I Still Dream

‘Obviously,’ I say. We had an argument, a few weeks after I first showed him Organon. He told me it wasn’t an actual artificial intelligence, and I told him he was wrong. Because it is: it understands what questions to ask, and when to ask them; when it’s gone too far, and when it’s not gone far enough. All the work I’ve done, it’s about understanding. Trying to make it understand when it can help, and how it can help. I explained that to Mr Ryan, and he said, But that’s not an AI. An AI can play chess, or it’ll launch nukes or something. He smiled then, but I didn’t think it was very funny. I had to explain that everything is artificial intelligence, really. Every bit of software. He didn’t understand, though, because Organon doesn’t do the things he expects. I didn’t say: Well, that’s how long it’s been since you’ve worked in software, then; and how little you actually understand. The week after that, I caught him reading Ray Kurzweil.

We haven’t had that discussion again since.

‘This thing’s amazing.’ He sits down, nudges me slightly to one side. He points his fingers – bitten-down fingernails, and I bite my fingernails, but not like this, these are right down to the quick, horrible stubby things digging into the flesh – at the code. ‘This is where you put the questions in?’

‘Yeah,’ I say, and he breathes in, nods along a few times. Puts his fingers up to his lips, like he’s making the shape of a gun, the barrel at his mouth. He’s got something to ask, and I know I’m not going to like it, because he’s nervous, but I can’t stop him.

‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. How I might actually be of, you know, real help. To you; to Organon. In the real world, software goes through beta testers.’ He pronounces it bayder. ‘So, you get people to use it, to work with it. Let it do its thing, and you get to use the results. That’s how you can make it better, you know? I’m thinking that it could be useful to you.’ He wants me to give Organon over to him. Shit, shit. I don’t know what to say. He’s a teacher. He’s a teacher, and he knows about this stuff, but I want to say no. I want to. ‘So,’ he says, and I wonder: can he tell that I’m not happy about this? Because I’m trying to make my body tell that to him as much as I can. ‘So why not let me take her home. Let me try her out, as she’s meant to be tried. It’ll be useful, because I’ll get to see what she’s really capable of, and you’ll give her a chance to stretch her legs.’

All I can think is, there’s something really icky about him talking about it as a her.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I don’t say: I don’t want you to, and I don’t need you to. My elbow, the scar there, itches. I can feel it scabbing over; the skin trying to heal, trying to grow back as something like what it used to be. Something like itself.

‘I think you’ll really benefit from it. I might try something that you haven’t expected, find a bug you didn’t know about. And it’ll be so much easier for me to write you a recommendation when you’re doing your UCAS forms, if I know exactly what you’re capable of.’ There it is. The bribe. It’s hard to get onto programming courses if you don’t have experience, and he’s worked in computers. His support on my application would probably help. ‘Besides which, I might get some benefit from talking to her! That’s the point of Organon, right? Real world experience, Laura.’ I don’t know what he’d want to talk to it about. There are rumours about him, but there are rumours about every teacher. And his aren’t nearly as nasty as some about the other members of staff. Some of them, the rumours never end, and they escalate. But Mr Ryan seems like he’s pretty together. But then, he’s not married, and he is pretty old. Mum’s age, I think. Flecks of grey in his beard. ‘Listen, it’s your project, Laura. You do what you want. But sometimes we can’t see the wood for the trees, and we need somebody who might be able to give us a pair of binoculars and an axe.’

‘Okay,’ I say. My elbow kills when I say it, and when he smiles, this beaming thing, bigger than I’ve ever seen from him before.

‘You won’t regret it,’ he tells me. ‘Seriously, a bit of time with her, little play with her code—’ He must see my face then, because he changes his words straight away. ‘I can write some notes for you, give you some suggestions for what you do moving forward. That’s it.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. He shifts back in his chair, leaving the keyboard free for me, and I open up Organon. The white room, the fade in of the text box.

> What would you like to talk about?

‘If you think of any questions I can get it to ask?’

‘I will absolutely tell you,’ he replies.

‘Just give me ten minutes with it,’ I say. ‘I need to set it up to work on your computer.’

