The Assistant

by S. K. Tremayne

  The voice drones on, but not unpleasantly. It is soothing. Perhaps it is that easy: fifteen sentences, on a single page, and you have your blueprint?

  I am alone in the flat, Tabitha is staying with Arlo. The Assistants are behaving, doing what they were meant to do. Could be I exaggerated it all. I do get bad dreams, I am sometimes a bit anxious, I probably take too many pills to help me sleep: they can unbalance the brain a bit. That’s all? Yes, that’s all it is. I am not going mad, everything will be fine. Liam has some woman and has decided to disappear, warning me off, maybe as a punishment for ghosting on him. The dying night is heavy on my eyes. Six a.m. Three hours have passed. I don’t know why, but three hours is a cycle in my brain, if I wake from a nightmare at two or three or five, I know that if I stay awake for three hours, I will fall peacefully asleep again, probably, hopefully, without the assistance of Alprazolam. It helps that I am freelance. I don’t have to rise at eight.

  Telling HomeHelp to stop reading from the book, I close my eyes. Quickly, sleep embraces, clasps me, a welcome succubus, like the comforting weight of a man on top, like Simon when we were young and we were sort of in love, I liked him simply lying on me.

  My thought slows. My brain nods heavily towards oblivion.

  A soft, repetitive jingle stirs me. My first clear notion is: the Assistants. They must be making this noise.

  I look through the gloom at HomeHelp. Nothing. No spinny lights. No noise. Silent.

  As sleep ebbs away, I realize that I actively recognize the jingle. It is the very recognizable sound of a Skype call. And it must be coming from my laptop, in the living room. My bedroom door is halfway open and I can just see the bright, distant screen, on the faraway table.

  Skype call.

  The flat is cool, but not freezing, as I wrap myself in my dressing gown. The heating must have come on in the night. I am grateful for the residual warmth as I pace, barefoot, down the landing, switching on a light or two. The Skype jingle ends. I missed it. But I want to know. Who would be calling me at this time? As I sit down at the laptop, yawning fiercely, I glance at the clock on the screen: 6.20 a.m. Dawn is still distant, on this midwinter day. Frost is icy lace on the windows; the first commuters, truck drivers, delivery vans, are racing the lights on Delancey, moving grey shapes in swirly cold mist.

  The Skype jingle starts over. I don’t recognize the number. It’s long. International. One of those mad numbers. Redirected from Namibia or Singapore.

  Ah, I think: my brother. He’s probably off his head in LA. Sometimes he rings at lunatic hours, forgetting the time difference, or misjudging it.

  I press the button, and accept the call, expecting my brother’s still-handsome face to appear. In his bright big southern California apartment. Will it be enviably warm and sunny there? Will I get to see my beloved nephew, with his plastic dinosaurs? What time is it in LA?

  A figure emerges, from a blur, on the screen.

  My chest is tight with obscure anxiety. The figure is just a figure. A darkness. A silhouette. A shape of someone. It looks like a woman. Long hair, slender shoulders. But the face is black, in deepest shadow. All I can see is the outline.

  ‘Hello,’ I say. ‘Who is this? Who are you?’

  Silence.

  ‘You do realize it’s six in the morning. Is this some random wrong number?’

  The figure says nothing. It does not move. She does not move.

  ‘Hello? Look, if this is a crank call just go away. I’m blocking this number.’

  ‘Hello, Jo. It’s Jo. I’m you.’

  The air in the room is still and cooling. I say nothing. My mouth opens. Closes. Trembling lips. I am so bewildered and horrified, I reel back. Physically.

  I am that person. I am this person.

  ‘Hello, Jo, say hello to yourself.’

  My mind blows fuses. She’s right. It is me. This person, this figure, this shadow, this thing is speaking in my voice, to me.

  18

  Jo

  The voice goes on. My voice goes on.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Jo, it’s only you, calling yourself. That’s how I got your number, Jo. I know your number because it is my number. I am you. This is you. I am you talking to you. I know how cold it is there, because I am you. I know how scared you are, because I am you.’

  The figure is almost motionless, yet not quite. Like it really is speaking, even if the features, the entire face and body, are concealed with shadows. The head moves in time with the words, this feels real. But it cannot be.

