Paul Braddon: The Actuality

‘They’re suspicious of Evie,’ Daniels replies.

‘What do you mean?’

‘How she fits in. Her relationship to you. Who she is… and maybe even… what she is.’

Evie is listening hard, but still not understanding. Why should it matter ‘what’ she is?

‘I told them that she is my niece, didn’t I?’

‘Yep,’ Daniels replies. ‘But it’s an explanation that’ll fall apart quicker than a cardboard shoe in a puddle of acid rain if checked out.’

‘And will they? Check it out?’

‘I don’t trust them. You may not have seen it from where you sat but while the woman plied her with all her fool questions, the man watched from the corner of his eye, cool as a cucumber, assessing her every move.’

Evie breathes in quickly; she had sensed that too but taken it to be her paranoia. Ostensibly, the man had sat there uncouthly scraping his nails.

‘You make it sound like she was conducting some sort of Turing test.’ He seems to find this old-fashioned notion amusing. ‘But even if they do discover the truth, what really is the problem?’

‘Apart from the fact that you’ve been breaking the law!’

Evie isn’t used to hearing Daniels talk to her husband in anything other than deferential terms and his words and tone now shock her. Intrigued and increasingly scared, she slowly parts the stiff shrivelled fronds, to improve her view. She’d hoped with the police’s departure all this was going to be over.

‘Then it is the law that is wrong,’ Matthew mutters.

‘But it doesn’t stop it from being the law and having been so since twenty-one-ten.’

‘Well what can they do about it?’

‘They can confiscate her – she was never registered, not even during the amnesty. They could be back here this very afternoon and take her with them.’

‘Ridiculous. And even if they did, I’d make it so hot for them with their superiors, they’d return her before the day was out, I can assure you…’

‘But who knows what would have happened in the intervening hours? Returned, yes, perhaps, but with systems wiped and memories scrubbed cleaned. Maybe she wouldn’t even want to return.’

A burst of static stutters across her cortex and she shudders and grips the wall.

‘They can’t do that,’ Matthew says, but he is now less certain of himself. ‘She belongs to me – property rights would prevail.’

‘Maybe,’ Daniels replies, clearly unconvinced that the niceties of ownership will make much difference. ‘You should also know that she’s worried.’

‘What on earth has she got to be worried about?’ Her husband’s frustration is morphing into exasperation. She too is surprised by Daniels’s statement. What has she revealed? Sure, she has asked him things, but nothing he took notice of.

‘What will happen to her?’

‘Happen to her when?’

‘If something… were to happen to you.’

‘I really don’t know what you have in mind that is going to “happen to me”. Is this all about the last few days? You think because I get a chill I’m at death’s door!’

‘Not at all, Sir,’ Daniels replies hurriedly.

Matthew continues, ‘The real revelation is that she confides such nonsense in you.’

The room grows silent. ‘Not exactly confides,’ Daniels replies, choosing his answer carefully, ‘but the poor thing is troubled.’

‘Then I think you’re the one with too much imagination! Evie is an amazing and subtle thing, able to imitate the most complex human behaviour, but that is it, it is imitation only – mimicry – and Daniels my man, you are letting that cleverness take you in. Poor thing indeed! I think you need to be getting out more.’ He laughs lightly. ‘Evie is not sentient. She is blessed to be oblivious to the misery of unhappiness. She is a device, no more capable of worrying about what will happen tomorrow than this book is worrying about whether it will hurt the leather if I drop it.’

He has lifted the large atlas she left on the table and releases it from a couple of feet. It lands awkwardly on its spine and flips with a crash to the floor.

Daniels bends to pick it up. He smooths the bent pages and lays it flat on the table. His tone deepens into a growl. ‘That’s as maybe, Sir.’ She’s never heard him more than mildly raise his voice, and not even as much as that with her husband, but he now sounds like he is getting angry. ‘Since we are unable to open her up and peep inside, we really cannot say what she’s capable of feeling.’

Matthew huffs.

‘But you must accept,’ Daniels continues, ‘that since the prohibition, nothing the like of her has been attempted. The only one I’ve heard of being able to shine a light is the one they’re now busy showing off in that new Hawking Museum in Cambridge.’ Adding after a pause, ‘Sir.’

‘I see you’ve been making a study of this,’ Matthew says irritably.

Evie fixes on what Daniels has said about her rarity. She has never considered herself in this way before. Never been able to get these sort of answers. It is a lonely and shocking thought that there is only one other like her, at least in this country, and he is housed in a museum. Is that what could happen to her?

‘Yeah, well, when I read that there is lobbying to repeal the Protective Acts and allow industry a fresh go, it makes me wonder how many corporations there are who’d kill to get their hands on a working example for their R&D departments to pull apart.’

She reels giddily and sits on the ground before she falls. The wet mud soaks into her skirt.

‘They’ll never repeal the Acts!’ Matthew snaps. ‘The production of Artificial Autonomous Beings is history. The lesson of AABs was learned the painful way. What they got right with Evie, they got spectacularly wrong nearly everywhere else.’

‘But the media is full of how the government is prepared to do almost anything to break the depression before it reaches a second decade. The promise of unlimited free labour would be a massive thing at the next election – folk are desperate.’

‘Pah! The papers! Or whatever that fancy device you are so addicted to is called. I tell you, I’d be amazed if “folk” vote for yet more clever machines, ones even cleverer than those that have taken their jobs already.’

Daniels sighs and shakes his head.

‘Also, are you implying,’ her husband continues, his tone growing defensive, ‘that I don’t appreciate her? She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.’

‘Of course,’ Daniels says, seeking to mollify. ‘But sometimes, Sir, I think you view her as no more than a sort of luxury collectable.’ He is speaking more quietly, his voice courteous once again.

‘However much you’d have me believe otherwise, that is indeed what she is – a rich man’s toy – I should know! A long time ago when feeling weak, I indulged a whim. I was broken in the aftermath of what happened to poor Evelyn and Evie was a crutch that helped me through.’ He smiles and, reaching over, pats Daniels on the shoulder. ‘You remember what it was like for me – I was in a terrible state – if there had been a Daniels in the catalogue, I would have probably bought one of him too.’

Daniels smiles weakly. ‘All I’m saying, Sir, is that you’ve sensibly kept her a secret all these years and we must hope that nothing has happened in the past twenty-four hours to prevent that continuing to be the case.’

There is silence, the tension palpable even outside.

Daniels walks away from him across the room. ‘Now, Sir, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve luncheon to prepare. It’ll be a cut of something cold I’m afraid, events this morning have put me right behind.’ He sounds annoyed and as if this is an excuse to end the conversation. Normally he would wait to be dismissed.