Machines Like Me

by Ian McEwan

The future kept arriving. Our bright new toys began to rust before we could get them home, and life went on much as before.

My friends, family and acquaintance, all had appeared in my life with fixed settings, with unalterable histories of genes and environment.

There’s a special dispensation in the sensuousness of an unshared bed, at least for a while, until sleeping alone begins to assume its own quiet sadness.