Matt Haig - The Humans

‘You’re right but don’t you think there is something beautiful in these contradictions, something mysterious?’

‘No. No, I do not. What I think is that their violent will has helped them dominate the world, and “civilise” it, but now there is nowhere left for them to go, and so the human world has turned in on itself. It is a monster that feasts on its own hands. And still they do not see the monster, or if they do they do not see that they are inside it, molecules within the beast.’

I looked at the bookshelves. ‘Have you read human poetry? Humans understand these failings.’

He still wasn’t listening.

‘They have lost themselves but not their ambitions. Do not think that they would not leave this place if they had the chance. They’re beginning to realise life is out there, that we or beings like us, are out there, and they won’t just stop at that. They will want to explore, and as their mathematical understanding expands, then they will eventually be able to do so. They will find us, eventually, and when they do, they will not want to be friends, even if they think – as they always do – that their own ends are perfectly benevolent. They will find a reason to destroy or subjugate other life forms.’

A girl in a school uniform walked past the house. Pretty soon, Gulliver would be coming home.

‘But there is no connection between killing these people and stopping progress, I promise you. No connection.’

He stopped pacing the room and came over to me, leant into my face. ‘Connections? I will tell you about connections… An amateur German physicist works in a patent office in Bern in Switzerland. He comes up with a theory that, half a century later, will lead to whole Japanese cities being destroyed, along with much of their population. Husbands, wives, sons, daughters. He does not want that connection to form, but that does not stop it forming.’

‘You’re talking about something very different.’

‘No. No, I am not. This is a planet where a daydream can end in death, and where mathematicians can cause an apocalypse. That is my view of the humans. Is it any different from yours?’

‘Humans learn the errors of their ways though,’ I said, ‘and they care more for each other than you think.’

‘No. I know they care for each other when the other in question is like them, or lives under their roof, but any difference is a step further away from their empathy. They find it preposterously easy to fall out among themselves. Imagine what they would do to us, if they could.’

Of course, I had already imagined this and was scared of the answer. I was weakening. I felt tired and confused.

‘But we were sent here to kill them. What makes us any better?’

‘We act as a result of logic, of rational thinking. We are here to preserve, even to preserve the humans. Think about it. Progress is a very dangerous thing for them. The boy must be killed, even if the woman can be saved. The boy knows. You told us yourself.’

‘You are making a little mistake.’

‘What is my mistake?’

‘You cannot kill a mother’s son without killing the mother.’

‘You are speaking in riddles. You have become like them.’

I looked at the clock. It was half-past four. Gulliver would return home at any moment. I tried to think what to do. Maybe this other me, this ‘Jonathan’ was right. Well, there wasn’t really a maybe. He was right: the humans could not handle progress very well and they were not good at understanding their place in the world. They were, ultimately, a great danger to themselves and others.

So I nodded, and I walked over and sat on that purple sofa. I felt sober now, and fully conscious of my pain.

‘You are right,’ I said. ‘You are right. And I want to help you.’

‘I know you are right,’ I told him for the seventeenth time, looking straight into his eyes, ‘but I have been weak. I admit it to you now. I was and remain unable to harm any more humans, especially those ones I have lived with. But what you have said to me has reminded me of my original purpose. I am not able to fulfil that purpose and no longer have the gifts to do so, but equally I realise it has to be fulfilled, and so in a way I’m thankful you are here. I’ve been stupid. I’ve tried and I have failed.’

Jonathan sat back on the sofa and studied me. He stared at my bruises and sniffed the air between us. ‘You have been drinking alcohol.’

‘Yes. I have been corrupted. It is very easy, I find, when you live like a human, to develop some of their bad habits. I have drunk alcohol. I have had sex. I have smoked cigarettes. I have eaten peanut butter sandwiches and listened to their simple music. I have felt many of the crude pleasures that they can feel, as well as physical and emotional pain. But still, despite my corruption, there remains enough of me left, enough of my clear rational self, to know what has to be done.’

He watched me. He believed me, because every word I was speaking was the truth. ‘I am comforted to hear this.’

I didn’t waste a moment. ‘Now listen to me. Gulliver will return home soon. He won’t be on a car or a bike. He’ll be walking. He likes to walk. We will hear his feet on the gravel, and then we will hear his key in the door. Normally, he heads straight into the kitchen to get himself a drink or a bowl of cereal. He eats around three bowls of cereal a day. Anyway, that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he will most likely enter the kitchen first.’

Jonathan was paying close attention to everything I was telling him. It felt strange, terrible even, giving him this information, but I really couldn’t think of any other way.

‘You want to act fast,’ I said, ‘as his mother will be home soon. Also, there’s a chance he may be surprised to see you. You see, his mother has thrown me out of the house because I was unfaithful to her. Or rather the faith I had wasn’t the right kind. Given the absence of mind-reading technology, humans believe monogamy is possible. Another fact to consider is that Gulliver has, quite independently, attempted to take his own life before. So, I suggest that however you choose to kill him it would be a good idea to make it look like suicide. Maybe after his heart has stopped, you could slice one of his wrists, cutting through the veins. That way, less suspicion will be aroused.’

Jonathan nodded, then looked around the room. At the television, the history books, the armchair, the framed art prints on the wall, the telephone in its cradle.

‘It will be a good idea to have the television on,’ I told him, ‘even if you are not in this room. Because I always watch the news and leave it on.’

He switched on the television.

We sat and watched footage of war in the Middle East, without saying a word. But then he heard something that I couldn’t, his senses being so much sharper.

‘Footsteps,’ he said. ‘On the gravel.’

‘He’s here,’ I said. ‘Go to the kitchen. I’ll hide.’

I waited in the sitting room. The door was closed. There would be no reason for Gulliver to enter here. Unlike the living room he hardly ever came into this room. I don’t think I’d ever heard him do so.

So I stayed there, still and quiet, as the front door opened, then closed. He was unmoving, in the hallway. No footsteps.

‘Hello?’

Then a response. My voice but not my voice, coming from the kitchen. ‘Hello, Gulliver.’

‘What are you doing here? Mum said you’d gone. She phoned me, said you’d had an argument.’

I heard him – me, Andrew, Jonathan – respond in measured words. ‘That is right. We did. We had an argument. Don’t worry, it wasn’t too serious.’