Machines Like Me

I sat at the table in a stupor, aware that I should get to my screen and earn some money. The month’s rent was due and there was less than £40 in the bank. I had shares in a Brazilian rare earth mining company and this could be the day to sell. But I couldn’t motivate myself. I was subject to occasional depression, relatively mild, certainly not suicidal, and not long episodes so much as passing moments like this, when meaning and purpose and all prospect of pleasure drained away and left me briefly catatonic. For minutes on end I couldn’t remember what kept me going. As I stared at the litter of cups and pot and jug in front of me, I thought it was unlikely I would ever get out of my wretched little flat. The two boxes I called rooms, the stained ceilings, walls and floors would contain me to the end. There were a lot like me in the neighbourhood, but thirty or forty years older. I had seen them in Simon’s shop, reaching for the quality journals from the top shelf. I noted the men especially and their shabby clothes. They had swept past some critical junction in their lives many years back – a poor career choice, a bad marriage, the unwritten book, the illness that never went away. Now their options were closed, they managed to keep themselves going with some shred of intellectual longing or curiosity. But their boat was sunk.

Mark walked in, barefoot and wearing what looked like an ankle-length gown. It was one of my t-shirts and it had an effect on him. Holding out the cotton material in each hand at his waist, he started to run up and down the kitchen, then in circles, and then made clumsy pirouettes in order to spin his gown out around him. The attempts made him stagger. Miranda came through the kitchen with his dirty clothes and took them upstairs to her washing machine. Her way, perhaps, of keeping him here. I sat with my head in my hands, watching Mark, who kept looking in my direction to check that I was impressed by his antics. But I was distracted, only aware of him because he was the only moving object in the room. I gave him no encouragement. I was waiting for Adam.

When he appeared in the doorway I said, ‘Sit down here.’

As he lowered himself onto a chair opposite me there was a muffled click, such as children make when they pull their fingers. A low-level malfunction. Mark continued to prance about the kitchen.

I said, ‘Why would this Gorringe want to harm Miranda? And don’t hold back.’

I needed to understand this machine. There was already one particular feature I’d observed. Whenever Adam faced a choice of responses, his face froze for an instant that was fractionally above the horizon of perception. It did so now, barely a shimmer, but I saw it. Thousands of possibilities must have been sifted, assigned a value, a utility function and a moral weighting.

‘Harm? He intends to kill her.’

‘Why?’

The manufacturers were wrong to believe that they could impress me with a soulful sigh and the motorised movement of a head as Adam looked away. I still doubted that he could, in any real sense, even look.

He said, ‘She accused him of a crime. He denied it. The court believed her. Others didn’t.’

I was about to ask more, when Adam glanced up. I turned in my chair. Miranda was already in the kitchen and she had heard what Adam said. Instantly, she began to clap her hands and whoop to the little boy’s capers. Stepping in his path, she took his hands in hers and they whirled in circles. His feet left the ground and he screamed in delight as she spun him round. He shouted for more. But now she linked arms with him and showed him how to turn about, ceilidh-style, and stamp on the floor. He copied her movements, placing his free hand on his hip and waving the other wildly in the air. His arm did not extend much above his head.

The jig became a reel, then a stumbling waltz. My moment of depression dissolved. Watching Miranda’s supple back bend low to make a partner of a four-year-old, I remembered how I loved her. When Mark squealed with pleasure, she imitated him. When she sang out on a high note, he tried to reach for it too. I watched and clapped along, but I was also aware of Adam. He was completely still, and still without expression, not looking at the dancers so much as through them. It was his turn to be the cuckold, for he was no longer the boy’s best friend. She had stolen him away. Adam must have realised that she was punishing him for his indiscretion. A courtroom accusation? I had to know more.