the umbrella term, ‘hurt’. Hurts like smell, one little whiff of a familiar ache and suddenly you’re there, right in the middle of powerful memories like they reached forward through time and slapped you in the face. “Never in those situations.”
You moved into the room, closing slowly on me. “But why? Why when you can talk to me so well-“
“-I know you.”
“So you can only talk to people you know?” And suddenly you were almost smug. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s pretty much a contradiction.”
“Where are you going with this?” I snapped impatiently.
“I’m going to the point that you are unsociable! Whatever you think the rest of the world’s done to you, you’ve done as much to yourself.”
Why were you saying this – this hurtful stuff? Was it because you wanted to get back at me for hurting you; was it that simple?
You continued. “And so you get me as a remedy for the loneliness you’ve created. I get that.” How much you’d changed from the almost remedially literal girl who had arrived with the CyberG goons. In just three years you had gone from being confused and frightened by your own emotions to this intelligent, confident, ultra-aware woman who felt she could judge me. My anger simmered away, massaging my pride, and I found myself for the second time that day thinking of you as a machine... a ‘product’ which I had bought and was now not behaving as advertised. I wondered if at any point during CyberG’s doubtless thousands of hours of product testing for the Companion model, they had ever run this particular simulation. “But what I don’t get is why, having got me, you want to keep me tethered down in the same lonely place that you are. Haven’t I at least given you even the smallest bit of an appetite for life?”
“Is that what you think, that you’re a remedy for me... like a course of pills?” I argued back hypocritically, well aware that I had just been thinking of another you in a lab, being run through test after test – not too unlike a new drug. “Take one for five years and it’ll clear that pesky pain right up. Make you feel like a new man. Is that it?”
You faltered a little; my indignant bluster was getting there. Except it wasn’t indignant bluster, not really. It was the genuine bluster of a man who had been living with a beautiful, kind woman for three years and, somehow, had managed not to be even a little bit of a better person for it.
You were right. I wasn’t going to say it, but you were right.
“I just... why did you do that? Why didn’t you like me talking to that man? I felt it from the moment
you got back to the table – well before you even said what you said. I felt your hostility.”
“I was worried,” I replied. “I wanted to protect you. It was a bit paranoid maybe, but he just kind of looked like a crazy.” Finally you took a seat next to me on the sofa. A silent moment passed as you appeared to think over what I had said.
“Okay,” you said at last, “that explains why you were funny at first.” In truth, it was only a partial explanation. Maybe you knew that anyway. “But then why did you say that at the end, then? We knew he wasn’t a crazy man by then.”
“Not crazy? You said it yourself, he’s a ‘Man of God’. And they’re far more scary than the knife-wielding, homeless ex-psych patient that I took him for at first. Religious people are all nutters and terrorists, and go to one of their meetings... that’s it... wham! Before you know it, you’ve got several pounds of explosive strapped to you and you’re blowing up a day nursery somewhere. You do not want to get involved with these people, Mina. I’m telling you.”
You looked at me for a long moment, your eyes seemingly earnest but your overall expression unreadable. Then, without another word, you got up and went to bed.
* * *
Chapter 12
Time went on and, well, I suppose I thought we were okay. Everything between us was the same as it was before, but then how much does continuity ever tell you about what’s going on beneath the surface?
Egg Day came in late March that year and, my conscience never one to let me forget my fuck-ups, I might have over-compensated with the amount of chocolate I brought into the house. My CyMedical profile would be lighting up like a flashing beacon and my next check up with the doctor would contain a strong lecture and likely a threat to downgrade the lifestyle rating for my life insurance. But I wanted you to feel special.
You had got into buying clothes and jewellery and all the cosmetic apothecary that I didn’t understand the first thing about. You changed your look so often that sometimes I was seeing a different Mina every week. And don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mind. You seemed to have an almost inexhaustible library of different guises and it was interesting, even thrilling, to see all the different sorts of people that you could be. Plus, there was the added bonus that most of these guises were in some way sultry or sexy. But, whoever I undressed under the bedroom light’s artificial glare, I still always lay with the same woman once those lights went out.
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