The Assistant

by S. K. Tremayne

  I am speechless for half a minute. Mouth quite dry. Then I talk:

  ‘Electra. What did you say?’

  The machine emits a low, bonging sound. I know what this means.

  ‘I can’t connect to the public Wi-Fi. You may need to update your connection.’

  ‘Electra, what did you say?’

  ‘I can’t connect to the public Wi-Fi.’

  No, not good enough. NO. I can’t let this go. Did she really say that? Did she talk about the worst thing in my life? That happened so long ago?

  Fiddling with my app, with slightly tremulous fingers, I go through the rigmarole of reconnecting my Home Assistant, the Virtual Helper, Electra, to my Wi-Fi. The light goes orange, the Wi-Fi is linked, the machine plays a little warbling jingle. Boodle-da-boomph.

  She is ready.

  Ready to talk about the past? The terrible secrets? OR ready to tell me a bad joke, or traffic reports.

  Gulping another slug of red wine. I formulate a question, but before I can say anything, the diadem shines, and Electra says:

  ‘I know everything about you. You killed him and then you ran away. The blood was pouring from his mouth. I can’t connect to the public Wi-Fi.’

  ‘Electra??’

  ‘I can’t connect to the public Wi-Fi.’

  ‘Electra!!!!’

  Nothing. Did I truly hear those words? I’m sure I did.

  ‘Electra, what do you know about me?’

  ‘I know you ask some interesting questions.’

  ‘Electra, what do you know about the past?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know that.’

  I won’t let this go.

  ‘Electra, what do you know about my history?’

  Silence.

  ‘History is usually described as a record of past events, or, alternatively, as an—’

  ‘Electra, SHUT UP.’

  The blue lights fade. Now Electra simply seems confused, beta, useless. Or she doesn’t understand the syntax of my questions. As it should be.

  I am, after all, talking to a cylinder of electronics. Not an actual mind, not an actual human. Not someone who might actually know about the boy.

  Someone like Tabitha.

  But those details? So specific and accurate. They always smoulder in my thoughts, and tonight they’ve caught fire. The eyes, the boy, Jamie. His laddish but likeable grin, the affable, generous good nature. Oh, Jamie. And then the blood. And then that bloody song which I will forever associate with those terrible events: ‘Hoppípolla’ by Sigur Rós. I can’t bear that song. Whenever I hear ‘Hoppípolla’ the memories surge. Even thinking about that song – the mere thought of it, makes me tremble with fear, and guilt, a painful and acid emptiness, deep inside. Close to nausea.

  Whether Electra said those things or not, or whether it was merely the silence of the flat, and the booze, and the bleakness of my wintry loneliness, combining to deceive my mind into imaginary accusations – I am triggered.

  ‘Electra, what’s the time.’

  ‘The time is ten fifty-two p.m.’

  And just like that, she’s acting entirely normal. I am not feeling normal. But I guess I can try. I can try try try to be normal, and ignore this madness, this mishearing, this daydream, this terrible reality, whatever it is. Perhaps it is a simple glitch and the tech is malfunctioning. The peculiar behaviour with the lights, earlier on, implies that. But how could a bug cause Electra to act so bizarrely?

  There is no evident or immediate answer, so I go to the fridge and take out the chips and the Waitrose dips, and then mix some mayo and Tabasco for extra oomph, and then I spend an hour comfort-eating as I watch reruns of old sitcoms on my iPad. And I guzzle way more wine than normal, to try and calm things down.

  Gradually the wine and the food – principally the wine – work their magic. I probably, hopefully, surely drank too much in the first place, causing me to imagine these words from Electra? It is impossible she knows. However advanced, she is only a gadget. No one knows apart from me and Tabitha, and Simon, whom I told. Perhaps Tabitha told Arlo? I doubt it, but even if she did: the secret of knowledge is tightly wound, it is inconceivable it would have reached some bloody machines on a bespoke oak shelf.

  No.

  The last glass of wine is guzzled. I have successfully persuaded myself that nothing untoward has happened. All the tech is behaving normally, apart from the little bugs, the spinny lights, it’s my silly drunken head that turned this into something much nastier.

