Waiting for the architect — seven or eight — part of a serial — after the singularity…

We are back at the house in the north for a week, its early June the latest pandemic is raging and we are waiting for the architect to arrive. Elsa has opened the gate and we are waiting. The country is mostly what the media calls ‘locked down’ — we have a file of NDA’s for them to sign and paper requirements and specification documents… Up here in the north its a warm sunny, early summer day.

She is sitting with a friendly smile at the polished limestone table, three or four centimetres thick on metal and cement adjustable legs. She is sipping an aperitif, alcohol or alcohol free, nobody knows. She is sitting in the shade. The table is in the courtyard. She is the mistress or at least the owner of the house. In a control society, its control that matters not ownership. Everything here is at its always been, except the trees are taller than when we planted them. What else is there to notice? The afternoon light over the valley is harsh and the old house, and the newly added extensions are either light by the sunlight or in shade. The courtyard has new walls erected between the house and walled garden, and the rebuilt barn that serves as the server room. The inside of the house has been redecorated again, mostly white. The libraries are painted in a soft modernist grey. We are both in good health, she is leaning back in her chair, her feet on the table top. We still live most of the time in the 1930s built house north of London, in what is nor about half an acre of land. just a few miles, kilometres outside the orbital. We still have questions about the world, but not about each other. Too many decades have passed for anything else. As far as money goes, everything has been sorted out and will last as long as capitalism does. I’m sitting on an adjacent chair half in the sunshine. She moves her right leg and puts her foot on my leg. (Elsa enters the courtyard from the server room, waves hello and asks if we want anything? An ice-cream prraps? I watch her go into the house. ) Her biography, our biographies are now longer than they could have been before. We span decades, worlds, universes together, its impossible for us to separate. It’s impossible to imagine being separate. It probably always was. (Later we will walk down the street of the local town, and this woman still sitting with her feet on the table will hold my hand as we walk. We will check out what is showing at the local cinema.) Elsa will babysit whilst we are out.

The numbers of people we know who are now dead is growing every week. month, year. We are among the oldest people in the world. Nobody we know is older than us. Though her farther and mother are still alive they are still younger than we are. I hardly knew my father and mother, were they like this or different? she says and sighs, and I cannot imagine what drove them to make me. Your other is different, I said to her. True, I’ll always be older than her. Everybody is younger than we are. Who do you miss most among the dead? I have no idea. The dead are very difficult because they have no idea how old we are. Especially those born after the network was created. It’s a slow mition apocalypse.

I eat an icecream.

I put on some music with my iphone, the outdoors speakers sing.

Later I’ll wash the glasses.

We wonder what it would be like to be alone.

Before the icecream is finished, Elsa returns with the architect, a surveyor and his assistant.