Hard, Soft and Wet. Melanie McGrath

friends’. I suspect the truth is she doesn’t think Dave is glamorous enough for her. Nancy is always chasing the unattainable at the expense of the possible, whether it be some greaseball zillionaire in a sta-prest suit, the state of permanent perfect happiness, or the latest must-have body-shape.

      We set up the brain machine and toss a coin to see who goes first. The machine reprograms your moods by flashing a series of lights into your retina and changing the pathways of your neural impulses. I win the toss. Having selected my chosen mood – exhilaration – from the mood menu, I settle down on the sofa, cover my eyes with the special glasses and flip the on button.

      At first nothing happens. Then, a few seconds later, some strange pulsing music starts up, followed by flashes of light which gather into a pattern of green helixes inside my eyelids. For a moment the whole thing feels like a bad trip, but the next I know, Nancy is tugging on my shoulder.

      ‘Sweetie, it’s time to get up.’

      I remove the glasses from my eyes.

      ‘Did I fall asleep?’

      Nancy nods. ‘Twenty-five minutes ago.’

      ‘That’s pretty amazing for an insomniac.’

      ‘Except you were supposed to be exhilarated.’

      And then Nancy takes her turn, chooses ‘speed learning’, picks up a software manual and is asleep within seconds.

      Later, we pipe a little caffeine while Dave tells us the story of his six-toed cat, Arnie, who is a direct descendant of an identical six-toed cat found stowed away on the Mayflower. After that we sit around in benign but awkward silence; then Dave, smiling, makes his excuses and gets up to go. He’s picked up the thought waves passing between me and Nance and feels excluded. Besides, there really is no follow-up to Arnie, the six-toed feline Pilgrim Father, is there?

      SUNDAY

      Unwelcome thoughts of home crowd round the breakfast table.

      Sorting through Nancy’s clippings box I find the following:

       1980s see 19,346 US teen murders, 18,365 suicides.

      150,000 young Americans on missing persons register

      20% teenage unemployment rises to 40% for African Americans

      One in four young African American males in prison, on probation, parole

      At lunch, an uneasiness sets in, somehow connected to Dave’s visit.

      ‘Don’t all those gloomy statistics about kids get you down?’

      ‘Uh huh.’ My friend pushes aside a half-eaten pop tart, takes some ice cream out of the freezer. It occurs to me that Nancy’s clippings are as much a part of Nancy as her fragile insouciance, whereas for me they’re just statistics strings.

      ‘So why d’you keep them?’

      A bottle of olives appears on the table, followed by some Oreo cookies. She tries a spoonful of ice cream, an olive, a bite of pop tart. Looks unsteady.

      ‘Pandora’s Box.’ A muffled sound as the other half of the pop tart follows an olive. She scrapes some Oreo filling onto her teeth.

      ‘It’s my only weapon against the bio-clock. Just to concentrate on what a shitty world it is out there for kids.’ I watch her removing an olive stone and inserting a spoonful of ice-cream.

      ‘Nancy. You’re not …?’

      ‘Are you insane?’ she looks at me with her eyes in that crepey position. ‘I don’t even know a friendly sperm bank.’

      I remind her of Dave.

      ‘Oh yeah, like the world really needs another programmer geek in diapers.’

      ‘That’s harsh.’

      Nancy pauses to think for a moment.

      ‘You’re right. And anyway, it’s untrue. The world needs all the programmer geeks in diapers it can get right now.’

      

      Muir Woods has become a weekend routine. At Nancy’s request a Japanese tourist takes a photo of us marking off the start of the digital age on the slice of redwood trunk, at the very edge where the bark begins to flake away. Climbing up onto the plateau, a weight of sadness falls. I look out over the ocean towards Japan, trying to think myself back to the blue of that wide water. Almost before I’m aware of it, salt tears have begun to scratch at my contact lenses.

      It dawns on me that I’m not a part of the grand technological experiment that is Northern California right now, nor a part either of those older dreams it has come to symbolize. I don’t belong to the redwoods, to the frozen yoghurt stands or the piney air. I’ve found myself a project here precisely because I am not from here. There is so much about this new digital world that is alien to me, but utterly familiar to Nancy. I am deflated and left behind, made spare by the sheer pace and scale of the change. I feel like a dazzled rabbit caught in headlights, a mere witness to the ballooning din and flux that is digital America, a self-indulgent stand-in. And as I watch Nancy striding across the plateau towards the woods again, I see she’s given me a vivid fragment of her life to take away and make flourish somewhere else. And I’m overcome by the stillness of understanding. What Nancy has known for a while and has patiently waited for me to discover is that the time has come for me to return to England, though that is where I least belong.

       II: Home & Away

      LONDON, ENGLAND, SATURDAY

       Lost in the blizzard of youth culture

      Saturday night has begun early in the Trocadero at Piccadilly Circus. Samantha, fourteen, breath as short as a running dog, scrapes back the rope of her hair and turns to say something. Behind her, in the belly of the arcade, a swell of pubescent boys fuels the games machines and fills the room with the jangle of defeat and Samantha’s words are obliterated in the greater noise.

      Today I’ll come clean. I’ll confess. I feel lost in the blizzard of youth culture.

      Samantha, Samantha, oh please tell me do.

      How shall I be young again, as young and hip as you?

      We break a path across the floor, unnoticed. Me under cover of her.

      ‘Chopping through the enemy,’ says Samantha. She is through to round four of the Streetfighter II South of England Turbo Tournament. The only girl. This is what it takes to rise through the ranks, according to Samantha: ‘Guts and loads of practice.’

      We remove to a bank of Streetfighter consoles pitched up against the back wall of the arcade. Samantha leans into the central deck, opens her callused baby hands, flips the supple wrists, stretches the finger clumps and lets them fall onto the joystick like a final act of homecoming. She closes her eyes for a moment, entertaining some thought, then smiles.

      ‘Double-jointed, ambidextrous Streetfighting champion,’ she says of herself, not having won the championship yet, but having ambitions.

      And so there I am, loading tokens into a Streetfighter deck, about to lose to some peppery girl almost half my age while she waits nerves akimbo for the call-up.

      ‘I’ve actually never played Streetfighter,’ I say, suddenly aware of how it feels to be one of those antique judges for whom the Rolling Stones is a description of a chain gang.

      ‘Yeah, I can tell,’ Samantha replies. ‘But that’s all right.’ She winks at me and pushes her hair back again. ‘I ain’t gonna hammer you straight off. Wouldn’t be sporting, would it?’

      Apparently Sam and I inhabit the same real-life world, but you