Forrest seems to be here alone, there is no particular cheer for him, but he waves to the crowd anyway, and even bows. Wow, the man’s got an ego, that’s for sure. I guess that is a requisite for poetry. It must take some serious self-belief to make sticking random words together your life’s work. I’m enjoying being quietly rude about Forrest when it hits me that three names have beencalled and there are only four places on the shortlist. Maybe I haven’t made it after all?
“And finally,” LadyB says, “I’m delighted to call the name of a truly local lass, Yorkshire’s very own Dr. Ava Green, computer science and AI architect.”
“Fuck,” I swear just as the in-house live stream camera focuses on me and my giant red sweaty face flashes up on the big screen. Rani beams at the camera and gives me a little shove in the right direction.
As I head for the stage, every awkward, humiliating, and mortifying experience of my life flashes before my eyes. Hitching up my skirt, I half stumble up the stairs, intent on keeping my head down and letting my long hair cover my hot face. It’s quite lucky that I can smell Forrest a mile off; it means I don’t have to look up and risk making eye contact with Hal Babbage as I take my place next to him. The heat of the lights is intense and though I know the volume of the applause shows that I have a lot of support here, it makes me want to screw my eyes shut and cover my ears. So, I try and think of something else. Something that is not me standing in front of a lot of people in a dress that makes me look stupid and face that matches my red hair.
“Now let’s have a few words from our spectacular shortlist!” LordB says, jovially. “Perhaps each of you could say a few words about what it means to you to be here tonight, as part of the shortlist.”
“My goal is to bring safe, cost-effective, and tailor-made organ transplant alternatives to the world,” Hal says, in exactly the deep and gentle voice I have heard in my head every time I imagine pillow talk, although I don’t actually know what pillow talk is. Dopeople get into bed and talk about the suitability of their pillows? Because that’s a conversation I can get behind. “There will be no need to wait for a donor organ when you can have one grown for you with my technology.”
“I’m so thrilled to be here,” Sasha says, pumping the air with her fist. “We are gonna totally smash it and show you how easy it is to help people help themselves! Whoop!”
“Forrest”—LordB hands the mic to him—“you just flew in all the way from the States. How do you feel about being a guest in this old pile for the next few weeks? Wordsworth was quite fond of it, you know.”
“I feel incredibly honoured,” Forrest says. “All I want from my work is to bring the basic human joy of art and story into as many lives as I can. In this world of screens and tech it feels more essential than ever before to keep the human creative impulse alive and all our souls connected to what makes life worth living.”
“And Ava?” The mic looms in front of my face.
“It was me,” I say. “I spilt the wine on him and ruined his silk shirt. That’s why he looks like that. Also I’ve designed a new kind of AI that doesn’t rely on scrapped data to learn, and is not only better for the environment, but designed to solve the world’s worst ecological problems, so yeah. That’s me. Oh, and also I hate yellow.” I think for a moment. “But I love my friend Rani who is here with me tonight.”
I see Rani’s thumbs-up emerge from the crowd and feel better.
“Right.” LordB blinks. “So, what can you tell us about your feelings about being on the shortlist?”
“It’s proper hot in here,” I say, and everyone laughs.
“A real Yorkshire lass!” Lord B laughs, as he returns the mic to the stand centre stage.
“Thank you for doing that,” Forrest says, turning to me as Handsome Hal and Sasha and her husband walk off the stage. He doesn’t seem to notice that his voice is being picked up by the still live mic. “For taking some accountability for this disaster.”
“Forrest,” I whisper, “just leave it...”
“No,” Forrest says as everyone in the crowd stops talking amongst themselves and turns to look at him. “I won’t leave it. There’s no point in having one of the biggest brains on the planet if you can’t have the intelligence to accept an olive branch when it’s being offered.”
“It’s just that it feels more like a declaration of war...” I say, nodding to the curious crowd. However, it seems like artistic types who mistakenly think they have something to say are even worse than introverted tech types when it comes to picking up on social cues. I tried to save him from himself. I failed. He’s angry, really angry. About a shirt. Loser.
“Trying to make the world a human contact–free zone, that’s the real crime. You and your lot are happy to take humanity off the cliff edge at a thousand miles per hour, and never mind what happens to the rest of us. We just have to go along for the ride. It’s so shortsighted.”
There are a lot of things my brilliant, logical, and erudite brain wants to say in this moment. A whole host of brilliant put-downs and comebacks that will probably haunt me at three in the morning. But they are all stuck behind the twelve-year-old girl who got mercilessly beat down and called stupid at school, the girlwho still wants to cry whenever she is frustrated and stuck and insecure. Me, I am that girl. The crowds gasp, and finally Forrest Faulkner realises that he’s been insulting me in surround sound. “Shit... listen, the thing is...”
“That you are a wanker,” I tell him. Then I hoist up my terrible skirts and make a run for it.
Hobbling as fast as I can in this skirt, I half tumble down the stairs and make a beeline out of the ballroom and down this long corridor full of dozens of serving staff, until I see an open door and find my way out into the night air.
Suddenly it’s much quieter and I can breathe again.
The night smells of ancient cedar trees and this afternoon’s shower. A peacock calls somewhere in the dark. This is more like it. Inhaling deeply, I lean against a stone pillar at the top of a broad flight of steps that leads down to neatly cut lawn.
“Are you okay, Ava?” a voice I almost recognise asks.
Looking up, I see Hal Babbage. I freeze, unwilling to look at him or open my mouth in case of an unforeseen incident of awkwardness, which, if I’m honest, is always a distinct possibility. I sense him hesitating at my side. “Look, I don’t want to intrude. I’m guessing you’re exhausted by all that hoo-ha, and the last thing you need is a stranger asking you questions but”—he takes a step closer—“I just wanted to check in.”
Straightening my shoulders, I make myself look at him. His handsomeness is unprecedented in real life. In my real life anyway; maybe in other continents there are just stupidly good-looking people wandering around all over the place. I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere outside of the UK, or Yorkshire very much.
“I just made a terrible dick of myself, didn’t I?” I ask him. Like I just told Forrest, I say things out loud by accident all the time. Yay.
“Not at all,” he says, that mouth twitching into a smile. “Most people out there won’t remember a thing by tomorrow, thanks to the free wine. And the great thing about being a genius, like you are, is that you’re allowed to be a bit eccentric. It’s practically a job requirement.”
