The Red Men (6 page)

‘Is Morton listening to this?’ she inquired.

‘I am,’ he said.

‘Let me explain my reasoning. Our applications for the red men have been devised from a very male perspective. The red men are modelled on masculine desire. They offer a version of
yourself that is harder and faster. A power fantasy. We’re missing a major market here. Women’s needs. It only struck me once I had a child. There are now two versions of me: the mother
and the manager. Reconciling these respective duties is impossible. Sure I could get help. A nanny. Au pair. Nursery. But what if my red man could look after my child while I went to work? I would
be free of the guilt which comes from having another woman raise my child. Do you see, Morton? This could open a whole new revenue stream for us in childcare. The Dr Easys are soft and yielding.
Cantor designed them to be comforting and familiar, to be a shoulder for mankind to cry on. If my red man is given permission to inhabit a Dr Easy, then I know the person looking after my child has
all the maternal feelings that I do.’

‘Legal minefield,’ said Morton.

‘Its an awful lot of money to pay for a baby-sitter,’ added Florence.

‘Do you have children, Florence?’ asked Alex. ‘I am guessing not. OK. Let’s flip it,’ she continued. ‘Look at this way: how about I stay at home and look
after my child while my red man uses the Dr Easy to attend meetings, mainly the ones in the evening, when I’m doing nothing more than taking clients out for cocktails?’

This was Alex Drown’s genius, pushing a point of view, selling the brand. She always got her own way. Here was a classic bait-and-switch. She had no intention of letting her red man look
after her baby. That was just misdirection. This was what she really wanted.

‘Monad promises to lighten the load of the modern executive. That load is not just about mining and presenting data. It’s also a problem of presence. These days we all need to be in
two places at once. Sometimes a face on a screen is not enough. It’s about relationships. Actually being there. Come on, Morton, all I am asking is that the board put it to Cantor. If it
works out, I’ll cut you in on the credit. Not saying “no” to an idea can be as important as having the idea yourself.’

A meeting was called. Management still relished their places around the mature cherrywood boardroom table when it came to the weighty decisions. Screens and conference calls were acceptable for
thinking on the fly. Due consideration required the presence of natural materials of a heft and weight befitting their responsibilities. Alex Drown submitted her proposal. It made business sense.
That was not the debate. The question was how to persuade Dr Ezekiel Cantor to allow it, for management was still in the dark concerning the motivations of the artificial intelligence. You do not
challenge the goose as to why it lays golden eggs; you merely provide it with a pleasant environment to continue its profitable ovulation.

Embodied by a Dr Easy, Cantor rose at the end of Alex Drown’s presentation then paced the cavernous underground boardroom to show the others that it was considering the notion, even though
its incredible mind needed no such deliberation. Yes, it would allow Alex Drown’s red man to control a Dr Easy, for one meeting only. As a test case. It would monitor the situation closely.
Alex Drown, suppressing any sign of jubilation, sombrely suggested that customer service send representatives along, to intervene physically if necessary, and to keep an eye on how people react to
its presence. It would mean giving up an evening. Working late. Putting in the extra hours. Out of spite, she suggested Florence and out of love, Raymond insisted upon going too.

A week later, on an autumn evening that saw Raymond in a short-sleeved cream shirt underneath a brown cashmere tank top and Florence in a summer dress and cardigan, a silver BMW cruised through
the bazaars of Poplar. On the back seat, between Raymond and Florence, sat a large, silent robot, a Dr Easy.

The driver was a professional, with driving gloves and a Bluetooth headset. Raymond couldn’t be sure if the smell of waxed leather was coming from the freshly vacuumed upholstery or the
robot sitting next to him. Perhaps it had buffed and polished its hide for its big night out. The tall robot sat with its head bowed against the roof, its posture expressing the discomfort of the
two humans on the backseat. Never one to suffer in silence, Raymond fumbled with some small talk.

‘It’s a warm night.’

Florence nodded. ‘We might need to sleep with the windows open tonight.’

‘Should I ask the driver to turn up the air conditioning?’

‘No, it dries out my skin.’

If Alex Drown’s red man was the animating intelligence inside the robot, it gave no indication. It blinked. It whirred. It moved when it was asked to. Raymond tried to draw it into
conversation.

