The Red Men (19 page)

I cleaned up after dinner, tossing crusts from a plastic child’s plate into the bin then opening a cupboard to return jam and honey to their proper place. Then over to
the sink, scrubbing out the pans and loading up the dishwasher; at home, I was unable to shake off the rhythm of ceaseless microtasks that constituted a working day at Monad.

‘You’re very quiet,’ said El.

‘I am doing my tasks,’ I replied. ‘I don’t like to be interrupted when I am tasking.’

I spent so much time working with Monad’s screens that part of me believed that the housework could be performed with a few haptic gestures: a click of the fingers, a two-finger swipe, a
hug. No such luck. Housework remained stubbornly analogue.

El dawdled in the kitchen doorway.

‘I appreciate your tasks. It has taken a lot of hard work but I have finally turned you into a responsible human being. Of course, I worry that if I take my eyes off you, you will quickly
revert.’

The domestication of Nelson Millar was a significant victory in the life of Ellen Millar née Newland.

‘A woman hates to see a taskless man,’ I said, wiping down the surfaces. ‘I mean, a man going about his business with no regard to the tasks that need to be done… why,
it makes a woman’s palms itch!’

Such banter was a prelude to a more serious discussion. We laid down good humour in preparation for the conflict to come, much as you might put down newspaper for a puppy.

‘I’ve heard barely ten words out of you all week,’ said El.

‘I have a lot on.’

‘We are always busy. We have to talk about what we’re going to do about Monad.’

‘It’s unfair to confront me with a macrotask while I am multitasking on my microtasks. Perhaps we should schedule a meeting with the Monad board to give them a good talking to about
how they conduct their business. Yes. Put it on my task list.’

The sarcasm was tolerated. She turned away to answer Iona and the conversation rested there, to be taken up later in the bedroom, after the tasks had been attended to but not finished. No task
was ever finished: there were clean clothes drying in the hallway; half-completed application forms on the desk; party decorations from the previous year still hanging around; this was the
half-done, in-betweeness of domesticity, neither victory nor defeat, just an on-going obligation.

The bedroom was underground, an old coal cellar dug out and damp-proofed. At the bottom of the light well, two fingers of London jaundice. El undressed quickly in the cold room.

‘I don’t want to move to Liverpool,’ she said, slipping into bed with a brisk shiver.

‘You’re not moving to Liverpool,’ I replied. ‘I am.’

Instinctively, her hands covered her eyes.

‘I will be on my own during the week. We’re just about managing as it is. The tasks. More than that. Me… Iona… our life here.’

El curled up around her unspoken needs and clutched the duvet to her mouth. I would have to join up the dots of her ellipsis if I wished to discover the true shape of her feelings. About eighty
per cent of our conversations are about people who are not there at the time. I guess the remaining twenty per cent of meaningful face-to face, heart-to-heart stuff is mostly composed of the
charged syntax of silences.

Should I comfort or persuade El? I could not decide, and so withdrew into a silence of my own, an unfeeling silence. Her silence was suggestive, a finger on the lips, easy to break. My silence
began halfway down my throat. It seemed possible that I might never speak again. A decision was before me, one so intricate I could spend hours chasing down its corridors and staircases, its
turrets and tunnels.

After a month of research, I had discovered a fit model for Redtown, a dormitory suburb outside Liverpool called Maghull.

‘I want you and Morton Eakins to work on this,’ said Hermes.

I was shocked.

‘I don’t know anything about simulating towns.’

‘Who does?’ smiled Hermes.

‘You could ask town planners, psychologists, sociologists…’

‘They would give me reports, present options, display expertise. I don’t need that. I need to get it done. Quickly. We must start immediately. The crucial learnings come from the Red
Men project, not some pointy-headed social policy. You and Morton did good work with the red men. I don’t blame you for what happened to Harold Blasebalk.’

I was shocked. It had never occurred to me that I bore any responsibility for what happened in the graveyard, with the gun, the robot and the dead man.

‘I had nothing to do with that,’ I replied.

