Foe by Iain Reid.
Title: Foe.
Author: Iain Reid.
Genre: Fiction, science fiction, thriller, horror, philosophical fiction, A.I..
Country: Canada.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2018.
Summary: Junior and Hen are a quiet married couple. They live a comfortable, isolated life on their farm, far from the city lights, but in close quarters with each other. One day, a stranger from the city arrives with surprising news: Junior has been randomly selected to travel away from the farm... very far away-a different planet. It is mandatory, a community service. The most unusual part? Arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Hen won't have a chance to miss him at all, because she won't be left alone-not even for a moment. Hen will have company. Familiar company. As the couple tries to reconcile with their upcoming parting, and Junior begins to suspect not everything is as it seems as he helps the stranger prepare his own "replacement", the book examines the nature of domestic relationships, self-determination, and what it means to be (or not to be) a person.
My rating: 7.5/10.
My review:
♥ Nothing ever feels simple in this heat. Everything requires an effort.
♥ "But remember, I always say this, and I really believe it: Everything changes. Change is one of the only certainties in life. Human beings progress. We have to. We evolve. We move. We expand. What seems far-fetched and extreme becomes normal and then outdated pretty quickly. We move on to the next thing, the next development, the next frontier. What's up there, it's not really another world. It is far away. It's been beyond our reach for most of our existence. But it's getting closer all the time. We've moving it closer. You see?"
..This is crazy, I say, reaching out to touch Hen's arm. Space. It is another world. But we have a world here. A life. Here. Together.
I'm starting to feel defensive, protective of this life, the one I know and understand.
♥ We can't help ourselves, I think, can't stop expanding, spreading, conquering.
♥ When you get significant news, unexpected, shocking, potentially life-altering news, as we did when Terrance arrived, it has a peculiar effect on everything, especially on how you think and order your thoughts.
This is what I'm learning about myself.
♥ But slowly, she began to return to the real Hen, the Hen I know, her normal self. That's what time does. It ushers a return to equilibrium. Unease becomes ease. A shock, no matter how potent, always wears off with time.
Hen settled and allowed me closer. Life continued as it had before we received the news. Week to week, month to month. We've returned to our natural tempo. We work; we eat; we sleep. Life finds a way of balancing out. This is what we desire as humans-security, certainty, affirmation.
But it's my own private internal cycle, my inner world, that has been dramatically reformed, though no one can see that, not even Hen. Terrance's visit lasted fewer than three hours in total, not an extensive intrusion in terms of length, but disruptive and meaningful nonetheless.
Days turn into weeks turn into months. A year goes by. Another. We carry on.
But I think about his visit every day.
..One short, innocuous visit from a stranger, that's all it was. Why does it have to have such impact, such force? I've decided it shouldn't, that it doesn't have to. No matter what happens in the future, nothing in our relationship needs to be affected now. I should refocus on the present. We are a couple, like before. And it's my responsibility to simply be myself, to be who I have always been, for Hen's sake.
Nothing in our routine was altered or transformed. But, against my will, I feel myself changing. I feel myself changed.
♥ We didn't even talk that day. Not a word. There was no acknowledgement between us, but I felt a connection. I was on the other side of the road. I was alone. I thought I was alone. Until I saw her. She had no idea of her impact. She was oblivious. That was the power she had over me. Even then.
Seeing her made me question what I was doing, what I wanted, what I desired, what I could do. Not just in the moment. But what I had been doing that led me to this point, why I was there, out in the sun, my hands dirty and sore. My whole life, I could not remember anyone's name. Nothing had made a formative impact on me. But right then I thought that might change. If I knew her name, I would remember it. That's what she did, even before we'd met-she changed things. There she was, preoccupied, bent down, oblivious, washing her hands in a puddle on the side of the road. I knew she was the one. I was meant for her. I saw her, and right then, my life began.
Are some things meant to be, meant to happen? There are some things we can't explain. Some call it fate. Maybe that's okay. Maybe we don't have to know more than that. Maybe the orbit we inhabit is preordained. I'm okay with it even if I don't really believe in that kind of thing. You can hold beliefs and not always believe in them.