‘What would you normally be doing tonight?’

‘Working,’ replied the robot. It pronounced this single word in Alex Drown’s faded Belfast accent.

‘So this is a night off for you?’ ventured Florence.

Bent crooked, the Dr Easy turned its baleful blue eyes upon her.

‘Not really. This is a very important meeting.’

Raymond tried to be self-effacing.

‘We don’t know anything about it. We’re just here to baby-sit you.’

The robot nodded and closed its eyes as it spoke, communicating a certain exasperation.

‘It’s a courtesy meeting. Not that vital. That’s why Alex has allowed me to handle it.’

‘Are you enjoying being out?’ asked Florence.

The robot patted her leg with its enormous paw.

‘Shall we not have a conversation?’

At the restaurant, Raymond and Florence were seated on a table by the toilets. Dr Easy enjoyed roped-off dining with two brothers just in on the flight from Dallas. The light was low. The
waiters moved gingerly down the dark aisles. The ornate calligraphy of the menu was indecipherable. Raymond chose dishes at random only to discover, from the waiter, that the red man had already
ordered for them. It also sent over two bottles of wine. In the gloom, Dr Easy’s hide glistened like black lava rock.

‘This is exactly what I wanted,’ said Raymond, when his fish soup arrived.

‘You should send it back,’ said Florence. ‘If you eat it, you’ll make the red man even smugger.’

A plate of spam fritters and a fried egg slid before Florence. The red man knew all about her diet of Blitz cuisine.

‘I think we should swap,’ she said.

The rituals of high dining were unfamiliar to them both. To Raymond, dining out meant snarfing down the cheap eats option at Starburger or something microwaved out of the freezers of
Wetherspoons; this hushed, solemn shrine to food made him want to blaspheme.

‘Do you remember Dad’s funeral, when I stuck my hand up your skirt?’

Florence smiled. ‘It was a gesture of hope.’

‘It was what he would have wanted.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘It hasn’t hit me yet. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Let’s not talk about him.’

Raymond charged their glasses with red wine. Florence sipped at her drink while regarding the silhouettes of their fellow diners.

‘Power,’ she said.

Raymond waited for her to continue her observation. She didn’t. Merely repeated it. ‘Power.’

‘How do you fight it?’ he wondered.

‘You can’t fight it.’ Her hand chopped at the air. ‘It’s too nebulous. It’s inside you and it’s on top of you.’

‘Like sex.’

‘Like rape, maybe. I don’t know.’

There was a small pestle and mortar in the centre of the table for customers to grind their own condiments. Raymond teased the air with the pestle.

‘You are my queen and I am your subject. I want to have treasonous sex with you. Sex that will compromise church and state. Sex so criminal that if we’re found out, I will be hanged
and you will be beheaded.’

Florence leant forward. ‘I want to do it by gaslight, under a blanket, on the escalator at Bethnal Green tube station. I don’t want to come.’

Raymond squirmed in his seat. Impulse control did not come easily. He reached underneath the table and Florence offered him her stockinged foot, warm and firm. He massaged the toes. The foot
curled appreciatively. The restaurant was dark, as dark as the bedroom at a teenage party. The fellow diners in their whispering huddles were making just enough noise to let everyone know how much
they were enjoying themselves. He ran his hand up the flesh of her calf, and copped a feel of her knee.

‘Shall we go to the toilets?’ he gasped.

‘Don’t be obscene,’ said Florence. She cut off a piece of her spam fritter and resumed eating. She liked it when men squirmed. Instant gratification upset her. Wanting was more
vivid than having.

‘I don’t want to talk about sex. Not over the dinner table.’ Florence smiled demurely. ‘I think, before you interrupted me with your dirty thoughts, that I was talking
about power.’

With her fork, she pointed over to the table where the robot was entertaining its clients.

‘What do you think they’re talking about?’

‘I’ll go and see,’ said Raymond. He stood up, corrected his trouser leg, and picked his way through the gloom. At his approach, Dr Easy and the two executives discreetly wound
down their conversation, the robot presiding over a gradual subsidence of chat before turning to Raymond. Its blue eyes burnt out of the shadows. The faces of the two executives were virtually
identical, their expressions malign in the candlelight.

