The Company (by Mark Watson & Mat Ryer)

God, what a night! Seriously that was one of the wildest New Year parties you can remember. You shake your head in disbelief. Rub your eyes. It still doesn’t seem enough so you rub your head and then shake your eyes.

Stay observant! Never get sloppy!

SONDER: the feeling of weirdness and wonder as you reflect that every passer-by has an inner life which is essentially unknowable to you. It's an interesting word, and concept.

@ChrisJackComedy Good work, Chris! Perhaps it will prove to have some relevance!

@Louie_JW_ Thank *you* for this comparison with the popular lexicographer, Louie - even if it was meant a little facetiously!

@MarkWatsonCo Thanks, Susie Dent

The Company You Keep by Robert and The Very Bad Dogs. youtu.be/eFnV532tVKI

In the moment after you've said it, you know it was the right thing, for once. You look up at the logo of The Company. It's been such a loaded word. But Francine is company, too. Good people are what 'company' also means. God, what a night! You see your face respond to what you've said. You think of all the company you're still to enjoy: hers, others'. Really, you've got no way of knowing what comes next. You're a human. The fun is not knowing.

It IS him. You don't gasp at first. Then you do. Then once again. Then twice, three times, five, eight, all the way to 244. Robert understands. 'That's cool, man. I heard you were into the Fibonacci sequence. Me too.'

That was The Company. You people have been amazing, thanks for supporting this.

Well, it wasn't QUITE balanced, and the ascent is far from smooth. You judder and rock like a frog in a sock. You shake and vibrate like the workings of Fate. But you're going up. Up, up and - 'Away, yes,' whispers your soul. 'Are you coming with me?' you ask. 'You'll never SEE me again,' says the soul, reminding you of the wrenching loneliness of the human in eternity, but also the end of soft-electronica classic 'Surfing On A Rocket' by Air. '...but I'll always be there. I'm your pissing *soul*. You will never lose me, even if you can't ever find me.' You take a moment. 'Will you explain at least a bit of what you meant? About being the most human...?' You and the soul glance behind you, but Camilla and Curtis are more than occupied: she's massaging him, nakeding him, oraling him, painting him pink. They must have got through the first half of the alphabet at some earlier point. 'What The Company wants - will always want, but cannot quite have - is humanity, real humanity, Y'KNOW?' says the soul, surprisingly drawling the last part in a poor US accent in a callback to various episodes from The Company. 'The CEO looks like a human (Mark Watson); the messaging is almost human; the jobs they carry out employ humans, and help humans. But the super-intelligence of The Company is still a machine. Can't love, can't lose, can't cry.' 'Can't cry' does something to you. You're a crier. You love. You lose things. You begin to understand. 'So it wants to be me?' 'It wants to LEARN from you, because you - as I say - are the purest exemplum of what it wants.' 'Not because you are exceptional,' says the soul. The lift is slowing down and you sense you're almost there. 'But because to be as human as you are - the mistakes, the confusion - is, in all creation, exceptional.' 'Keep being you, I guess is what I mean,' says the soul, patting you on the temple. 'And Francine, keep being Francine.' 'Is she OK?' 'Well, you'll be able to ask her yourself in ten seconds. Good luck, mate.' The doors open. You're.... well. Your first thought is you're in The Company HQ - a reasonable assumption since you came here in the first place. But it's as if the place has been turned inside out, almost. The roof is gone. You're in sunlight. There are trees and flowers everywhere. Bees - Curtis goes wading in to harvest what he can while Camilla disappears. Your eye is caught by a butterfly of near unbelievable beauty. Its wings are a rich, rusty red. The wings, furthermore, are adorned with black, blue and yellow spots resembling peacock feathers. The underside of the wings is darker, providing - you guess - camouflage. It is a striking, vibrant thing. You follow it. Butterfly is the AI system used by The Company, you recall. The word means something to the AI: a code, a signifier. But to you, a human, in this moment, it means this astonishing tiny thing with which you share the earth for now. The machine knows butterflies exist. It can train itself to understand what beauty is said to be. In fact the above description of the peacock butterly (aglais io) was written by ChatGPT in under one second. But it can't feel it. One day, maybe. But not now. Right now it can't feel the way you're feeling as you tail the tiny fragile thing, into an atrium where a familiar figure is sitting at a table with a pot of tea. In fact: can it be TWO familiar faces? Francine smiles, gesturing to you to sit down. You lower yourself into the chair next to her, the only way you know how: bum first, hope for the rest to follow. 'I'd like you to meet someone,' she says, with a warm grin.

A map of the planets. Two beautiful parakeets. A newly installed bay window. A dildo, a lido, a doily, a lilo, a lolly. Oh, finally, a Bag For Life, a radiator, a carton of orange Joyce, three original Muppet puppets, an icecream van and magic box.

'We need to get... it's hard to explain,' you say, 'but 25 percent of people pulling for each one of us.' 'Twenty-five percent of who?' explodes Camilla. 'Christ in the crapper!' 'You'll see.' You're confident. In control.

Ah, yes. You realise now. You've done balancing before. You've done everything before. You're an expert. 'For old time's sake,' you say. 'We need to distribute the weight of the four of us - me, soul, you two - exactly evenly.'

You get, if not the gist, at least half the gist - the gi. All your trials have been selected for you. You are uniquely qualified to solve them. You are - by some definition - 'the most human'. 'Balance,' whispers the soul.

'Cute, certainly...' commences Camilla. 'You're doing it again' cwibbles Curtis. 'All right,' she snaps. 'Can you GET US OUT OF HERE. I'M TOO HOT, I'M GONNA MISS THE SHINGLES AWARDS, AND I NEED TO SHIT LIKE A SHIRE HORSE.'