My desktop computer, bought second-hand from a Brixton junk shop, dated from the mid-sixties and was slow. It took me an hour to arrange the position on the flag maker. I would have been quicker if I’d had my thoughts under control. When I wasn’t thinking about Miranda and listening out for her footsteps in the flat above me, I was thinking about Adam and whether I should sell him off, or start making decisions about his personality. I sold sterling and thought more about Adam. I bought gold and thought again about Miranda. I sat on the lavatory and wondered about Swiss francs. Over a third coffee I asked myself what else a victorious nation might spend its money on. Beef. Pubs. TV sets. I took positions on all three and felt virtuous, a part of the war effort. Soon it was time for lunch.
I sat facing Adam again while I ate a cheese and pickle sandwich. Any further signs of life? Not at first glance. His gaze, directed over my left shoulder, was still dead. No movement. But five minutes later I glanced up by chance and was actually looking at him when he began to breathe. I heard first a series of rapid clicks, then a mosquito-like whine as his lips parted. For half a minute nothing happened, then his chin trembled and he made an authentic gulping sound as he snatched his first mouthful of air. He didn’t need oxygen, of course. That metabolic necessity was years away. His first exhalation was so long in coming that I stopped eating and tensely waited. It came at last – silently, through his nostrils. Soon his breathing assumed a steady rhythm, his chest expanded and contracted appropriately. I was spooked. With his lifeless eyes, Adam had the appearance of a breathing corpse.
How much of life we ascribe to the eyes. If only his were closed, I thought, he’d at least have the appearance of a man in a trance. I left my sandwich and went to stand by him and, out of curiosity, put my hand close to his mouth. His breath was moist and warm. Clever. In the user’s manual I’d read that he urinated once a day in the late morning. Also clever. As I went to close his right eye, my forefinger brushed against his eyebrow. He flinched and violently jerked his head away from me. Startled, I moved back. Then I waited. For twenty seconds or more nothing happened, then, with a smooth, soundless movement, infinitesimally slow, the tilt of his shoulders, the angle of his head moved towards their former positions. His rate of breathing was undisturbed. Mine and my pulse had accelerated. I was standing several feet away, fascinated by the way he settled back, like a balloon gently deflating. I decided against closing his eyes. While I was waiting for something more from him, I heard Miranda moving around in the flat upstairs. Back from Salisbury. Wandering in and out of her bedroom. Once again I felt the troubled thrill of undeclared love, and that was when I had the first stirrings of an idea.
That afternoon I should have been making and losing money at my computer. Instead, I watched from the great height of a helicopter as the leading ships of the Task Force rounded Portland Bill and filed by Chesil Beach. The very place names deserved a respectful salute. How brilliant. Onwards! I kept thinking. And then, Go back! Soon, the fleet came along the Jurassic coast, where herds of dinosaurs once grazed on giant ferns. Suddenly, we were down among the people of Lyme Regis gathering on the Cobb. Some had binoculars, many had the very flags I had in mind, plastic on a wooden stick. A news team might have handed them around. Vox pops. Gentle local voices of hard-working women, tight with emotion. Tough old coves who’d fought in Crete and Normandy, nodding to themselves, giving nothing away. Oh, how I wished I too believed. But I could! A long lens mounted somewhere on the Lizard showed the tiny receding blobs of ships heading bravely out onto the big swell of the open sea to the sound of husky Rod Stewart, while I tried not to be tearful.
What turmoil on a weekday afternoon. A new kind of being at my dining table, the woman I newly loved six feet above my head, and the country at old-fashioned war. But I was tolerably disciplined and had promised myself seven hours every day. I turned off the TV and went to my screen. Waiting for me was the email from Miranda that I’d hoped for.
I knew I would never get rich. The sums I moved around, safely spread across scores of opportunities, were small. Over the month I had done well out of solid-state batteries but had lost almost as much to rare earth element futures – a foolish leap into the known. But I was keeping myself out of a career, an office job. This was my least bad option in the pursuit of freedom. I worked on through the afternoon, resisting the temptation to look in on Adam, even though I guessed he would be fully charged by now. Next step was downloading his updates. Then, those problematic personal preferences.
Before lunch I’d sent Miranda an email inviting her to dinner that night. Now she’d accepted. She liked my cooking. During the meal I would make a proposal. I would fill in roughly half the choices for Adam’s personality, then give her the link and the password and let her choose the rest. I wouldn’t interfere, I wouldn’t even want to know what decisions she had made. She might be influenced by a version of herself: delightful. She might conjure the man of her dreams: instructive. Adam would come into our lives like a real person, with the layered intricacies of his personality revealed only through time, through events, through his dealings with whomever he met. In a sense he would be like our child. What we were separately would be merged in him. Miranda would be drawn into the adventure. We would be partners, and Adam would be our joint concern, our creation. We would be a family. There was nothing underhand in my plan. I was sure to see more of her. We’d have fun.
My schemes generally fell apart. This was different. I was clear-headed, incapable of deceiving myself. Adam was not my love-rival. However he fascinated her, she was also physically repelled by him. She had told me as much. It was ‘creepy’ she had told me the day before, that his body was warm. She said it was ‘a bit weird’ that he could make words with his tongue. But he had a word-store as large as Shakespeare’s. It was his mind that aroused her curiosity.
So the decision not to sell Adam was made. I was to share him with Miranda – just as I might have shared a house. He would contain us. Making progress, comparing notes, pooling disappointments. I regarded myself at thirty-two as an old hand at love. Earnest declarations would drive her away. Far better to make this journey together. Already she was my friend, she sometimes held my hand. I wasn’t starting from nowhere. Deeper feelings could steal up on her, as they had on me. If they didn’t, then at least I’d have the consolation of more time with her.
In my ancient fridge, whose rusty door handle had partly come away, was a corn-fed chicken, a quarter-pound of butter, two lemons and a bunch of fresh tarragon. In a bowl on the side were a few bulbs of garlic. In a cupboard, some earth-caked potatoes, already sprouting – but peeled, they would roast nicely. Lettuce, a dressing, a hearty bottle of Cahors. Simple. First, heat the oven. These ordinary matters filled my thoughts as I stood from my desk. An old friend of mine, a journalist, once said that paradise on earth was to work all day alone in anticipation of an evening in interesting company.
The meal I intended to cook for her and the homely dictum of my friend distracted me and for the moment Adam was not on my mind. So it was a shock to enter the kitchen and find him standing there, naked, by the table, partly facing away from me, one hand vaguely fiddling with the wire that protruded from his umbilicus. His other hand was somewhere near his chin, stroking it in a contemplative way – a clever algorithm no doubt, but entirely convincing in its projection of a thoughtful self.
I recovered and said, ‘Adam?’
He turned towards me slowly. When he was facing me full on, he met my gaze and blinked, and blinked again. The mechanism was working but seemed too deliberate.