Luckily for me, technology has produced a solution to my periodic cigarette-envy; the mobile phone. There’s no better way to appear busily self-absorbed as you while away the time, waiting for someone to arrive. What’s more, experts tell us that, just like cigarettes, mobile phones may even give you cancer.
On this particular occasion, however, I had been fiddling around with my mobile for longer than was desirable. I was sitting on a park bench trying to ignore a group of drunks on the bench opposite. Every couple of minutes, one of them would shout “does anyone know what time it is?” For some unfathomable reason, this would trigger a burst of raucous laughter from the rest of the group, as if it was the funniest thing anyone had said to them in years.
I continued to toy with the menu buttons on the phone in the forlorn hope that I would eventually discover some previously hidden functionality, such as the ability to fire a paralysing beam of energy at the drunks, leaving them frozen in mid-guffaw. When mobile phones first came out, it struck me that part of their appeal had to do with the fact that they were rather large and heavy. I imagined that wandering around with one must have felt like having a gun in the inside pocket of your jacket, allowing the owner to indulge in any number of fantasies derived from Hollywood action movies. But now that mobiles had become lighter and more compact, they were better suited to more futuristic fantasies. It was as if the handset itself had become a mere anticipation of some more sophisticated, as yet uninvented device.
I had only ever handled a gun once, when a friend of mine had shown me a World War Two pistol he had acquired. It was much heavier than I had expected. There was something crude about it which repelled me. Besides the extra weight, the gun felt cold and hard in comparison with the shiny plastic of my mobile. It didn’t seem to have enough buttons or switches to allow it to be controlled in a precise manner. In theory, the hand-eye co-ordination required to use it ought to be similar to the skills needed to play a video game. But holding the gun in my hand, I felt that the two could not be more different. A video game could be played on a whim; it wasn’t serious. But a gun was deadly serious. Its use required genuine resolve.
At that moment, I felt something tubular and hard poke into my back. A high pitched voice said:
“Hands up mister. On your feet. Turn around slowly. No fast moves.”
I did as the voice asked and saw a small blond-haired boy, of maybe about eight or nine, pointing a toy pistol at me. Kay was standing behind him. She was wearing jeans and a red coat. The wind blew her long, fair hair across her face. As she brushed it away, I noticed that she was wearing a small amount of make-up, just enough to accentuate her dark eye lashes and high cheekbones. I stopped myself staring at her by taking off my glasses and pretending to give them a clean. Kay became a blur.
I heard her say: “Alright Jonah, that’s enough. Now, why don’t you go down to the shops? I’ll meet you back here.”
“Can I rent a game from the video shop? You promised!”
“OK. But not any of the really expensive ones. And that’ll be your last one this week. No more games after today.”
“Can I shoot him first?”
“Well, if you must. But please get on with it.”
“Do I have any say in this?” I asked, appealing to both of them.
“Phut!” said Jonah.
“Phut?” I repeated. “What sort of a gun noise is that?”
“It’s got a silencer on it, stupid,” said Jonah disgustedly, pointing at the fat, elongated barrel of the pistol. “Guns with silencers go Phut! Everyone knows that. If it went bang really loudly then everyone would hear and I wouldn’t be able to make a clean getaway.”
“I see.” I turned to look at Kay. She seemed to be used to this sort of thing.
“I’ve just shot you in the head,” Jonah added, impatiently.
“Oh right, I suppose I’d better slump lifelessly against this bench then,” I said, moving to sit down.
“You don’t have to be dead,” said Jonah, relenting now that I seemed to be playing the game. “I don’t always shoot to kill. You could just be paralysed or something. Mum could bandage the wound.”
“Or perhaps you could just come back later when your aim’s a bit better and put Miles out of his misery,” said Kay. “Anyway, hadn’t you better leave the scene of the crime? He’s sure to be bleeding all over the place and there are rather a lot of witnesses around.”
“I suppose so,” said Jonah. “But it’ll only attract attention if I run off. It’s better to look casual, as if nothing’s happened.”
“Jonah, just go to the shops!”
“Oh, alright.” He started to head off and then hesitated.
“I just want to ask Mr Jensen a question.” Before Kay could object, he turned to me and said: “Have you seen my Dad? Mum said he was friends with you. ”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t seen him. Well, not recently.” I hadn’t seen or heard from Pete since the night of our argument, which was months ago. Kay looked away, as if she regretted having spoken to him so sharply. “But if I do see him,” I added, “I’ll tell him you were asking about him.”
“Yeah. OK,” said Jonah, sounding disappointed. He shrugged and then walked off down the path, occasionally picking off small dogs and their owners as they passed him.
“I’m sorry,” said Kay. “He was supposed to be going round to a friend’s house to play, but he insisted on coming so he could rent some new computer game they’ve got in.”
“That’s alright. I thought kids were meant to grow up wanting to be train drivers or astronauts, not hit men.”
“Well, at the least the hit man thing gets him out of the house. He spends most of his time holed up in his bedroom playing video games.”
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Oh, he’ll be eleven next birthday, as he insists on telling everyone.”