‘Even so,’ said Hermes. His implication was a hollow black orb into which I was expected to peer. It did not make pleasant viewing.

Hermes asked, ‘Have the police interviewed you about the murder yet?’

‘Yes. They came to my house. Raymond had been calling me in the days running up to the murder, but the calls were diverted.’

Hermes shook his head wearily.

‘It will be a difficult investigation. There is no real appetite within the police to dig into our business. They may accept a scapegoat. Raymond Chase was your friend. You were his
referee. We only hired him because of that recommendation. Even worse, you were overhead talking in an animated fashion to his girlfriend in the staff canteen on the day of the killing. Florence
has already gone, of course. The board is not forensic in its decision-making. We like to clean out the whole wound.’

‘This is insane. I had nothing to do with it.’

‘Even so.’

Again, the smooth, round silence.

‘The alternative to working on Redtown is to resign, of course, although that may be taken as an admission of guilt. Certainly, I would not be able to protect you if you left the company.
No, resignation would be a colossal mistake. Take this offer instead. Time away from the Wave will benefit you. Out of sight. Out of mind. If I was in your position, I would jump at the chance to
go to Liverpool.’

He spied my reluctance and diagnosed its cause.

‘Of course, you’ll struggle to sell this to your wife. Simply, she will have to accept that her needs must fit around our imperatives. This is a moral education for you, Nelson, a
chance to learn what success really involves. Building Redtown will demand sacrifices and not just from yourself. You will be working at a much higher level than previously. Results will be
expected. This is where we ask you to step up and actually achieve something. Do you know what it feels like to win a big one?’

I didn’t. My leaps for success had always ended in inglorious plummets. As I lay in bed, hunting my way through this big decision, anticipating what victory might feel like, El waited for
me to comfort her.

Let us be clear about this: I wanted the victory. My only experience of victory came after meaningless battles on the chessboard. Most weekends, my friends and I watched football just to taste
victory at one remove. Not yet corrupt enough for the triumphs of adultery, we played games like boys until dinner when each of us would return to their respective homes. Hermes’ opinion was
that this immaturity came from our domesticity, which suppressed the competitive instinct. Even though I was a husband and a father, true maturity – to Hermes – lay in sacrificing your
personal life to achieve a profitable one. Because he was the employer and I was the employee, I had to listen to his theories on these matters, and mostly I would faithfully record his words so
that I could parody them later for the entertainment of El. On this occasion I chose not to because that would set her face against Monad once and for all. Then there would no victory and no
defeat, just the long slow undulations of mediocrity.

I tried reasoning with my wife.

‘Liverpool is only a couple of hours away by train. I’ll be back all the time. And you can come and visit.’

‘A family should live together,’ replied El, and this was her closing statement on the matter. She refused to accept Monad’s hold over us. Stubbornly she hunkered down as power
strode by, hoping to hide from it, hoping that it would ignore us. I told her of Hermes’ insinuated threats, that I might be implicated in the investigation of Harold Blasebalk’s
death.

‘Just quit,’ she said.

‘They would make me the scapegoat,’ I replied.

El did not want to follow my argument and instead vaulted directly to her hurt.

‘Why do you want to leave us, Nelson? Why are you letting this happen?’

‘It’s temporary. In the grand scheme of our lives, it’s only six months.’

I could say no more. My silence was as broad as the course of a river.

When it was time to tell Iona that her father was going away, the plan was to do it together. But El stopped halfway down the stairs, suddenly overwhelmed with tears. One hand
gestured ahead to the child’s bedroom, the other suppressed her sobs. I went on alone. Iona was sitting in bed, dressed in her cotton nightie and reading a story. As she had not yet learnt to
read, this storytelling involved remembering and improvising a tale based on the pictures upon the page. I had tried to teach her to recognize a few words, with little success. Iona was convinced
this improvising was reading and did not need my help. She had inherited El’s stubbornness. As I waited for her to finish the story, I looked around the room, at the diminutive blue book
shelf with its dishevelled ranks, the red crate of soft toys, the diorama of knights and princesses and dragons poised mid-fight, the small plastic glass of water next to the bed, which she never
drank from but insisted upon nonetheless, because her father kept a pint glass of water next to his bed too.

