‘The children. The grown-up ones. They mean well, of course, but they take things away from you. Little bits of independence. I mean, so what if the house isn’t as clean as it used to be? If the food goes past its sell-by date? But they worry.’

‘You get left alone for too long,’ says Sylvia. ‘You forget how to talk after a while. I used to buttonhole the postman, for the company, for a minute or two. Then he changed his route, and I got a new one who wouldn’t stop.’

‘You’re sliding down a slope, without knowing it. The water’s at the bottom, but you can’t see it, because you’re looking up. Looking back at where you came from, but you can’t climb up, and nobody pulls you back. You slide down, and down, and then the water’s all around you, and you float off,’ says Pamela. She’s quite the poet.

‘And now?’ I say. ‘They’ve pulled us out. The Helpers and the nanobots. Do you think they look like miniature Winifreds and Dorises?’

Everyone laughs.

‘Whatever they look like, they’re brilliant. Bring them on,’ says Sylvia, in a rock and roll sort of voice, which makes us all laugh.

I still want to know more about what’s going on. Because much as I like being with these ladies, and much as the place is warm and comfortable, and the food not at all bad, still – if I’m well now, and if it’s going to last, then I want to get out of here. I want to be in charge of my own life again.

May 2022

Winifred

I look back on my first operational months with satisfaction. I think that is the correct emotion.

How do humans recognise their own emotions? Is it something they have to learn? Or do they somehow just know? I suppose when they’re children, they get told what they’re feeling – ‘Don’t be sad,’ or, ‘You look happy,’ or, ‘You’re bad tempered today,’ and they connect the label with the feeling. Or is it all inside them?

In my case, I match whatever’s going on with what my database says are the appropriate emotions. Here, today, reflecting on my time on earth so far, I know I’ve done a good job. We all have.

The progress with the residents has been gratifying. They have been restored to health, and even those who had been suffering with advanced dementia of all kinds have returned to normal functionality.

I say normal, but it’s better than that. Normal for any human past about 30 includes a great measure of deterioration. It’s slow, but the way cells repair themselves changes, and systems that could be repaired are allowed to fall into sub-optimal conditions and in some cases fail altogether.