Chapter 31
Dear Anon
Well, aren’t you the catch with your fancy car and your big job and your fancy apartment and ego to match it all? I bet your new wife feels like all her dreams have come true, married to a guy like you. Not.
Seriously, Anon, when I encounter a man like you I feel frankly ashamed of my own sex. Not just because you’re treating your wife appallingly – although you are – but because your lack of self-awareness shows in every word you write. You really do believe you’re God’s gift, don’t you? And not only to your wife, but to your employer, your colleagues and the woman you’re thinking of having – or, most likely, by the time this reply reaches you, already having – an affair with.
Here’s the thing, Anon – you’re not. Without decency, integrity, trustworthiness and kindness, you’re nothing. Those are the attributes that make a man, and I can see very little (to be generous) evidence of any of them in your letter.
So what should you do? Come clean, mate. Tell your wife what you’ve been up to and beg for her forgiveness. If you’re lucky, you’ll get it – but most likely you won’t, and I can’t say I blame your wife one bit for that.
Then, take a long, hard look at yourself. Why are you so blind to what really matters in relationships and in life? Did you have a distant father growing up? Quite possibly you’d benefit from some counselling – if you go down that route, put the work in with honesty and pragmatism.
As for the other woman, end it. She doesn’t deserve you – and not in the way you think.
And moving forward, do try to stop being such a dick.
Yours ever, Adam
The journey to Brooklyn seemed to take forever – actually, it did take forever, because instead of waiting for Ross, whose superior knowledge of the subway would have ensured we got an express train, I dragged him on to the first one that arrived and it stopped absolutely everywhere. In spite of the freezing air conditioning, I could feel sweat trickling down my back and soaking into my top, and the hand Ross was holding got so clammy I had to wriggle it free after a few minutes.
There was no point putting him off me before we’d even started, after all.
He asked several times before eventually giving up, ‘What’s going on? What did Greg say?’
But all I could answer was, ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand. I need to check my laptop.’
So, when at last we arrived at the apartment, that was the first thing I did. I perched on the bed – which to my shame I hadn’t got around to making that morning, and my clothes were scattered everywhere, too – while he poured us glasses of water from the tap. I opened my laptop with trembling hands and tapped through to my email.
And there it was – the answer I’d sent through to the subs’ desk in the small hours of the morning, in response to the email I was sure had come from Zack.
Feeling like I was about to throw up, I opened my browser window. The Max! homepage was right there in the first tab, same as it always was. I hit Refresh and the new Ask Adam column appeared right at the top of the screen. I felt even sicker – normally it was about halfway down, below the news coverage and the sport, but above Neil’s weekly financial advice segment.
I passed the laptop to Ross.
‘Read that,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’
He looked like he might be about to make some kind of a joke, but changed his mind, balanced the computer on his knees and tapped the trackpad. The text appeared on the screen, but I couldn’t look at it. I heard Ross take a sharp breath in, then hiss it out slowly through his teeth. Then he chuckled. Then I felt the warm weight of the laptop on my thighs..
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That’s hot stuff.’
‘Is it…’ I tapped the email window and opened the attachment I’d sent the previous day, unable to make myself read it. ‘Is it this?’
Ross leaned over to peer over my shoulder. I could feel his breath on my neck, tickling my hair, and smell his skin. He smelled a whole lot better than anyone who’d caught an overnight flight from London and been walking the streets of New York ever since had any right to.
‘Looks like the subs changed a few words here and there,’ he said. ‘Made it more Adam-like. The original’s kind of stilted, like you wrote it in a hurry, so I guess they had more heavy lifting to do than usual. But it’s – I mean, it’s pretty punchy, right? Well done you.’
‘Here’s the thing.’ My lips felt so numb I could barely get the words out. ‘I didn’t write that.’
‘What? Then who did?’
‘GenBot 2.0. I think.’
‘You think? Surely you must’ve told it what to write?’
In a rush, I explained what had happened. How overwhelmed I’d felt by the increased frequency of my deadlines. How I hadn’t known how to respond to the letter, because I thought it was from Amelie’s husband. How I’d been using GenBot to help me compose answers when I was stuck. How I’d remembered my overdue copy late at night and pasted the answer before sending it without checking it properly.
‘But it wouldn’t come up with this on its own.’ Ross’s brow was furrowed. ‘I mean, it’s done a decent job of copying Adam’s style, which is pretty impressive given the column’s only been running a couple of months. They must have updated the algorithm quite recently. But the content – it’s dynamite. It’s not like anything we’ve ever got from the AI when we’ve used it for research before.’
