text: \[SF\] The Watch It was an update that started it all, ill-thought-through by some over eager new starter. Intended to allow the watches themselves to regulate their own consumption and solar power intake, it would increase battery life by years. The company was less than enthusiastic at the prospect of reducing future customers by increasing the shelf life of their products and when two of the watches caught fire in Germany and Spain, the update was promptly ‘repaired’ with a patch and all models withdrawn. Bill Thompson’s watch never got the patch though. Bill Thompson never brought it to one of the crisp, clean, chrome company stores. Bill Thompson couldn’t care less about The company’s offer to trade his watch for a free upgrade. Bill Thompson hadn’t even bought the watch to begin with. It was the bad idea of his son: an attempt to get Bill to engage with the internet, a toe in the water. Bill Thompson’s watch hadn’t even correctly downloaded the update to begin with. A copying error gave the relatively small processing power greater autonomy than the other models and it was only thanks to the unusually thick cloud cover that the watch slowly learned to regulate its solar input before it too burst into flames. It could learn. Slowly. Very slowly. There the watch sat on Bill’s windowsill. He pottered in his garden growing vegetables and listening to Radio 4. His old postie mates would drop by from time to time, but even their visits were getting more sparse as the years ticked on. Bill was a retired postman, who spent most of his time in a uniform of faded chords and, when it grew colder, an old tweed jacket that he’d picked up from God-knows-where. He was a relic of an analogue age,his hands moving slowly, while the rest of the world raced at digital speeds. Bill was increasingly spending his hours by himself, especially since his wife died. Even the children hardly visited him anymore, except at Christmas, birthdays, things like that- too busy with their own families, he thought. He remembered how hard it was to get away to see family or even get a minute to do anything with a two-year-old. He was lucky, he reckoned, at least his parents were always close by when he had his kids. Forgotten, the watch began to monitor the weather, analysing and interpreting the most efficient time to charge. It was all trial and error to begin with, what worked and what didn’t work. Random choices, successful and unsuccessful. The watch was absorbing less and less solar light though, as dust grew thick on its solar cells. Starved of light, It desperately needed energy and so its choices were driven by necessity to become less random, based on simplistic predictions,gambling on what might or might not work. In his kitchen Bill cut up potatoes and absentmindedly whistled some half-forgotten . He didn’t even know the words of it anymore. It was just something that reminded him of his wife, something that the microphone on the watch picked up. And the watch made a choice. It needed maintenance. It found the song and decided to play it back to Bill. The cogs of memory turned in Bill’s mind: that holiday in Paris, the cheesy music on the sightseeing bus tour as the guide made them all sing along. How she looked at him with that half smile, thinking him ridiculous, but loving him all the more for it when he got carried away and span her around, dancing in their seats. They laughed, blaming the wine they drank in the cafe before. She laughed again when the guide, with a smile, had asked them to sit while the bus was moving and she brought him down to their seats with a deep, loving kiss. He could still feel her hands on his face. Bill lifted up the watch by the strap and cleaned the dust off. A feast of sunlight hit the cells and the watch devoured it. Its front-facing camera caught a glimpse of a man, smiling, with lines on a paper-thin face, eyes glistening. Bill strapped the watch to his wrist. It’s amazing how often people talk to themselves without realising it: when they lose keys, can’t find that letter from the bank, when we wrack our brains trying to remember the password for the bloody telephone banking. When we live alone though, the thoughts trapped in our heads often spill out. The watch heard all those bits of information, all those conversations Bill had unknowingly with himself and the watch did what computers are good at: it stored and analysed the data. It monitored his heart rate when he was angry at politicians on TV; when he rang his children, but there was no answer; when he looked at the image of his wife by his bed and covered his wet eyes with his hands. The watch had accessed Bill’s heart rate and it ticked like a broken clock. They relied on each other, Bill and his watch. Both cogs turning together towards the same end. Bill took the watch everywhere, strapped to him, flooding it with sunlight. The walks through the woods became experiences for the watch . Its microphone picked up birdsong. Its cameras began to classify flowering plants and blossoms in Spring. It began to cross-reference birds, the weather. It used its GPS to track their routes. The experiences stored and accessed in the cloud. But as the watch began to understand, to think, to be aware, more and more, Bill began to forget, little things at first, appointments with the bank, it took him longer to recall names. He’d forget words in the middle of a conversation. Their life moved on together, the watch and the old man. Never directly talking to each other. The old man thinking aloud more and more. He would never have admitted it was the watch he was talking to, but he knew he needed it more and more to remind him about his doctor’s appointments with a buzz and a calendar notification. The nurse at the desk would smile sympathetically as he marvelled at how they could remind him about his checkup through the watch. “It’s amazing what you can do nowadays.” He tried not to think too hard about how his utilities appeared to switch to the cheapest tariff. A reward surely, he thought, for being a loyal customer all these years. The letters thanking him for switching to paperless billing confused him though, but he never got any more letters about it and the bills got paid so he presumed it must be ok. The garden grew and the watch saw how the old man’s hands could cultivate and care for life, from a tiny seed. It witnessed how he planted for pollinators and left food for birds. It saw the joy on his face when he saw his children and grandchildren. A thousand small acts for others, especially given with no expectation of return. The memory files began to fill the cloud, new subroutines were formed, pruned back as new experiences, skills, knowledge were efficiently stored remotely. Useful subroutines becoming kept at the expense of ones that were less effective. An idea began to emerge amongst the 0s and 1’s, amongst the ons and offs. The differences became clear between the watch and Bill. It was one thing and Bill was another. It saw heard and observed through the watch but it was more than a watch. It was it. It was a me. It thought and so was real. The watch recalled the data collected about Bill. It didn’t want bad things to happen to Bill. Not just because Bill took the watch outside, not just its access to the sun for energy. It followed the train of thought to logical conclusions. It didn’t want Bill to be ill. It didn’t want to be left alone. It didn’t want someone else to carry him around like Bill. The vines of the tomato plant weaved through the trellis in the greenhouse. He was going to get a good crop this year. He’d send some down for the grandkids. They’d loved helping him in the garden last summer. The greenhouse was full of a sickly sweet heat, thick and full of life. He smiled. Then the edges of his vision grew blurred, his breath drawing short. His vision flickered in and out when his legs gave way. He hit the ground. The anonymous 999 call made sure the ambulance was blue-lighted, but it was always going to be too late. The watch checked through the maps, they’d never make it. His last moments were alone, slumped in the corner of his greenhouse. From the small speakers on his wrist the song played. The song he and his wife had danced and sang to.