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.

I’d thought he would arrive optimally adjusted. Factory settings—a contemporary synonym for fate. My friends, family and acquaintances all had appeared in my life with fixed settings, with unalterable histories of genes and environment.

absent illness, famine, war or other stresses, a lot of life is lived in the neutral zone, a familiar garden, but a grey one, unremarkable, immediately forgotten, hard to describe.

I may have been stronger, but he would be more reckless. Less to lose. Or this was what bravery was. Being ready to take a chance on not getting felled and your head lifted and slammed down on the tarmac many times, with lifelong neural consequences.

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

The present is the frailest of improbable constructs. It could have been different. Any part of it, or all of it, could be otherwise.

He took a deep breath to indicate his appreciation of the evening air. Then, out of nowhere, he said, “From a certain point of view, the only solution to suffering would be the complete extinction of humankind.” Yes, this was why he needed to be out and about.