The Humans by Matt Haig Page A

a dog hate you is having a dog
love you. Seriously, if there was a
needier
species in the universe I had yet to meet it.
    ‘Get away,’ I told him. ‘I don’t want your love.’
    I went to the living room and sat down on the sofa. I needed to think. Would Daniel Russell’s death be viewed by the humans as suspicious? A man on heart medication succumbing to a second
and this time fatal heart attack? I had no poison, and no weapon they would ever be able to identify.
    The dog sat down next to me, placed his head on my lap, then lifted his head off my lap, and then on again, as if deciding whether or not to put his head on my lap was the biggest decision he
had ever faced.
    We spent hours together that day. Me and the dog. At first I was annoyed that he wouldn’t leave me alone, as what I needed to do was to focus and work out when I was going to act next. To
work out how much more information I needed to acquire before doing what would have to be my final acts here, eliminating Andrew Martin’s wife and child. I shouted at the dog again to leave
me alone, and he did so, but when I stood in the living room with nothing but my thoughts and plans I realised I felt a terrible loneliness and so called him back. And he came, and seemed happy to
be wanted again.
    I put something on that interested me. It was called
The Planets
by Gustav Holst. It was a piece of music all about the humans’ puny solar system, so it was surprising to hear it
had quite an epic feel. Another confusing thing was that it was divided into seven ‘movements’ each named after ‘astrological characters’. For instance, Mars was ‘the
Bringer of War’, Jupiter was ‘the Bringer of Jollity’, and Saturn was ‘the Bringer of Old Age’.
    This primitivism struck me as funny. And so was the idea that the music had anything whatsoever to do with those dead planets. But it seemed to soothe Newton a little bit, and I must admit one
or two parts of it had some kind of effect on me, a kind of electrochemical effect. Listening to music, I realised, was simply the pleasure of counting without realising you were counting. As the
electrical impulses were transported from the neurons in my ear through my body, I felt – I don’t know – calm. It made that strange unease that had been with me since I had
watched Daniel Russell die on his carpet settle a little.
    As we listened I tried to work out why Newton and his species were so enamoured of humans.
    ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘What is it about the humans?’
    Newton laughed. Or as close as a dog can get to laughing, which is pretty close.
    I persisted with my line of enquiry. ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Spill the beans.’ He seemed a bit coy. I don’t think he really had an answer. Maybe he hadn’t reached
his verdict, or he was too loyal to be truthful.
    I put on some different music. I played the music of someone called Ennio Morricone. I played an album called
Space Oddity
by David Bowie, which, in its simple patterned measure of time,
was actually quite enjoyable. As was
Moon Safari
by Air, though that shed little light on the moon itself. I played
A Love Supreme
by John Coltrane and
Blue Monk
by Thelonious
Monk. This was jazz music. It was full of the complexity and contradictions that I would soon learn made humans human. I listened to ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ by Leonard Bernstein and
‘Moonlight Sonata’ by Ludwig van Beethoven and Brahms’ ‘Intermezzo op. 17’. I listened to the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Daft Punk, Prince, Talking
Heads, Al Greene, Tom Waits, Mozart. I was intrigued to discover the sounds that could make it on to music – the strange talking radio voice on ‘I Am the Walrus’ by the Beatles,
the cough at the beginning of Prince’s ‘Raspberry Beret’ and at the end of Tom Waits songs. Maybe that is what beauty was, for humans. Accidents, imperfections, placed inside a
pretty pattern. Asymmetry. The defiance of mathematics. I thought