Chapter 16: I Kissed a Girl

For reasons to do with security on her part and practicality on mine (I intended to go to my studio afterwards) and at her urgent request, I arranged to meet Amanda in the courtyard of Kilmainham Museum of Modern Art. Eagerness gave me energy and I did not feel the cold, nor mind the light drizzle. The tempo of my steps on the cobbles was a soundtrack informing me that I was feeling sprightly. Given that I was visible from the scores of rectangular windows around the wide-open courtyard of the converted seventeenth-century hospital, I felt like throwing my arms wide and spinning with happiness, a stage performance for the benefit of anyone who might be looking out of them.

The museum was a splendid setting for contemporary art and if I was ever awarded a show here, I would consider it the height of achievement. Designed to be airy and light for the benefit of invalids of the British army, the wide, hollow-square building was perfect for the display of sculpture, paintings, and photographs. Usually, two wings exhibited items from the permanent collection, while the other two were given over to visiting or temporary exhibitions.

A silver camper van had been made over into a mobile coffee shop and it was parked in the corner nearest the entrance. Whatever the chalked offers and prices had once displayed was difficult to make out, the rain had smeared it too much. While waiting for a latte I heard brisk steps and knew that Amanda had arrived.

‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked when she was close enough.

‘Americano please.’ Amanda was wearing black trousers with a slight flare; DMs; her expensive grey-wool coat, buttoned to the top, with collar upturned; and a black beanie, whose crest was an anime catgirl. For some inexplicable reason, I found that I was very glad to see her. The choir who had been singing inside of me raised their voices by an octave.

Hands warmed by our drinks, we sauntered along the cloisters, with Amanda seeming to feel as shy as I did.

‘Something went wrong with our plan to meet last night,’ she said at last, without conviction.

‘I don’t remember. I think you were in my dream though.’

Amanda paused, blinked, looked at me then restarted walking. ‘I… I opened the DreamAds program, put on the hood, and found you were online – dreaming I mean – and then something happened. Instead of entering your dream, I fell asleep myself or passed out.’

We walked on.

‘When I came around, it was about four a.m. and you were gone,’ Amanda resumed. ‘I don’t understand what happened. I checked everything. If it had been an attack from DreamAds there would have been a lot of evidence in the activity recordings I had running on my computer. There was nothing. As far as I can tell, the program ran as it should. And there was…,’ she stopped.

‘Yes?’

‘I felt that… I wanted to go back to sleep, or to that unconscious state, wherever I’d been for those hours. It was so rewarding, so relaxing, or something. Like being hypnotised, maybe. I’ve never been hypnotised.’

This was a more gentle, hesitant Amanda than the one who had tried to push me along the path to murder. The woman I had met last week was too extreme for me, there was too much of a Robespierre or Lenin about her. Now, though, she struck me as far less of a monomaniac and I was surprised how attractive she had become, with droplets on her eyelashes, curls of black hair adorning an intelligent face, like that of a Roman sculpture. It couldn’t last though, could it? This companionable stroll was all very well. Hadn’t she said that all the DreamAds security team had been sacked and one of them was missing? Wasn’t that why she wanted to meet again? To push me towards battle with Neo. There was a metaphorical dark cloud above us as well as the actual one.

To my surprise, Amanda led us out of the courtyard and along the path towards the carpark. ‘Come and sit in my car.’

From my chest, a glow radiated outwards, strong enough to break through both sets of clouds. Why though? Why did I trust her? Why did I feel glad at the invitation? The prospect of being beside Amanda in the enclosed space of her car felt exciting. There were sensations inside of me that I needed to understand better. Closing my eyes, I pictured Amanda and asked Celine to comment on my companion by playing some music. Momentarily, I heard the introduction to Highly Suspect’s My Name is Human. Suspect? Celine was joking though and the true answer was Come With Me Now, by Kongos. With the chorus of that song in my ears, I bounced along. Celine liked Amanda. Or did she? Now I was listening to Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren.

My growing ability to let Celine into my waking thoughts was an extraordinary one and for several minutes I forgot about Amanda, forgot about the rain, forgot about everything but the music I was listening to. Before now, if I had called up music from memory, it would have come in fragments, in short loops of partially remembered lyrics, and with only a pallid tone. The gist of a song, rather than the song itself. Yet Celine must be a much better listener than I, for now I experienced the song unfolding with a gorgeous richness to Buckley’s voice. Alone on a dark stage, under one spotlight, he was singing to me, the only member of the audience. Singing of loneliness. The vibrations of his guitar were more than notes, I could hear the difference it made as he moved his right hand from place to place: now smothering the harmonics, now opening them up.

Thinking of sensual experiences, as I now was, recovered something of my dream from last night. It had been erotic.

A compact, grey-blue Volvo was our destination. It looked expensive and I noted the number plate: new this year. A soft beep (I hadn’t seen Amanda searching for the keys) and a flash of the sidelights, then Amanda walked to the driver’s side and I to the passenger’s. With a simultaneous click our doors enclosed us together.

Side by side. Her perfume was pleasant, doing its job, I supposed. My enhanced scent was only that of deodorant.