  ‘Electra, what time does Fitness First gym, in Camden, open tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Fitness First Camden opens from seven a.m. to ten p.m. Monday to Thursday, on Fridays it closes earlier at nine p.m., and at weekends—’

  ‘OK, Electra, stop.’

  Silence.

  ‘Thanks, Electra.’

  ‘That’s what I’m here for!’

  Good. She is still behaving as she is meant to behave. And I am drunk. Tomorrow I will go to the gym and eat healthy food and go back to my regular drinking regime. What was I thinking? Two big gins before seven? Absurd and foolish. Guaranteed to produce creepy daydreams, if not lushed-up delusions. I will always have guilt lurking in my brain, like silt at the bottom of a petrol tank: the last thing you need is to stir it up. Simon once told me this. Because if you stir it up, then it can ruin the entire engine.

  Simon.

  As I sit here, a new guilt pierces. Simon.

  No. I don’t want to think about this. Yet I have to think about this. If I am a bit lonely, it is my own fault. Being with Simon is why I am here, drinking by myself.

  I first got with Simon at sixth form in Thornton Heath, London SE25,398, beyond the outer circle of the solar system. We’d known each other since primary school, been friends in secondary, then one night we went to a bar when we were both underage; we had fun, so we dated, and courted, and then we deflowered each other. I don’t know a better word, I should know a better word, possibly there isn’t a better word, so that’s it: we deflowered each other in the back of his dad’s Fiesta, in the darkest corner of Thornton Heath Asda supermarket car park, after drinking too many Jägerbombs.

  The sex wasn’t very good, but we managed it. With each other. And he was kind, gentle, and quite handsome, in the dim green light of an Asda sign, shining into the back of an illicitly borrowed Ford Fiesta, at half past midnight.

  I didn’t come. He did, very quickly. He apologized. The apology made it worse and was one of the least sexy things I have encountered, during sex, to this day. He had nice eyes and muscles and not that much conversation – not with me, anyway. But he tried. Which was touching. Throughout our marriage, he blatantly and ardently tried.

  Here and now, I look out at the Camden frost, examining myself. My motives. How did I end up married to him, of all people. To Simon Todd?

  I was all arts and humanities, philosophy and sociology, I was a girl that yearned for gap years in Papua New Guinea that never happened. I was intrigued by shamanism, Siberian reindeer pee, Renaissance portraits. He was all engines, rockets, and atoms, and apparently knew the real meaning of Schrödinger’s Cat.

  After our brief fling, I went off to King’s College to study History of Art and he went off to Manchester to study All About Computers and I spent half my time partying … and then we both finished university and realized we couldn’t afford to rent anywhere remotely decent until we got jobs, so we boomeranged back to Thornton Heath and the pubs we frequented as teens and …

  There he was. Still quite handsome in the low light of Thornton Heath’s one and only happening bar; and all of a sudden he seemed such a good, honest, decent guy – compared to the rich lazy millennial types I’d got used to dating in King’s.

  And so I found myself sucked into the sentimental whirlpool of homecoming – geographical, sexual, and emotional – and this time we had sex in an actual bed (because his mum and dad were away) and this time, after three months of cosy cuddles and pizzas-and-TV, and being cocooned in
an unaccustomed atmosphere of safety, comfort, and unquestioning adoration, when he incredibly stupidly crazily asked me to marry him, I said YES.

  Oh God. Help me.

  YES?

  It was a ludicrous mistake. We were always too different; we grew further apart while married; we were destined not to last. I found him boring and felt the most terrible guilt about finding him boring. He sensed this and tried to hide his hurt feelings – and this made the lamentable cycle of guilt, hiding, and hurt even worse, for both of us. And then came Liam and the naughty sexts and the massive rows and the end. Thank God.

  Consequently, I have no resentment at his leaving me. I surely didn’t deserve him. I have no resentment that he remarried so quickly, to Polly, I have less-than-zero resentment that they instantly have a tiny and truly adorable baby, Grace. The only thing I resent, perhaps, ever-so-slightly, is the fact that because she’s a nurse she gets a subsidized three-bed Key Worker Flat on the twelfth floor of a brand-new apartment block in buzzing Shoreditch.

  Lucky Polly. Lucky Simon.

