Machines Like Me

It was only when I got there that I knew what I had to say. My point was this: I had bought him, he was mine, I had decided to share him with Miranda, and it would be our decision, and only ours, to decide when to deactivate him. If he resisted, and especially if he caused injury as he had the night before, then he would have to be returned to the manufacturer for readjustment. I finished by saying that this was Miranda’s view, as she expressed it earlier this afternoon, just before we made love. This last intimate detail, for the lowest of reasons, I needed him to know.

Throughout, he remained impassive, blinking at irregular intervals, holding my gaze. When I finished, nothing changed for half a minute and I began to think I had gone too fast, or spoken gibberish. Suddenly, he came to life (to life!), looked down at his feet, then turned and walked a few paces away. He turned again to look at me, drew breath to speak, changed his mind. A hand went up to stroke his chin. What a performance. Perfect. I was ready to give him my devoted attention.

His tone was of the sweetest, most reasonable kind. ‘We’re in love with the same woman. We can talk about it in a civilised manner, as you just have. Which convinces me that we’ve passed the point in our friendship when one of us has the power to suspend the consciousness of the other.’

I said nothing.

He continued. ‘You and Miranda are my oldest friends. I love you both. My duty to you is to be clear and frank. I mean it when I say how sorry I am I broke a bit of you last night. I promise it will never happen again. But the next time you reach for my kill switch, I’m more than happy to remove your arm entirely, at the ball and socket joint.’

He said this kindly, as though offering help with some difficult task.

I said, ‘That would be messy. And fatal.’

‘Oh no. There are ways of doing it cleanly and safely. A practice refined in medieval times. Galen was the first to describe it. Speed is of the essence.’

‘Well, don’t take my good arm.’

He had been speaking through a smile. Now he began to laugh. So here it was, his first attempt at a joke and I joined in. I was in a state of exhaustion and suddenly found it wildly hilarious.

As I passed him on my way to the bedroom he said, ‘Seriously. After last night I came to a decision. I’ve found a way to disable the kill switch. Easier for all of us.’

‘Good,’ I said, not quite taking this in. ‘Very sensible.’

I entered my room and closed the door behind me. I kicked off my shoes, and lay on the bed on my back, softly laughing to myself. Then, forgetting about the painkillers, I was asleep in less than two minutes.

*

The next morning I turned thirty-three. It rained all day and I worked for nine hours, content to be indoors. For the first time in weeks, my profit for the day was in three figures – just. At seven I stood up from my desk, stretched, yawned, looked in my drawer for a clean white shirt, then took a bath. I had to hang my arm over the edge to protect the cast from dissolving, but otherwise I was in good shape. I lay in the heat and rising steam, singing snatches of Beatles songs in the tiled echo, the new old Beatles, and occasionally topping up the hot with my healed toe now fit to turn a tap. I soaped myself single-handed. Not easy. Thirty-three seemed as significant as twenty-one and Miranda was treating me to dinner. We were meeting up in Soho. The simple prospect of a rendezvous with her raised my spirits. The view I had along the length of my body was uplifting in the misty light. My penis, capsized above its submerged reef of hair, winked encouragement with a cocky single eye. So it should. The muscles of my gut and legs looked nicely sculpted. Heroic even. I wallowed in self-love, happier than I’d been in weeks. I’d been trying not to think about Adam all day and had almost succeeded. He’d been in the kitchen for hours, he was there now – ‘thinking’. I didn’t care. I sang louder. In my twenties, some of my most cheerful times were spent getting ready to go out. It was the anticipation rather than the thing itself. The release from work, the bath, music, clean clothes, white wine, perhaps a pull on a joint. Then stepping out into the evening, free and hungry.

The pads of my fingers were well wrinkled by the time I got out. An adaptation, I’d read, of our sea- and river-loving ancestors to enable them to catch fish. I didn’t believe it, but I liked the story, the way it lay beyond disproof. We didn’t catch fish with our feet, so toes didn’t need to wrinkle like that. I dressed in a hurry. In the kitchen I passed Adam without a word – he didn’t look round – and put up my umbrella to walk the few hundred yards down a squalid side-street to where my wreck of a car was parked. This short depressing stroll often brought me to my usual lament, to the song of my unhappy lot. But not tonight.