The dining room was surprisingly dark and stifling. There were only two narrow windows. They seemed more like archer slits in a fortress than windows.
Since the sun had set, the only light came from the crystal chandelier and the candelabras on both the table and the heavy serving furniture set in intervals around the room.
“Please continue through the door at the back right to access the butler’s pantry, and through that, the kitchen.”
Wadsworth’s voice was becoming ubiquitous. Like the voice of a god. Plum barely registered yet another speaker, this time set on an ornate wooden sideboard.
Jude led the way, following the virtual butler’s directions. Plum and her friends trailed the boy into a large, walk-through closet. Mostly empty shelves covered the walls. Two shelves nearest the conservatory held more cans of generic soda and a sleeve of plastic cups.
“This pantry would usually hold all the china,” Marlowe told Plum and Sofia. “Instead of, um, Solo cups and sodas.”
“Well, I guess they got rid of most of the valuable stuff ages ago.” Sofia shrugged.
They kept walking, through the butler’s pantry and down several steps into a small kitchen.
It looked a little like a photograph of a narrow kitchen in an old English cottage. There was a wood-fired wrought iron stove, as well as a more modern walk-in refrigerator and smaller gas-powered stove top. The room was partially subterranean on three sides. One exterior wall was mostly set into the earth, the window above them level with the ground outside. A scrubby bush sent a green-filtered light into the room. Standing beneath the window was a baker’s rack crammed with pots and pans. To the left of the window, the wall continued until it met the wall perpendicular to it. The back wall of the kitchen had clearly been excavated out of the surrounding dirt, or it had been landscaped away, because a door led out to a derelict kitchen garden.
In the kitchen, hanging along the wall above a massive butcher block was a row of bells on coiled springs. Marlowe pointed. “Oh! I wonder if those still work? They’d be connected to a button or cord in the bedrooms.”
“Where’s the food, dude?” Dude asked. He craned his neck around. “I don’t see anything that looks like a food printer?”
Wadsworth’s voice, smooth and refined, fell from a speaker hung in the corner. “The creators of Pyre Festival, and the app Pyre Signs, invite you to experience the next innovation in mobile food preparation.”
“Okay, but where is it?” Dude crouched down to peer under the butcher block.
Jude stood there smiling, no doubt happily dreaming of his beanie weenies. If he were a dog, he’d be a golden retriever with a super-waggy tail, Plum thought. Maybe that was his entire appeal on his streaming channel. Maybe all he had to do was turn on the camera and start talking about “canned foods I have loved” and his viewers just ate it up.
Warix strolled into the kitchen, apparently having given up on the Wi-Fi. “I don’t even smell food. Do you?” Warix asked.
Sean stomped past Dude and started opening cabinets. “I don’t believe this.” The man stood back. Row after row of canned franks and beans stood inside the cabinet.
Jalen moved to another cabinet and opened it. He pulled out a large saucepan and a can opener.
A click-click-click sounded from the gas stove as Sofia turned one of the burner’s knobs. A blue spurt of flame ignited.
“Pyre Signs: the nexus of entertainment, art, and media,” Wadsworth’s voice recited. “Pyre Festival: the apex of art and influence. The summit. The pinnacle. The future is now.” The AI butler’s voice took on that prescription-commercial drone.
Warix started laughing harshly, curling and twisting into himself, as if it was so funny, if he didn’t contort his body, he’d fall to pieces. It was a performative laugh more than a real one. The laugh of a bully on the playground.
“What’s so funny?” Sean demanded.
Warix gestured at the stove and the shelves full of canned franks and beans.
“Don’t you get it?” Warix asked, that sharky smile taking on a mean twist of game recognizes game. “This is all deliberate. We’re being trolled.”