♥ "But I have a question for you," he says. "And it's something I'd like you both to think about: Do you want to live normal, mundane, average lives? Is that really your ambition?"
Hen sits up, listening closer to what he's saying.
"Do you want to be indistinguishable from everyone else? Or do you want to be part of something special and unique? And that, more than anything, is what this is about," he says. "A chance to be a better version of yourself. ..You've been presented with a rare opportunity that, at the moment, remains unresolved. But why is the unknown a burden? It doesn't have to be. It can just as easily be the opposite-a kind of awakening to feel something. I don't just mean the Installation. Even before that. This is a chance to be taken out of your daily, weekly, monthly, yearly routine, regardless of the final outcome. Again..." He looks at Hen. Why, why is he fixating so much on her? "This is for both of you. It's a chance to wake up. How many people live day to day in a kind of haze, moving from one thing to the next without ever feeling anything? Being busy without ever being absorbed or excited or renewed? Most people don't ever think about the full range of achievable existence; they just don't. This is something we've been working on at OuterMore. You could say it's a company philosophy. Our moral grounding. Its the idea that a true, righteous existence is always achievable, for anyone."
Existence is achievable? I say.
"Existence is achievable! Yes, Junior. You shape your existence through decisions, perceptions, and behavior. It's our company philosophy at OuterMore. Habitual, comfortable activity is the worst kind of prison, because the bars are concealed. You can never learn anything that way. We want people to learn things, not just about new environments but about themselves. Maintaining the status quo is not what being a modern human should be about. This is bigger than the Installation. Do you see what I'm saying? This is what I'm offering you both. An awakening."
♥ I've always known that, but it's only been recently that I realize whenever I think about the past, I feel a heightened sense of oblivion. I can't go back. I can't. I can't think about those years at all. I can only go forward. I endured the passage of lonely days indifferently. Hen changed that. She gave me a purpose. A reason to exist.
I refuse to be pulled back. I don't have to. I don't have to remember just because Terrance asked me to. I'm not his pet, his toy. There's nothing in those years before that I wish to think about or dwell on. We get only so much mental space in which to store out memories, and there's no reason for me to waste it on what came before. I wasn't myself then. I was someone else, something less, a lesser version of the man I have since become.
Despair is never satisfied on its own. Despair does not want to be alone. Despair wants company. But I feel no despair. Not now. Not going forward.
There really isn't any one memory that sticks out from back then, before Hen. Everything blends into a nebulous fog.
I suppose for someone like me, it's easier to forget.
♥ "What do you remember from those days? When you two were first living here."
I remember we were happy, I say. Happy to have our own house.
"Can you recall anything specific, like a detail, or is it more a feeling you remember?"
Anybody can remember details if you ask them to, I say, but it doesn't mean it actually happened that way.
♥ I owe what I have now-my job, my house, my life-to my wife. All of it. I am who I am because of Hen. I have to keep that in mind. I can never forget that. She can be erratic at times, frustrating, unpredictable, and, recently, standoffish. But she's supported me through everything. That's what a relationship is for: mutual support and acceptance. No one understands me the way she does. And that means something.
To me, it means everything.
♥ Hen, I say, taking another step toward her, I'm worried about you.
Her expression changes, softens a little.
"What are you worried about?"
I worry about leaving you here, about what you'll do while I'm gone.
I don't tell her everything I'm worried about. How I'm concerned what my leaving will mean for us. That it's a long time to be gone. That this is all I've ever known.
♥ Plus, these objects, they remind me of things.
"This is why we have so much stuff. If you think like that, you'll never get rid of anything. It's not healthy. This is a chance to clean up, to clean house, throw stuff out. Don't you see that?"
I don't consider it much of a chance to throw my belongings away, my memories. A chance usually mean it's a good thing. If it's in here and not tossed already, there's a reason.
..So much stuff that just sits in the dark for years. But it's not garbage. It makes up who I am. My memories. To dispose of them because she happens to be in one of her moods-that isn't right.
I've shared years here with Hen. Without substance, how can I maintain an identity? Why does she want to forget? Why does she want to forget us?
