Tell the Machine Goodnight
‘Philosophical, funny, cleverly structured, unpredictable’ Gabrielle ZevinIf a machine could offer a prescription for happiness but you might not like the results would you take the test?Eat more tangerines. Divorce your wife. Cut off your right index finger. The Apricity machine’s recommendations are often surprising, but they’re 99.97% guaranteed to make you happier. Pearl works for Apricity – meaning happiness is her job – but her teenage son Rhett seems more content to be unhappy, and refuses to submit to the test. Is Pearl failing as a mother and in her job – and does she even believe in happiness any more?Warm, witty and utterly charming, Tell the Machine Goodnight is where A Visit from the Goon Squad meets Where’d You Go Bernadette.
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The Borough Press
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Katie Williams 2018
Cover design by Andrew Davies/HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Jacket imagery by Andrew Davies. Bee images © Shutterstock.com
Katie Williams asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of 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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008265038
Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008265052
Version: 2018-05-30
For Uly and Fia
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
4. SUCH A NICE AND POLITE YOUNG MAN
10. TELL THE MACHINE GOODNIGHT
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Katie Williams
The machine said the man should eat tangerines. It listed two other recommendations as well, so three in total. A modest number, Pearl assured the man as she read out the list that had appeared on the screen before her: one, he should eat tangerines on a regular basis; two, he should work at a desk that received morning light; three, he should amputate the uppermost section of his right index finger.
The man—in his early thirties, by Pearl’s guess, and pinkish around the eyes and nose in the way of white rabbits or rats—lifted his right hand before his face with wonder. Up came his left, too, and he used its palm to press experimentally on the top of his right index finger, the finger in question. Is he going to cry? Pearl wondered. Sometimes people cried when they heard their recommendations. The conference room they’d put her in had glass walls, open to the workpods on the other side. There was a switch on the wall to fog the glass, though; Pearl could flick it if the man started to cry.
“I know that last one seems a bit out of left field,” she said.
“Right field, you mean,” the man—Pearl glanced at her list for his name, one Melvin Waxler—joked, his lips drawing up to reveal overlong front teeth. Rabbitier still. “Get it?” He waved his hand. “Right hand. Right field.”
Pearl smiled obligingly, but Mr. Waxler had eyes only for his finger. He pressed its tip once more.
“A modest recommendation,” Pearl said, “compared to some others I’ve seen.”
“Oh sure, I know that,” Waxler said. “My downstairs neighbor sat for your machine once. It told him to cease all contact with his brother.” He pressed on the finger again. “He and his brother didn’t argue or anything. Had a good relationship actually, or so my neighbor said. Supportive. Brotherly.” Pressed it. “But he did it. Cut the guy off. Stopped talking to him, full stop.” Pressed it. “And it worked. He says he’s happier now. Says he didn’t have a clue his brother was making him unhappy. His twin brother. Identical even. If I’m remembering.” Clenched the hand into a fist. “But it turned out he was. Unhappy, that is. And the machine knew it, too.”
“The recommendations can seem strange at first,” Pearl began her spiel, memorized from the manual, “but we must keep in mind the Apricity machine uses a sophisticated metric, taking into account factors of which we’re not consciously aware. The proof is borne out in the numbers. The Apricity system boasts a nearly one hundred percent approval rating. Ninety-nine point nine seven percent.”
“And the point three percent?” The index finger popped up from Waxler’s fist. It just wouldn’t stay down.
“Aberrations.”
Pearl allowed herself a glance at Mr. Waxler’s fingertip, which appeared no different from the others on his hand but was its own aberration, according to Apricity. She imagined the fingertip popping off his hand like a cork from a bottle. When Pearl looked up again, she found that Waxler’s gaze had shifted from his finger to her face. The two of them shared the small smile of strangers.
“You know what?” Waxler bent and straightened his finger. “I’ve never liked it much. This particular finger. It got slammed in a door when I was little, and ever since …” His lip drew up, revealing his teeth again, almost a wince.
