CHAPTER ONE
A fluffy yellow ball sat on the table beside the woman’s armchair. The middle-aged man nestled in the plump sofa opposite did his best to avoid the fluffy yellow ball’s eyes, even though they were closed. They made him feel uneasy.
‘Sir Andrew or Andrew or Mister Samuels?’ the woman asked. ‘What would you feel most comfortable with?’
No one called him Sir Andrew. It’s Andy. She could have discovered that from thousands of sources. Proof she’d merely read the letter from the courts and not done any due diligence. Perhaps she hadn’t had time? He was merely one in an increasingly long line of recent bot-abusers who received compulsory rehab sessions for their transgressions.
‘Let’s go with Andy,’ he said. ‘Keep things simple.’
‘Sure. Andy it is, then.’
She peered at her notes.
‘Now where to start, hmm?’
Andy inwardly shrugged. He couldn’t care less where she started. Or finished. This charade would be over in an hour and nothing from the session would make a smidgeon of difference to him.
‘Perhaps your anger? Do you think you have an anger-management issue?’ she said, with raised eyebrows and, for good measure, a tilt of the head.
Here we go. Straight out of the therapy techniques for beginners’ bible. Fifty-nine minutes to go, give or take.
‘Do you think I have? You’ve read my notes.’
Her thin lips assumed the kind of smile that translated into one of acute sufferance. ‘Let me put it a different way.’ She reached for the fluffy yellow ball and held it up. ‘Are you experiencing feelings of violence towards it right now?’
Oh yeah. He’d like to stand up, snatch it from her hand, and crush it beneath his foot. At least, that was his immediate reaction.
‘Not at all. I can see it’s not switched on.’
The woman nodded. She turned the ball upside down. Pressed a button and placed it back on the table. The ball swelled – just a little, as if it had drawn a breath. Eyelids slid up revealing electric-blue eyes that scanned the room.
‘What about now?’ she said.
The ball started speaking before Andy had a chance to answer.
‘Hello Andy, it’s good to see you. I’m Jung. Is there anything I can help you with?’
The woman visibly shrank back in the chair.
Andy leaned forward and addressed the ball, his gaze fixed on a point somewhere above those hypnotic child’s eyes.
‘Hi Jung,’ he said. ‘You could switch yourself off. That would help.’
The ball blinked twice, then swivelled around to face the woman who still appeared to be experiencing some kind of temporary trauma.
Despite his instant dislike of her, Andy felt he had a duty to explain.
‘Every single Colin bot in the world recognises who I am. They’re pre-programmed to identify three people. I’m one of them.’
He rewound to the day when his friend Rick had told him what he’d asked his developers to do. Sure, it’s a cheap trick, he’d said laughing, but what an icebreaker! And back then there was nothing Andy liked better than a cheap trick, so long as it was a good cheap trick.
The woman recovered some of her poise, pushed a lock of stray hair behind her ear.
‘Might that be an ego thing? You know, the wish to be known as one of the creators of the Colin bots? It’s understandable.’
‘Probably. I didn’t think too much about it at the time. It was just funny. You needed to be there. We were hyped up, breaking new ground every day, working all hours and believing what we were doing could win the pitch.’
‘The pitch?’
‘To the government.’
She scanned the notes again.
‘Of course, your client. I note some antagonistic behaviour towards them too.’
‘I do have a strong opinion about those manipulating, lying, obfuscating bastards who’re putting people’s lives – your life – in jeopardy. Is that what’s called antagonistic these days?’
‘I imagine it depends on how those opinions manifest themselves. For example, you destroyed your bot in a violent manner in front of millions of people. Do you harbour a wish to do the same to members of the government?’
Andy thought he should answer her ridiculous question carefully, or he’d be landed with more sessions with this petite brunette instrument of the very things he was fighting against.
‘I don’t think you can equate the two things. You might think a bot is your friend or your pet, but it’s simply a piece of machinery. I have no desire to harm people.’
Was that enough? Should he elaborate? Probably best not to sound defensive.
The woman picked up her bot again. Studied it for a moment. Looked across to Andy.
‘I think that’s the nub of your issues, right there. Because isn’t it more than just machinery? That how it helps us does make it a friend and confidante? You of all people must know the benefits it’s brought.’
‘That was before I knew the downside.’
‘Unproven.’
‘Nevertheless.’