♥ It was a mistake to come here. This isn't good. But I'm here now. I can't change that. Before this week, I would have turned around and fled. Things are different now. I feel my sense of duty expanding, and this, too, can be my duty. I can't be a bystander. I have to be brave, take control. I have to act. I take a breath and run towards the fire.
♥ "It's been designed with our most advanced computer software and produced using a 3D printer. We've been working with prototypes for a decade or so. It's remarkable. You can't tell the difference. Even Hen will not be able to look at it and see any disparity between the replacement and the original. There's nothing distinct. Not in any way."
This is a joke, I say. I don't want a robot look-alike coming to live with my wife.
"It's not a robot. It's a new kind of self-determining life-form, an advanced automated computer program. A conflation of life and science. If you prefer, think of it as a very sophisticated, dynamic hologram with living tissue, with volume and a body. In the old days, you would have left a photograph of yourself for Hen. This is the next step."
♥ "The thought of ever going somewhere new is scary," she said. "But isn't it good to scare yourself from time to time? It's so easy to get stuck in your own narrow rut. We convince ourselves they're paths to something else, contentment, but really they're just ruts going on forever."
♥ I hear Hen walking around upstairs, above me. I know it's her by her steps. The pace. The weight. It's amazing the way we know someone after living with them as long as Hen and I have lived together. The time we've spent together: it's significant. I'll miss hearing those gentle steps when I'm gone. Hearing her steps is like hearing her talk; it's as recognizable as her voice.
..Living with someone can't be simulated or rehearsed. It has to be experiences, in real time. There is no substitute to shared involvement, for creating actual memories. Like, I know how Hen blows her nose. I've never thought about it until now, but I do. I know the cadence, the rhythm. She does it in the same tempo every time.
These observations-her footsteps, how she blows her nose-they're like little secrets.
I'll miss her steps, and the way she blows her nose. I wonder what else I'll miss. I wonder what she privately knows about me that I might not even know about myself. What will she miss about me when I'm gone?
♥ I don't know if he understands marriage or how committed relationships function. You can't really understand a relationship until you live it, unless you're in it.
♥ I sling the tea towel over my sore shoulder.
Do you think he's nice?
"He is what he is."
♥ "I'm going to say something, okay?" I feel her hand squeeze my wrist harder. "I know you so well. I really do. Things have changed over the course of our relationship. We've both changed. You probably feel the same about me. Change in relationships is normal. But, even as things changed for us, after we got married and moved here, I still feel like I know you so well. I know you better than ever. I think that's part of the problem. When you start a relationship, you just have to go all in, and it's based on a mix of hope and belief that you do know who you're marrying and what it's going to be like. But you can't really know how it will work out. Not until you live it. At some point the hope turns into constancy and comprehension and then repetition. It's so... severe. The predictability of everything we've done. It's become the new truth for us. Which for me isn't comforting. It's the opposite. ..You have these traits, a way of being that's fundamental to you, and it can be exhausting. I wonder if that's just an inherent part of who you are of if it's part of us in this relationship. And maybe I shouldn't be sensitive about this, or even wonder if it's unique to our relationship. I know you think you're being nice when you say that you don't know what you'd be without me, but I feel like I'm not here only to help you feel secure in your life, or to offer you support so you can then do whatever it is you want to do. I don't know if you understand any of this, but I've been thinking about this for a long time. Sometimes I feel drained. Sometimes I feel trapped."
♥ There are certain moods, like tonight's, that remind me how much is beyond my own intentions and desires, how much I can't control, even without myself. I forget that sometimes. I can fall into the habit of believing I can regulate everything. My hope right now is to sleep, to rest, to recover. But my goal doesn't matter. What I want is irrelevant.
♥ "Sleeping is about a lot of things. It could be about decluttering our brains. In order to acquire new information and process it, like you've had to do the last couple of days. We have to grow synapses between neurons in our brain. Brains need rest to do this. .."There's no way we could function if we didn't forget the vast majority of new information we acquire throughout the day. In other words, Junior, we sleep so we can forget."
I consider what he'd just said.
I don't want to forget, I say.
♥ One of the guys who used to work at a poultry farm said chickens' brains are smaller than his thumb. The privilege of being human is that our brains are big enough to decide the fate of other creatures.