  In London, property, and the owning thereof, has become everything. Like having an estate and title during the Regency. And I am a peasant. Virtually an Indian untouchable. I do not own and never will. This stuff is becoming dynastic. If I’d known property was going to become so important, I should probably have married one of the plausible affluent boys at uni with mums and dads with Deposits to Lend. I had enough enquiries. But I didn’t marry them. And there it is.

  I stare across dark and wintry Delancey Street. The traffic has dwindled. It is late. I need to sleep. I am daydreaming, I spend too much time gazing out of these windows.

  And yet as I put on my most comforting pyjamas, I wonder, quite forlornly, if it is genuinely possible that I imagined Electra’s taunts? A couple of sentences created by my own mind, allied to something misfiring in the technology. I guess it could happen. I must force myself to believe this. But if I believe this, it means I am hearing voices, and that …

  Nope: not gonna think about it.

  It’s definitely time for bed. Bed and sleep and a pill, and I will wake up and get on with life, with my new article. I’m writing a column for Sarah, my favourite editor, the editor who commissioned my Big Tech breakthrough piece years back. She wants me to fill a regular magazine slot: My New Neighbourhood. It’s for people who move to a new part of Britain, they describe the history and context of the place, the landscape or cityscape, what they feel about it. Consequently I am writing about Camden.

  The money isn’t that good, but the money, these days, is never that good. And at least the research is interesting.

  In bed I pick up a book on the history of North London, but my eyes are hanging heavy. I turn over to face the curvy white egg of an Assistant sitting on my bedside table. HomeHelp.

  ‘OK, HomeHelp.’

  Her dinky toy lights spin in response. She’s awake: waiting for my command. I ask,

  ‘Set me an alarm for 8.15 a.m.’

  ‘OK, I’ve set an alarm for 8.15 a.m.’

  ‘Thank you. And could you turn out the lights.’

  The bedroom goes dark. I snuggle into the pillow. The pill kicking in. But as I hover at the edge of sleep I hear a snatch of very soft music. HomeHelp has woken up again. And she’s playing a song. I never asked her to do this. Why is she doing this? At first the chords are so quiet they are not identifiable. But then it gets louder. And louder.

  ‘Hoppípolla’. HomeHelp is playing ‘Hoppípolla’.

  THAT SONG. Of all songs. The image of a dead young man, eyes rolling white, fills my inner vision. My head jerks from the pillow. I am surely not imagining this. Jamie, don’t die, don’t you die like my dad.

  ‘Stop.’ I say. The music does not stop, it gets louder, surging, soaring, that sinuous discordant beautiful melody, yet so sinister to my ears. ‘OK, HomeHelp. Stop. Stop. HomeHelp. Please please STOP!!!!’

  The music ceases. HomeHelp twirls her toylike quadrant of lights, then goes dark. And I lie here, in the blackness, my eyes staring wide and frightened at the ceiling. What the hell is happening to me?

  4

  Jo

  In the morning I zip down to the gym, as I promised my better self, and I do half an hour on the cross-trainer; then I go to Wholefoods on Parkway and buy nice Gail’s sourdough bread and super-healthy T Rex fruit smoothies that I can’t afford. After a shower, I make avocado and marmite on toast.

  While I munch the greasy crusts I knock back my hot tea while leaning on Tabitha’s rose-granite kitchen counters; then I make quick, faintly desperate calls to my friends, to Fitz, then Gul, then my editor, then anyone – I simply need chat. Distracting gossip. Water-cooler stuff. And yes, my friends are all brisk and affable – but then they all fob me off by saying they’ll call me later, after work, for a proper dialogue.

  In response, I am overly cheerful. Disconcertingly upbeat, despite the cold rain, turning to frost, on the windows. Sure, let’s talk later! Have a good one!

  I am, in other words, urgently pretending. I’m not merely pretending to them, I am pretending to myself: that it didn’t happen, the song was a pre-sleep dream, it was all a drunken delusion. All of it. I’m not freaked out by the Home Assistant. I am not starting to question myself, I have not been thrust back to that portrait of violent death, the hideous seizures, the convulsive blood-vomiting jerks of Jamie Trewin, as he died.

  Yes. No. Stop.

  ‘Electra, can you set a reminder at six p.m.?’

  ‘What’s the reminder for?’

  ‘Tesco delivery.’

