LITMIR.BIZ

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women tend to drive smaller cars, and she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself trying to squash some Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson into her Renault Twingo.

      If we get into nightclubs – and we might, because I don’t know what to do with the money I’m making – then I might try hen-night specials where we supply some boy-bots to see how it goes – just for a laugh – like ride-my-pony sorta thing? Women might enjoy sitting on top if I can get the action right. I’ve got some ideas from when I used to repair pop-up toasters.

      This market is global. This market is the future.

      Let me tell you something about China, Ryan. That one-child policy? Thank God they’ve stopped it. All those strangled girl babies chucked in a paddy field somewhere. There’s millions and millions of Chinese men who’ll never have a female partner because there aren’t enough girls to go round. That’s right – what goes around comes around – like a sushi belt – you’d think they’d know that, wouldn’t you? The Chinese market will be mega. That’s why they’ve got the factories – and they love technology, and a lot of Chinese men will prefer a bot because they like the submissive type. Modern Chinese women are too independent. I went to the factory – I’ve seen it all.

      Anyway, I’m opening my own factory in Wales. China can’t have it all their own way. Show some competition, I say, and if they’re in a trade war with bloody America who knows what will happen? Price of bots could go sky-high.

      Mum said we should do a Karl Marx and control the means of production.

      Also, I want to put something back into the community. There’s no jobs in Wales, Ryan, not since Brexit. They voted Wales for the Welsh, like everyone in the world was just killing themselves to get over the border and open a new coalmine.

      All the money in Wales came from some euro-fund anyway, but there’s a lot of inbreeding in Wales. I think it would be good to have a bit of immigration – all that inbreeding affects the brain. Brexit! Jesus! Might as well have built a wall made out of leeks right round the place.

      So I have to do my bit. I’m opening a big factory that will make the whole bot. Top to bottom. And I’m having a smaller workshop – got enterprise money for it – that just makes heads. Bit more artisan. They are quite good at handicrafts in Wales. Tea towels … pottery …

      And there are a lot of out-of-work hairdressers as nobody can afford to get their hair done, not now it’s just Wales for the Welsh.

      Why do I need extra heads?

      A lot of the XX-BOTs get their faces bashed in. Get thrown at the wall or something. I seriously thought about a detachable nose at one time. You can change the face yourself on some of them, but it’s fiddly, and I think buying a spare head to start with is a better idea. Sex can get a bit rough, can’t it? I don’t judge.

      Also, I’m thinking of manufacturing an Outdoor type. Tougher. Rugged. Sorta Lara Croft. We’ll need our own production line for that. It might be for the fetish market. Dominatrix. Spanking. That sorta thing. The Chinese won’t touch it. Brits will like it, I think. I’m in talks with Caterpillar and JCB.

      This is the future, Ryan.

      Are you coming to my live show? See the girls in action? Look, here’s a taster on the iPad. What do you think of the music?

      Walking in Memphis. I love that song. My favourite line – There’s a pretty little thing waiting for the King …

      They’re all pretty. We’re all kings.

      What did you say? Does it make real life more difficult?

      What is real life these days?

      There never was a wilder story imagined, yet, like most of the fictions of this age, it has an air of reality attached to it.

      The Edinburgh Magazine, 1818

       Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

      That is why we invent stories, I said.

      And what if we are the story we invent? said Shelley.

      Still shut in by rain, I write and write.

      Claire sits sewing in a corner. Polidori nurses his lame ankle. Yesterday he jumped out of a window to prove his love for me. The idea was Byron’s. When he is bored he is dangerous.

      All we do is drink and fuck, said Byron. Is that a story?

      That’s a bestseller! said Polidori.

      We sleep. We eat. We work, said Shelley.

      Do you? said Byron, who is on a diet for his corpulence, and besides, he is insomniac, and idle. He cannot find the lines, he says, for his supernatural story, even though our enterprise is the challenge he set. That is irksome. We are irksome.

      Polidori is busy with his own tale. He calls it The Vampyre. Blood transfusions interest him.

      For want of excursion or diversion, the gentlemen fell to discussing the series of lectures we had recently attended in London. Lectures delivered by Shelley’s doctor, William Lawrence, on the origin of life. Life, Doctor Lawrence argued, is based in Nature. There is no ‘super-added’ force such as the soul. Human beings are bone, muscle, tissue, blood, etc., and nothing more.

      There was an outcry, of course: No difference between a man and an oyster? Man is nothing more than an orang-utan or an ape, with ‘ample cerebral hemispheres’?

      The Times newspaper had this to say: Doctor Lawrence strives with all his powers to prove that men have no souls!

      Yet, I said to Shelley, you of all men believe in the soul.

      I do, he said; I believe it is each man’s task to awaken his own soul. His soul is that part of him not subject to death and decay; that part of him made alive to truth and beauty. If he has no soul he is a brute.

      And where does this soul go, at death? said Byron.

      That is unknown, answered Shelley; the becoming of the soul, not its going, should be our concern. The mystery of life is on earth, not elsewhere.

      The rain is on earth also, said Byron, staring out of the window like a helpless god. He wanted to ride his mare and was turning restive.

      We shall all be dead soon enough, said Polidori, thus we cannot live as others would wish us to live, but only for our own desires. He looked at me, his hand on his crotch.

      Is there not more to life than what we desire? I said. Might we not sacrifice our own desires for some worthier cause?

      You may do so if you wish, said Polidori, if that gives you satisfaction. I would rather be a vampyre than a corpse.

      To die well is to live well, said Byron.

      None finds satisfaction in death, replied Polidori. You imagine it so, but what will you know of it? What will you gain from it?

      Reputation, said Byron.

      Reputation is gossip, said Polidori. Say well of me, say ill of me – what is that but tittle-tattle?

      You are out of sorts today, said Byron.

      It is you who is out of sorts, said Polidori.

      Shelley put his arms round me and held me to him. I love you. You, dear Mary, you, who is most alive.

      I could hear Claire’s needle stabbing into her tapestry.

      All alive o! All alive alive o! sang Polidori, beating time on the arm of the divan. Byron scowled and limped to the window, opening it to let in the rain directly onto Claire.

      Will you stop it? She jumped up as though she had been stung, shouting at his laughing at her, taking her place on another chair and savagely snipping her yarn.

      Death is a counterfeit, said Shelley. Almost, I do not believe in it at all.

      You will gladly believe in it when

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