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The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © James Smythe 2018
Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Cover photograph © Tara Moore/Getty Images
James Smythe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007541942
Ebook Edition © April 2018 ISBN: 9780007541966
Version: 2018-01-02
Dedicated to my father, and to the memory of my father-in-law
Q: What is the purpose of life?
A: To serve the greater good.
Q: What is the purpose of living?
A: To live for ever.
Q: Where are you now?
A: I’m in the middle of nowhere.
Q: What is the purpose of dying?
A: To have a life.
Q: What is the purpose of emotions?
A: I don’t know.
Q: What is moral?
A: What empowered humanity, what intellectual the essence is.
Q: What is immoral?
A: The fact that you have a child.
Conversation between human interviewer and Google’s DEEPMIND AI, 2015
I want full manual control now.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Contents
1997 – Okay, Computer
Monday
Tuesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
2007 – A Very Modern Piracy
2017 – That Be-My-Baby Drumbeat
2027 – Wave After Wave, Each Mightier Than the Last
2037 – Every Time it Rains
1987 – I Won’t Forget
2047 – Present Tense
2§§7 – Of Organon
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by James Smythe
I’m sifting through the post, looking for the telltale return address on the telephone bill that I’m going to steal before my parents can see it. My glasses steam up, because Mum keeps the house warm all the time, and my glasses always steam up when it’s raining outside, putting me in a foggy microclimate of my very own. I try to clean them on my shirt, but that’s damp as well. I end up smearing the water around. Hate that. But then, here we go, some industrial estate in Durham. This is it. The phone company has started sending the letters unmarked, which I suppose
