The Transition

‘What did she say?’

‘It’s not really …’ Janna took out her tablet and started tapping on it. ‘It doesn’t matter, actually. Is that just for one cup?’

‘Um,’ said Karl. ‘It is. Sometimes she says odd things. I wouldn’t think anything of it.’

‘Don’t boil the whole kettle for one cup, okay?’

‘Sorry.’

Janna put her tablet down, walked up to Karl and put her hand on his cheek. He tensed all over.

‘And stop apologising all the time,’ she said. ‘You’re making me feel bad.’

Back at his desk Karl wrote 500 words on lumbar support. It was only in the wake of his arrest that Karl had diversified into the shady world of bespoke essay writing through an online database called Study Sherpas©. Wealthy students, canny enough to fear plagiarism-detection software, could use the fairly expensive service to commission bespoke essays, written by actual educated human beings. An essay would never be reused – it became the customer’s intellectual property the minute they paid for it. Study Sherpas© was covered in disclaimers pointing out that it was intended as a study aid providing model answers in a variety of subjects and that collusion was an offence punishable by expulsion from any given institution, but that, nevertheless, their product was one hundred per cent undetectable provided it was used with basic common sense. You could request a particular grade: if, for instance, you were an un-brilliant student who needed to complete a module for whatever reason, you could request a 2:2 in postcolonialism and your Sherpa would do their best to deliver just that. Within three marks of the target or the fee was halved.

The site took the majority of the fee, but even at its most paltry there was a better per-word rate than the average journalist or book critic received and this more than made up for the dubious morality of facilitating lie after lie in the lives of a growing pool of strangers with undeserved degrees. It was dishonourable work, but he was getting paid for doing what he loved in a competitive economy, and how many people really got to use their degrees in the real world? Karl had already provided five 2,000-word essays for A-level coursework and six presentations and papers of various lengths for undergraduate students, and was now working on a 12,000-word dissertation on elliptical technique in Henry James, a plum job he’d scored thanks to his five-star rating in the English/Comparative Literature section of Study Sherpas©. He read his most recent customer review and flushed with pride:

FIVE STARS NO QUESTION! This guy is the bollox I needed decent two one in postmodern American fiction did he deliver fuck yes!

Karl didn’t even need to buy any books – membership of Study Sherpas© came with access to the eBeW database (every book ever written), a hidden resource of pirated literature, pre-annotated with pertinent, adaptable quotes already highlighted.

He was about to make a start on his second-year BA paper ‘Don’t Be A Caterpillar: Self-Actualisation in Caribbean Poetry’ when Janna called up to the attic to say she had business in town and did he want anything?

This bought him a good hour to investigate the understairs cupboard again, but it was getting late and he was too rattled by his earlier disturbance. It seemed likely that Stu would get back while he was in there, and Genevieve was already late home and he wasn’t sure if he wanted her to know he was prying. No, the key had to be returned before anyone realised it was gone.

He tiptoed into Stu and Janna’s bedroom, carefully sidling through the part-open door rather than opening it further. Janna’s work clothes were discarded on the bed. He tried to remember if the key had been upside down or not, decided not and placed it back in the corner of the windowsill. The gnarly foot was still kicking gently in the bramble garden.

It wasn’t until the following morning that Karl remembered he still had the Polaroid of Genevieve in his pocket. He didn’t want to lose it, but he thought through the situation and decided that there was some advantage if he knew about the photo being stolen and Janna and Stu didn’t know he knew.

On Wednesday morning he waited for half an hour after they’d all left for work, judging this long enough for any forgot-my-keys-type returns, and took the opportunity to check the cupboard out properly. Stu and Janna’s bedroom was dark and when Karl flicked the light switch he saw that the wardrobe doors were open and several outfits – a salmon-pink shirt, a blue pinstripe suit, a smart grey dress and some boots – were strewn over the bed.

He checked the windowsill. The key was gone. His breathing made a cloud of condensation on the window.

Downstairs Karl slid the Polaroid of his wife halfway under the door of the cupboard and then flicked it the rest of the way in.

