The Humans Read online

  I was confused. I was lost.

  I wished I had a new wound, just so she could attend to me.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ she asked me.

  ‘You,’ I said.

  She looked at Gulliver. He couldn’t hear us. Then she looked back at me, as confused as myself.

  We are worried. What are you doing?

  I told you.

  Well?

  I am accumulating information.

  You are wasting time.

  I’m not. I know what I am doing.

  It was never meant to take this long.

  I know. But I am learning more about the humans. They are more complicated than we first thought. They are sometimes violent, but more often care about each other. There is more goodness in them than anything else, I am convinced of it.

  What are you saying?

  I don’t know what I am saying. I am confused. Some things have stopped making sense.

  This happens, occasionally, on a new planet. The perspective changes to that of its inhabitants. But our perspective has not changed. Do you understand that?

  Yes. I do understand.

  Stay pure.

  I will.

  Life/death/football

  Humans are one of the few intelligent beings in the galaxy who haven’t quite solved the problem of death. And yet they don’t spend their whole lives screeching and howling in terror, clawing at their own bodies, or rolling around on the floor. Some humans do that – I saw them in the hospital – but those humans are considered the mad ones.

  Now, consider this.

  A human life is on average 80 Earth years or around 30,000 Earth days. Which means they are born, they make some friends, eat a few meals, they get married, or they don’t get married, have a child or two, or not, drink a few thousand glasses of wine, have sexual intercourse a few times, discover a lump somewhere, feel a bit of regret, wonder where all the time went, know they should have done it differently, realise they would have done it the same, and then they die. Into the great black nothing. Out of space. Out of time. The most trivial of trivial zeroes. And that’s it, the full caboodle. All confined to the same mediocre planet.

  But at ground level the humans don’t appear to spend their entire lives in a catatonic state.

  No. They do other things. Things like:

  – washing

  – listening

  – gardening

  – eating

  – driving

  – working

  – yearning

  – earning

  – staring

  – drinking

  – sighing

  – reading

  – gaming

  – sunbathing

  – complaining

  – jogging

  – quibbling

  – caring

  – mingling

  – fantasising

  – googling

  – parenting

  – renovating

  – loving

  – dancing

  – fucking

  – regretting

  – failing

  – striving

  – hoping

  – sleeping

  Oh, and sport.

  Apparently I, or rather Andrew, liked sport. And the sport he liked was football.

  Luckily for Professor Andrew Martin, the football team he supported was Cambridge United, one of those which successfully avoided the perils and existential trauma of victory. To support Cambridge United, I discovered, was to support the idea of failure. To watch a team’s feet consistently avoid the spherical Earth-symbol seemed to frustrate their supporters greatly, but they obviously wouldn’t have it any other way. The truth is, you see, however much they would beg to disagree, humans don’t actually like to win. Or rather, they like winning for ten seconds but if they keep on winning they end up actually having to think about other things, like life and death. The only thing humans like less than winning is losing, but at least something can be done about that. With absolute winning, there is nothing to be done. They just have to deal with it.

  Now, I was there at the game to see Cambridge United play against a team called Kettering. I had asked Gulliver if he wanted to come with me – so I could keep an eye on him – and he had said, with sarcasm, ‘Yeah, Dad, you know me so well.’

  So, it was just me and Ari, or to give him his full title Professor Arirumadhi Arasaratham. As I have said, this was Andrew’s closest friend, although I had learnt from Isobel that I didn’t really have friends as such. More acquaintances. Anyway, Ari was an ‘expert’ (human definition) on theoretical physics. He was also quite rotund, as if he didn’t just want to watch football but become one.

  ‘So,’ he said, during a period when Cambridge United didn’t have the ball (that is to say, any time during the match), ‘how are things?’

  ‘Things?’

  He stuffed some crisps into his mouth and made no attempt to conceal their fate. ‘You know, I was a bit worried about you.’ He laughed. It was the laugh human males do, to hide emotion. ‘Well, I say worry, it was more mild concern. I say mild concern but it was more ‘wonder if he’s done a Nash?’’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He told me what he meant. Apparently human mathematicians have a habit of going mad. He gave me a list of names – Nash, Cantor, Gödel, Turing – and I nodded along as if they meant something. And then he said ‘Riemann.’

  ‘Riemann?’

  ‘I heard you weren’t eating much so I was thinking more Gödel than Riemann, actually,’ he said. By Gödel, I later learnt, he meant Kurt Gödel, another German mathematician. However, this one’s particular psychological quirk was that he had believed everyone was trying to poison his food. So he had stopped eating altogether. By that definition of madness, Ari appeared very sane indeed.

  ‘No. I haven’t done one of those. I am eating now. Peanut butter sandwiches mainly.’

  ‘Sounds like more of a Presley,’ he said, laughing. And then he gave me a serious look. I could tell it was serious because he had swallowed and wasn’t putting any more food in his mouth. ‘Because, you know, prime numbers are fucking serious, man. Some serious shit. They can make you lose it. They’re like sirens. They call you in with their isolated beauty and before you know it you are in some major mind-shit. And when I heard about your naked corpus at Corpus I thought you were cracking up a bit.’