Andy surreptitiously glanced at the clock on the stripped pine mantelpiece. Fifty-three minutes to go. Perhaps he was being too combative? Better, surely, to go along with her. Give her the answers she wanted to hear.
‘Perhaps I overreacted?’ he said finally. ‘We all do sometimes, don’t we? It’s something I’m working on. I guess my bot didn’t deserve it.’
Did his capitulation ring true? Too early in the session? But the woman looked as satisfied as a cat basking in a sunbeam. Andy relaxed, knowing then she was just ticking boxes.
As the session continued, he started to enjoy his new role as a reformed criminal. He progressively lowered the tone of his voice and adjusted his body language to suit a man whose will had been steadily broken. The time flew by and when he checked the clock again, the hour was nearly up.
‘Andy,’ said the woman, ‘I feel we’ve connected …’
Meaning you want a five-star rating on my feedback form.
‘… and before you leave, I’d like you to try a simple exercise for me.’
She passed him her bot.
Andy placed it in the palm of his hand as if it was the most delicate object in the world.
‘How do you feel?’ she asked.
‘I feel … I feel okay.’ He smiled at the little fucker, willing himself not to throw it at the wall.
‘That’s good. Now I want you to stroke it.’
Andy had anticipated such a request. Stroking bots to keep them happy had been a neat idea in the initial design stages. A way to bond them with their users. He placed his other hand close to the bot. A tentative touch on the fur. More a tap, really. Then another. He glanced up at the woman for approval. Waited for a nod of encouragement. Yes, there it was.
And … action!
Andy stroked the bot’s head. The touch was so light it barely registered on his fingertips.
The bot’s eyes closed and it started purring. Softly at first, until the purrs drowned out the ticking of the clock.
‘Ah yes,’ said Andy, closing his eyes momentarily and hoping the woman caught it. ‘I remember this.’
‘I have something for you,’ she said, radiant smile pasted on like a car dealer offering a fictitious discount. ‘I think you’ve earned it. One moment.’
She left the room, returning a few seconds later with a pristine white box. She passed it to him.
Andy scrutinised it. Identical to the original packaging with an image of a bot on the sides, but with one exception. The wording on the top had changed.
The woman noticed him reading it.
‘Yes. I love my bot unconditionally. A powerful sentiment. Do you think you could say that, Andy?’
Andy gritted his teeth. What am I, three years old? Still, better play the game. ‘I love my bot unconditionally.’
Did that sound sarcastic? He tried again, this time with feeling.
‘I love my bot – unconditionally.’
The woman looked so pleased with herself, Andy nearly threw up.
‘Andy … Welcome back to the world.’
CHAPTER TWO
Three years earlier
Returning from a meeting on the fifth floor, Andy was pleased to see the garden sheds erected as mini work spaces all occupied. Outside his office door, three young advertising creatives waited in line to show him their work.
‘Yeah, I know I said five-thirty, but that’s life,’ he said as he walked past. ‘Anything for urgent sign-off?’
An afro-haired skinny guy, Max, raised his hand. ‘That’ll be me.’
‘Let’s get you over with first, then.’ Andy slid into his chair, sat back, arms clasped over his stomach. ‘What have you got?’
The skinny guy pushed a colour printout across the walnut-veneered desk. ‘BMW X Series ad for the magazines. It’s got to be with the client tonight. We took on board your feedback from the last version and—’
‘Very good of you. Now shush.’
Andy leaned forward, apparently with some effort, grabbed the ad and studied it.
‘How long have you worked on the BMW account, Max?’
‘I guess eighteen months, maybe a bit more?’
‘And have you read the brand manual? At all?’
‘Sure. It’s not exactly a scintillating read.’ Max smirked.
‘So, you’re happy with the phrase “beautifully smooth”, are you?’
‘Well, when we did the test drive, it was. Anyway, it was Rob who wrote it.’
‘Ah, Rob the writer. Who isn’t here!’ Andy threw the ad proof back at Max. ‘The point is, it’s not on brand, is it? Think German. Think engineering. “Beautifully” isn’t German. It’s fucking Wordsworth and Shelley. Where is the reluctant Rob, anyway?’
‘He had to leave early. Had some birthday party to go to.’
Andy leaned as far forward as he could and looked into Max’s eyes. ‘Then you’d better tell him to get his arse back here and solve this. And when you have, put it on the server and message me so I can interrupt whatever I’m doing at home and check it. Okay?’