9

WEDNESDAY WAS KARL’S first night to cook. His tablet announced that he was to make a simple but nourishing cheese and egg tart with wholemeal pastry and a spinach salad with home-made vinaigrette. The ingredients were all in the Smart Fridge and Smart Cupboard. When Genevieve got home from work she found him in the kitchen wearing a blue and white striped apron. He had flour on his forehead.

‘Ha ha ha!’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ said Karl.

‘You know, pastry is one of those really simple recipes which is almost impossible to get right,’ said Genevieve.

Karl flicked a fingerful of raw egg and grated cheese at her and she screamed.

‘My work clothes!’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘God.’

She stalked upstairs and Karl listened to the rest of a documentary about peak oil as he kneaded the bowl.

‘It’s delicious, Karl,’ said Stu. ‘Genevieve, did Karl cook much before?’

‘Pasta and pesto,’ said Genevieve. ‘Fish fingers.’

‘Well, he’s a natural, isn’t he?’

‘Please,’ said Karl. Although he was pleasantly surprised by the texture of the pastry – flaky but consistent. Janna poured a greenish liquid into their glasses from an oddly shaped bottle: a tall, wide neck and square base with the periodic table printed on it. Saturday was alcohol night – the rest of the week was dry.

‘This is a vitamin drink developed by one of our former protégés,’ she said. ‘The ones before the ones before you guys. It made the Journal of Nutritional Science – one of the first supplements to genuinely enhance your diet. I don’t know anything about the technical side, but … She’s a millionaire now.’

Karl took a sip of the cold vitamin drink. It tasted a little like Germolene.

‘Mm.’

‘So do you have protégés staying with you all the time?’ said Genevieve. ‘It must be exhausting. Are our replacements already lined up for when we leave?’

‘No,’ said Stu. ‘It’s the same for all the mentors: six months on, six months off.’

‘Like a lighthouse keeper,’ said Genevieve.

The tablet prompted them both to keep a journal at 10 p.m. every night. There were no rules on the content, but it had to be at least 500 words and the grammar check could tell whether or not it was basically literate.

‘This is going to be a novel by the end of the scheme,’ Karl complained.

Genevieve looked up from her typing.

‘That’s the point,’ she said. ‘The best ones are made available to future protégés. We get access to the online library in week 3. Karl, are you actually reading any of the daily bulletins?’

‘The what?’

‘Are you paying any attention at all?’

‘Sure.’

‘I get the feeling your heart’s not really in it.’

‘I’ve had a lot of work.’

‘I mean you’re the reason we’re here.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘I know you are.’

‘Well, then.’

Genevieve laughed.

Karl began transcribing their exchange on his tablet.

Halfway through his first sentence he looked up. When Genevieve paused he said, ‘How does this work with our TGU vows?’

‘This? Oh, it’s not relevant,’ said Genevieve. ‘This is a private network. It’s not the same at all.’

‘I don’t know if I’m comfortable with it,’ said Karl.

‘So call your sponsor.’

‘We haven’t spoken in a year.’

Karl hadn’t felt the need to consult his sponsor in a while. As far as he was concerned the Great Unsharing had broken the worst of his internet addiction and he no longer needed to observe its dogmas. The Great Unsharing had been founded three years previously by a child named Alathea Jeffreys. The logo was a graphical silhouette of her face at nine years old on a blue background. Alathea represented the first generation to be ‘commodified without consent’; from birth to early childhood everything about her had been documented, stored and shared with complete strangers by her parents, the first wave of social networkers whose internet use had transitioned over a decade from drunken party photos to political posturing to holiday snaps to baby scrapbook. ‘Where was our opt-out?’ asked Alathea. ‘What choice did we have? I was a public domain image when I was still in my mother’s womb.’ Alathea called for a mass strike from social networks, and then from the internet in general. A degrading, dehumanising place. The Great Unsharing gathered publicity from columnists and commentators and via the very networks from which it encouraged withdrawal. ‘I want to share something that happened to me in the coffee room after church last month,’ ran a typical editorial at the time. ‘I was there with Simon and our newborn. A young man of our acquaintance asked if he could take a photo of my baby. A little unusual, perhaps, but I tend to look for the best in people. I said yes, of course. He held up his smartphone and, flash, that was that, or so I thought. But later I saw him leaning against the wall working avidly on his phone. I approached and saw that he was playing a computer game. He made no effort to hide it from me, so I looked over him at the screen. The sick game involved drop-kicking an animated baby at a rugby goal, or over a rainbow or into the sea, and the program was able to use photographs to alter the appearance of the baby. With horror it dawned on me that he was kicking my baby.’

