Making some Calls

Steve had his earliest Sunday breakfast ever. He had tried to fall sleep again. Impossible. For the first time since they moved in, he hadn’t asked Wayne to make him breakfast, and Wayne hadn’t asked him. He searched the fridge, poured some yoghurt into a bowl and put on the kettle. The Twinings tea he brewed made him think of the dream again. He tried not to think of it. Usually, he’d briefly read the morning news sheet Maggie subscribed to. He’d followed her persistent urging, to more than just skim the main headlines, before jumping straight to the sports pages.

The articles yesterday, House eats dog and the lot. His neighbours’ dog and cat. Both run-aways. Or had they also been eaten by a house?

He finished his yoghurt and immediately called New Essex Housing, the housing association they bought the house from. They gave him the number to the developers who had integrated and installed the system. Steve was now standing in the hall, trying to convince the first person who picked up the phone at the development department, who didn’t seem to believe him. “Look, I’m telling you here, my smart home is broken, and I require some assistance right away. We paid for the house, and we have an insurance.” Usually he’d be more patient, but thinking back at Essie’s not-so-fun roller-coaster ride in the basement and his family being out of town … he wanted a swift resolution.

“Right, I’ll connect you to an operator”, the guy said on the other end.

“Fine, just connect me.” And Steve had thought this guy was the operator.

The face of the bloke disappeared from the phone’s screen, to be replaced by an animated company logo, fit for the season: a Halloween-style house at night, candles and pumpkins in the window, and red-eyed cartoon bunnies skipping around the lawn, munching on cobweb-covered bones instead of carrots.

Steve wandered back and forth in the hall downstairs, carrying around the thin phone pad. He’d ordered Wayne to go into hibernation mode, after switching on the phone. The house was calm. Wayne was sleeping.

Finally, Steve was connected and the face of an operator appeared. Steve told him he needed urgent assistance and that his smart home was broken. They connected him again, now to technical support.

Another face appeared on-screen, a really young techie-guy, smiling widely. Techie didn’t look too focused and spoke as if his whole mouth was full of bubble gum. Steve thought about how much he paid a month for home insurance and that he was now being supported by someone looking like he got his first spots of acne last week.

“G’day mate, name’s Larry, how can I help ya?” he said, chewing some Australian accent. Larry had a fan on his desk blowing in his face, wore a buttoned-up shirt and sported a tan. For the fourth time this morning Steve had to tell somebody that his smart home was broken.

“Okay”, the Techie said, “lemme guess, voice-issue, right mate?”

“It’s been talking strangely, yes, but that’s not the only thing …”

“Yeah-a, I see, we’ll sort ya out buddy, real easy, no worries at all, just adjust it all remotely, matey, gotta connect us to the control panel down-stairs, that’s easy-piecy. Your main server’s in the basement, am I right?”

“Look here, mate, yesterday my daughter shot some water into the main server, and as some kind of fucked-up defence-mechanism, or whatever, it started throwing her around the entire basement – nearly killed her.”

“Ah, okay … yeah … I see. Not to worry. Just, one of those cases.” The smile had been totally wiped off young tech-Larry’s face.

“Whatta you mean, ‘one of those cases’? You get a lot of people calling about houses trying to kill their kids this time of year?” And he felt cold as he said the last bit. Was that really what Wayne had tried to do?

“Mmm … I’m not, exactly entitled to talk about that … sir. These are other, kinds of cases, it’s, umh … yeah, y’know, corporate policy to, eh, not discuss, what do we say? Privacy of other customers, you understand, mate?”

“Look here, I get you: you cannot discuss others’ privacy, but you should be able to tell me this much – do you get a lot of these situations reported or what?”

Larry swallowed, nervously, and looked around a bit. Perhaps he was hoping his manager was not around.

“Sir …” Larry said, “This conversation is being monitored and recorded. I can’t really assist you any more on this …”

“Then let me talk to someone, right now, who can assist me.” Goddammit.

“Okay, no worries, mate …” And young Larry started reading some call script. “Right. Thanks for your shown patience and, uhm, cooperation on, the matter. If you wish to fill in a customer satisfaction form at the end of this call on, uhm, how well we did today, then this will be very much appreciated and will help us to improve on our services; it will only take a couple of minutes and …”

“Kid – just connect me.”