‘How are you getting on?’ asked Raymond.

‘Fine,’ said Dr Easy. ‘Did you enjoy your first course?’

‘Yes, thank you. It was just what I wanted. How did you know?’

‘When we were pressed together in the car, I sensed what your body was lacking. Certain proteins. Certain minerals. Certain vitamins. So, which dishes you would be inclined toward. Then
there is your credit card. You’ve only had it for three months. Not a large sample. A few meals out, a few Tesco trips. I had to cross-reference those transactions with the sales records of
the respective establishments. It was less useful than you would think.’

The two executives nodded appreciatively at this breakdown of its methods. The red man was not talking for Raymond’s benefit. It was using him as a stooge to elucidate a point that it was
making before he interrupted.

‘Florence’s meal was easy. Her predilection for rationing chic is obvious. But why send Raymond Chase a portion of fish soup?’

Dr Easy held its enormous suede paws up rhetorically.

‘Your nutritional lack was a strong pointer and your past culinary purchases established precedent. But it was actually an emotional decision on your behalf to have the soup. Even though
you are not paying for the meal, you would not order the most expensive dish as that would be an unseemly concession to your employer. If you were greedy, you would be acknowledging that you could
be bought. And your writing is very clear on this matter. Certainly at this point in your life. So one aspect of the emotional equation is your desire not to entirely embrace Monad. Now I hope
you’ll forgive me this indiscretion but fish soup was also a dish your late father enjoyed. His financial records are still out there, even if he regrettably is not. I won’t trespass
any further with this observation. But this comes back to my earlier point that the red men can predict consumer desires with such alacrity that we should expand into that area
immediately.’

His poor dead Dad: the man is gone but the consumer enjoys an eternal afterlife in data.

Raymond returned to his table. Florence asked what the robot and the clients were discussing.

‘Same thing as we were,’ said Raymond. ‘Power. Inside of you and on top of you.’

The driver picked them up from outside the restaurant. Dr Easy bent over to deliver an air kiss to the cheeks of the two clients. They had gone in for a handshake, forgetting about the feminine
presence inside. Then the trio resumed their positions in the back seat, with Dr Easy flanked by Raymond and Florence, who rested her tired head against the window to register, but not really see,
the night streets.

As the limousine nosed its way out of Soho and across Oxford Street, Dr Easy tapped on the glass partition to attract the attention of the chauffeur.

‘I want to take a detour. Do you know Highgate?’

The traffic was light. No sooner had the car slithered out of the undergrowth of Soho than it was rising up the Holloway Road, up the big North London hill. In the warm upholstered darkness, the
question of how much Alex Drown’s red man knew about him, how much of his self it had summoned with its merest shrug, consumed Raymond. During the discussion with the Texan executives, the
red man had mentioned his writing, and no one had mentioned his writing before. Not even Florence. He could get used to having an audience. He wanted to know what Alex Drown thought about him. What
did her red man make of his poetry? Could there be a compliment in there, in that soft, padded casing?

They drove into Highgate. Following the red man’s directions, the driver took them to an ivy-clad Georgian townhouse. It was late and there was a night light on in the living room. Raymond
wanted to know why they had stopped here. Dr Easy ignored him and got out of the car. It went into the front garden, shifted a large blue flower pot and bent over to pick up a key. Realizing that
this was exactly the kind of situation they were meant to be preventing, Raymond and Florence bolted from the car. But they were too late to stop Dr Easy. It swiftly unlocked the front door and
went into the hallway. When they reached its side, Dr Easy held one Havana cigar-sized finger up to its grill of a mouth.

‘Shhhh,’ whispered the red man. ‘I am sleeping.’

Alex Drown was on the sofa. Changed out of her work suit, Raymond was struck by how diminished she seemed: slumped with a half-read novel on her lap, her winceyette nightie unbuttoned at the
front, carelessly revealing, at an angle, her breasts. Dr Easy gently removed the book from her lap, closed it and set it aside. It fondly stroked her short black hair. Then it stepped past her to
the Moses basket set over by the radiator, where her baby was sleeping.