The movement struck a chord with Genevieve and, after discussing it, she and Karl agreed to sign up. Karl often found himself sitting with his smartphone going between five social networks and three separate email accounts, and, if he had no new messages, a simulation of a social network called Humanatee which was entirely computer-generated and passably amusing for its similitude to the real thing, albeit with no repercussions. Achieving nothing, praying for the battery to die so that he could read a book. One night they held hands and deleted their profiles from three networks, twelve years’ worth of photos, opinions and comments on other people’s opinions. It felt like flushing a toilet. The Great Unsharing encouraged participants to delete their email accounts, too, which they both felt was a bit extreme. Within two years the movement had reduced the user base for social networks by a third.

‘We’re not trying to be sanctimonious or didactic,’ read Alathea’s official statement. ‘The fact is, most of the time you go online, within about five minutes you’ve directly engaged with something that makes you genuinely unhappy. You’ve either given or received indignation. This is a reduction of what you are and what you can be as a human being. Imagine if instead of doing that you asked an elderly neighbour if they needed anything from the shops? Or went for a walk. Or studied Greek. Or had a conversation with someone in your house. Just try it for a week and observe the effects on your mental health.’

The following year it was revealed that Alathea Jeffreys didn’t exist; that she was the invention of a middle-aged American academic called Dr Cary Gill and formed part of his post-doctoral Sociology research into authenticity for the University of Bristol. By this point the followers of the Great Unsharing were no longer involved in the forums where the hoax was revealed and so they missed much of the outrage, the debates and the counter-outrage.

10

THURSDAY OF THE first week. It was 7 p.m. and the moon was already visible as a shadowy crescent. After finishing the very creditable pumpkin and spinach curry his wife had prepared, Karl was sent outside to pick his way through the runner beans in the dark, the collected rainwater seeping through his fuzzy trainers. He could see through the garage’s screen door. In oil-stained jeans and a white T-shirt Stu hunched over the bonnet of a bright-green Honda Civic, rubbing its immaculate paintwork with a piece of sandpaper. He looked up when Karl pulled the door open.

‘All right, Karl?’

‘Hey. Janna said you, um …’ He inhaled the smell of turps.

‘Yeah, first workout – just let me finish …’

Stu went back to sanding the bonnet.

‘This Lime-Green Car my Prison,’ said Karl.

‘What?’

‘Came into my head. Is that for …’

‘Rat look,’ said Stu. ‘Security feature, really. You downgrade a fairly expensive car so it doesn’t get vandalised or stolen. Sorry. Just finish this bit.’ His sanding sped up for a moment, then he rose and sat down on a stepladder, motioning Karl towards an old paint-spattered wooden stool.

‘We’ll start with a little cardio,’ he said. ‘And then get straight into the weights – there’s no need to hold back. I’ve got you a kit.’

He handed Karl a canvas bag. In it he found a pair of white running shoes, some black shorts and a black Aertex shirt, a brand he remembered the more popular kids at school wearing.

‘Go up and get ready and I’ll join you once I’ve washed my hands.’

Karl noticed the steps in the corner of the garage. His wet trainers squeaked against the steel and he hauled himself up to a mezzanine bedecked with oily gym apparatus. It looked like the set of a grim science-fiction film.

They were running, side by side, on a double treadmill. Stu was able to keep a conversation going as if they were sitting in a bar. Karl, who only ran when he needed to catch a train, felt a little less able to draw breath, let alone speak.

‘People say running clears your mind,’ said Stu, ‘and you know what the key to that is?’

‘N … No.’

‘You keep doing it,’ said Stu. ‘You keep doing it until all you can think about is how much you hate running and how much you don’t want to be running any more. Suddenly, magic! All the cares of this world have melted away. You just want it to end. You are a non-physical being, a spirit of pure hatred of running.’

‘That,’ said Karl, clutching the stitch in the side of his stomach, ‘is something I can get behind.’

Twenty minutes later he was pouring with sweat, sitting in a weight-lifting machine the like of which he had only ever seen in Hollywood montages.

