Beth still doesn’t sleep, even as he does. She lies next to his body and watches the ebb of it. She tries to match his breathing: to draw her own breaths in as Vic takes his, so that there’s some synchronicity, and the noise – which is so alien, more alien even than the distant hum of the Machine from the adjacent room – might somehow fade into a background of her own creation. She counts his breaths, which are naturally slower than hers.
That’s the thing about sleep, she thinks: the body slows down. In sleep, it quietens to an energy-saving crawl. In danger, it becomes hyper-energetic, surging with adrenaline. She wonders what her own body is doing: lying in bed, constantly on the verge of consciousness. If the rest she’s getting is worth anything at all. She counts his breaths to five hundred, and then starts counting down. She makes it nearly halfway before stopping.
At 4 a.m., according to the clock, she gets up and paces the kitchen. She opens the fridge – such a simple pleasure, that burst of cold – and drinks water, then uses the toilet before putting the television on and watching the news. The shallow news cycle in the middle of the night, the same fifteen-minute segments repeated with tweaks, as the stories roll in, and the scrolling texts at the foot of the screen giving real-time updates, suggesting that the newsreaders aren’t even broadcasting live. Beth wonders if they’re asleep as well: tucked under the desks, waiting until a real emergency springs up. She tries sleeping on the sofa but she can’t even begin to shut her eyes. The alarm clocks are all off, because she reasons that Vic needs the sleep. He’s not used to this, she thinks, and that makes her laugh; because what exactly is he used to? He’s used to being nothing, she thinks. He’s used to being a void.
It’s a bad thought, and one that she banishes. She tells herself that she has to remember that he’s here now. She wanted her husband back and here he is. He’s mostly-formed and tweaked and as close to perfect as she can reasonably expect. And he’ll get better. That’s what they say on the forums:
Remember: this is just the start.
The news flicks to a story about the economy, and she realizes all of a sudden how out of touch she is: how little she knows about the state of everything. Outside her flat, everything is carrying on, motoring forward. Inside, it’s just her and Vic and the Machine.
She opens the spare-bedroom door. She’s told Vic that they don’t need it any more. She’s been honest about what happened; about why it’s here.
I bought it so that we could make you better, she said.
Okay, he told her. He didn’t ask anything more than that. He only said, a few hours later, I don’t like it here.
What? she asked.
The Machine. In that room.
Okay, she told him.
Don’t you trust that I’m better?
Of course, she said.
So why do you still have it?
I’ll sell it, she told him. I’ll put it on the forums and sell it. Somebody else will want it, you know. Easy sale. And we can use the money. She blabbered excuses to him, to make him feel better. Now she looks at it, growling at her. Or maybe like a purr. Such a fine line between the two.
I should thank you, she tells it. You gave him back to me. She calls up the screen with her touch, a single stroke of her fingers, and it lights up. She’s left the room light off, and the screen casts its own colours: blue on the far wall, green on the ceiling, white everywhere else. And some black: black light, which she didn’t even know was possible, making parts of the room – corners, nooks – darker than they were even without the screen on. She flicks to the recordings, selects one and presses play. She acts like it’s an accidental choice, but it isn’t. She knows which one.
I know how this goes, Vic’s voice says. What do you want me to talk about, Robert?
I’d like you to tell me your name, like always, the doctor says.
Victor McAdams. He sounds so nervous. Now, in the present day, she can hear the confidence in his voice. That’s what the Machine has embedded of itself: the confidence that this is right. That he is who he is.
Tell me some other things about yourself, Victor. Where do you live, for example?
London.
Oh, whereabouts?
Ealing. Beth remembers their house. Their beautiful house, and their brutal mortgage, and their struggling to keep it. Another life entirely.
Okay. Are you married?
Yeah, Beth. He sounds so happy when he says her name. As if she’s the thing getting him through this, she thinks. That’s what she would like it to be: that she’s what got him through the early days. He did this for her, and their marriage. They spoke about kids. About being old. Elizabeth, Beth, Vic repeats, like he’s trying the names on. The reassurance of repetition. At this point, he still remembered everything. He knew what the Machine was going to do. He repeated her name, Beth thinks, so that he could cling onto it. This is something he never wants to lose, because they were meant to be together.
Beth stops the recording. Maybe she could sleep here, she thinks. On this bed. She peels back the duvet and heaps it on the floor, and she lies down on the sheet that’s been washed countless times since Vic came home to her. Even now it smells of him, of his skin and his sweat. Something about the Machine’s noise is comforting to her. And that makes her uneasy, because it scares her – and she’s right to be scared, she tells herself, something so powerful and confusing right there, with the power that it has. It’s rumbling. Like those planes overhead, when she was a child, and the trains at the bottom of the garden. She shuts her eyes. The smell of the pillows is stale sweat, but again, that means something. In this heat, it’s a smell she’s used to. Nothing off-putting about it.
She shuts her eyes and the room moves with her. As her body turns over – always moving from her back onto one side, then onto the other, once before sleep – so too does the room, it seems. And then there is the noise of the Machine, which starts in one place only and then envelopes her. It’s in the walls and the floors, and the vibrations come up through the foam in the mattress and through the sheet, and through the pillow where it touches the wall. And she can hear the voices: Vic and the doctor talking in the background, in the far distance, so quiet they’re barely there. The pressure on her head, which she’s sure is the Crown, but it can’t be. Because the Crown is still on the dock when she opens her eyes, and the Machine is silent and sleeping, and the room is dark again. It’s getting light outside, which means she’s had barely any sleep: and from the living room she can hear the panting of Vic, press-ups in full flow. Trying to drag his body completely back to being what it used to be. His hair already looks longer, a few days of growth having a nearly transformative effect. Where the darkness of the scruff around his temples has grown, the blackened patches look almost like part of the hairline. As if they’re almost meant to be there.
Beth walks to the doorway and watches him. He turns and smiles at her.
Sleep well? he asks.
Yes, she says.