James Smythe - I Still Dream

‘I’m not doing anything,’ I say.

There’s nothing I’m not saying to her, now.

‘Your father hated him, you know. He didn’t trust him, said we shouldn’t trust him,’ she says. The flood breaks. Everybody’s crying on me, today.

‘Dad left,’ I say. ‘Maybe he’s not the best judge of who we should trust.’ That sets her crying properly. I take the glass out of her hand and move it away from her, in case, and I hold her. Her hands creep up to my arms, holding me, not quite letting me absolutely close; as if she’s ready to push me back as fast as possible, should she discover that she has to.

The offer from Mark Ocean is pretty persuasive. Bow are developing their own computer language – the email says it’s real next-level stuff like you wouldn’t believe – and there’s a list of the different departments I’d get to work in over the course of the internship. Operating systems, user interfaces, artificial intelligences, data prediction. The things that, he says, will help to drive the future of computing. (And there’s a tacky bit right after that, where he writes, after a semi-colon, and maybe even the world , which could be a slogan torn right out of some marketing brochure.) All I do is go there, try it out. As part of the internship, they’ll pay for me to do my degree out there. That’s four years of study, all paid for. Mark Ocean says he feels like he owes it to my father.

In some weird way, I suppose that this is my inheritance.

I read the email over and over. Not online, because Paul would kill me, but I copy the text and paste it into a different document: sort of because I want to read it more, and sort of because I want to check it’s real, that the words aren’t going to evaporate or degrade or whatever when I do it. You have to make everything as tangible as you can, as real as it can be. But I don’t reply, not yet. I need those words to be right. When Mum wakes up, she makes me breakfast – she never does that any more, and it’s only frozen pain au chocolat, but she bakes one for herself as well, and lets me have a coffee, even though she says that it’s not good for somebody my age to get into the habit of drinking that stuff every morning. She reads the newspaper, and I read Melody Maker , which she got for me from the corner shop, and we don’t say anything, while Paul buzzes around us. It’s nice. She says she’s got to go to the shops, and asks do I want a lift into town, and I say yes, and she lets me have XFM on in the car, doesn’t even complain that they don’t do the traffic. Her car smells a bit of wine, I think, or maybe she does, but I don’t say that, and she doesn’t apologise for it. She asks me if I’m all right making my way home when I’m done, and I say that I am. Am I going out tonight? I’m meant to be seeing Nadine, I say. Don’t know if I’m going or not.

‘You should,’ she says. She doesn’t give me a reason.

I spend the afternoon drifting around clothes shops, around HMV and Our Price. I go to the library, and I get some books about artificial intelligences. More up-to-date ones than Dad’s. I sit and read one of them with a cup of hot chocolate at the café by the fountains. I don’t recognise Organon in it, in what it says that AI will one day do. I’m sort of happy about that.

When I get home, there’s a message on the machine from Mum, telling me that her and Paul are off out tonight. They’re going to the cinema – Paul loves it, Mum hates it, but I can hear her voice now: Give and take, Laura, give and take – and that she hopes I’m out as well. She’s left me twenty pounds in the thing in the kitchen. I take the handset upstairs with me, to call Nadine, tell her – or, hopefully, her crazy mother, if Nadine’s already out – that I’m not going tonight. That Gavin’s going to have to find the prospect of his own company enticing enough. When I’m waiting for her to answer, I picture her seething with me. On her own, and there’ll be other people there, sure, but she wanted me. Even if it’s nothing to do with Gavin, she wanted me. Gavin can fuck off. I don’t like him, and I don’t want him anywhere near me. But that’s not Nadine’s fault. When her machine kicks in, I leave a message telling her that I’ll see her at the Chinese near Finnegan’s first. Maybe we could get some of those sweet and sour chicken balls before we go to the pub. Sit on the steps of the college and eat them out of the bag, dipping them into that pot of red sauce. We’ve done that a lot. It’s always a good night when we do that at some point. And maybe she might even suggest we don’t end up going to the pub. Let Darren and Gavin be there by themselves. What are they even doing with a couple of sixth formers, at their age. she might say. Dirty bastards.

I click my computer on. I read the email again, but still don’t write an answer. I figure they won’t expect one until Monday. I don’t know where I’ll end up, with university. They’re yamming on about UCAS forms now, and I don’t have a clue. I’ve thought about a gap year, and this would be as good a way as any to spend it. Even if I hate working at Bow, they’ll still pay for my education, Ocean says. That’s important. I might not do computers, if I hate working there. I don’t know what I want to do yet. That’s the important thing, understanding exactly what it is that my future looks like. At school, they’re all, You have to pick a path, because you can’t change it after that. I’m not sure about that. I don’t feel like anything’s set in stone, where the future is concerned.

But I’m going to say yes. I’m absolutely going to say yes. Just not yet.

I check the forum, where I asked them to help me trace the IP addresses. One of the users has, finally, come through. They hid their tracks, he writes. (I’m assuming he’s a he.) This was through five proxies before I managed to find out where it was. It’s some server farm in California. San Francisco. Do you know where that is?

I open up Organon’s code, and I look for traces of myself. Signatures. They say that every coder has a signature; that every piece of code is as unique as handwriting.

I wonder how readable mine is, already.

If my handwriting looks anything like my father’s.

Another email pings in, as I’m getting myself ready. I’m not wearing a skirt, I don’t care if Nadine kicks off. But I’m doing make-up, and I feel weird and clumsy with it, like I’m not as good at this part as I should be, so I stop and wipe it off, thinking I’ll try again when I’ve read the email. But it’s not from Mark Ocean. It’s from Shawn. I can feel the heat from it – angry heat – before I even read the contents. Just a fury of words.

Jesus you stupid bitch, leave me alone. Why can’t you get the message? Stop writing to me, I’ve been trying to let you down easy but you won’t get the hint. It’s been a week since I emailed you, and you didn’t get it, so I am telling you to stop now, okay. I don’t know what’s wrong with you.

A week. But I’ve had emails from him the past few days. I open them, to check they’re real. I look at his email address.

It’s different. It’s just the name. They’re not from him at all.

The words in them. I know where I recognise them from. I wrote them into Organon. They’re the questions, the phrases. Rejigged, maybe, slightly. But they’re Organon’s words. I asked Organon for help with Mr Ryan. I told Organon I wanted Shawn to reply to me. Organon is programmed to do what I tell it to; to try to understand me.

To try to make me feel better.

I can see myself in the glare of the screen as I start Organon; as the off-white room appears, and the text box, inviting me to speak to it.