‘We ran two miles,’ said Stu. ‘Feels good, right?’

‘No.’

‘Start on level three,’ said Stu, taking the push-pin out of 16 and placing it on the second hole. ‘First week on three. People always start too high and get demoralised. Do ten.’

Karl pushed the bars, which felt light. He brought the bars back to his sides again and pushed. A little more resistance.

‘So what’s the story?’ said Stu.

‘You mean how I got here? Somewhere between fraud and tax evasion and incompetence,’ said Karl.

‘No, no, I know all that,’ said Stu. ‘I mean with you and Genevieve. How’d you meet?’

Karl finished his tenth lift.

‘Ten more,’ said Stu.

‘University,’ said Karl. ‘She was a friend of a friend. I was obsessed with her.’

‘Not hard to see why.’

‘In fact it totally ruined my three years of university. I didn’t even talk to another girl the whole time I was there. Then I didn’t see her for a decade. I had, like, three pretty joyless relationships with women who weren’t her. And then one day Genevieve just sent me an email asking if I remembered her.’

‘How long have you been together?’

‘Four years,’ said Karl.

‘And how’s that going?’

‘I feel very lucky.’

‘Good.’

‘Very lucky.’

‘You are. She’s gorgeous.’

Karl smiled. He liked other men admiring Genevieve.

‘Now don’t get me wrong,’ said Stu, ‘you’re a good bloke and I’m sure you have your qualities – but there’s a fairly standard way someone like you gets a girl like Genevieve.’

‘Oh? What’s that?’

‘You won’t take this the wrong way?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘I tell it as I see it,’ said Stu. ‘Some people don’t like that.’

‘Tell away,’ said Karl. If Stu said something he didn’t like, it would only serve to make him value Stu’s opinion less.

‘You’re a fairly ordinary-looking guy,’ said Stu.

‘I’ve always thought so.’

‘So is she damaged goods?’ said Stu.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Come on,’ said Stu. ‘When she got back in touch with you, after ten years … I’m not asking you to tell me what she survived or the condition she was diagnosed with or whatever. I just wanted to say that I’ve noticed. You look after her. I couldn’t see it at first, but I do now.’

‘Right,’ said Karl, relieved that Stu had brought the conversation round to a form of compliment again, something easy to accept. ‘Well, thanks.’

‘You’re caring, which is good. What I want to give you,’ said Stu, ‘is a little more self-esteem. I’ve been insulting you and you’re not even offended. Men keep their self-esteem in the biceps and pectoral muscles. You should feel that you’re in an equal relationship with Genevieve. Does that make sense?’

‘I guess so,’ said Karl.

‘I guess so,’ said Stu. ‘You sound like a Muppet. I don’t mean like “you muppet”, I mean like an actual Muppet, from The Muppet Show. Lose the Americanisms. Try to sound like yourself.’

Karl swallowed.

‘We’ll finish with a hundred press-ups,’ said Stu.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘That sounds more like your real voice. We’ll do them together. Come on.’

‘I don’t think I can do twenty,’ said Karl.

‘You can do a thousand,’ said Stu. ‘Might take you a week, but there you go. We’ll do a hundred, as long as it takes, then you can go and have a shower.’

Karl laughed.

‘What’s funny?’

He assumed the position. His arms already burned from the weights, but the first five press-ups were relatively easy. After the eleventh, Stu waited, supporting his weight with one hand while Karl completed his twelfth press-up.

‘Don’t give in at the first sign of resistance,’ said Stu. He sounded genuinely cross. ‘This is important.’

Slowly Karl lowered himself so that his nose was touching the rubber floor.

‘Come on,’ said Stu. ‘That’s it.’

Karl tensed his chest. He felt like he was made of loose Meccano. He forced himself up again.

‘Eighty-six to go,’ said Stu.

His arms shaking, Karl lowered himself again.

‘Eighty-five and a half.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ stuttered Karl.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Stu mimicked. ‘That’s fifteen. Good … Why aren’t you moving? Your wife will be wondering where you are.’

‘Twenty-three,’ said Stu. ‘You said you couldn’t do twenty. Karl, I’ve seen better men than you lose a woman like Genevieve because they stopped working for it. Do you want that to happen?’

