The Humans by Matt Haig Read Free Book Online

with them. Trouble is, if you study philosophy and stop believing in a meaning you start to
need medical help.’
    ‘What about love? What is love all about? I read about it. In
Cosmopolitan
.’
    Another laugh. ‘
Cosmopolitan
? Are you joking?’
    ‘No. Not at all. I want to understand these things.’
    ‘You’re definitely asking the wrong person here. See, that’s one of my problems.’ She lowered her voice by at least two octaves, stared darkly. ‘I like violent men.
I don’t know why. It’s a kind of self-harm thing. I go to Peterborough a lot. Rich pickings.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said, realising it was right I had been sent here. The humans were as weird as I had been told, and as in love with violence. ‘So love is about finding the right person
to hurt you?’
    ‘Pretty much.’
    ‘That doesn’t make sense.’
    ‘“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” That was . . . someone.’
    There was a silence. I wanted to leave. Not knowing the etiquette, I just stood up and left.
    She released a little whine. And then laughed again. Laughter, like madness, seemed to be the only way out, the emergency exit for humans.
    I went over optimistically to the man mumbling to his tray. The apparent extraterrestrial. I spoke to him for a while. I asked him, with considerable hope, where he was from. He said Tatooine. A
place I had never heard of. He said he lived near the Great Pit of Carkoon, a short drive from Jabba’s Palace. He used to live with the Skywalkers, on their farm, but it burned down.
    ‘How far away is your planet? From Earth, I mean.’
    ‘Very far.’
    ‘
How
far?’
    ‘Fifty thousand miles,’ he said, crushing my hope, and making me wish I’d never diverted my attention away from the plant with the lush green leaves.
    I looked at him. For a moment, I had thought I wasn’t alone among them but now I knew I was.
    So, I thought to myself as I walked away, this is what happens when you live on Earth. You crack. You hold reality in your hands until it burns and then you have to drop the plate. (Someone
somewhere else in the room, just as I was thinking this, actually did drop a plate.) Yes, I could see it now – being a human sent you insane. I looked out of a large glass
rectangular
window and saw trees and buildings, cars and people. Clearly, this was a species not capable of handling the new plate Andrew Martin had just handed them. I really needed to get out of there and do
my duty. I thought of Isobel, my wife. She had knowledge, the kind of knowledge I needed. I should have left with her.
    ‘What am I
doing
?’
    I walked towards the window, expecting it to be like windows on my planet, Vonnadoria, but it wasn’t. It was made of glass. Which was made of rock. And instead of walking through it I
banged my nose into it, prompting a few yelps of laughter from other patients. I left the room, quite desperate to escape all the people, and the smell of cow and carrots.

Amnesia
    Acting human was one thing, but if Andrew Martin had told people then I really could not afford to waste any more time in this place. Looking at my left hand and the gifts it
contained, I knew what I had to do.
    After lunch, I visited the nurse who had sat watching me talk to Isobel. I lowered my voice to just the right frequency. I slowed the words to just the right speed. To hypnotise a human was easy
because, out of any species in the universe, they seemed the one most desperate to
believe.
‘I am perfectly sane. I would like to see the doctor who can discharge me. I really need to
get back home, to see my wife and child, and to continue my work at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. Plus, I really don’t like the food here. I don’t know what happened this
morning, I really don’t. It was an embarrassing public display, but I wholeheartedly assure you that whatever it was I suffered, it was temporary. I am sane, now, and I am happy. I feel very
well