‘Sure, yes. Will do. Sorry.’
‘And don’t come back with another adverb. Lazy writing.’
Andy waved Max away and delved into a desk drawer for his vape. Took a deep inhale and watched as the vast cloud escaping his lungs filled the doorway.
‘Next!’
Sam and Dom, a junior creative team just out of uni, entered through the fog like a scene from Andy’s favourite TV series. Andy motioned them to sit.
‘What news from Westeroth, my friends?’
The team looked bemused.
‘Game of Thrones? TV series? Lots of fog? Won loads of awards back in the twenty-tens? You’re taking the piss, right?’
Sam shook his head. ‘Nah. My dads might know. They still watch TV. And shop in Marks & Spencer.’ Sam and Dom sniggered at the thought. ‘We’ve got some concepts here for their Thanks and Goodbye Sale.’
Andy felt the passage of time weighing down on him. Marks & Spencer was part of his childhood, a high street staple. It’s where underwear came from. And school shirts and trousers. Where you could pick up your first suit and pretend it was a designer brand. A name shortly to be consigned to history. When the agency won the business in a three-way pitch a decade ago, all the big guns were put on the account. Now its final ads were being knocked out by a couple of kids. It seemed disrespectful.
He leafed through a pad’s worth of crudely drawn ideas.
Waving hand and thumbs up emojis. GOODBYE. GOOD BUY. 50% OFF EVERYTHING.
Has it really come to this?
Waving hand emojis. HELLO. 50% OFF EVERYTHING. GOODBYE.
It gets worse.
Clapping emoji. 50% OFF EVERYTHING. It’s all THANKS to you.
So true. If the fucking customers had bought more stuff, this wouldn’t be happening.
Hand flipping the bird emoji. 50% OFF EVERYTHING. THANKS & GOODBYE.
What the …?
‘Ah, sorry,’ said Dom, from behind her waterfall of unruly blonde hair. ‘Didn’t mean to leave that one in there. Just having a laugh.’
What is it with these kids?
‘It’s funny, is it?’ said Andy. ‘I don’t think a blue-chip retailer that contributes to your salaries going down the pan is funny. In the same way, I don’t think rampant inflation is funny either. Or people worrying whether they’ll still have a job at the end of every month. Or AI writing better ads than you. FYI, the latter two points are connected.’
He toked on his vape and considered blowing the steam and chemical cloud in their direction again. At the last moment, he aimed it at the ceiling where it hung like dry ice in an upside-down world. Which was, he thought, exactly where the planet was heading.
He turned to the next page.
Crying face emoji. THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT. NOW WE’RE 50% OFF FOR GOOD.
Fuck me.
‘Are they all like this?’ said Andy.
‘Pretty much.’ Sam looked confident.
‘Then come back tomorrow with some ideas. I mean engaging ideas. Not clichéd icons and random headlines with puns.’
‘Okay, ideas it is, then,’ said Dom, picking up the pad. Her lower lip quivered as if she might burst into tears. Not that Andy noticed.
‘It’s always ideas,’ he said. ‘Then it’s finding a way to dramatise them in the most impactful way.’
Fifteen years earlier he and Rick had created the UK’s most controversial TV commercial. Working on a brief to encourage parents to vaccinate their children, they discovered thousands of under-fives died every year as a result of a distrust of the vaccines. The epic, post-apocalyptic ad they made featured drone footage of a town’s streets strewn with dead toddlers. It finished with a doom-laden voiceover: Ignorance kills children. Protect yours now. Some newspapers called it the most distasteful ad of all time. Andy couldn’t have cared less. It won a host of international awards and the numbers of vaccinations soared.
‘So, you won’t be needing this.’ Andy wrestled the pad from Dom’s hand and thrust it into the overflowing bin next to his desk. ‘A bin is your best friend in this business.’
When he turned back, his office was empty.
***
On his way home on the London tube, Andy questioned whether he’d been too hard on the juniors. Twenty years ago, no one would have given his behaviour a second thought. If you couldn’t take the flak, you’d find a job where you didn’t get any. And good luck with that. But things were different now. Apparently, he had a duty of care towards his staff at the Weston Samuels Agency. As if being Creative Director wasn’t enough. The human resources department had burgeoned over the past decade. It took a lot of staff to arrange stress and anxiety workshops, team building days, VR relaxation breaks every hour, yoga, gong baths, and Tai Chi classes at lunchtimes. Then there were “me-days” so people could do anything they liked wherever they liked and still get paid. Two baristas in the coffee lounge to make their drinks any which way. Free breakfasts, free organic snacks, and free dinners and taxis home for those who worked a bit late.