♥ Terrance's interviews have set something in motion within me that hasn't quite come to a full stop. Doesn't life have to be determined by each individual, and be involved to be legitimate? Doesn't there have to be an element of challenge and progression?
It makes me think of the Installation. Is that my calling? My challenge? Is that the progression that I'm being offered? What if someone else had been selected to go in my place? My life would have taken a different course, naturally. What if my inclusion wasn't a lottery at all, that it was preordained?
♥ I guess that's what always happens, I say. One thing paves the way for the next.
"Growth and advancement: it's human nature. It's always been this way. What's impossible becomes not only achievable but then is also quickly forgotten when the next impossibility becomes the new pursuit."
I guess we're the common thread, then.
"You mean humanity?"
Yeah, I say. I've been thinking more about this since you've arrived. About how we live. What we rely on. We depend on progress.
Terrance starts nodding. "Exactly. Even your truck. It wasn't that long ago, probably when your parents were kids, that people were till diving their own cars. It seems so stupid to us now, outrageous and dangerous that a fallible human would be controlling a massive hunk of metal moving at sixty miles an hour down a freeway, but for a few generations, that was the norm. Everyone owned cars, and people drove them themselves. No one thought twice about it."
And at the same time that everything changes, so much stays the same.
"Right. It's like the OuterMore slogan."
Go Farther, Be Better, I say.
♥ Maybe I'm not as average as I've always believed. It's a heavy thought, bracing. I've never considered this before.
♥ You can always talk to me, Hen. Anytime, I say.
"Thank you," she says.
I meant it, I say.
She puts a hand on my arm.
"What if it never comes?" she says. "The storm. The rain. We act like it has to come, like it's inevitable because it has always come before, but what if a storm doesn't come this time and things just keep going on and on like this forever? What then? I'm not sure I can keep going on and on like this, even though I'm supposed to. I don't think I can."
Before I can reply, or say anything else, she stands, pushes the bench back with her legs, and walks upstairs without another word.
♥ My to-do list is never-ending. In the past, that's made me more inclined to put the work off. Where would I start? But now that I know I'm leaving, I've felt a greater need to achieve. Now. Today. I have responsibilities, duties, chores. What would life be without them? Easier, but in no way satisfying. We need to be engaged and challenged. We all need to be productive and produce.
♥ My heart is grinding away in my chest, pumping, almost bursting from the exercise. I like how it feels right now, beating this hard, working and working, all on its own.
♥ But I'm sensing a change. I'm here after all! Right now! I'm having experiences, feeling desires, making decisions, building relationships, creating new memories. And I'm aware of them all happening at once. How can any of this be standard and typical?
I always thought I was ordinary, but that is my own illusion, it seems. Ordinary is impossible. It's more realistic to believe that we are all exceptions, that I, too, am singular, unique, that there has never been nor ever will be another me.
I'm an individual. I'm unprecedented and unimaginable. I'm impossible. Me, right now, standing in my house, considering my uncertain future, reflecting on my own experiences.
♥ Do you use the lunchroom?
No, I say. Not really. I stick to myself mostly.
"And why's that?" Terrance asks.
It's easier than making small talk.
"What about eating? Do you eat alone, too?"
Yeah, usually.
"And why's that? Any particular reason?"
People can be disgusting, I say.
He picks up his screen, turns something on, maybe a recorder.
"How so?" he asks.
I got in the habit of looking at the guys in the lunchroom. Watching them bite hunks of their sandwiches. The bread and filling being ground together into some vile paste. Whatever wasn't swallowed would end up stuck between beige teeth and infected gums. Sorry, but it's true. It's not just eating. I've seen a coworker fall asleep during a break with his mouth gaping oven. I felt sick at the sight of it. We're oblivious to it most of the time. And one day, I started to think about why that is, as I watched one of the guys wipe his mouth on his napkin after eating and then blow his snotty nose into the same napkin, which he then balled up and dropped onto his plate, and very slowly the napkin started to unfold from the ball all on its own, as if it wanted to be seen, and that's when I realized our common seam, each of us, is our own inherent vulgarity. Think about earwax, and fingernails, and pus. I've seen guys spit on the ground and walk away. And we do all this stuff automatically.