This was the first time I had met Jonah. I was pleased that Kay had felt able to bring him along. I interpreted it as a sign that she had confidence in me. But was it confidence in me as a friend - or as something more than that? Occasionally, I thought I had picked up hints that Kay saw me as a possible replacement for Pete, only to decide on reflection that I was probably reading too much into a chance remark – or the fact that she happened to be wearing make-up. And even if she did see me as more than a friend, was that really what I wanted? The existence of Jonah meant that it would be a much bigger commitment. Taking on someone else’s child was not something which had figured in my projections of how my life would turn out.
We had been meeting up like this for about six weeks now. It had all started about a month after my argument with Pete. Kay had phoned me to ask if I knew where Pete was. I said I hadn’t seen him for a while. She asked if I had an address or phone number for him. Feeling that I was somehow missing the point, I said, rather bluntly: “Well, I thought he lived with you.” Kay was then forced to explain that in fact, Pete had moved out several weeks before – and no one had heard from him since.
I felt a mixture of elation and dread. Elation because this first contact with Kay was just the opportunity I had been hoping for - but dread because I sensed that this was a crucial moment and I realised that I had no idea what to say or do. I didn’t want to blow my chances by saying the wrong thing. We exchanged a few pleasantries. But then the conversation began to stall. It was years since we had spoken. Our ignorance about each others’ lives made it difficult to say anything which didn’t carry a risk of being interpreted as stupid or insensitive. More in desperation than in hope, I suggested, as casually as I could, that we meet for a drink – just to catch up on things.
Our first meeting was awkward to begin with. Kay seemed almost as nervous as I was. She was reticent about the reasons why Pete had moved out. He had not been in touch since, which was why she had phoned me. Eventually, she had reported him as missing to the police. They had been sympathetic and had taken down Pete’s details, but said there wasn’t much they could do about people who didn’t want to be found. Kay, meanwhile, was convinced that Jonah blamed her for Pete’s departure, and the fact that Pete hadn’t been in touch only made things worse.
I suggested that perhaps she was being too hard on herself. But she insisted that she was to blame for the way things had turned out. She seemed in two minds about whether to confide in me. “Maybe we should talk about something else,” I suggested.
“No, it’s all right,” she said. “I may as well put you in the picture. After all, he’s your friend as well as my husband.
“About six months ago, I had an affair with my boss at work. He’d made no secret of the fact that he fancied me. It had been obvious ever since he moved to the department. He didn’t put any pressure on me. He just made it obvious that the opportunity was there if I wanted it. I should really have put a stop to it there and then, but it was flattering to have the attention. Pete had got more and more engrossed in his work. It became an obsession. He didn’t seem to have time for anything else. I felt as if I was a long way down his list of priorities.
“Anyway, Alan - my boss, that is - invited me for a drink after work one evening and things sort of went on from there. I knew it was stupid. I tried to tell myself that it would be nothing more than a brief fling. The guy was married, after all. And in the end, that’s all it was - a brief fling. It went on for about four months. I shouldn’t really have been surprised when he told me it was over. But by that time, things were even worse at home. So one day, a couple of weeks after it was over, I told Pete what had happened. I thought it would shock him into doing something about our relationship. But he didn’t react at all. He just nodded and carried on staring into space. It was like he had something else more important on his mind. So then I started yelling at him but he still wouldn’t respond. He just sat there, taking it, which made me even more angry. It was weird because we’d had rows before and he’d never acted like that.
“My God, you must think I’m an awful cliché. I mean, having an affair with your boss, it’s hardly original, is it? I didn’t even enjoy it most of the time. It was OK for a week or two, when it was all new and exciting, in an illicit sort of a way. But after that, it just felt sordid. I re-read all the novels I could think of which dealt with adulterous relationships. I had this crazy idea that they would somehow work as self-help manuals. But they just made me feel worse. The only comfort was that the adulterous characters always seemed to feel equally shitty about the whole thing.
“At one point, I started to worry that Pete had begun to suspect something because I had left all these books lying around. After he didn’t react when I told him all about it, the same thought went through my head again - maybe he already suspected it, so that’s why he didn’t seem shocked or angry. But then I decided that couldn’t be it. I mean, you know what he’s like – he only reads about three novels a year. He was never going to be much of a literary Sherlock Holmes. So there had to be another explanation.” She paused and then asked: “Did Pete ever talk to you about E-Gnosis?”
“No,” I said. “At least, I don’t remember him ever talking about it. What is it?” I thought it sounded like some kind of software.
“It’s a cult.” said Kay. “Well, they would hate to be called a cult, or even a religion. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s what they are. They believe that we’re about to reach a turning point in human history. They call it the Singularity. It’s all to do with technological progress getting faster and faster until suddenly - wham! There’s going to be this amazing transformation where the human race evolves into some kind of cosmic super-intelligence.” She rolled her eyes. “Sounds pretty crazy, I know. But the point is, they think this is going to happen really soon - within the next fifty years at the latest. So you can see the attraction of it for someone who’s as technology-fixated as Pete.
