The Humans by Matt Haig

distances, but also that we can
rearrange our own biological ingredients, renew and replenish them. We are psychologically equipped for such advances. We have never been at war with ourselves. We never place the desires of the
individual over the requirements of the collective.
    Where we are from we understand that if the humans’ rate of mathematical advancement exceeds their psychological maturity, then action needs to be taken. For instance, the death of Daniel
Russell, and the knowledge he held, could end up saving many more lives. And so: he is a logical and justifiable sacrifice.
    Where we are from there are no nightmares.
    And yet, that night, for the very first time in my life I had a nightmare.
    A world of dead humans with me and that indifferent cat walking through a giant carpeted street full of bodies. I was trying to get home. But I couldn’t. I was stuck here. I had become one
of them. Stuck in human form, unable to escape the inevitable fate awaiting all of them. And I was getting hungry and I needed to eat but I couldn’t eat, because my mouth was clamped shut.
The hunger became extreme. I was starving, wasting away at rapid speed. I went to the garage I had been in that first night and tried to shove food in my mouth, but it was no good. It was still
locked from this inexplicable paralysis. I knew I was going to die.
    Die.
    How did humans ever stomach the idea?
    I woke.
    I was sweating and out of breath. Isobel touched my back. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, as Tabitha had said. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all
right.’

The dog and the music
    The next day I was alone.
    Well no, actually, that’s not quite true.
    I wasn’t alone. There was the dog. Newton. The dog named after a human who had come up with the ideas of gravity and inertia. Given the slow speed with which the dog left its basket, I
realised the name was a fitting tribute to these discoveries. He was awake now. He was old and he hobbled, and he was half-blind.
    He knew who I was. Or who I wasn’t. And he growled whenever he was near me. I didn’t quite understand his language just yet but I sensed he was displeased. He showed his teeth but I
could tell years of subservience to his bipedal owners meant the very fact that I was standing up was enough for me to command a certain degree of respect.
    I felt sick. I put this down to the new air I was breathing. But each time I closed my eyes I saw Daniel Russell’s anguished face as he lay on the carpet. I also had a headache, but that
was the lingering after-effect of the energy I had exerted yesterday.
    I knew life was going to be easier during my short stay here if Newton was on my side. He might have information, have picked up on signals, heard things. And I knew there was one rule that held
fast across the universe: if you wanted to get someone on your side what you really had to do was
relieve their pain
. It seems ridiculous now, such logic. But the truth was even more
ridiculous, and too dangerous to acknowledge to myself, that after the need to hurt I felt an urge to heal.
    So I went over and gave him a biscuit. And then, after giving him the biscuit, I gave him sight. And then, as I stroked his hind leg, he whimpered words into my ear I couldn’t quite
translate. I healed him, giving myself not only an even more intense headache but also wave upon wave of fatigue in the process. Indeed, so exhausted was I that I fell asleep on the kitchen floor.
When I woke up, I was coated in dog saliva. Newton’s tongue was still at it, licking me with considerable enthusiasm. Licking, licking, licking, as though the meaning of canine existence was
something just beneath my skin.
    ‘Could you please stop that?’ I said. But he couldn’t. Not until I stood up. He was physically incapable of stopping.
    And even once I had stood up he tried to stand up with me, and on me, as if he wanted to be upright, too. It was then I realised the one thing worse than having