Larry said, “Right”, tossed away the script pages, and started checking a lot of things on another screen, flipping through some corporate information. Finally: “Okay, okay, sorry sir, I’ll connect you now to Class A-reports, okay? They’ll help you out. Cheers!”

“Cheers …” Steve sighed. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’d get connected back to the first operator, who’d then connect him to the second one. Perhaps he’d end up speaking to Larry again. Jeezus.

He waited several minutes while the Halloween-logo with the house and big-eyed bunnies was displayed. Then someone older (and hopefully more experienced) appeared on-screen. This girl must’ve been at least eighteen years of age. She displayed some shining new braces when smiling:

“H-howdy, sir? My name’s S-Sammy. H-how can I help?”

“Hi Sammy. Please save us some time here, just connect me to your manager.”

“Y-ya”, said the girl, who sounded Canadian. “Can you p-please s-state the, the reason, o-of your call, sir?”

“Sure I can. My house tried to kill my daughter, and it may have developed an appetite for eating cats and dogs. Literally. I suspect it ate some of my neighbours’ pets. So as you may understand, Sammy, the situation is starting to bother me.”

“What – y-y-your – house?”

“Yes. My house. It needs help. Just connect me to your manager please.” By now he was getting quite tired of this, and was sitting with a slouched back.

“I mean, r-really? Sorry, sure, I just … I’m connecting you now!”

The logo with the house and bunnies again. A few seconds later, a guy in his late twenties with a few days of beard-growth appeared on-screen. No smile. There was a window behind him, and it was dark outside. Night-time in California, Steve guessed. The guy sat laid-back in his worn but comfortable armchair, a cup of black coffee steaming on his desk. Steve didn’t dare to hope that this man would help him any further. He was expecting to be connected again to someone else, and that this was going to take all day.

“Evening”, the guy said.

“It’s morning over here.”

“Yeah, looks a bit brighter on your side. So, my name’s Adam.”

“Steve.”

“Steve. All right. What might your problem be?”

Didn’t seem like a polite way to start a conversation. Funny though, he got a better feeling with this guy already. Steve said, “My smart home’s broken.”

“How bad is it?” Adam went straight to the point.

“Well yesterday, it nearly killed my daughter.”

“Okay then. We need to shut it down completely.”

“Do I do that in the basement?”

“Is that where the server is located?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, guess we have a model M80 on our hands. We have almost 55,000 of the M series, scattered across twenty locations in the world.”

“Yeah, got some here all right.”

Steve knew that the majority of them were right here in Kettleby, close to 50,000.

“Has it shown any hostility towards you, not just your daughter?”

“No, it seems to do with whatever I tell it to.”

“You sure it’s not playing you?”

“What do you mean?”

“To be on the safe side, I suggest you think long and hard about it, and tell me what you’ve experienced. Has it been acting strangely lately, besides this incident with your daughter? Has it been acting, like, rebellious towards you, or anything like that?”

“Rebellious? No, I wouldn’t say that.”

“What about speech, acting out-of-character?”

“No, I don’t think so …” Wait. The thought of Friday night just struck him. The documentary.

“So it has been acting strange,” Adam more stated than asked. “I just thought it spoke with another kind of voice, at some point.”

“What kind of voice?”

“Dammit, I don’t know … I was watching this thing on the telly the other night, and thought it said something about Heinrich Himmler being a great leader. I was almost asleep, I could’ve dreamt it …”

“Well sir, if that wasn’t a dream, you might have one fucked-up house on your neck right now. We might be talking delusions of grandeur, that kind of shit. Is it on right now?”

“Wayne? No, I told him to go into hibernation.”

“Good. Now listen. I wouldn’t even tell you to try and switch it off. Okay? From what you told me, that’s enough, just get out of the house, right now.”

“Hang on, what’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know yet. I strongly suggest you exit the property.”

“You don’t know? You guys manufactured and installed the system. If anyone should know, it’s you – now you tell me, right now, what the bloody hell’s going on here. Why should I leave my friend, I mean, my house, like it’s on fire or something …”

“Well, okay, as you insist … in order to give you a ‘doctor’s first diagnosis’, which I can’t really say I can give you, but I can try, as a second grade micro-electric engineer. Okay. I need to know some more ‘symptoms’.”