“I don’t know exactly how he got involved with them. I think he found them on the internet. They have a website which tells you all about what they believe in. It also has this software on it that you can download. That’s the thing that frightened me most. I got home from work one day and found Pete just staring at this pattern on his computer screen. It was as if he was mesmerised by it. I thought it was a screensaver at first, because it was just a pattern of swirling, multi-coloured dots, a bit like you get when a TV hasn’t been tuned to the right channel. I said ‘hello’ but he didn’t react. I had to go over and shake him hard before he snapped out of it. Afterwards he tried to convince me that it was some harmless meditation aid. But if you ask me, there was something far more sinister about the whole thing. It was like he’d had a complete change of personality. He couldn’t be trusted any more to do things like the shopping or picking up Jonah from school. He’d lost his sense of humour. And all he would talk about was this Singularity thing and all these other weird ideas he’d picked up. I mean, I was used to him coming out with some pretty strange ideas for all those magazines he writes for, but he didn’t go on about them all the time. This was something different though. It was taking over his whole life.
“The final straw was when he started trying to convert Jonah. He’d been filling the poor kid’s head with some bizarre theory about the future evolution of the human race. It was something to do with how everyone was going to be absorbed into a giant network of computers. So that’s when I told him he had to go. I wasn’t going to have him trying to brainwash Jonah with his crackpot ideas.”
I had forgotten how utterly ruthless Kay could be when she felt the situation demanded it. This was exactly how she had behaved towards me all those years ago. She had decided it was over and that had been that. We hadn’t spoken until now. I had found it difficult to understand how she could suddenly cut off all ties, without ever really saying goodbye or giving me a proper explanation.
For once, I was tempted to take Pete’s side, but thought better of it. Then I remembered something she had said at the beginning of our meeting, which suggested that in this case she didn’t see things as being quite so black and white.
“But I still don’t understand why you think it was all your fault,” I said.
She sighed. “Because I should have noticed what was happening to Pete earlier. I was too busy having an idiotic affair. And because I started him off down this road in the first place. I was the one who sent him to talk to you. That was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” I said, feeling slightly aggrieved. “Why? I thought I did rather a good job of encouraging him - you know, to start writing stuff and sending it to publishers. I mean, it’s not as if he hasn’t been successful. I thought that’s what you wanted me to do.”
Kay smiled ruefully. “Well, no, not really. It certainly wasn’t what I had in mind, at any rate. I was hoping you would give him a healthy dose of cynicism and he would come home cured. But no - you had to go and fire him up with enthusiasm!”
It had never occurred to me that Kay had sent Pete to see me precisely because she did not support what he was proposing to do.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling rather stupid. “I hadn’t realised.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not angry with you,” she said, still smiling. “I was trying to be too clever. Besides, he’d probably have gone ahead and written all those articles anyway, with or without your encouragement.” She paused and then said; “Do you know why I married him?” This was clearly a rhetorical question, which was fortunate, because I had no idea how to answer it. I would never have posed that kind of question or talked so openly about my private life with someone I hadn’t spoken to in years. I would have felt awkward and embarrassed, which would have made the person I was talking to feel the same way. This in turn would have increased my own sense of embarrassment, and so it would have gone on in a farcical downward spiral of awkwardness - until one of us could bear it no longer and would probably find an excuse to leave. But Kay seemed perfectly at ease talking openly about herself. This was how it had been when I first met her. She had confided things to me that I would never have expected a person who I had only just met to reveal. She never seemed to expect the same thing in return. She just seemed to want someone to listen.
I shrugged in response to her question, but tried not to appear too nonchalant about it. The movement was intended to convey the impression that I was relaxed about whatever she was about to come out with - even though I had a feeling that she was about to say something which would make me feel distinctly uncomfortable.
“I think it’s because back then, I really needed someone to believe in me. I know everyone thinks I’m a pretty confident, up-front sort of person, but that’s not the way I really feel. And back then, Pete believed in me, he really did. It’s hard to explain. You were the opposite - you always seemed so self-contained, almost aloof from things. It was almost like you didn’t need anyone else. You didn’t even seem to need to believe in anything. Don’t get me wrong - that was what I liked about you. Pete could be quite intense and it was a relief to be with someone who wasn’t so demanding. Still is, in fact.”
She paused and smiled at me again. I wanted to ask her: “So why did you go back to him? Was it a mistake? And what about now? Which one of us would you choose now?” But the questions were too blunt, too loaded with resentment about the past. I didn’t want to risk spoiling our rapprochement.
“Anyway,” she continued, “that’s why I sent him to see you when he started to become obsessed with all this technology stuff. I thought you would be the antidote - that you would make him see that it was all a dream and that he wasn’t going to get anywhere with it. Because if that happened, then I was confident I could make him believe in me again. But when he came back that first evening, I should have realised that I’d lost him. He already had that look in his eye, as if his mind was on higher things.”
I didn’t say anything.
Kay seemed to think I had taken offence, when in fact, I was just thinking that what she had said about me was largely true. “Hey, I’m sorry,” she said, “I wasn’t getting at you. I don’t think you really are aloof, not deep down – it’s just how you seem a lot of the time, on the surface.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, without much conviction.
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