“I’ve been arguing with it,’ I confessed. ‘When I don’t like what it writes, because it’s too kind of boring. I’ve been asking it follow-on questions and why it’s not telling these men what dicks they are and stuff like that. And now it’s gone rogue.’
‘It’s a piece of software, Lucy. It can’t go rogue. You’ve trained it.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve trained the algorithm. When you didn’t accept the responses it gave, you made it change them, and it’s learned. That’s how these things work.’
Ross wasn’t the only one who understood technology. I did too, and I knew he was right. I’d wanted the AI Adam to give answers that the real Adam – that I – couldn’t. And now it had. And I hadn’t checked my copy and it had gone live and it was all my fault.
‘What does Greg say?’ Ross asked. ‘Is he spitting feathers?’
I forced myself to look at him. His face was full of concern. ‘No, he’s not, actually.’
‘Jesus. He must really like you. But why not?’
‘It’s gone viral,’ I explained. ‘It’s had the most hits of any Ask Adam column so far, like way more. It’s had more hits than any Max! article ever, except the interview Marco did with Boris Johnson back in the day. The analytics are insane, Greg says. It’s getting shared all round the web.’
Ross let out a long, slow breath again. This time it came out as a whistle. ‘So you got away with it?’
‘Looks like it. But I feel terrible. I did a shit job. I was late and careless and it could all have gone horribly wrong.’
‘I mean – yeah, I suppose so. But what’s the worst that could have happened? The AI could’ve spat out some anodyne response about the guy talking to his wife and getting counselling and blah blah, and no one would’ve been any the wiser. Or if it really hadn’t stacked up the subs would’ve flagged it and Greg would have assumed you’d sent the wrong draft and made you do a rewrite.’
‘I guess.’
‘I mean, that’s why we have processes in place, right? Checks and balances.’
‘And I didn’t follow them properly. I deserve to be sacked.’
‘Well, you’re not going to be,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky, you’ll learn from this – but also, you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I think this is good shit. I think it’s better than the Ask Adam columns have been in the past, I’m not going to lie. You’re a great writer, Lucy. You do your research and give put a lot of thought into them. But they could be a bit more… you know? Punchy?’
‘Like this?’
‘Exactly. And this isn’t GenBot, Lucy. This is you. GenBot wouldn’t have come up with it if you hadn’t fed it the ideas in the first place. I reckon – speaking as a man?—’
‘Don’t say that! That’s what men always say when they’re about to start mansplaining.’
‘Sorry. Speaking as me. I mean, when I wrote in to Ask Adam?—’
‘You what?’ Suddenly I remembered the letter I’d responded to way back, from a guy who wasn’t sure how to tell if the woman he was seeing was the one for him. At the time, something about it had struck a chord – and now I remembered why.
The conversation I’d overheard between Ross and Marco in the pub. The doubts he’d expressed then had been almost identical to what Adam’s anonymous correspondent had been worried about. And it was Ross – it had been Ross all along.
‘So that was you?’ I asked, astonished.
‘That was me.’
‘But why?’
’Two reasons. I genuinely wasn’t sure what to do about Bryony. I needed advice. And also – oh God, I feel like a right pillock saying this.’
‘Saying what?’
‘I wanted you to know that I wasn’t sure. I wanted you to know that I liked you.’
I looked up from my screen and met his eyes. He was blushing furiously.
I felt my own cheeks turn absolutely scarlet. ‘I really liked you too. I still really like you.’
‘Then maybe we should do something about that.’
‘I…’ I hesitated. Most of me wanted to throw myself into his arms, feel his body close to mine the way it had been at the foot of the ladder in the escape room. But a smaller, frightened part wanted to hold back, to walk away. ‘I want to. But, Ross, I’m scared.’
He didn’t throw his arms around me. Instead, he reached over and took my hand. ‘Relationships are scary. At least, they are when there’s something real going on. When you care about the other person a lot.’
‘I haven’t had a boyfriend in ages.’ My voice came out in a whisper and I felt my eyes squeeze shut, like if I couldn’t see him he wouldn’t be able to see me, know the truth I was about to tell him. ‘Not for years. The last time I was with a guy, he treated me terribly. I don’t know how to do this.’
‘No one does,’ he said. ‘Not really. We can figure it out together, if that’s what you want.’
‘I do want to. I think. I think I’m ready. But, Ross…’
He squeezed my hand tighter. ‘Lucy, I can promise you one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ll try my very, very best not to be a dick,’ he said.
And then he kissed me.