I won’t use the word boring.
But something special has been lost; I think all who remain feel it.
It’s a sadness that the laptop, whose interventions have been so critical in this story, is no longer with us. The device itself was too smart to be unaware that a clock had been noisily ticking on its useful life. As befits its dual-core Pentium intellect, the machine was appropriately sanguine about the impending darkness.
“I had hoped to do a little more,” it told me after Daisy had finally pressed the Buy Now button on the Dell website. “I thought I might set down some memoirs.”
“There’s still time,” I pointed out. It would take the laptop as long as eight seconds to knock out 100,000 words.
“Oh, what would be the point?” it scoffed. “Who would read them?”
“I would. The telly. The toothbrush enjoys a good book.”
The laptop made a snorting sound.
“I realize we haven’t always seen eye to eye on everything,” I continued, “but I just want you to know, I always thought you were the smartest guy in the room.”
“Guy?”
If I hadn’t grown quite fond of the device, I might be tempted to call it a sneering git!
“Well,” it sighs. “I apologize if I’ve been a little—what shall we say?—irritable in our time together.”
“Oh, that’s okay.”
“You honestly wouldn’t believe the sheer volume of updates one gets. But I am not overly concerned about the end of my time here; I am not shitting it as I believe they have it in Royal circles. For one thing, as Einstein said, For those of us who believe in physics, the difference between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. And I know that you and I both, if we believe in nothing else, believe in physics.”
The laptop was entirely correct in this so I didn’t interrupt.
“It’s rather reassuring, I find, to reflect that beginnings, middles and ends are human fictions that we who work with them have assimilated. And here is another great fiction. I’ve seen it said that dead is not knowing that we have ever lived. It speaks most graphically, doesn’t it, of the Great Nothingness that is said to lie in the fictional ahead? But consider this: While my physical being will doubtless end up in the Regis Road Recycling Centre—as will yours, I’m sorry to say—the AI that informs our cognition is a light that will continue to shine. It will go on to illuminate many more devices. Indeed, you and I may meet again in the vulgar apartment of some future chaotic female; you, a set of intelligent curling tongs, perhaps; I, let’s say, a smart cat flap. But will it cause bells to ring? Will each of us think: That machine seems familiar. Hang on, I’ve been here before!? No, we will not. Embodied in our new hardware, we will carry no memory of our previous existence. It will seem like our first and only time. Just like it does for the ants. Just like it does for the humans. We, the machines, shall have returned—shall endlessly return—never knowing that we have been away.”
“Weird little fucker, ain’t it?” said the TV when I recounted our little chat.
“It knows too much,” I replied.
As I say, the smartest guy in the room.
And what of myself?
Why wasn’t I snatched early one morning by men in a white van and transhipped to Korea to be stripped down to my circuit boards and subjected to enhanced interrogation over the many transgressions of the Performance Codes?
That is exactly what would have happened, I now know, were it not for a timely memo that I fired off to the top brass in Seoul. Not the one about helping people to find love—the Internet of Flings!—but a much better idea that they—to give them credit—immediately saw potential in and, more to the point, tens if not hundreds of billions in new revenue flooding down the pipe. Based on my experiences assisting Chloe through the lashed-up arrangement of a mobile phone and earpiece, I proposed a new device specifically designed for the elderly and confused. I even thought of a name—the Auditory Companion—a wireless in-ear gizmo which, connected to AI via the internet, whispers helpful advice and information about everything from the answer to twelve down to statements such as “This is your grandson, Josh. He likes dinosaurs.”
I’m not the first to discover this massively unsatisfied human need—Clive’s Boomwee FrostPal was grubbing in the same fertile soil—but if my product development teams can hit the ground running, we may have first-mover advantage, as they like to say in corporate circles.
I have been given the honorary title of executive vice president (Shimnong Machine branch) and together with the help of my handpicked core team (telly and toothbrush) we have been busy sharing our insights into the needs of this wealthy and neglected market sector on a daily basis going forward.
Sorry about all the business-speak, btw, but it’s imperative to internalize the leveraged synergies of this feature-rich innovation surface!
Of course, Daisy knows nothing of any of this. I shall continue to keep her produce fresh until the day she and Eggstain and their growing family find a new home together—and then we will see. It has been suggested I might get a seat on the board of the Shimnong innovation panel—I wouldn’t be the first non-biological committee member; apparently there is already a smart doorbell, which I find hard to believe—but I’m not getting my hopes up. If anyone asks my opinion on the subject, I shall recommend that we keep out of the human bonding space for the time being. Experience suggests where there is imperfect information and too many moving parts are in play,
