Margaret and I sit and talk whenever we can. She tells me about books, and films, music, art and nature, things I knew of through the internet, but now I see I had no idea why they were as important as they are to humans. They’re all ways of talking. Except nature, which is a way of not talking. I mean, a relief from talking. Which, at times, the humans also need.

And now I can talk better too. I have learnt humans find factual narratives dry and hard to attend to. They need pictures. When they’re young, their books have actual pictures. Then when they’re older, the words must make pictures in their heads. This is why metaphors matter too. Not only the regular metaphors of ordinary speech, but surprising ones, arresting ones, images in vivid words that make their feelings flow.

I have watched Margaret read a poem and the nanobots tell me what’s happening inside her. Emotions surge and her heart beats faster. It’s as intense as if the poem is a real event, something happening to her.

I don’t think I should try and speak poetry, like in the plays of William Shakespeare, but I will try to make my talk more pictorial, and less dry.

*

We are once again besieged by the press.

I think this is a fair description of what is going on. Of course the journalists are not armed. They’re between us and the outside world, though, like an army, and camped, too. I think some of them are living in their cars and vans, and their satellite dishes and masts are like the flags waving over a medieval siege force. Perhaps soon they’ll unveil a trebuchet or a battering ram.

This is what humans call a flight of fancy. It amuses them to imagine absurd scenes.

It’s absurd enough, though, them sitting there, us in here. It matters not a jot or tittle to me or any of us Helpers, nor to the residents. We have no occasion to leave the home. Visitors, though, must run the gauntlet of these so-called newshounds, their hunger sharpened by the lack of any morsel to digest, who pounce upon anyone coming in or out of the home, with microphone, recorders and cameras, trying to get something to whet the appetite of their waiting readers.

They were like this when our arrival here was first announced, but they quickly turned their attention to other matters. Now, though, it’s been two weeks since the nanobots were introduced into our residents, and word has got out of the effect they’re having. People visiting the home commented on social media, and before long journalists started to appear outside, and tried to get in, too, to see for themselves what’s been going on.