  Terror tilts me, this way, that way. I force myself to regard the screen.

  ‘Who is this? How did you record my voice?’

  I know someone is doing this. It has to be Simon, egged on by Polly? He has the knowledge. Of the tech. He installed most of it. But still I am terrified. Because, whatever they are doing, it is working. My voice speaks again, to me.

  ‘No one recorded your voice, Jo. I am you, I thought you’d like to speak to yourself, you mumble to yourself anyway, these days, I’ve noticed me doing that, lately. Liam certainly scared you, didn’t he? You should be scared. Of Liam.’

  ‘You’re linked to the Assistants, aren’t you?’

  The figure laughs. With vivid fear, I realize this is definitely my laugh. My drunken, sarcastic laugh. How could anyone record that, and use it at the right moment? How would they – Simon, Arlo, Fitz, the whole of Facebook, whoever it is – program a computer, with my words, to have a spontaneous conversation? The ghastly possibility enfolds me: this really is me, talking to me, and therefore I am going mad.

  No. No. I shout:

  ‘Please stop this.’

  A lorry thunders past the house, rattling panes, its headlights like torch beams in the winter fog, madly seeking something lost, running to save someone. Save me. Save me. I want to scream it out loud. Yet in there, in the window of the laptop screen, I have stopped laughing.

  I am speaking, from the screen, from my own mind, or from some computer code.

  ‘You think you’re going mad. You’re not going mad, Jo. I know this because I’m you, Jo. I know what you ate yesterday morning, because I am you.’

  ‘Stop …’

  ‘Ah, Jo. Why should I take orders from me, because I don’t know what I want, do I? I’m all afraid and confused? Poor Jo. Poor little Jo-Jo with our crazy dad. Ach, du.’ The laughter again. My very own South London cackle. Sardonic, sharp, I’ve always had a distinctive laugh, I quite like it, people like to mimic it, to tease me, and I don’t mind, but this is me, on a screen, laughing at me, in the pre-dawn darkness of another murky, polluted, freezing-point London morning, and I am shivering in my dressing gown, listening to myself laugh at myself. And then the laughter stops.

  And as soon as it does, the soft voice starts.

  I lean towards the screen, getting ready to turn it off. I’ve had enough. But the voice intervenes. I am stopping myself.

  ‘Oh no, Jo. Don’t do that. Remember what Tabitha said, you mustn’t turn anything off, or Arlo will know. Then you’ll have to live somewhere else, and we don’t have any money, do we? You have to listen to yourself. And if you don’t you will go to the police. I have all the evidence, of what happened to Jamie Trewin. You want to go to jail? No. I thought not. So listen close, Jo. This is only the beginning. Because you know what you did to Jamie. It was all your fault. Don’t blame our poor daddy, don’t blame the madness, that’s all so weak, so lame, blaming the parent. No no no. We’re stronger than that. We’re going to do something better. We’re going to do something braver, be like Daddy.’ The figure on-screen leans in, I catch a glimpse of light on hair, is that my hair? I think it is, but my senses are so taut, I could be seeing anything. ‘Jo, here’s the deal: in a few weeks, maybe sooner, you are going to kill yourself. That’s what you’ve decided, you don’t realize yet. But you will do it soon, or I will do it for you, one way or another. You will die. Maybe you can get in your car like Daddy and do it that way? OK? OK? I’ve got to go. Speak so
on.’

  The Skype call ends and the screen flashes away.

  I stare at the screen saver. A picture of Regent’s Park, all white with snow. From a month ago. I thought it was pretty at the time. Now it seems replete with menace. I am that person lost in the winter mist, being hunted with torches, but they will not find me. I fear that no one will find me: a crying little girl, scared of her beloved daddy, the way he shouts at the TV and the car and the radio and me. Yet wanting him to hug me. My daddy. I remember his hugs, the days when he wasn’t mad, the joy as he threw me in the air, playing ring a ring o’ roses around the apple tree with me and all my friends. He was a good father. Until the darkness embraced him, and fewer friends came round. Then none came at all.

  Laden with sadness, and fear, I turn the entire laptop off. And there I am, dimly reflected in the deadened screen, staring back at myself with haunted, sleepless eyes. I am everywhere. Watching me.

