Machines Like Me

Adam’s utopia masked a nightmare, as utopias generally do, but it was a mere abstraction. Miranda’s nightmare was real and instantly became mine. We sat beside each other at the table, flustered and dumb, a rare combination. It was left to Adam to be clear-headed and set out the reassuring facts. Nothing Maxfield had said on the phone indicated that Gorringe was on his way here tonight. If he’d been out three weeks, murder was clearly not his priority. He could arrive tomorrow, or next month, or never. If he hoped to succeed without witnesses, he would have to kill all three of us. He would be an obvious suspect in any crime against Miranda. Even if he came this evening, he would find Miranda’s flat in darkness. He knew nothing about her connection with me. It was likely that the threat itself was all the punishment he intended. Finally, we had a strongman on our side. If necessary, he could keep Gorringe talking while one of us called the police.

Time to open the wine!

Adam set three glasses on the table. Miranda preferred my father’s Edwardian teak-handled corkscrew to my fancy gadget with a lever. The effort seemed to settle her. The first glass settled me. To keep us company, Adam sipped at a third of a glass of warm water. Our fears were not quite dispelled but now, in this party atmosphere, we returned to Adam’s little thesis. We even raised a toast to ‘the future’, though his version of it, private mental space drowned by new technology in an ocean of collective thought, repelled us both. Fortunately, it was as feasible as the project of implanting the brains of billions.

I said to Adam, ‘I’d like to think that there will always be someone, somewhere not writing haikus.’

We raised our glasses to that too. No one was in the mood for an argument. The only other possible topic was Gorringe and everything related to him. That conversation was just starting when I excused myself and went to the bathroom. As I was washing my hands, I found myself thinking about Mark and my fleeting sense of privilege in the playground when he put his hand in mine. I remembered his look of resilient intelligence. I thought of him not as a child, but a person in the context of his entire life. His future was in the hands of bureaucrats, however kindly, and the choices they made for him. He could easily sink. Miranda had so far been unable to get news of him. Finding Jasmine, or any social worker willing to talk to her, was impossible. There were, she was told at last by someone in the right department, issues of confidentiality. Despite that, she learned that the father had vanished and the mother had drink and drug problems.

As I was returning to the kitchen I had a moment of nostalgia for my life as it was before Gorringe, Adam, even Miranda. As an existence, it had been insufficient but relatively simple.

Simpler still if I’d left my mother’s money in the bank. Here was my lover at the table, beautiful and outwardly composed. As I sat down, it wasn’t irritation I felt towards her, though that wasn’t far off. More like detachment. I saw what must have been obvious to everyone – her secretiveness; also, her inability to ask for help, her trick of getting it anyway, and of never being held to account. I sat down, drank a little wine, listened to the conversation – and made a decision. Setting aside Adam’s reassurances, I believed she had brought a murderer into my life. I was expected to help, and I would. But she had told me nothing. Now I was calling in a debt.

We were looking right at each other. I couldn’t keep the terseness out of my voice. ‘Did he rape you or not?’

After a pause, during which she continued to hold my gaze, she shook her head slowly from side to side and then she said softly, ‘No.’

I waited. She waited. Adam went to speak. I silenced him with a slight shake of the head. When it was clear that Miranda was not going to say more – the very reticence that was oppressing me – I said, ‘You lied to the court.’

‘Yes.’

‘You sent an innocent man to prison.’

She sighed.

Again, I waited. My patience was running out, but I didn’t raise my voice. ‘Miranda. This is stupid. What happened?’

She was looking down at her hands. To my relief, she said, as though to herself, ‘It’ll take a while.’

‘Fine.’

She began without preamble. Suddenly, she seemed eager to tell her story.