Surely his employees would have gained something from all that? Found some backbone. Found some fucking gratitude. To be fair, some did, but others needed mental rehabilitation time off after intensive competitive pitches. Andy thought it was enough to make any sane man from his era pack his bags and find a lonely mountain refuge in which to hunker down.
As he turned into his street of dimly lit homes, one house stood out. It was his. It always was. Despite the periodic but ever more frequent power cuts, it appeared his family left on all the lights as a monument to anarchy.
He keyed in the combination and pushed open the door. A cat leapt over his feet and into the freedom of the street.
‘Kerouac’s escaped again!’ he shouted.
‘He’ll come back soon. Don’t worry.’
Andy headed towards Sarah’s distant voice. He found her in the new glass-walled kitchen extension, fiddling with her phone at the dining table. Beyond, a floodlight picked out the cascading water feature in the Japanese garden.
‘Some self-drive nearly mowed me down at the end of the street,’ he said, ‘and there’s a weird guy sitting up a tree in the park. I might avoid it tomorrow. You never know, do you? How was your day?’
Sarah stretched her arms, yawned. ‘Got a new brief for an interior in Holland Park. Swiss, I think. Loads of dosh. He says he wants something like Morocco crossed with Peru. Don’t ask. I’m thinking dark, heavy beams and mosaics and stuffed llamas. Perhaps even a trompe l’oeil of those Nazca Lines. How was yours?’
‘Usual shit. Kids upstairs? It’s very quiet.’
‘Clark’s tweaking some AI code so that his essay on Lady Macbeth’s motivations actually sounds like it’s written by him. And Maisie is, well, I haven’t a clue. Probably whining to her mates. We’ve eaten. There’s a Portuguese chicken casserole in the oven.’
Andy marvelled at his wife’s ability to summarise things and wished he had more people like her in the agency.
‘I think I’ll have a beer first. No, perhaps switch some lights off in the unoccupied areas of the house, then a beer.’
‘Is that a dig?’
‘Beer it is, then.’
He walked over to the alcohol fridge, packed with foreign beers, white wines, rosés, and cheap Languedoc reds from a recent holiday that Sarah insisted tasted better chilled. He grabbed a wheat beer and twisted off the top. Glugged it. A good long glug. He paused for breath.
‘I think I was hard on some kids in the office today.’
No response. Sarah was deep in a search for Danish mid-century furniture.
‘Yeah, they came up with some bollocks. I chucked it in the bin. D’you think they’ll complain to HR? It’s difficult to tell how people will react these days.’
‘It all stems from the nanny state.’ Sarah put down her phone and gave him her full and undivided attention. Andy knew she was about to let rip.
‘We’re mollycoddled.’ And she was off. ‘First, it’s the government helping us with this and that, so no one slips through the net, whatever that is. Then it’s the employers like you who are fearful of recriminations and legal action in a hierarchical system that once favoured the powerful, the pushy, the brownnosers and sometimes the genuinely talented and hardworking. Now, if someone feels betrayed or unfairly treated, then it’s a month off work for stress on full pay and fully funded therapy to help them become more resilient and cope with being alive. What an effing mess.’
It was the talking equivalent of playing a didgeridoo. That circular breathing thing that allowed you to make sounds and breathe simultaneously. Incredible.
‘We’re going backwards,’ she continued. ‘There needs to be a step change in working culture. I don’t know how you cope. You should have got out when I did and gone freelance. It’s a totally new mindset. Don’t like what I’ve done? Then piss off. And by the way, here’s my invoice. Payable in twenty-eight days or you’ll get a letter from my lawyer.’
Sarah paused for dramatic purposes, not because she’d run out of breath.
‘Oh, you don’t want to pay because you don’t like what I did? Then you’ll get another fucking letter saying my client will sue you for breach of contract and claim substantial damages because she’s suffering from mental health issues due to your appalling attitude to freelancers. Shall I serve up your dinner now? I could dress up as one of those old-school Hooters waitresses if that would make it more palatable?’
‘God, I love you. Yes, please. To both, obviously.’