‘Sure,’ he replies. He smiles, and then walks over to the Year 9s, and he asks them about the pictures they’re drawing on. He keeps glancing over, so I’m quick. I have to be quick. I open the code, and I write in a homing device. It’ll email me bug reports. I make it so you have to be on the Internet to even run Organon, and then I save everything. ‘All done?’ Mr Ryan asks. I nod. All done.

The main home computer, the one that my mum uses, is ancient. You can’t even plug the modem into it, that’s how old it is; and her printer is this ridiculous dot-matrix thing that takes about ten minutes to print a page, that screams like there’s something trapped inside it as it pukes up its pages. But she won’t get rid of it. She’s used to it, she says. It was my dad’s, way back. She doesn’t have much of his stuff around, just a few boxes in the loft; and there aren’t any pictures of him on display or anything. The computer is it.

I’ve got a photograph of me sitting on his lap in front of it, that he took the day before he left. He held the camera himself and took it, stretching his arm out to capture us both. He looks sad, and I look oblivious. The last picture I have of him. My hands are on the keyboard, and there’s a flag up on the screen, horrible colours, like the Union Jack, but beaten-up and bruised to purples and greens. We’re both smiling. That’s the picture where, if anybody ever sees it, they tell me that I look a bit like him; something in the eyes, they say. And I always think: Well, his eyes look so sad in that, so what does that say about me?

Mum does all her work on this ancient piece of software that he built for her way back when, this word processor that’s years behind what you can do in Microsoft Word. The computer doesn’t even run Windows. And now it won’t even turn on. She’s been moaning about it for weeks. I reckon, I do this now, fix it for her, that might get me some bonus Internet time. A little bit of leniency.

I press the power button. Nothing happens. I unplug it and wait twenty seconds. There’s memory in there attached to a tiny little battery, and you have to wait for that to wipe itself sometimes before it’ll work. Then I plug it in, try again. Nothing.

Only, it’s not actually nothing. When I get close to unplug it again, before opening it up, I notice that there’s this weird hum coming from it. Like, this scratching, almost. Probably the hard drive trying to start. I don’t even know what a hard drive from the 1980s looks like. I reach around the back to find the stupid twiddly fussy knobs that take far too long to undo, and which don’t seem to want to turn, they’ve been stuck in place that long. I get them all out, but the case seems like it’s jammed.

I spin the computer around, to check that I got them all, get a better view. Sometimes there’s one of them hidden, just out of reach. And there is, sure enough, right through the manufacturer’s label. The name of the company who put this together, handwritten in neat blue ink on a yellowing white sticker. Bow, it says. The company my father used to work for, or run, or whatever. His father’s company, my grandfather’s company. Makes sense this would be one that they built.

The back of the box falls off, then, flips down, and I can see inside it. It’s so, so dusty. Too much to blow it away, but I have to try. Breathe in, puff out this stupid fake-sounding breath into the box. The fan doesn’t even turn, so I reach in, just with my fingertips, and pull the dust out in clumps. The inside of this thing is crazy. I’ve built my own PC now – the one that I used to create Organon, that’s mine, parts ordered from a website I saw in a magazine, paid for with money that Mum and Paul gave me for my fifteenth birthday – but it looks nothing like this. Everything in here is massive and clumsy and crammed in. The cables are worn and frayed. I try to see better, to get the rest of the case off, but it’s stuck hard.

I grab the base between both hands, and I shake it.

Something moves. It rockets towards me, right out of the darkness. Up to my fingers, and across my hand, onto my forearm, and I scream, flicking my arms upwards in panic. Whatever it is hits something – the wall, the ceiling, I don’t know – and there’s a thud, then another when it lands on the floor in the far corner of the room. It’s a mouse, thin and brown, a tiny skeleton in patchy fur. I see a breath taken; a chest rise and fall. Stub dashes – as much as a seventeen-year-old cat can dash, more of a hurried wobble – into the room, and seems to sniff the air; but then drops back to fake nonchalance, even though his fur’s prickled; as if his body, muscle memory or something, remembers how the chase is meant to go, but that this mouse really isn’t giving him anything to work with.

