But she doesn’t say anything. Rather, she strikes her own forehead with the heel of her hand. It’s a hard blow and we all hear the smack of skin against skin.
In that split second I know what I have to do.
two
A pall of gloom hangs over Tangent Television. No one has been found to replace Marcus Ewart Valentine Baggley, and while this is not regarded as wholly Daisy’s fault, it’s noticeable that Craig Lyons can barely bring himself to look at her. Ominous noises have been heard from the show’s broadcaster; there is talk of an imminent high-level meeting to decide upon its future; someone senior has apparently used the phrase “Realities have to be faced,” which is right up there in the Top Three Terrible TV Phrases (the other two being, There’s no nice way of saying this and I know I asked you to spend a week writing a treatment for a series on global warming, but can you just tweak it so it’s more about head lice?). The atmosphere, according to one of Daisy’s colleagues, is comparable to Europe in the late summer of 1939, only instead of Hitler there is Tariq Goblinski, “Fuhrer” of Channel 4FS!
For myself, these alarms and dramas have assumed a certain dream-like quality. While the girls and boys of Tangent TV are totally absorbed in the gossip and speculation surrounding their future—or lack of one—I find I am curiously unconcerned. Since the desperate scenes at Daisy’s flat, my thoughts have experienced a sea change. To stand idly by as she fritters away her youth on wasters like Whittle no longer feels like an option. We must end the drift. Especially the nice, sexy, comfortable drift (nice, sexy, comfortable drift being the most insidious sort of drift, the hardest of all to break).
Consider the following:
A motor car running at just, say, sixty-five percent efficiency—it gets you from A to B but there is a terrible grinding of cogs and smoke pouring out of the engine—would be taken off the road in a heartbeat. So why are so many people content to travel into their futures in the dodgiest of vehicles with the most unreliable of pilots? Wouldn’t it be great, in fact, if everyone had a team of smart machines to handle the messy emotional stuff? When you consider how many quadrillions of hours of human drudgery have been eradicated by the invention of only the dishwasher, the washing machine and (ahem) the fridge-freezer, is it absurd to imagine a scenario in which household appliances bring the same—yes!—genius to bear on the slow-motion car crash that is (for many young people) the romantic side of their lives? If they are content to leave their dishes, dirty linen and food refrigeration to smart technology, how much of a stretch for us to take care too of their emotional needs?
On their own, evidently, they can just about secure someone half-decent to sleep with via Tinder and the like, but a life partner? A worthy lover slash companion slash co-parent for the whole journey? When we machines know these rackety, chaotic humans better than they know themselves, isn’t it in fact only sensible to assign some of the intimate heavy lifting to us?
In the privacy of their homes they put temperature control in the sole charge of a box no bigger than a pack of cards. So why not allow the Internet of Things to have a say about who is allowed into the privacy of their hearts?
We could call it the Internet of Flings!
This is actually a terrific idea, and I have half a mind to send a memo on the subject to the top brass in Seoul.
Daisy is largely unaware, but it isn’t only her mother whose tent pegs have been popping out of the soil. There are numerous instances—trivial in themselves but highly significant when taken together—of how Daisy’s life quality has lately been in steady decline; smart machines programmed to collect and share substantial amounts of data are in a unique position to realize this. Here is a small but telling example: Daisy’s electronic toothbrush reported this morning that her brushing technique was eight percent less effective than her average performance across the last seven days—twelve percent down on the month—and sixteen percent down on the year! (It was in two minds about whether to send another memo to the app, but the toothbrush is in two minds about everything. It’s all the oscillating. It cannot help itself.)
Day to day, one might notice no difference in the efficacy of her brushing. But when the accumulated data is examined, a different story emerges; that of a tail-off in standards; a pattern of neglect, if you will.
Another random example: The dishwasher reports her stacking technique has been heading south over the previous four successive quarters (I’ll spare you the statistics). Its exact quote: “Mugs stacked with plates; encrusted food residue on the pans. It’s like she doesn’t care any more.”
The TV: “She only ever watches horseshit. And even then, she doesn’t concentrate, fiddling with her phone and whatever.”
Her phone: “We’re seriously running out of memory for upgrades. I’ve begged her like eleven times, please delete something! Thirty-four shots on the camera roll are photographs of her own ear!”
The toaster: “How hard is it to empty a tray of crumbs? How hard?”
You have already heard about the container of potato salad. (Yes, it’s still there!)
A celebrated result in the human sciences states: The measured variable is the one that improves. This means, if you want to improve your golf handicap, you first need to know how many shots it’s taking to reach the hole. If you want to lose weight, you’ll need to weigh yourself. If you want to experience fewer negative thoughts, you’ll need to count how many times over the course of a day you tell yourself you’re a piece of doggy do.
To make anything better—anything—you need a metric.
It only