  19

  Jo

  I try to sleep. I fail. I take a Xanax. It doesn’t work. I lie here feeling as fearful as before, but heavier. Slothfully horrified. Yet furious too. Is it Simon and Polly? I have to rule them out – or rule them in – once and for all.

  Eventually I give up on sleep, get up, dose myself with Nespresso – and as soon as it is remotely civilized, when my ex would have settled into work, I invite Simon out for dinner. Today. This evening. He seems surprised at the short notice, he seems seriously reluctant – mumbling about Polly – but as I press him, nearly begging, he relents.

  ‘All right, OK,’ he says. ‘Seven p.m.? Where?’

  ‘Vinoteca,’ I reply. It’s the big, modern, airy wine place near Google and St Martin’s, in buzzingly renewed King’s Cross. We’ve been there many times.

  He agrees, and rings off. I go to the living room and distract myself with coffee and news and work and Twitter. And staring out at the cold.

  And now the morning has passed, likewise the dimming and dying afternoon, and at 6.50 p.m. I get an Uber to the restaurant, where I am escorted to a nice corner table. The glass-walled restaurant is busy and noisy, full of happy young Londoners – guzzling wine under the sleek, vertical, modernist lights. Surveying the tables, I think about last night. How I rang myself and terrified myself: or someone very clever terrified me, by pretending to be me.

  How could they do that? The laughter was so authentic, the voice tones, the natural conversation.

  A waiter hovers, a querying expression on his young face; there’s a tinge of an Eastern European accent as he asks would I like to order. I shake my head. I tell him I am waiting for a friend. I almost add: an ex-husband who might be trying to send me mad.

  The waiter disappears.

  A glance at my phone tells me: five minutes to seven. I look out at the darkened plaza – at the criss-cross pattern of the Vinoteca steel pillars, and the gleaming redbrick on the floodlit frontage of the German Gymnasium. Everything here is either made of steel and glass, or repointed Victorian brick.

  A man is staring back at me. Sitting on a bench, out there in the killing breeze, under the frosty streetlights, wrapped in several coats. He is motionless as a corpse, as commuters hurry around him, escaping a knife-crime mugging by the wind.

  This man who stares at me is evidently homeless. Why is he staring? I fiddle with a fork as I think about the Skype call and the sound of my own laughter and I shudder. The fork is gripped in my perspiring hand. I hold it so hard, thumb over the tines – it hurts. When I drop the fork, with a clatter, I see that a woman is looking at me from the bar. She quickly looks away. Embarrassed on my behalf.

  A sip of wine. Then a gulp of wine. I check the time once more. One minute to seven. Simon is punctual. My bet is he’ll be here bang on the money: 7.00 p.m.

  7.03.

  7.06.

  7.09?

  I’m sure he will turn up. It’s hardly the first time we’ve had a meal since we divorced. We have stayed real friends. Kept things amicable. And he seems to want a good, post-marital friendship. Yet I also know that Polly detests our lingering attachment, because.

  In her world, when a relationship is over it is over, and you don’t acknowledge that the ex ever existed. You get rid of every trace of your attachment, right down to the holiday snaps, and the nail parings. As if the relationship was a murder, and you don’t want to get caught with the evidence.

  Seven twenty p.m.? This is unexpected. Maybe Polly has got to him; probably this is a bad idea anyway and Polly is right: Simon and I should have severed connections. But we didn’t. And tonight I need his presence, because I want to find out if he and Polly are doing this shit to me.

  Alternatively, my childhood friend Simon will see the other possibility, that I am going mad like my dad.

  A waving hand catches my eye.

  My ex is wearing one of those puffy rain-jackets, and sober scarf. He gives them to a waiter, and walks over in jeans and long plaid shirt, a black vest underneath. They all wear these slouchy clothes, the software people. The more important they are the more they dress down – because they can. Simon isn’t that important though. He doesn’t earn big money like his friends. I think he slightly resents me for this. Like I was holding him back somehow.

  He pulls a chair – and pulls a face.

  ‘Jesus. You look terrible.’

  I shrug, and swallow wine.

  ‘Thanks. I haven’t been sleeping well.’