‘Get away,’ I say to him, and I make that Psssshhh! noise that my mum makes sometimes. He backs away slowly while I squat down and look at the mouse. ‘Little dude,’ I say, ‘poor little guy. I’m sorry.’ I pick him up, cupping him in my hands. He’s stopped breathing; I wonder if he even was after he landed or if that was just a trick of the light. I go down the stairs, out the kitchen door, and walk carefully to the bottom of the garden. I can see the Tube line through the fence; a Heathrow train just pulling into the station. I put him in the tall grass right by the fence, deep into it. Maybe Stub’ll find him anyway, and do some weird old-cat-eats-his-already-dead-prey thing. Or, maybe the mouse will just decompose. Go back into the ground.

When I get back inside, I go through the house using my sore elbow to open doors and to turn the tap on, so I can wash my hands. When that’s done, I take a shower. I don’t know if mice carry diseases, but I don’t want to risk it. I’m lathered up when there’s a bang. Cars backfiring, and fireworks. That’s what you blame loud noises on in London. Chances are, though, it’s Stub. He keeps falling off things, wobbling around. Last week he went for a wee on the kettle. Paul’s got this look in his eye when he strokes Stub now. None of us are talking about what it means, but we know, we all know.

I go into the hallway, towel wrapped around me. No more bangs, but I can hear a crackling, now. Like feet treading on dead leaves. And there’s a smell, something burning. Fireworks, bonfires. But Guy Fawkes’ night isn’t for a couple of weeks yet.

Another bang: it’s coming from the computer. There are flames sparking from the power supply. Didn’t I turn it off? Did I forget? I’m a total fucking moron. Inside my head, the voice screams: You’re going to be so dead when Mum finds out; when you have to tell her. Oh, that computer you asked me to look at? It exploded because I’m an idiot.I yank the plug from the wall, get water from the bathroom, in the little toothbrush cup, because that’s all I can find, and I run back and pour it over the sparks. The fizzle as the flames go out is so weirdly satisfying; the sound of something terrible happening suddenly gone. Makes me think of my matches. Then there’s smoke, and steam. I don’t even know the difference. I bend down, to peer into the computer. The motherboard is totally blown. The fire looks like it was caused by one of the frayed wires – which, I realise now, were probably nibbled; thanks, Mr Mouse! – and it’s blackened half of the inside, best I can see. I get the screwdriver and reach in. I can save the hard drive, I think. It’s hot inside the box, but I can still manage to undo the screws that hold the drive in. It’s enormous, and I think it’ll just be a casing at first, but then when I manage to drag it out, it’s the hard drive itself. Takes about three or four times the room that mine upstairs does, and this one is so much smaller inside. It’s got 10 megabytes printed on the side, which is insane. I couldn’t even fit Organon onto it if I tried.

I take the drive upstairs and clear a space for it on my desk. Move my joss stick burner, some computer magazines, a few issues of the NME and Select that I’ve been cutting up for the pictures. I’ll need to save Mum’s spreadsheets, I’m sure. God knows if she’ll be able to open them any other way.

Then the door downstairs slams – I recognise the sound this time, so different from the bang when the computer exploded I don’t even know how I confused them – and Mum shouts ‘Hello,’ and I shout it back. I scratch at my elbow, until the scab comes off again, because that’s all I’ve got time to do before she comes up to see me; and I can feel the warmth of the blood inside my jumper when I press on it.

When I’m sure they are both asleep, I get back to work. I’m used to staying up for a few hours after them at this point. It helps that Paul’s got this sleep apnoea machine: a mask he sticks on his face that makes him sound like Darth Vader. No idea how Mum sleeps through it – I’m guessing she takes something to help her, she’s got enough bottles of tablets in their bathroom cabinet – but she does. I get the tiny screwdrivers I use on my computer and I take my modem apart. Should have done this before. Inside it, I find the little speaker that makes its sound. There’s a tiny wire, and I snip it, put the case back on, do it up. Plug it into the wall.

Next month, this is going to bite me in the arse. Next month, when that bill comes, Paul is going to go mental, because – I can hear it already – I’ve lied to them, gone behind their backs, let everybody down.

Mum’ll say: You promised us; and I won’t say: I did no such thing.

I watch the flashing red LEDs on the front of the modem, and I catch myself making the little noise – the scree, screeeech – under my breath.

‘You’ve got mail!’ the speakers basically scream at me, and I flap at them to find the power button. I sit, quiet as anything, listening to the house for a minute. To hear if that woke them. But there’s nothing, just the distant hiss and wheeze of Paul’s breathing passing through two closed doors and a load of hallway. Breathe in, breathe out. So controlled you could set your watch to it.

