‘What did they do to them, these… AABs?’
‘Switched the buggers off. Pronto. Every one of them, as soon as they could be found.’
She catches her breath and blinks. Imagining them being hunted down, broken in upon in the middle of the night. ‘But not me? I wasn’t… switched off.’
‘No, of course not. You weren’t like them one bit. You were neither violent, nor had dreams of improving the public’s commuting times.’
Not violent? Evie thinks. He has a short memory. What she did in the apartment garden is never far from her mind. There is another Evie inside the one she is familiar with, capable of killing. Is she some kind of Russian doll with hidden layers? What if there is another hidden within the killing one, capable of even worse?
‘They’d been invented after you,’ Daniels continues, ‘and were designed for commercial use. Also, they were never really more than machines. They may have come under the definition of possessing autonomous processing but they couldn’t properly think, not in the round, they just followed their programming to its logical conclusion – such as how best to run an efficient hospital. When it came down to it they were nothing more than clumsy computers with ill-defined goals. And that was what led to the train crash.’
‘Train crash?’
‘I mean, when it all started to go wrong. But there were literally a couple of real ones too, train crashes that is. No, Evie, you’re absolutely nothing like them. Even from the get-go it was apparent you had something special going on in that noddle of yours.’
‘Special?’ she repeats.
He thinks for a second before answering. ‘I mean a moral compass – a conscience.’
Evie remembers how sceptical Daniels had been of her at first, treating her with the same caution he would a new, overly complicated household appliance, but then within a few months had come completely around. The turning point had been when he’d found her crying in the corridor outside Matthew’s room. That had been when he’d started to look at her differently. As if she may actually be sort of human.
For quite a while after arriving in the apartment, Evie had actually believed herself to indeed be human. To be a wife. To belong to a loving husband. She’d persisted in denying the truth even when the evidence had begun to stack and stack.
‘But under The Acts, I should at least have been registered,’ she says.
Daniels looks at her with a puzzled expression, maybe wondering how she knows this. Why he’d be surprised is more the mystery; she’s had enough years to figure at least some things out from the plentiful snippets she’s overheard. ‘Yes,’ he says, finally. ‘Registered, that is correct – a first step in what was a bureaucratic solution.’
‘But I wasn’t… registered.’
‘No, you weren’t. Matthew never did believe in following rules. He didn’t want much to do with the outside world. He took the view that the less anyone knew of you, the better. I think we can see now that he was right.’
‘But with these other AABs, why didn’t they just learn from what went wrong and design improved replacements. Less arrogant ones.’
‘Less arrogant ones!’ Daniels chortles. ‘Yeah, I like that. Somehow humanity did indeed transfer its own abundant arrogance into those wretched machines. But, in answer to your question, I think people assumed The Acts were only going to be temporary – a chance to draw breath – but in this country anyway, that’s not what happened. With the economy so trashed, it became more about trying to get the basics to run right. Along the way, all that hi-tech know-how, which this country was only ever on the periphery of anyway, was lost.’
‘What about elsewhere, outside England?’
‘Similar issues. In the States, it became a massive thing, with an amendment being passed to the constitution. But then they did have the most horrendous massacre in their Capitol building when fifty senators and a hundred visiting school children were gunned down by an AAB they’d made head of security.’
‘A hundred children killed!’ She is appalled.
‘It was the death of the fat old senators that actually spurred them to act.’
‘With everything that happened. Do you think we… they… were a good idea or not?’ she asks, not sure she really wants to hear his answer.
‘I don’t think they were half as brilliant as they thought they were, but they were still a clever idea. How can it be denied? I think you, however, were a totally great idea.’
She blushes and twists her neck away towards the distant trees to hide her face. The thing about Daniels is that when he says this kind of thing, he is not doing it to get his way – like she might – but because he really means it. He just can’t help but wear his heart on his sleeve.
‘And the others – the ones unlike me – should they be brought back?’
‘Should they, or will they?’
‘Will they?’
‘Yeah, they’ll be brought back. It was always going to happen at some point and it looks increasingly certain that that point is now. People recognise easily enough that independently minded artificial beings, however tame, however low their running costs, won’t improve their lives and would indeed more likely make them worse, but business is pressing hard for the opportunity, as they always will do where there’s money to be made.’
A pair of sheep stand together in the sun, on a rise of ground twenty yards away. Curiosity draws her towards them. The snow muffles her tread and they are only conscious of her presence as she comes up alongside and reaches to touch them, when with a hop and skip they skitter away.
Daniels laughs at her disappointment as she returns.
‘I didn’t mean to scare them,’ she says.
‘I’m surprised they let you get that close. It must be because they couldn’t smell you. A human wouldn’t have been able to do that.’
The sheep, now with their backs to the fence, observe them walk on, taking turns to lift their heads and baa aggressively.
They reach the oak in the top corner of the field and pause to allow Daniels to draw breath. Looking back down the hill, their route is as clear as an arrow – morning shadows collecting in their footprints – and in the bottom of the valley smoke rises from the chimney of their cottage. Sunlight glints on the glass of her bedroom window.
She can’t believe how much things have changed for her in just twenty-four hours and her present good fortune returns her guiltily to her husband, lying dead on his bed, like it was his funeral barge.
‘Thinking of Matthew?’ Daniels asks.
She nods, wondering how he read what was in her mind, maybe because the same sad thoughts were in his. ‘I let him down.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘It was what he told me.’ She tries to keep any hint of bitterness from her tone. ‘The last thing he said was that by failing to imitate Evelyn closely enough, I had spoiled his memories of her.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Daniels says firmly. ‘He wouldn’t have had a clue what he was saying. You didn’t let him down.’
‘I was never as good as Evelyn.’
Daniels huffs and they stand together until he speaks again. ‘Evie, I met Evelyn a few times – maybe not enough to claim that I really knew her, but certainly enough to form a pretty good impression. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but I can say truthfully that I found her hard to like. A right bossy, opinionated…’ He tries a reassuring smile but Evie is staring ahead, her eyes fixed on the distance. ‘And I don’t care what rubbish Matthew may have come out with, the fool was luckier with you than he was ever prepared to admit.’ He puts his arm around her shoulder and squeezes her against him. ‘I loved that man and miss him greatly, but boy, sometimes he could be infuriating.’