Machines Like Me

Simon Syed had grown up in a large village thirty miles north of Calcutta. His English teacher at his school had been an Anglophile, a martinet who had beaten into his pupils a courteous and precise English. I had never asked Simon how or why he had taken on a Christian forename. Perhaps a desire to integrate, or the parting insistence of his formidable teacher. He had arrived in north Clapham from Calcutta in his late teens and immediately went to work in his uncle’s shop. Thirty years later, the uncle had died and the shop passed to the nephew, who still supported his aunt from the proceeds. He also supported a wife and three grown-up children, but he didn’t like to talk about them. He was a Muslim, by culture rather than practice. If there was sadness in his life, it was well concealed behind a dignified manner. Now in his mid-sixties, he was sleek, bald, very correct, with a small moustache that tapered to sharp points. There was an anthropology journal, not available on the Internet, that he kept for me. He didn’t mind when I came in to scan the world’s front pages during the Task Force days. He was amused by my taste for low-grade chocolate – those global brands invented between two world wars. In the mid-afternoons, after hours at my screen, I craved sugar.

In that strange way by which one reserves intimacies for a mere acquaintance, I had told Simon about my new girlfriend. When she and I had been in the shop together, he had seen for himself.

Now, whenever I came by, his first question was always, ‘How are matters proceeding?’ He liked to tell me, on the basis of nothing but kindness, ‘It’s clear. Her fate is you. No dodging it! Eternal happiness for you both.’ I sensed that many disappointments were heaped behind him. He was old enough to be my father and wanted for me what had eluded him.

There were no other customers when Adam and I entered the cramped shop with its compound scent of newsprint, peanut dust and cheap toiletries. Simon rose from the wooden chair he sat on behind the till. Because I was not alone, he would not be asking the usual question.

I made the introduction. ‘Simon. My friend Adam.’

Simon nodded. Adam said, ‘Hello,’ and smiled.

I was reassured. A good start. If Simon had noticed the strange appearance of Adam’s eyes, he didn’t show it. It was a common reaction, I would soon discover. People assumed a congenital deformity and politely looked away. Simon and I discussed the cricket – three consecutive sixes and a pitch invasion at the India–England T20 – while Adam stood apart before an array of canned goods on a shelf. They would be instantly familiar to him, their commercial histories, market share, nutritional value. But as we chatted, it was obvious he wasn’t looking at tins of peas, or anything at all. His face was frozen. He hadn’t moved in two minutes. I worried that something unusual or unpleasant was about to happen. Simon politely pretended he hadn’t noticed. It was possible that Adam had put himself in rest mode. I made a mental note: he was in need of an appearance of plausibility whenever doing nothing. His eyes were open, but he failed to blink. Perhaps I had brought him out into the world too soon. Simon would be offended that I had tried to pass off Adam as a person, a friend. It could look like mockery, a tasteless joke. I would have betrayed a pleasant acquaintance.

The cricket banter began to falter. Simon’s gaze settled on Adam, then returned to me. He said tactfully, ‘Your Anthropos is in.’

It was my prompt to go over to the magazines, where Adam stood. Years ago, Simon had cleared his top shelf of soft porn in favour of specialist stuff, literary magazines, academic bulletins of international relations, history, entomology. A fair number of ageing, down-at-heel intellectuals lived in the neighbourhood.

As I turned away he added, ‘You can get it yourself?’ A gentle tease to lower the tension. Simon was taller and he usually reached up for me.

A single word brought Adam to life. With the faintest whirring sound, which I hoped only I could hear, he turned to address Simon in formal terms. ‘Your self, you say. There’s a coincidence. I’ve been giving some thought lately to the mystery of the self. Some say it’s an organic element or process embedded in neural structures. Others insist that it’s an illusion, a by-product of our narrative tendencies.’

There was a silence then, stiffening a little, Simon said, ‘Well, sir, which is it? What have you decided?’

‘It’s the way I’m made. I’m bound to conclude that I’ve a very powerful sense of self and I’m certain that it’s real and that neuroscience will describe it fully one day. Even when it does, I won’t know this self any better than I do now. But I do have moments of doubt when I wonder whether I’m subject to a form of Cartesian error.’

By this time I had the journal in my hands and was preparing to leave. ‘Take the Buddhists,’ Simon said. ‘They prefer to get along without a self.’