The email is nothing. Spam. Nothing from Shawn. I don’t know what I expected, really. Something. Just a, No worries, my parents are assholes as well, we’ll talk soon. Something like that. But there’s nothing.

Do I write him another one? Tell him I’m online now, maybe if he wants to reply we can chat a bit? Find a chatroom or something? I am actually angry at him right now. It’s not like it was my choice to have to be offline, and am I being punished? By getting no reply? His parents let him on whenever he wants, so I know he’s seen my email. If he told me he was shut off from the Internet after an argument, I know I’d be at least a little bit concerned. I’d at least ask if everything was okay. But then – breathe, Laura, breathe, think of Paul’s sleep-breathing, follow that – maybe he knew I wouldn’t be online, so he didn’t reply? It’s probably that. It’s probably that he’s going to send me more emails over the week, before – of course! – before I get back online at the weekend, when I said I would. He’s got four days to come up with a reply. I should send him a new email. Let him know he doesn’t need to wait. I start typing. I ask him how he is, first. Make it about him. It’s not all about me. Tell him that I managed to sneak some time when they’re asleep. Ask him what time it is there, even though I know – seven hours behind us, so he’s probably just getting back from school himself – and what his day was like. And I ask him for his address, because I want to send him something. I won’t tell him what, but he’ll be excited. I can picture his face, when he opens the tape, when he plays it. This perfect ninety-minute song arc.

I click send.

The little thing telling me I’ve got another email triggers straight away, popping up on the top of the screen. I think how quick he was to reply, and then tell myself that’s stupid. Can’t be him.

Bug Report. It’s from Organon; or, the Organon that’s installed on Mr Ryan’s computer. He must have just stopped using it. That’s what it does, after the session: it lets me know how its programming went. There’s a feeling in my throat, like something stuck, that’s made out of disappointment. I open the report and have a look. Everything’s fine: Organon asked him a lot of questions. I can tell which ones, but only by their log numbers. I can’t see his responses, and I don’t want to. That’s the point of it. It’s private. It’s yours, and yours alone. Mr Ryan was using Organon for four hours. That’s fine. Maybe it’ll be useful, like he said. Maybe he’ll help me learn something about it.

I work on Organon myself, then. I put more questions in. I tell it about my day. I tell it that I’m worried about Mr Ryan with the software, that it feels out my control; that I wish Shawn would reply to me, because that always helps me to feel better; that I wish my mum would calm down, let everything go a bit more, because I’m going to be fine. I’m going to be fine.

Organon asks all the right questions about what I tell it. I wonder if Mr Ryan will have found it useful at all, or if it’s really only geared to me; my questions, my answers, designed only ever to make me feel better.

When I’m lying in bed, I listen to Radiohead, and I hold my elbow, and I feel the scab pressing onto my palm; and I think about the email I sent, the words I wrote, the letters that made them up. I rearrange the sentences in my head, making them better, instantly filled with regrets about them; and I think about how I would do it all over again, if I had the chance.

WEDNESDAY (#ulink_79d5c9ed-c5f1-547d-ac5a-9e2908042d5e)

‘You’re so bloody boring at the moment,’ Nadine tells me. She thinks that her bluntness is her best trait. She thinks that’s how you know she’s a true friend, because she’s just so upfront. Honesty, always. I try to be honest with her, as well, but that would mean telling her how tiring I find that honesty sometimes. ‘Come out on Saturday. Darren and Gavin will be there.’

‘I hate Gavin,’ I say, which isn’t strictly true. I don’t hate–hate him, but I certainly don’t want to get off with him, which is what Nadine seems borderline obsessed with making happen. Nadine thinks she’s got a chance with Darren if Gavin’s distracted.

‘Well, it won’t just be them. Owen, probably. Maybe Sarah and Tommy. Maybe Martin.’

‘My mum’s being a bitch about me going out.’

‘She didn’t ground you. You’re not locked up.’ There’s this petulant look on her face, a pout that she thinks is pitched somewhere between sulky kid and sexy temptress. ‘Well, I’m going. Everybody’s meeting at Finnegan’s, and then we’re going to the park. If you don’t mind me being on my own, fine. God knows what could happen, though.’