Matt Haig - The Humans

Hope.

‘Gulliver, Gulliver, Gulliver—’

Another pulse.

Stronger.

A defiant drumbeat of life. A back-beat, waiting for melody.

Duh-dum .

And again, and again, and again.

He was alive. His lips twitched, his bruised eyes moved like an egg about to hatch. One opened. So did the other. It was the eyes, on Earth, that mattered. You saw the person, and the life inside them, if you saw the eyes. And I saw him, this messed-up, sensitive boy and felt, for a moment, the exhausted wonder of a father. It should have been a moment to savour, but it wasn’t. I was being flooded with pain, and violet.

I could feel myself about to collapse on to the glossy wet ground.

Footsteps behind me. And that was the last thing I heard before the darkness arrived to make its claim, along with remembered poetry, as Emily Dickinson shyly came towards me through the violet and whispered in my ear.

I was back at home, on Vonnadoria, and it was exactly how it had always been. And I was exactly how I had always been, among them, the hosts, feeling no pain and no fear.

Our beautiful, warless world, where I could be entranced by the purest mathematics for all eternity.

Any human who arrived here, gazing at our violet landscapes, might well have believed they had entered Heaven

But what happened in Heaven?

What did you do there?

After a while, didn’t you crave flaws? Love and lust and misunderstandings, and maybe even a little violence to liven things up? Didn’t light need shade? Didn’t it? Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I was missing the point. Maybe the point was to exist with an absence of pain. Yes, to exist with an absence of pain. Yes, maybe that was the only aim you needed in life. It certainly had been, but what happened if you’d never required that aim because you were born after that goal had been met? I was younger than the hosts. I did not share their appreciation of just how lucky I was. Not any more. Not even in a dream.

I woke up.

On Earth.

But I was so weak I was returning to my original state. I had heard about this. Indeed, I had swallowed a word capsule about it. Rather than allow you to die your body would return to its original state, because the amount of extra energy deployed to be someone else would more usefully serve to preserve your life. And that was all the gifts were there for, really. Self-preservation. The protection of eternity.

Which was fine, in theory. In theory, it was a great idea. But the only problem was that this was Earth. And my original state wasn’t equipped for the air here, or the gravity, or the face-to-face contact. I didn’t want Isobel to see me. It just could not happen.

And so, as soon as I felt my atoms itch and tingle, warm and shift, I told Isobel to do what she was already doing: looking after Gulliver.

And as she crouched down, with her back to me, I got to my feet, which at this point were recognisably human-shaped. Then I shifted myself – midway between two contrasting forms – across the back garden. Luckily the garden was large and dark, with lots of flowers and shrubs and trees to hide behind. So I did. I hid among the beautiful flowers. And I saw Isobel looking around, even as she was calling for an ambulance for Gulliver.

‘Andrew!’ she said at one point, as Gulliver got to his feet.

She even ran into the garden to have a look. But I stayed still.

‘Where have you disappeared to?’

My lungs began to burn. I needed more nitrogen.

It would have taken only one word in my native tongue. Home . The one the hosts were primed to hear, and I would be back there. So why didn’t I say it? Because I hadn’t finished my task? No. It wasn’t that. I was never going to finish my task. That was the education this night had brought me. So why? Why was I choosing risk and pain over their opposites? What had happened to me? What was wrong?

Newton, now, came out into the garden. He trotted along, sniffing the plants and flowers until he sensed me standing there. I expected him to bark and draw attention, but he didn’t. He just stared at me, his eyes shining blank circles, and seemed to know exactly who it was, standing behind the juniper bushes. But he stayed quiet.

He was a good dog.

And I loved him.

I can’t do it.

We know.

There is no point in doing it anyway.

There is every point.

I don’t believe Isobel and Gulliver should be harmed.

We believe you have been corrupted.

I haven’t. I have gained more knowledge. That is all that has happened.

No. You have been infected by them.

Infected? Infected? With what?

With emotion.

No. I haven’t. That is not true.

It is true.

Listen, emotions have a logic. Without emotions humans wouldn’t care for each other, and if they didn’t care for each other the species would have died out. To care for others is self-preservation. You care for someone and they care for you.

You are speaking like one of them. You are not a human. You are one of us. We are one.

I know I am not a human.

We think you need to come home .

No.

You must come home.

I never had a family.

We are your family.

No. It isn’t the same.

We want you home.

I have to ask to come home and I am not going to. You can interfere with my mind but you can’t control it.

We will see.

The next day we were in the living room. Me and Isobel. Newton was upstairs with Gulliver, who was now asleep. We had checked on him but Newton was staying there, on guard.

‘How are you?’ asked Isobel.

‘It was not death,’ I said. ‘For I stood up.’

‘You saved his life,’ said Isobel.

‘I don’t think so. I didn’t even have to do CPR. The doctor said he had very minor injuries.’

‘I don’t care what the doctor says. He jumped from the roof. That could have killed him. Why didn’t you shout for me?’

‘I did.’ It was a lie, obviously, but the whole framework was a lie. The belief that I was her husband. It was all fiction. ‘I did shout for you.’

‘You could have killed yourself.’

(I have to admit that humans waste a lot of their time – almost all of it – with hypothetical stuff. I could be rich. I could be famous. I could have been hit by that bus. I could have been born with fewer moles and bigger breasts. I could have spent more of my youth learning foreign languages. They must exercise the conditional tense more than any other known life form.) ‘But I didn’t kill myself. I am alive. Let’s concentrate on that.’

‘What happened to your tablets? They were in the cupboard.’

‘I threw them away.’ This was a lie, obviously. The unclear thing was who I was protecting? Isobel? Gulliver? Myself?

‘Why? Why would you throw them away?’

‘I didn’t think it was a good idea, to have them lying around. You know, given his condition.’

‘But they’re diazepam. That’s valium. You can’t overdose on valium, you’d need a thousand.’

‘No. I know that.’ I was drinking a cup of tea. I actually enjoyed tea. It was so much better than coffee. It tasted like comfort.

Isobel nodded. She too was drinking tea. The tea seemed to be making things better. It was a hot drink made of leaves, used in times of crisis as a means of restoring normality.