the machine starts - part 5

“Well, it was your idea.”

“My idea?” Somehow it was always my idea – but in this case perhaps she’s right. “Well it was my idea in the sense that I invented it.”

“I didn’t mean that, and you know it.” Bett was sitting at her dressing table getting ready for the evening. He’d hated formal functions since Cambridge, and was still in his underwear, leaving off the dinner suit until the last minute.

“We need to go in ten, you’d better get dressed.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t have told Dan about the – they’re running with MindMeld as a working title – I shouldn’t have told him about it. I should have known he would be desperate to try it.”

“You never think when it comes to the kids.”

“Brain the size of a planet, and stupid with it.” Sometimes self deprecating humour worked with her. Not this time: she was still stony faced in the mirror, doing something weird with her eyelashes.

“Well, it’s done. At least he’ll be able to boast about it.”

“If it doesn’t rot his brain.”

“Alfie – if it’s risky, why did you let him be used as a tester.”

“Oh, it’s not this particular device, Bett. You know that. Just the whole thing: that’s what I’m getting at.” He felt the urge to pace up and down again but stayed slumped on the bed. “At least he’ll get some kudos at school when he tells them his dad invented the MindMeld.”

“Kids never get kudos for what their parents do.”

“True. Well, when he tells them he was the first kid to use one then. And he got to the final level in Alien Invasion!”

“Eight minutes.”

He got up reluctantly and started to pull on the trousers, getting tangled up in the braces.

“And I’m not wearing the cummerbund.”

“Yes you are.”

He tried to stare her down in the mirror: they are so pointless. She stared back: not with your paunch. He shrugged and reached for the stupid thing.

“There, that’s the car in the drive.”

They had looked in on Dan before getting changed. Amazingly, Dan was reading a book. Well, a comic book. But at least it was paper. He gave Dad a big smile.

“Thanks, Dad.” Wow, maybe it was a good thing after all. Two thanks in one day.

“No more Alien Invasion, eh?”

“Oh yea but not with a Gizmo any more,” he said. “I still have to explore the final level. The aliens take you through the most kickass tests ever. But with the MindMeld, yea?”

“And the end result is?”

He looked at his dad blankly. Like, duh! “To win of course!”

Ah, the winning and the taking part. Was it really so different to Cluedo or Risk?

Bett gripped his arm in the corridor, speaking softly. “He’s fine. He’s gonna be a fine boy.”

“I know. Like I said, it’s just – the whole thing. What are we doing to our kids? What are we – training them to be?” He flashed on Patrick Dunwoody’s rant.

“Well, you invented this stuff.”

This stuff – a neat summation of the Information Revolution. And he had invented a fair part of it. Well, it was your idea.

“What happened here? It was always me saying are you sure they should be… like, all their waking hours online, and… and you were saying that we were equipping them for the modern world, the globalised economy, the connected world…”

“True: you used to be more worried. Then you had all that stuff with Dan. Trying to ration him, when all his friends were able to… and then you gave up.”

She looked a little defensive. “Yes, I had all that stuff.” And where were you when a father was needed? “So – I didn’t give up – I realized.”

Yea, realized it was more hard work than she wanted to bother with. And, let’s be fair, she’s right, no encouragement from me. She always had to play the bad guy.

She was fixing in her earrings. “Anyway, look how happy he is now. It’s good to have that level of focus. I remember you when you were at Cambridge.”

“When I forgot to turn up for supper?”

“Kinda thing.” They both laughed. “Now he’s learning all these new skills.” She stood up and gave herself a once over in the full length mirror.

“Gorgeous!” New skills for what? He hugged her from behind, looking seriously at her. “It’s just – what are we teaching them, Bett? For who? For what?”

“For the new world you created, Alfie.” She picked up her clutch and they made for the door. “You’re in a funny mood tonight.”

She pushed open Kath’s door. She was absorbed in her MultiFace account.

“Did you finish your homework, darling?”

“Of course, Mommy. Tiger Lily helped me with it.”

There was a vaguely Asian face, but with unusually wide puppy dog eyes, on the largest of the pop-up screens.

“Say hi, Tiger Lily.”

“What a lovely name. Hello, Tiger Lily. That was kind of you.” Bett peered into the display. The kid smiled.

“Hello, you are Kath’s mommy and daddy?”

“That’s right, sweety.”

“Good evening, Mr and Mrs Beckinsale.”

Asian kids. Why can’t western kids be respectful and polite?

“We’re doing a project on Asian geography and Tiger Lily’s helping me.”

Bett turned to Alfie as if to say: you see, globalization, all the stuff, there are benefits to your ideas.

“Where do you live, sweety?”

The Asian girl and Kath both giggled. “In the clouds, Mommy.” Another window suddenly popped up on the screen, an image scanning through a traditional Chinese scroll painting: improbable mountains pushing up through the mist.

Her parents looked puzzled for a minute.

“I live in the Cloud, she means, Mrs Beckinsale.”

“What do you mean, the cloud?”

“The Cloud is a name for the use of computing resources that are delivered as a service over a network, and where the user's data, software and computation are stored and handled remotely.” Oddly formal. The image on the screen looked a little serious, but then gave a big smile at the end and tilted her head to one side, impossibly cute.

Kath beckoned her mother nearer and whispered in her ear. “She’s not real, Mommy!”

“You mean – an avatar?”

“No, she’s like a virtual person. But she only lives in the computer. She’s been teaching me real good!”