Klara and the Sun

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Even so, an AF would feel himself growing lethargic after a few hours away from the Sun, and start to worry there was something wrong with him – that he had some fault unique to him and that if it became known, he’d never find a home.

Still, there were other things we saw from the window – other kinds of emotions I didn’t at first understand – of which I did eventually find some versions in myself, even if they were perhaps like the shadows made across the floor by the ceiling lamps after the grid went down.

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘at special moments like that, people feel a pain alongside their happiness. I’m glad you watch everything so carefully, Klara.’

I’d begun to understand also that this wasn’t a trait peculiar just to Josie; that people often felt the need to prepare a side of themselves to display to passers-by – as they might in a store window – and that such a display needn’t be taken so seriously once the moment had passed.

the danger topics were themselves ways the Mother had devised to make certain emotions appear inside Josie’s mind.

At the same time, what was becoming clear to me was the extent to which humans, in their wish to escape loneliness, made maneuvers that were very complex and hard to fathom, and I saw it was possible that the consequences of Morgan’s Falls had at no stage been within my control.

‘Yes. Until recently, I didn’t think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.’

‘Sufficiently generous and liberal to be open to all students of high caliber, even some who haven’t benefited from genetic editing.’

When you passed it on that Josie and I really loved each other, that was the truth at the time. No one can claim you misled or tricked them. But now we’re no longer kids, we have to wish each other the best and go our different ways.

‘I suppose I’m saying Josie and I will always be together at some level, some deeper one, even if we go out there and don’t see each other any more. I can’t speak for her. But once I’m out there, I know I’ll always keep searching for someone just like her. At least like the Josie I once knew. So it wasn’t ever a deception, Klara.

‘Mr Capaldi believed there was nothing special inside Josie that couldn’t be continued. He told the Mother he’d searched and searched and found nothing like that. But I believe now he was searching in the wrong place. There was something very special, but it wasn’t inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.