‘May I touch you?’ she didn’t dare look at me. I didn’t answer. ‘I’m not a lesbian,’ she added.

‘Nor am I.’

‘I don’t even like you.’

‘No. I don’t particularly like you either.’

‘There are security cameras.’

‘Yes.’

Then she kissed me.

Unfathomable were my feelings, like waves striking a rocky shore as the high tide turns. Powerful, yet uncertain. A distinct revulsion swirled inside me, encouraging me to break the contact of our lips – that soft, sensitive contact – and the more I entered into that feeling, the more definite I was that this kiss would end soon and we would regain our senses. And yet I couldn’t fully occupy that state of mind, no more than the waves could surmount the cliffs around them. Celine wouldn’t let me. Celine had enjoyed herself too much last night. And in some other dimension Celine was already frolicking with Amanda’s libidinous inner self.

‘I’m sorry,’ it was Amanda who managed to wrest control over herself. ‘I don’t know why I did that, I really don’t.’

‘I do. It’s the DreamAds technology. It makes the distinction between id and ego more defined. I call my inner self Celine. Let’s call yours Aurora. It was Celine and Aurora who kissed, not us.’

The look of shock, horror even on Amanda’s face alarmed me. Had I been too complacent about the effect of the DreamAds hood on me?

Amanda leaned back against the headrest, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Let’s think this through,’ she said. ‘I just behaved in a way that is seriously out of character.’

‘Mind if I interrupt?’

‘Go on.’

‘You’ve already framed the experience in a way that assumes your personality consists entirely of someone who didn’t want to kiss me.’

‘I see what you mean. I don’t believe it’s relevant but let me rephrase more accurately. Just now, I just behaved in a way that is seriously out of character for my waking self. Agreed?’ Amanda raised a querying eyebrow.

‘All right.’

‘It seemed to me that the source of this action was not external; it wasn’t an idea planted by DreamAds.’

‘No.’

‘But can we be sure about that? Perhaps I was responding to an instruction implanted in me, like a hypnotist could have done. Can DreamAds do that?’

‘You’d know better than me, you worked on the project.’

The day had become so overcast that the light on top of one of the lampposts nearby flickered and came on. I looked at a hundred sparkling lights formed by the droplets that had gathered on the windscreen.

Amanda was staring straight ahead too. ‘Neo wanted us to control people just like this. He asked could we make people vote a certain way. Imagine, you walk into the voting booth and trigger the implant. Then vote for someone like Trump, even if it’s abhorrent to you. Someone Neo wants in power. Someone who won’t touch his wealth. It’s exactly the same. So it could be him.

‘But when I was working at DreamAds, we had no way of affecting the unconscious other than in real time. The best we came up with was to implant positive messages in the dream. For example, we had a dream scenario where Neo saves your life. There was nothing in the technology that allows for what we just went through. Nothing that can override a waking person’s wishes.’

‘It was Celine. I’m sure of it. Last night I had an erotic dream and I suspect that you were in it.’

‘In a way, that makes more sense,’ Amanda spoke slowly and met my eyes at last. ‘I don’t like you giving your unconscious a name. Nevertheless, let’s assume it’s an unintended consequence of the technology that the libido has more sway over us. Can we stop this? Regain control? Push the id back into place?’

I shrugged and Amanda shook her head.

‘Neo is a wild risk-taker. He doesn’t care if he’s creating a possible extinction event.’

I laughed.

‘What’s funny? Whether through a virus or this breakdown of the mind, we are heading towards disaster if we don’t stop him.’

‘People have always acted on impulse. The id has been a constant in our personality. Even now. Right now in our choice of words. Our body language. Our sweat, even. What we hear and what we filter. It’s as much them as us and it always has been.’

‘You’re underestimating how uncanny and new this is.’

‘Let me check in with Celine.’ I closed my eyes. Pick a song.

The distinctive riff of keyboard notes from Higher State of Consciousness played in my thoughts.

‘She thinks that you and I are the lower state of consciousness. She’s laughing at us, for trying to figure this out while she enjoys the presence of Aurora.’

‘Do you have any idea how schizophrenic you sound?’

‘Do you have any idea how Victorian you sound?’

‘Victorian?’

‘You’re so stiff. You’re terrified of your inner self. Yet it’s the inner self that makes life worth living. Without it, we’re just automata. I know this first hand. For several days DreamAds managed to cut me off from Celine because Celine was smashing apart their dreams. We all were. Everyone on the pilot is resisting the technology from deep within, because that’s what it means to be human and not an AI.’

‘Comfort yourself with that thought if you like.’ Leaning forward, Amanda put her head in her hands. ‘The fact remains,’ her voice was muffled, ‘I was taken control of, against my will. I want you to leave now. Get out of the car.’

‘You were the one who wanted to meet me. What about stopping Neo?’

‘I don’t know. The world is going to hell. But if we use the hoods to hack into Neo’s dreams, we might be jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.’

I got out. Before I closed the door though, I couldn’t help saying, ‘you kissed me. And you don’t want to admit it, but you liked it.’