While Karl didn’t think this was likely, he tried to channel his embarrassment, his rage and his temporary loathing for Stu into his twenty-fourth press-up. It took almost a minute.

‘That’s fifty-eight,’ said Stu.

Karl was shaking all over. His temples felt like they were going to explode and his stomach was like a sack of snooker balls. He tried very hard to lower himself again, but his arms gave out. He collapsed, hitting his nose on the floor, and started to cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Hey,’ said Stu. ‘Hey. Karl, stand up.’

Karl clambered to his feet and Stu took him in his arms. Karl cried hard, took big breaths and cried, his nose streaming with snot on Stu’s shoulder. Stu stroked the back of Karl’s head.

‘Let it all out.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Karl sobbed.

‘Do you know how much the last guy held out for?’ said Stu. ‘Thirty-one. And that was the best so far. You did great.’ He patted him on the back, hard. ‘You did fucking great.’

11

‘WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?’

‘I was working out.’

‘You look like you’ve been hit by a car.’

Karl gingerly climbed into bed and put his head on Genevieve’s shoulder. She smelled of a medicated facial scrub she used sometimes, a smell he associated with their university halls: bare-brick stairwells, a pasted-up lightning crack in the side of the building.

He only realised he’d been asleep when the room filled with light. Janna and Stu were standing at the end of the bed, holding two envelopes. Karl sniffed, sat up in bed, nudged Genevieve.

‘Really sorry to wake you,’ whispered Janna.

‘We won’t make a habit of it,’ said Stu.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, no.’ Genevieve shuffled out of the bed and stretched. ‘Don’t apologise. I don’t know what … We never fall asleep this early.’

‘You’re exhausted,’ said Janna. ‘Poor things.’

‘We’ll keep this quick,’ said Stu. He held the envelopes out to Karl.

Karl found it hard to move his arms from his sides; it was as if an important pulley system had snapped.

‘What are these?’

‘We want you both to read a newspaper,’ said Stu. He sat on the end of the bed and Janna sat down against the wall.

‘We’ve got you subscriptions,’ said Janna. ‘To The Guardian and The Telegraph. Every day.’

‘Every day?’

‘You get up an hour early and you read them both, quickly, cover to cover, then swap. Get into the habit. It’s like keeping an allotment.’

‘I’ve tried to read newspapers,’ said Karl, rubbing his left eye. ‘It doesn’t feel like they’re for me.’

‘And that’s the problem,’ said Stu. ‘You need to be an active participant in society. We got the paper editions because the symbolism is important – you could just read it all on your tablets, but I want you to think about your parents, and how serious they seemed when they were behind newspapers.’

‘It’s not that we’re not interested in what happens in the world,’ said Genevieve. ‘Really it’s just that I’m busy or I would read one. At least once a week.’

‘But you’re apolitical.’

‘I’m disillusioned.’

‘No,’ said Stu. ‘The problem you’ve got is that you don’t feel worthy of newspapers. Be honest. A part of you still feels that newspapers are for grown-ups and that you’re not grown-ups.’

‘Look at this,’ said Karl. He had been rifling through The Guardian to the property section and had now folded it on Bargain of the Week, a two-bedroom flat for £1.2 million. ‘This is supposed to be the newspaper for intelligent poor people,’ he said, ‘but we’re completely unrepresented. Newspapers are written for the wealthiest fraction of a fraction of society.’

‘We spend most of our lives living in a fantasy of the future we think we deserve,’ said Janna.

‘This is part of the programme,’ said Stu. ‘This is something you have to trust us on. Try it for the next couple of weeks. You read the papers first thing. We discuss home and international news over breakfast. Deal?’

‘If we can talk about X-Men comic books over dinner,’ said Karl.

‘Okay, second nag,’ said Janna. ‘Teeth. Has either one of you ever been to a dental hygienist?’

‘How does that differ from a dentist?’ said Karl.

‘It’s like the difference between a doctor and a coroner,’ said Stu. ‘Not even joking.’

‘We are incredibly backward about teeth in this country,’ said Janna. ‘It’s seen as separate from health. Most of the population, they might as well be walking around with radioactive waste in their mouths. Name any disease: your teeth and your gums can give it to you. Do you floss?’