Matt Haig - The Humans

If you failed one test, there was a test to see why. I suppose they loved tests so much because they believed in free will.

Ha!

Humans, I was discovering, believed they were in control of their own lives, and so they were in awe of questions and tests, as these made them feel like they had a certain mastery over other people, who had failed in their choices, and who had not worked hard enough on the right answers. And by the end of the last failed test many were sat, as I was soon sat, in a mental hospital, swallowing a mind-blanking pill called diazepam, and placed in another empty room full of right angles. Only this time, I was also inhaling the distressing scent of the hydrogen chloride they used to annihilate bacteria.

My task was going to be easy, I decided, in that room. The meat of it, I mean. And the reason it was going to be easy was that I had the same sense of indifference towards them as they had towards single-celled organisms. I could wipe a few of them out, no problem, and for a greater cause than hygiene. But what I didn’t realise was that when it came to that sneaking, camouflaged, untouchable giant known as the Future, I was as vulnerable as anyone.

Humans, as a rule, don’t like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode.

Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.

After a while, my wife came to visit. Isobel Martin, in person. Author of The Dark Ages . I wanted to be repulsed by her, as that would make everything easier. I wanted to be horrified and, of course, I was, because the whole species was horrific to me. On that first encounter I thought she was hideous. I was frightened of her. I was frightened of everything here, now. It was an undeniable truth. To be on Earth was to be frightened. I was even frightened by the sight of my own hands. But anyway, Isobel. When I first saw her I saw nothing but a few trillion poorly arranged, mediocre cells. She had a pale face and tired eyes and a narrow, but still protruding nose . There was something very poised and upright about her, something very contained. She seemed, even more than most, to be holding something back. My mouth dried just looking at her. I suppose if there was a challenge with this particular human it was that I was meant to know her very well, and also that I was going to be spending more time with her, to glean the information I needed, before doing what I had to do.

She came to see me in my room, while a nurse watched. It was, of course, another test. Everything in human life was a test. That was why they all looked so stressed out.

I was dreading her hugging me, or kissing me, or blowing air into my ear or any of those other human things the magazine had told me about, but she didn’t. She didn’t even seem to want to do that. What she wanted to do was sit there and stare at me, as if I were the cubic root of 912,673 and she was trying to work me out. And indeed, I tried very hard to act as harmoniously as that. The indestructible ninety-seven. My favourite prime.

Isobel smiled and nodded at the nurse, but when she sat down and faced me I realised she was exhibiting a few universal signs of fear – tight facial muscles, dilated pupils, fast breathing. I paid special attention to her hair now. She had dark hair growing out of the top and rear of her head which extended to just above her shoulders where it halted abruptly to form a straight horizontal line. This was known as a ‘bob’. She sat tall in her chair with a straight back, and her neck was long, as if her head had fallen out with her body and wanted nothing more to do with it. I would later discover that she was forty-one and had an appearance which passed for beautiful, or at least plainly beautiful, on this planet. But right then she had just another human face. And human faces were the last of the human codes that I would learn.

She inhaled. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t remember a lot of things. My mind is a little bit scrambled, especially about this morning. Listen, has anyone been to my office? Since yesterday?’

This confused her. ‘I don’t know. How would I know that? I doubt very much they’ll be in at the weekend. And anyway you’re the only one who has the keys. Please, Andrew, what happened? Have you suffered an accident? Have they tested you for amnesia? Why were you out of the house at that time? Tell me what you were doing. I woke up and you weren’t there.’

‘I just needed to get out. That is all. I needed to be outside.’

She was agitated now. ‘I was thinking all sorts of things. I checked the whole house, but there was no sign of you. And the car was still there, and your bike, and you weren’t picking up your phone, and it was three in the morning, Andrew. Three in the morning.’

I nodded. She wanted answers, but I only had questions, ‘Where is our son? Gulliver? Why is he not with you?’

This answer confused her even more. ‘He’s at my mother’s,’ she said. ‘I could hardly bring him here. He’s very upset. After everything else this is, you know, hard for him.’

Nothing she was telling me was information I needed. So I decided to be more direct. ‘Do you know what I did yesterday? Do you know what I achieved while I was at work?’

I knew that however she answered this, the truth remained the same. I would have to kill her. Not then. Not there. But somewhere, and soon. Still I had to know what she knew. Or what she might have said to others.

The nurse wrote something down at this point.

Isobel ignored my question and leant in closer towards me, lowering her voice. ‘They think you have suffered a mental breakdown. They don’t call it that, of course. But that is what they think. I’ve been asked lots of questions. It was like facing the Grand Inquisitor.’

‘That’s all there is around here, isn’t it? Questions.’

I braved another glance at her face and gave her more questions. ‘Why did we get married? What is the point of it? What are the rules involved?’

Certain enquiries, even on a planet designed for questions, go unheard.

‘Andrew, I’ve been telling you for weeks – months – that you need to slow down. You’ve been overdoing it. Your hours have been ridiculous. You’ve been truly burning the candle. Something had to give. But even so, this was so sudden. There were no warning signs. I just want to know what triggered it all. Was it me? What was it? I’m worried about you.’

I tried to come up with a valid explanation. ‘I suppose I just must have forgotten the importance of wearing clothes. That is, the importance of acting the way I was supposed to act. I don’t know. I must have just forgotten how to be a human. It can happen, can’t it? Things can be forgotten sometimes?’

Isobel held my hand. The glabrous under-portion of her thumb stroked my skin. This unnerved me even more. I wondered why she was touching me. A policeman grips an arm to take you somewhere, but why does a wife stroke your hand? What was the purpose? Did it have something to do with love? I stared at the small glistening diamond on her ring.

‘It’s going to be all right, Andrew. This is just a blip. I promise you. You’ll be right as rain soon.’