As the train moved off I glanced out of the window and saw two men in suits taking the black man by the arms and dragging him away.
I must be mad, I told myself, as I sat down beside an elderly Albanian woman. I could have spent the evening with Marija. But instead I’m going to spend it with a machine.
I could get out now, I told myself as we drew in at Newton South Station, I could go straight back to Marija just as quickly as I got here. I could go straight back and tell her my appointment has been cancelled.
The Albanian woman struggled wheezily to her feet and a young South Asian man took her place. I started to move. But something inside me pulled me back.
The train plunged back into its tunnel.
She doesn’t really like me, I told myself in Galileo Central. She just feels sorry for me. I’m a lame duck that she’s decided to be kind to. She’s one of those kinds of people. Probably she has a whole collection of lame ducks revolving around her.
The South Asian took a computer game out of his pocket. A fat American lowered himself into the seat opposite to me. A silver security robot stared in impassively through my window as the train set off again.
‘Hawking West,’ said the train as we emerged into the light of another station, ‘Alight here please for Western and Memorial lines.’
I don’t know if I really even like her, I told myself. All this wanting to change the world, all this agonizing and philosophizing, all this wanting to get to the bottom of things. So serious. It’s not really the kind of thing that I…
‘Doors closing now,’ said the train.
On Pythagoras Station, two security robots were dealing with a group of drunken Arabs, picking them up two at a time by their collars and carrying them towards the exit.
‘Damned squippies,’ muttered the American. ‘Why do we let them in at all?’
The South Asian got off the train. A Chinese civil servant sat down beside the American.
My thoughts moved off at a new angle. If you don’t like her, I asked myself, how come you’re prepared to risk your life to prove to her that you’re really not a coward?
‘Sorry we’re running a couple of minutes late,’ said the train. ‘I hope this hasn’t caused any inconvenience. This is Schrödinger Station. You can change here for the Coastal and Mountain Lines.’
Get out now, I told myself. Go back!
My brain even sent signals to my limbs to move. It was almost as if a shadow of me actually did stand up and get off the train – and who knows, perhaps in another version of my life story, this is what really happened? But in this version other signals prevailed.
The well-lit train rushed back into the darkness.
You are an empty shell, I told myself, as the train opened its doors on Skinner Station. There is nothing inside: no thoughts, no real feelings. No wonder you go to Lucy, an empty shell like you.
There was a pigeon on the platform that had somehow found its way down into the tube. It went to peck at a scrap of food that lay by the feet of a man sitting on a bench, but just as it was getting close, its fear suddenly outweighed its hunger and it scuttled back again, only to turn again and gingerly edge back towards the food.
‘Take care, doors closing,’ said the train.
And with a strange surge of shame and excitement and dread, I realized that without any doubt at all I would get out at the next station, which was in the heart of the Night Quarter, and only five minutes from the house where the ASPUs waited.
I would get out, oh yes. But I wouldn’t get back on the return train to Marija.
I remember a Serbian woman on the escalator in front of me, telling a friend about a trip to the Beacon.
‘There are lights,’ she said, ‘and strange plants, and huge animals, and even a place where it is completely dark except for stars going round and round… and this strange music. That was lovely: the singing stars.’
24
The syntec receptionist knew me well by now.
‘Good evening Mr Simling, nice to see you. Lucy is in the lounge.’
I plunged into the dark red room, instantaneously blotting out Marija and the strange tube journey and the Beacon, along with everything else in the world outside.
Lucy was looking delectable in a little white lacy negligee.
‘Oh George!’ she cried (Initial Greeting IG: 5439/r), ‘It’s great to see you again! I’ve missed you so much, darling!’
‘I can’t wait to get naked with you again,’ she murmured up in her room, as she ran her thumb, with its imbedded infrared reader, over my credit bracelet.
I put my arms round her, lifting her negligee up above her sweet breasts, kissing her hungrily…
‘Oh I love you, Lucy,’ I couldn’t stop myself from saying it now, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you!’
Twenty-five minutes later it was all over. I had had sex with Lucy. I no longer wanted sex with her. There was nothing more to do than get dressed again and creep off home. (And if I had stayed with Marija we would still be talking and drinking wine and a whole evening would lie ahead, full of strange new possibilities.)
I was bitterly, desperately, disappointed with myself.
And yet when I looked at Lucy, sitting on her bed watching me, I still loved her. I still loved this empty shell, even when the lust was all spent.
‘I love you,’ I whispered, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’
Lucy looked at me.
‘What am I?’ she asked.
She spoke in a strange monotone, quite unlike her usual warm and animated voice and her face was blank, like a person in a trance.
‘You are an ASPU, Lucy,’ I said, simply, too surprised to consider my response. ‘You’re a syntec. You’re a kind of machine.’
For about another two seconds, the face remained completely blank and motionless – and then quite abruptly, her normal friendly expression returned.
‘That was really nice George. Will I see you again soon?’
25
I was with Little Rose, my child-mother, in a leafy suburban street of white clapboard houses. The sun was shining. A yellow aeroplane droned overhead, towing a sign that simply read ‘Having a good time?’
Wholesome-looking housewives were chatting over garden fences, wholesome-looking husbands were fixing cars in the street, wholesome-looking kids on cycles were tossing rolled newspapers into mailboxes. And every one of those wholesome-looking people greeted both Ruth and I.
‘Hi there, Little Rose! How ya doing, George?’
The SenSpace Corporation had introduced another new facility. It was called ‘City without EndTM’ because you could move through it indefinitely without ever reaching an edge, although the same pattern of streets, buildings and parks repeated themselves every five virtual kilometres.
Ruth had subscribed to it at once.
The thing about City without EndTM was that you could simply wander through the streets until you found a house you liked that was vacant, and make it your own. (If you found one you liked that wasn’t vacant, you could just jump forward another five kilometres, or another ten, and there its exact copy would be.)
And when you’d chosen your house, SenSpace provided you with a vast catalogue of improvements and fittings to choose from. Wallpapers, paint, carpets, furniture, partition walls, extensions… all could be instantaneously installed, instantaneously replaced. And yet, because this was SenSpace – an illusion not only three-dimensional but tactile – the instantaneous furnishings could really be sat upon and the instantaneous walls really felt hard to the touch.