Iona was becoming like me. Because she loved me. Because I was around. What would she learn from me? How to fit your desires around those of the world? I could teach her the manners of the
reality principle. Hold classes in how to respond to the fierce urgent will of the world with polite supplication. With her stubbornness, Iona was certainly born into the spirit of the age, the
Great Refusal. To some people, the Great Refusal was the stamping foot of a spoilt bourgeoisie; to others, it reclaimed the right to dream. Myself, I longed for it but had no faith in it. I had
tried defiance. It was futile. Of late, I had learnt the rewards of doing what I was told.

I sat on the edge of her bed, found Iona’s teddy tucked up in the bedclothes, and passed it over to her.

‘I am going away. I’ll not be around for a long time.’

‘Where will you be?’

‘Another city. I have to go there to do my job. When I am finished, I will come back.’

‘Why do you have to do your job?’

‘Because that’s how Mummy and Daddy get money, which we need for this house and for food and toys.’

‘And chocolate.’

‘That too, yes.’

She nodded, as if she understood. Iona liked to ask questions but was too young to understand the answers. Sometimes she would ask me how things get dead and give a considered nod at my answer,
as if she was content that finally all this mortality business had been cleared up for her. She was four years old. She didn’t have a clue. I did not press the point home. I kissed her warm,
tired cheeks good night and, looking back at her from the bedroom door, made a conscious effort to fix this moment in my memory.

I spent the next six months supervising the simulation of the citizens of Maghull. Monad set up an office between a disused library and the car park of the local supermarket, a
stack of prefabricated trailers for Morton, Dr Easy and me to work in. Monad used the Lockdown project management system which forbade team members from undertaking any activity outside of the
project. Only once we’d completed the initial burn-down list was I permitted a family visit.

The last item on the burn-down list was an upload interview with a Maghullian called Don Lunt. His charts did not promise an easy session. The scans were livid with aggressive tendencies. His
police record filled in the details. Two counts of actual bodily harm, one dogfighting misdemeanour and a fine for ‘watching and besetting’, which was an offence to do with aggressive
picketing.

Dr Easy sat in on the interview sessions, poised awkwardly on a small wooden chair. Whenever it spoke to me, it put its soft paw on my thigh, like I was a patient who needed comforting.

When he took his seat, Don Lunt shrugged to show that he was not intimidated by the robot. A grizzly bear in a Hawaiian shirt and leather jacket, the big man slumped down in the seat with his
legs parted, airing his crotch. He let out a big fat grin.

‘Do you have my money?’ he asked.

Lunt had logged three requests for advances on his fee. Dr Easy had predicted this would be his first question and so we had prepared an appropriate script.

‘Let me suggest a deal,’ I said. ‘I could give you five hundred now, with another grand on your completion of the course to our satisfaction. Then, we will give you a third and
final payment of five hundred when your simulation comes into being – effectively we would be advancing you out of that final chunk.’

Lunt scrutinized the ceiling tiles. The movement of his eyes, first upward, and then to the right, showed he was calculating, mentally allocating the money we had promised him. He maintained a
sullen noncommittal front, as civilians feel they must during negotiation.

‘That sounds on the right track.’ The access cue was the word ‘sounds’, indicating that his calculation was associated with his auditory faculties and that the decision
was being made on emotional grounds. He was pleased with himself for bullying some advantage out of us. The Cantor intelligence, eavesdropping on the interview from within the lumbering form of the
Dr Easy, would know for sure. Whereas I could only discern the broad themes of body language, Cantor’s experience, the trillions of interactions between humanity and its algorithms, the
thousands of men and women it had intimately counselled, their minds copied and bobbing upon the waves of its imagination, meant that it could hypothesize the character of a subject from a few
minor hand gestures.

Don Lunt finished his calculation and showed us how much we bored him by our presence.