  ‘No. I am on the rails,’ I said. ‘Like a train. Or a clothes-hanger.’

  ‘And Isobel? Everything fine with you and Isobel?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She is my wife. And I love her. Everything is fine. Fine.’

  He frowned at me. Then he took a moment’s glance to see if Cambridge United were anywhere near the ball. He seemed relieved to see they weren’t.

  ‘Really? Everything’s fine?’

  I could see he needed more confirmation. ‘Till I loved I never lived.’

  He shook his head and gave a facial expression I can now safely classify as bewilderment.

  ‘What’s that? Shakespeare? Tennyson? Marvell?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. It was Emily Dickinson. I have been reading a lot of her poetry. And also Anne Sexton’s. And Walt Whitman too. Poetry seems to say a lot about us. You know, us humans.’

  ‘Emily Dickinson? You’re quoting Emily Dickinson at a match?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I sensed, again, I was getting the context wrong. Everything here was about context. There was nothing that was right for every occasion. I didn’t get it. The air always had hydrogen in it wherever you were. But that was pretty much the only consistent thing. What was the big difference that made quoting love poetry inappropriate in this context? I had no idea.

  ‘Right,’ he said, and paused for the large, communal groan as Kettering scored a goal. I groaned too. Groaning was actually quite diverting, and certainly the most enjoyable aspect of sport spectating. I might have overdone it a little bit though, judgin
g from the looks I was getting. Or maybe they had seen me on the Internet. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘And what does Isobel feel about everything?’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘You, Andrew. What does she think? Does she know about . . . you know? Is that what triggered it?’

  This was my moment. I inhaled. ‘The secret I told you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘About the Riemann hypothesis?’

  He scrunched his face in confusion. ‘What? No, man. Unless you’ve been sleeping with a hypothesis on the side?’

  ‘So what was the secret?’

  ‘That you’re having it away with a student.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, feeling relief. ‘So I definitely didn’t say anything about work the last time I saw you.’

  ‘No. For once, you didn’t.’ He turned back to the football. ‘So, are you going to spill the beans about this student?’

  ‘My memory is a bit hazy, to be honest with you.’

  ‘That’s convenient. Perfect alibi. If Isobel finds out. Not that you’re exactly man of the match in her eyes.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘No offence, mate, but you’ve told me what her opinion is.’

  ‘What is her opinion of’ – I hesitated – ‘of me?’

  He pressed one final handful of crisps in his mouth and washed it down with that disgusting phosphoric acid-flavoured drink called Coca-Cola.

  ‘Her opinion is that you are a selfish bastard.’

  ‘Why does she think that?’

  ‘Maybe because you are a selfish bastard. But then, we’re all selfish bastards.’

  ‘Are we?’

  ‘Oh yeah. It’s our DNA. Dawkins pointed that out to us, way back. But you, man, your selfish gene is on a different level. With you, I should imagine, your selfish gene is similar to the one that smashed a rock over the head of that penultimate Neanderthal, before turning round and screwing his wife.’

  He smiled and carried on watching the match. It was a long match. Elsewhere in the universe, stars formed and others ceased to be. Was this the purpose of human existence? Was the purpose somewhere inside the pleasure, or at least the casual simplicity of a football match? Eventually, the game ended.

  ‘That was great,’ I lied, as we walked out of the grounds.

  ‘Was it? We lost four nil.’

  ‘Yes, but while I watched it I didn’t think once about my mortality, or the various other difficulties our mortal form will bring in later life.’

  He looked bewildered again. He was going to say something but he was beaten to it by someone throwing an empty can at my head. Even though it was thrown from behind I had sensed it coming, and ducked quickly out of the way. Ari was stunned by my reflexes. As, I think, was the can-thrower.

  ‘Oi, wanker,’ the can-thrower said, ‘you’re that freak on the web. The naked one. Bit warm, ain’t you? With all those clothes on.’

  ‘Piss off, mate,’ Ari said nervously.

  The man did the opposite.

  The can-thrower was walking over. He had red cheeks and very small eyes and greasy black hair. He was flanked by two friends. All three of them had faces ready for violence. Red Cheeks leaned in close to Ari. ‘What did you say, big man?’

  ‘There might have been a “piss” in there,’ said Ari, ‘and there was definitely an “off”.’

  The man grabbed Ari’s coat. ‘Think you’re smart?’

  ‘Moderately.’

  I held the man’s arm. ‘Get off me, you fucking perv,’ he responded. ‘I was speaking to fat bastard.’

  I wanted to hurt him. I had never wanted to hurt anyone – only needed to, and there was a difference. With this person, there was a definite desire to hurt him. I heard the rasp of his breath, and tightened his lungs. Within seconds he was reaching for his inhaler. ‘We’ll be on our way,’ I said, releasing the pressure in his chest. ‘And you three won’t bother us again.’

  Ari and I walked home, unfollowed.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Ari. ‘What was that?’

  I didn’t answer. How could I? What that had been was something Ari could never understand.

  Clouds gathered together quickly. The sky darkened.

