Matt Haig - The Humans

‘Yes. There are. Because, you know, there’s this new groundbreaking and controversial theory that money can’t buy you happiness.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

She laughed again. She was trying to be funny, I think, so I laughed, too.

‘So, no one has solved the Riemann hypothesis?’

‘What? Since yesterday?’

‘Since, well, ever?’

‘No. No one has solved it. There was a false alarm, a few years back. Someone from France. But no. The money is still there.’

‘So, that is why he… why I… this is what motivates me, money?’

She was now arranging socks on the bed, in pairs. It was a terrible system she had developed. ‘Not just that,’ she went on. ‘Glory is what motivates you. Ego. You want your name everywhere. Andrew Martin. Andrew Martin. Andrew Martin. You want to be on every Wikipedia page going. You want to be an Einstein. The trouble is, Andrew, you’re still two years old.’

This confused me. ‘I am? How is that possible?’

‘Your mother never gave you the love you needed. You will for ever be sucking at a nipple that offers no milk. You want the world to know you. You want to be a great man.’

She said this in quite a cool tone. I wondered if this was how people always talked to each other, or if it was just unique to spouses. I heard a key enter a lock.

Isobel looked at me with wide, astonished eyes. ‘ Gulliver .’

Gulliver’s room was at the top of the house. The ‘attic’. The last stop before the thermosphere. He went straight there, his feet passing the bedroom I was in, with only the slightest pause before climbing the final set of stairs.

While Isobel went out to walk the dog I decided to phone the number on the piece of paper in my pocket. Maybe it was Daniel Russell’s number.

‘Hello,’ came a voice. Female. ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is Professor Andrew Martin,’ I said.

The female laughed. ‘Well hello, Professor Andrew Martin.’

‘Who are you? Do you know me?’

‘You’re on YouTube. Everyone knows you now. You’ve gone viral. The Naked Professor.’

‘Oh.’

‘Hey, don’t worry about it. Everyone loves an exhibitionist.’ She spoke slowly, lingering on words as if each one had a taste she didn’t want to lose.

‘Please, how do I know you?’

The question was never answered, because at that precise moment Gulliver walked into the room and I switched off the phone.

Gulliver. My ‘son’. The dark-haired boy I had seen in the photographs. He looked as I had expected, but maybe taller. He was nearly as tall as me. His eyes were shaded by his hair. (Hair, by the way, is very important here. Not as important as clothes obviously, but getting there. To humans, hair is more than just a filamentous biomaterial that happens to grow out of their heads. It carries all kinds of social signifiers, most of which I couldn’t translate.) His clothes were as black as space and his T-shirt had the words ‘Dark Matter’ on them. Maybe this was how certain people communicated, via the slogans on their T-shirts. He wore ‘wristbands’. His hands were in his pockets and he seemed uncomfortable looking at my face. (The feeling, then, was mutual.) His voice was low. Or at least low by human standards. About the same depth as a Vonnadorian humming plant. He came and sat on the bed and tried to be nice, at the start, but then at one point he switched to a higher frequency.

‘Dad, why did you do it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘School is going to be hell now.’

‘Oh.’

‘Is that all you can say? “Oh?” Are you serious? Is that fucking it ?’

‘No. Yes. I, I fucking don’t fucking know, Gulliver.’

‘Well, you’ve destroyed my life. I’m a joke. It was bad before. Ever since I started there. But now—’

I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about Daniel Russell, and how I desperately needed to phone him. Gulliver noticed I wasn’t paying attention.

‘It doesn’t even matter. You never want to talk to me, apart from last night.’

Gulliver left the room. He slammed the door, and let out a kind of growl. He was fifteen years old. This meant he belonged to a special sub-category of human called a ‘teenager’, the chief characteristics of which were a weakened resistance to gravity, a vocabulary of grunts, a lack of spatial awareness, copious amounts of masturbation, and an unending appetite for cereal.

Last night .

I got out of bed and headed upstairs to the attic. I knocked on his door. There was no reply but I opened it anyway.

Inside, the environment was one of prevailing dark. There were posters for musicians. Thermostat, Skrillex, The Fetid, Mother Night, and the Dark Matter his T-shirt referenced. There was a window sloped in line with the ceiling, but the blind was drawn. There was a book on the bed. It was called Ham on Rye , by Charles Bukowski. There were clothes on the floor. Together, the room was a data cloud of despair. I sensed he wanted to be put out of his misery, one way or another. That would come, of course, but first there would be a few more questions.

He didn’t hear me enter owing to the audio transmitter he had plugged into his ears. Nor did he see me, as he was too busy staring at his computer. On the screen, there was a still-motion image of myself naked, walking past one of the university buildings. There was also some writing on the screen. At the top were the words ‘Gulliver Martin, You Must Be So Proud’.

Underneath, there were lots of comments. A typical example read, ‘HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! Oh almost forgot – HA!’ I read the name next to that particular post.

‘Who is Theo “The Fucking Business” Clarke?’ Gulliver jumped at my voice and turned around. I asked my question again but didn’t receive an answer.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, purely for research purposes.

‘Just go away.’

‘I want to talk to you. I want to talk about last night.’

He turned his back to me. His torso stiffened. ‘Go away, Dad.’

‘No. I want to know what I said to you.’

He sprang out of his chair and, as the humans say, stormed over to me. ‘Just leave me alone, okay? You’ve never been interested in a single thing about my life so don’t start now. Why fucking start now?’

I watched the back of him in the small, circular mirror staring out from the wall like a dull and unblinking eye.

After some aggressive pacing he sat back in his chair, turned to his computer again, and pressed his finger on an odd-looking command device.

‘I need to know something,’ I said. ‘I need to know if you know what I was doing. Last week at work?’

‘Dad, just—’

‘Listen, this is important. Were you still up when I came home? You know, last night? Were you in the house? Were you awake?’

He mumbled something. I didn’t hear what. Only an ipsoid would have heard it.

‘Gulliver, how are you at mathematics?’

‘You know how I fucking am at maths.’

‘Fucking no, I don’t. Not now. That is why I am fucking asking. Tell me what you fucking know.’

Nothing. I thought I was using his language, but Gulliver just sat there, staring away from me, with his right leg jerking up and down in slight but rapid movements. My words were having no effect. I thought of the audio transmitter he still had in one ear. Maybe it was sending radio signals. I waited a little while longer and sensed it was time to leave. But as I headed for the door he said, ‘Yeah. I was up. You told me.’

My heart raced. ‘What? What did I tell you?’

‘About you being the saviour of the human race or something.’