The firmware update is the part that she’s been dreading. There are privately linked videos on the internet that show how to do the update, found only through the forums that she uses. The videos have told her what to do, with step-by-step instructions. This is all clandestine, all under the radar. She shouldn’t have a Machine, and it’s not like the instructions are easy to come by. Illegal firmware updates are even more so. Back before the mass recall, when they thought that there was a problem, the first lot of Machines – the ones that could be tampered with, that could have custom firmware installed – were all recalled, all sucked back into the system and, in theory, disposed of, repurposed and turned into the smaller, safer Machines. The one that she has is not small or safe.
The update isn’t something that can be done wirelessly, because of how the reboot process works. Instead Beth needs to get inside the thing. There’s a panel that needs unscrewing. There’s a USB socket inside there, tucked away. Download the firmware to your USB stick, insert it into the Machine. Reboot it by holding all the buttons down with the flat of your hand. Wait there until you hear the triple beep that heralds the Machine’s start-up process. Choose to update firmware, when the screen prompts you. Check the firmware numbers. If it says one thing, you’ve succeeded. Another, try again. Back to the start.
The panel comes away with relative ease. Four screws, that’s it. She looks for the screws to the second panel, underneath the screen. They’re tucked away. Beth has to lie on the floor to undo them, at the join of the screen and the black metal case. She looks up at the Machine towering over her. She hadn’t realized that the front of it isn’t entirely flush, but it’s definitely not. It has a slight undulation. From the floor, looking over its surface, there are slight peaks and troughs. Like razor-blade-black sand dunes.
The USB socket is crude in comparison to the rest of the Machine. Whereas it’s highly finished elsewhere, smoothed over and made accessible, this is like seeing into the guts of the thing. Behind the socket runs exposed wires, reds and greens and yellows, and one solitary black cable that’s thicker than the rest, that coils in and over on itself like an intestine, thick and lumpen. The rest of the Machine is cordoned off with internal panels. Beth reaches up and taps one of these panels and it moves, so she slides it. She’s intrigued. She expects fans and processors and a wall of circuitry that she doesn’t understand, something totally alien to her.
Instead there’s nothing. Past the wires, there’s a hollow, she thinks. Past it, a cluster of wires, leading to something in the centre, but she can’t see what. It’s so dark in there: far darker than the outside. Almost impossible, she thinks. She can’t ever remember seeing such an absence of light. She backs out and looks at the Machine itself, to work out which part of the shell this area lies behind, and see that it’s the bulk of the main section, where the screen is. Again she peers up into it, but can’t see past a few inches, because it’s so black in there. She thinks about getting a torch, but it would be too easy to be distracted. She has a job to do: there’s only five days left.
She goes to her computer. The files – one for every possible firmware combination – have been on the desktop for over a year now, sitting at the top left so she couldn’t accidentally delete them. She’s bought a new memory stick especially, still sealed, so she scissors and hacks through the blister pack to get to it. It’s so light, she thinks.
She puts it into the computer and then finds the right file, cross-matching the file name with that of the Machine. She copies the file across, then renames it into the protocol that will make it actually work. This is the part she’s most worried about: making sure that everything works first time. She’s thought about this, late at night. If she messes it up she worries that she’ll lose her guts and stop. That she’ll eke out the rest of her days with that Machine sitting there in the room, a reminder of her failure. And leaving Vic in that place, like he is. She checks the name of the file three times, making sure it’s exactly what the online guides have told her that it should be.
When she’s positive she takes the memory stick back to the Machine. The guide says to switch the Machine on and then insert the stick, before doing a hard reset. She flicks the power switch and the vibrations start, and the noise. Ding-ding-ding. The screen on, she squats and slides the memory stick in. It clicks neatly into the socket, and the Machine whirrs. Sudden and abrupt, the fans kick in, and the whole thing makes a grinding sound, filthy and enormous, and Beth is almost kicked back onto the bed by the shock. The screen goes blank, replaced with its own blackness – false and printed on, pixels approximating the tone that’s so exact and pure on the outside – and then the noise abates, slightly.
Okay, Beth says aloud. She looks at the instructions – her own transcription of the videos she’s watched, printed out on paper that she’s folded over and over and read a thousand times – and it doesn’t say anything about this stage, but that’s not her problem. She has to stick with the instructions. She can’t expect the people who hacked this all together to write down every little detail.
Put your hand on the screen, her instructions say, and hold it there until you get an option by your index finger to reboot. Press it, keeping your hand there.
She can’t be sure, but she thinks that the Machine is somehow colder. The screen as well, not just the metal. That must be an effect of having the fans on as they are, so loud it’s like being on an aeroplane: the whirr of the engines, readying to take off. That burst of noise and power. But here it’s coming from this box in her spare bedroom in her little flat. She presses her hand flat to the screen and makes sure it’s all touching, and then stands there as the vibrations run up her arm and into her shoulder, and from there to her collarbone and her teeth. Her back teeth she presses together, and they chatter. It’s almost like static: like rubbing a balloon on your head as a child, that same feeling. The instructions don’t say how long to hold it there for. Her arm runs with pins and needles after thirty seconds, and it’s almost painful after a minute, just as the option appears. INSTALL. She moves her finger across to the picture of a button and taps it, and as soon as she does so the Machine stops whirring and the sound completely drops away. She hadn’t realized it, but she had been pressing really hard on the screen, and she almost falls forward, suddenly not having to push against the Machine’s shaking. The screen goes black – not display black, completely lightless – and the sound disappears, and she’s in the room in silence.
She thinks about when they first saw the Machine, when she and Vic were brought in by Vic’s therapist. He told Vic how perfect he would be for the treatment, which was experimental but so perfect, so neat and tidy.
Conventional therapy is usually like sweeping everything away. Under the carpet. The doctor, Robert something, he was the same man who then led Vic through his therapy. She and Vic had thought of it as a sales pitch, and a pretty convincing one. This treatment, Robert said, isn’t sweeping. It’s cleaning. Hoovering. It’s taking a hose to the patio and washing away all the grime and dirt, and leaving it looking good as new. You understand what I’m saying, right? It’s taking the bad stuff away. All these conversations we have, the dreams, the shock you’re going through: we can simply get rid of it.
So why don’t more people do this? Vic had asked.
Because it’s still a secret, the doctor told them.
Beth watches the Machine doing nothing, and it hits her that she’s done something wrong. She’s ruined it: all that money, time, thought, down the drain. She reads the instructions again, which implore her to wait. They say, It will take longer than you think. She pushes herself back onto the bed, up towards the pillows and the headboard, and she folds her legs under herself and watches it. Eventually she lies down and shuts her eyes. She thinks she’s asleep when she hears the whirring, and the familiar ding-ding-ding, and when she opens her eyes the screen is already bright with the menus.
Has it worked? she asks. She presses the information button and the screen flicks to the year, the firmware. CUSTOM, it says, instead of a number. Shit, she says. Okay. She opens the instruction sheet again, her hands shaking. Congratulations, she reads. Okay.
She flicks through the Machine’s menus again. It’s internal structure has been rearranged: where the recordings of Vic from before had been buried in a folder of their own, now they’re the only thing accessible from the MEMORY tab. She presses the button marked on, to check that the files have survived the process.
What are we doing here, Vic? asks the doctor.
We’re here to get rid of the stuff I can remember about the war, Vic says.
And how do you think it’s going.
I think it’s going. Is that enough?
At this point, yes. Absolutely.
Beth presses stop. She shuts the Machine down, and then she goes to the computer and looks at the videos of the process again, and she starts to cry. She’s so close.