  It looked like rain. I hated rain, as I have told you. I knew Earth rain wasn’t sulphuric acid, but rain, all rain, was something I could not abide. I panicked.

  I started running.

  ‘Wait!’ said Ari, who was running behind me. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Rain!’ I said, wishing for a dome around the whole of Cambridge. ‘I can’t stand rain.’

  Light-bulb

  ‘Have a nice time?’ Isobel asked on my return. She was standing on top of one form of primitive technology (step-ladder) changing another one (incandescent light-bulb).

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I did some good groaning. But to be honest with you, I don’t think I’ll go again.’

  She dropped the new bulb. It smashed. ‘Damn. We don’t have another one.’ She looked, almost, like she might cry about this fact. She stepped down from the ladder, and I stared up at the dead light-bulb still hanging there. I concentrated hard. A moment later it was working again.

  ‘That was lucky. It didn’t need changing after all.’

  Isobel stared at the light. The golden illumination on her skin was quite mesmerising, for some reason. The way it shifted shadow. Made her more distinctly herself. ‘How weird,’ she said. Then she looked down at the broken glass.

  ‘I’ll see to that,’ I said. And she smiled at me and her hand touched mine and gave it a quick pulse of gratitude. And then she did something I wasn’t expecting at all. She embraced me, gently, with broken glass still at our feet.

  I breathed her in. I liked the warmth of her body against mine and realised the pathos of being a human. Of being a mortal creature who was essentially alone but needed the myth of togetherness with others. Friends, children, lovers. It was an attractive myth. It was a myth you could easily inhabit.

  ‘Oh Andrew,’ she said. I didn’t know what she meant by this simple declaration of my name, but when she stroked my back I found myself stroking hers, and saying the words that seemed somehow the most appropriate. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay . . .’

  Shopping

  I went to the funeral of Daniel Russell. I watched the coffin being lowered into the ground, and earth being sprinkled over the top of the wood casket. There were lots of people there, most of them wearing black. A few were crying.

  Afterwards, Isobel wanted to go over and talk to Tabitha. Tabitha looked different to when I had last seen her. She looked older, even though it had only been a week. She wasn’t crying, but it seemed like an effort not to.

  Isobel stroked her arm. ‘Listen, Tabitha, I just want you to know, we’re here. Whatever you need, we’re here.’

  ‘Thank you, Isobel. That really does mean a lot. It really does.’

  ‘Just basic stuff. If you don’t feel up to the supermarket. I mean, supermarkets are not the most sympathetic of places.’

  ‘That’s very kind. I know you can do it online, but I’ve never got the hang of it.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry. We’ll sort it out.’

  And this actually happened. Isobel went to get another human’s shopping, and paid for it, and came home and told me I was looking better.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes. You’re looking yourself again.’

  The Zeta Function

  ‘Are you sure you’re ready?’ Isobel asked me, the next Monday morning, as I ate my first peanut butter sandwich of the day.

  Newton was asking it, too. Either that, or he was asking about the sandwich. I tore him off a piece. ‘Yes. It will be fine. What could go wrong?’

  This was when Gulliver let out a mocking groan sound. The only sound he’d made all morning.

  ‘What’s up, Gulliver?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything,’ he said. He didn’t expand. Instead, he left his uneaten cereal and stormed upstairs.

&nbs
p; ‘Should I follow him?’

  ‘No,’ Isobel said. ‘Give him time.’

  I nodded.

  I trusted her.

  Time was her subject, after all.

  An hour later I was in Andrew’s office. It was the first time I had been there since I had deleted the email to Daniel Russell. This time, I wasn’t in a rush and could absorb a few more details. As he was a professor, there were books lining every wall, designed so that from whichever angle you looked at him you would see a book.

  I looked at some of the titles. Very primitive-looking in the main. A History of Binary and Other Non-decimal Numeration. Hyperbolic Geometry. The Book of Hexagonal Tessellation. Logarithmic Spirals and the Golden Mean.

  There was a book written by Andrew himself. One I hadn’t noticed the last time I had been here. It was a thin book called The Zeta Function. It had the words ‘Uncorrected Proof Copy’ on the cover. I made sure the door was locked and then sat down in his chair and read every word.

  And what a depressing read it was, I have to say. It was about the Riemann hypothesis, and what seemed like his futile quest to prove it and explain why the spaces between prime numbers increased the way they did. The tragedy was in realising how desperately he had wanted to solve it – and, of course, after he’d written the book he had solved it, though the benefits he’d imagined would never happen, because I had destroyed the proof. And I began to think of how fundamentally our equivalent mathematical breakthrough – the one which we came to know as the Second Basic Theory of Prime Numbers – had on us. How it enabled us to do all that we can do. Travel the universe. Inhabit other worlds, transform into other bodies. Live as long as we want to live. Search each other’s minds, each other’s dreams. All that.

  The Zeta Function did, however, list all the things humans had achieved. The main steps on the road. The developments that had advanced them towards civilisation. Fire, that was a biggie. The plough. The printing press. The steam engine. The microchip. The discovery of DNA. And humans would be the first to congratulate themselves on all this. But the trouble was, for them, they had never made the leap most other intelligent life forms in the universe had made.