&hearts I've been aware of little things that I would have missed before.
"Like what?"
Like seeing the sun shine off the roof of our old barn. I saw that this morning and stood there, looking at it. I found it moving. It was beautiful-it really was. I don't usually think about if a landscape is beautiful or not, but I couldn't control this feeling. I saw it and recognized that it was beautiful. But you know what? It made me sad.
"Sad?" I can hear him typing. He's trying to do it quietly, but I can hear. "Why?"
I don't know. I have no idea.
"Because beauty is fleeting, maybe?"
No, I say. It's the opposite. Beauty isn't fleeting. Beauty is eternal. But... I'm not. I'm fleeting. That's more the point.
♥ "Why do people stay together?" she asks a few minutes later.
In long-term relationships? I ask.
"In marriages," she says.
Because they love each other, I say. They're committed to each other. They depend on each other. There's comfort there, security.
"No. They stay together because it's expected, because it's what they know. They try to make it work, to endure it, and end up living under some kind of spiritual anesthetic. They go on, but they are numb. And the more I think about, the more I think there's nothing worse than to live your life this way. Detached, but abiding. It's immoral."
I'm not numb, I think. I'm not detached.
Marriage is hard, I say. Living with another person for years takes work and effort. You can't just give up when things are hard.
She rolls onto her side.
"I know you think what you're saying makes sense. And it might in theory. But I'm not talking about giving up when things are hard. I'm talking about forced survival when things are rotten."
♥ Hen, these last few days I've been feeling something real for you. Something new and incredible. I can't describe it.
She places her hand on my stomach.
"Try," she says. "What does it feel like?"
There are so many things, Hen, so many things-objects, stuff, and so many people. Just think about the canola fields and all those flowers and everything living in there. The grain at the mill. And think about the city and everything there, the stores and apartments and vehicles. Think about all the screens people have. For almost everything, any object you can think of, there are too many. There's only one you, and it's miraculous.
♥ "I had a nightmare last night," she says several minutes later. "It felt so real. This one was especially bad. I was terrified right from the start. I knew it was a dream. I was lucid dreaming, I could do whatever I wanted, I could control it, supposedly. But that didn't make it any better. I was in this big room. I could see all the walls, I was aware of its size, but I also knew the space went on forever. The space was limitless, but I couldn't go anywhere else."
That sounds awful, I say.
"And the worst part-I want you to understand this-I wasn't alone. That's the worst part: I wasn't alone."
♥ Middle of the night. I'm not tired yet. The house is quiet. Not silent. What I've learned sitting down here all night is that no house, even at this time, is ever silent, not if you're really listening.
♥ I'm the boat, pushing through the waves. Hen's the anchor. Hen is my anchor. My stabilizing force.
..What's a boat without an anchor? It will get swept away, veer off track. At some point, it will be lost at sea.
..My theory isn't really a theory anymore. A theory is uncertain, whereas what I've uncovered has to be true. I understand this now. And I intend to prove it. Terrance isn't our friend. He never was.
Should I tell Hen or not? I wonder if she knows. The more certain I am that he's a threat, the less I want to tell her. It will frighten her, upset her, which is the last thing I want. She won't sleep. She'll worry.
I won't tell her. For her own good. What she doesn't know can't hurt her.
Terrance wants what I have. That's why he's living up on the second floor while I'm down here. Why he's cooking our meals, shopping for our food. Why he's going to my work. Why he's studying everything about me. He wants my wife. He wants my life.
I can't let it happen. I won't.
What's a boat without an anchor?
♥ I walk over, lean in, and kiss her on the cheek.
You're my anchor, I think. The stability and assurance I need to be me.
♥ Here we are again, the first time we've been alone in years. The silence can't go on. It has to be broken. So I break it.
♥ "It seems a shame, though," she says.
"A shame how?"
"That it doesn't exist anymore. I wonder if it can be replaced. I mean, if you can be replicated and replaced, couldn't it be replaced?"
♥ It's a strange thing. The way we're interacting tonight has made me feel younger, lighter. Tension can build up and live and fester, creep into in the smallest corners of daily life. This is a move back toward regularity, to predictability. We all want certainty. And we have it here, everything we need.