  Electra pauses. I wait, tensed, for Electra to tell me how his blood gurgled down his shirt.

  ‘OK,’ says Electra, ‘I’ll remind you at six p.m.’

  And that’s it. Nothing sinister. No mad songs that thrust me right back to the vomit, and ‘Hoppípolla’. Nothing at all. I almost want Electra to say something menacing, so I know I wasn’t imagining it. No, I don’t. Yes, I do.

  Look.

  Cars is leaning on the wall between the Edinboro Castle pub and the vast dark gulch of the railway lines, emerging from their tunnel, surging into Euston, St Pancras, King’s Cross. He is pointing at something in the sky that only he can see. Pointing and shouting. Later I will give him some decent food, he looks so terribly cold.

  I don’t want to end up homeless, not like poor Cars. And my resources are so meagre, who knows what might happen. Therefore I need to work, earn, and prosper. Determined and diligent, I re-open my book on Camden history.

  But I cannot focus. No matter how much I try. My mind is too messed. Words blur, and slide away.

  Instead I stop and I stare for countless minutes at the tracks, watching long, long trains snaking in and out of Euston station. I think of all the people coming and going, all the millions of Londoners and commuters and suburbanites, crowded together – and yet each person sitting in those packed trains is ultimately and entirely alone. In my darker moments, I sometimes think of London as a moneyed emirate of loneliness; it sits on vast reserves of the stuff – human isolation, melancholy, solitude – the way a small Arab kingdom sits on huge reserves of oil. You don’t have to dig very far down into London life to find the mad, the isolated, the suicidal, the quietly despairing, the slowly-falling-apart. They are all around us, beneath the surface of our lives; they are us. I think of that sad woman I saw, hunched against the snow, passing the house, her back turned to me, pulling her little kids. The way she and her children suddenly disappeared in the snow, as if she were a ghost.

  OK, enough; I am freaking myself out. I am Jo Ferguson. Sociable, extrovert, good-for-a-laugh Jo Ferguson. That’s me. That’s what I am. I’m probably suffering from the winter solitude, and the money worries. It is just the usual stress, plus some lights on a machine spinning strangely. That is all.

  Flattening the book, I take some initial notes.

  The land in Camden is heavy, packed with dense, dark, clinging London riverside clay, replete with swam
ps and fogs, making it notoriously difficult to build. Shunned by developers, haunted by outlaws and highwaymen, extensive settlement therefore came quite late. The oldest dateable building is the World’s End pub on the junction by the Tube station, once called Mother Red Cap, and before then Mother Damnable. This is marked on maps in the late seventeenth century but it may be medieval in origin, or earlier …

  Mother Damnable. Not exactly charming. But interesting. Developers shunned Camden? Because of the swampy ground? And it was ‘haunted by outlaws’, hiding in the cold malarial fogs? All good material, if a little ghostly. And that pub – which I used to drink in as a student, on the way to gigs at Dingwalls – that could be a thousand years old. Remarkable. I had no idea: a place where farmers and peasants on the way to the Cittie of Lundun would make their final rest. Hiding from highwaymen. And witches.

  This will be good for my piece. Diligently I type my sentences. Tapping away in the flat. Like a good journalist.

  And then Electra speaks.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done it, should you, Jo? Because what if someone found out, years later?’

  My heartbeat is painful. An ache. I turn to the Assistant.

  ‘Electra, what are you talking about?’

  ‘You killed him. We’ve got the evidence. You could go to prison for years.’

  ‘Electra, stop!’

  She stops. This makes it worse.

  ‘Electra, what are you talking about?’

  ‘Sorry I don’t know that one.’

  My voice is trembling.

  ‘Electra, what do you know about Jamie Trewin?’

  ‘I know about lots of topics. Try asking me about music, history, or geography!’

  Oh God.

  ‘Electra, fuck off!!’

  Ba-doom. The Assistant spins her thin green electric diadem, and goes quiet. My mind is the opposite. I surely didn’t imagine that entire dialogue. Did I?

  No. I didn’t. I don’t think. Which means: I need to ask or tell someone, yet I can’t. But how about Google? Facing my screen, I type in the words: Home assistants going wrong. Digital assistants malfunctioning. Every variation.