  ‘You look like you haven’t slept since D-Day. What’s up, Jo?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, as he sits, and pours water. I look at him tipping the glass. I am not quite sure how to broach it, how to make the terrible accusation, not yet; I want to mention Liam, yet I don’t know how: because I feel too guilty about Liam, and the way I destroyed our marriage.

  My mind is a smashed avocado. I cough up a sentence.

  ‘There are a few things I want to ask you.’

  ‘Yeah? OK.’ He sets down his water-glass. Warily. ‘Sorry I’m late by the way – got some last-minute emails from America.’

  The waiter reappears, handing out long menus on white card. We look at each other and attempt a mutual smile, kindling a hint of the old warmth. There’s a signature dish here, and we both always have it.

  I speak for the two of us.

  ‘We’ll both have steak bavette. Rare. Thanks.’

  The waiter nods. ‘And to drink?’

  Simon is already scanning the wine list with his smartphone, but I know what will happen at the end. He will ask for a beer. He just likes using his wine app which rates wines and wine lists, down to the vintage and terroir. He loves new apps. He loves new tech. An early adopter. Perhaps that’s why he married me so calamitously young.

  ‘Actually, I’ll have a beer. Bottle of Leffe.’

  ‘And I’ll stick with my Rioja … maybe a half-bottle, can you do that?’

  The waiter nods, pockets his notebook, and hurries away.

  Simon looks at me. Flatly. And then he says, ‘Before we talk. The usual?’

  He holds his phone up, and overtly turns it to mute, and then lays it on the table, screen down. Lots of his friends do this, at dinners and parties. The new Silicon Valley social etiquette. He and I do the same: ensuring we are ready to talk: ready to concentrate on real human interaction.

  The ritual complete, he says,

  ‘OK. What things did you want to ask?’

  No choice now. It’s best I do this quickly. Jump in, and see how he responds.

  ‘I’ve been having tech problems.’

  ‘Such as? Where?’

  ‘At Delancey Street. Problems with the heating and the lighting, the Home Assistants, I can’t control it all, sometimes it behaves strangely.’

  I watch closely for a telling reaction: a wince of knowledge, a hint of guilt. But there is nothing; his frown persists. The drinks arrive, my Rioja, his Leffe, and Simon takes a hit of beer. Then he asks,

  ‘So you just get it all fixed, right? Or get Tabs to fix things, she’s kinda you
r landlady. Yeah?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Of course I could do that. But the problems are so weird.’

  His frown is properly sceptical.

  ‘Weird?’

  How do I phrase this without talking about Jamie? Even though Simon knows the backstory, I always feel a mental block when it comes to that subject. I attempt an answer.

  ‘The Assistants say peculiar things, it’s like they … Know certain things about me. Like they are listening. Like they’ve heard, uh, things from the past.’

  ‘Well,’ Simon says, with a hint of geeky smirk, ‘they are listening, Jo. That’s the point. They are designed to listen to you, to get to know all your habits, needs, desires. They adapt to your personality, even adopt your personality. Imagine what they will do in the future – they will be friends for the friendless, children for the childless. This tech means no one has to endure isolation and loneliness any more. Old people, people in hospital, they will have real conscious voices, talking to them. Ready and waiting, on the shelf.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ I am flailing. ‘The way they listen, and watch, and all that? All the time?’

  He shrugs. ‘And? It’s no different to computers reading your emails, or your Facebook posts, and sending you personally directed ads. That’s the way it works. And it’s all cool, yeah? It’s better than cool. We’re right on the cusp of full-on AI, where the machines can do everything; it’s exciting. Arlo Scudamore is all over it, clever bastard.’

  I gaze at my ex-husband’s earnest young face. The anger and anxiety compete inside me.

  ‘Well it might be exciting but it’s also frightening, Simon. Too creepy, too intimate. I hate it.’

  I am flushing, quite deeply. Can’t help it. The fear that has been simmering threatens to boil over. I don’t know which is worse: the possibility I am going mad, or the possibility that someone – possibly my ex-husband and his supposedly kindly new wife – wants to drive me mad. Or to suicide. Yet Simon is reacting so innocently, there is no trace of guilt in his conversation, or his body language. Which means?