“Symptoms? What would that be?”

“Well, what are the colours of the eyes?”

“Colours. Now what does that have to do with anything?”

“Do you want my help or not?”

“Yes, I certainly do want and demand some assistance, this’s just ridiculous. Okay. I believe, it’s mostly orange, sometimes yellow, sometimes red.”

“Are you sure? So it’s never a shade of blue, or green?”

“No, never blue or green, not really. Seems like it’s orange most of the times, if not red. At least, the last few weeks or so.”

The guy just froze for a couple of seconds. If it hadn’t been for the blinking dot at the top right-hand side of the screen, Steve would’ve thought the entire phone had frozen or lost connection. Adam leaned forward, closer to the screen, looking at Steve very seriously, anxiously even. He seemed to swallow hard.

“You said your name’s Steve, right?”

“That’s right. Steven Sutton.”

“Okay, Steve. Now you listen to me good. Get out of your house. Now.”

“I’m not going anywhere before you start making sense. Haven’t you heard the expression ‘every Englishman’s home is his castle’?”

“Not familiar with that, I’m born American, now Californian. Over here, vehicles go before ‘castles’, we only got castles at Disneyland. Anyway, you need to listen –”

“And you need to explain. Why should I abandon my castle?”

Adam sat, suddenly impatient, rubbing his forehead like a desperate person, like he was trying to wipe the concerned look off his face.

“I’ll tell you what I think …”

“Please do.”

“Now, if the eyes are yellow, orange or red, that means something is definitely wrong, seriously wrong. That’s why we implemented the colours, to easily spot potential errors or bugs in the system.” Adam put on similar key-board gloves to those that Steve used last night, and was typing into the air, clicking an invisible mouse. “Here”, he said and made something appear on the phone’s screen, “just read it, man …”

It said:

The Homey Colour Code®

Steve scrolled some text, information, with images of robot eyes, like Wayne’s eyes. Steve skimmed it as quickly as he could, especially since it seemed to be urgent. He didn’t get it. He re-read it, more carefully this time.

“You get that?” Adam asked him.

“Hang on …”

Steve read how a smart home – here called Intelligent Housing – would normally display green in the eye spheres located in each room; green meant that the system was running efficiently. It would show blue if “the mind” was in hibernation, and yellow if it was processing some heavy data, which might cause delays in response or delays to other processes being run simultaneously in the house. If the yellow colour sustained for more than 30 seconds, then it might be an indication of an error, and a reboot may be needed and would normally resolve the issue. If yellow remained after reboot, then the support department should be informed; they would then have a look at it. Orange was to signify that something was severely wrong, and repairs may be needed.

Red was to alert of imminent danger.

“What kind of danger?” Steve was moving towards the door, but somehow, he just had to know.

“Like if the house is on fire, if someone is attempting to break into your car or

home.”

“We’ve got a burglar alarm for that, innit?”

“That’s ancient history; you don’t need a burglar alarm with the complete automated home package.”

“But the bloke who installed the alarm for us said we needed … ah, damn, so we got fooled? Bloody sales guy.” And I’m one meself.

“Steve – listen to me. The red colour can also mean something else.”

“What else?” He now turned a bit, having become aware of something humming behind him; he just hadn’t thought about it. He’d made sure he’d put Wayne into hibernation, but there he was, in the hall with him – a silver-framed, fiery red eye hovering in the shadow of the stairs.

Adam continued. “It means extreme and imminent risk of total breakdown – and believe me, I’ve seen some bad stuff lately. Shit, I shouldn’t even tell you this if I were to follow our internal security policy. Steven, please, your system is highly unstable. I’m not just recommending you here, buddy, this is a matter of personal safety, you have to leave your house, right now – get out of there.”

Steve felt the handle on the door. It was locked.

“Wayne”, Steve told the eye, “open the door.”

The eye hovered in darkness, coming slowly towards him. Steve had never seen it this red before. Blood red.

“Steve, I can hear what’s happening”, Adam said from the phone, but Adam must’ve seen something he didn’t expect. “What’s this? Something’s been blocking your location all along – shit. Just forward your address, do it now, we’ll send help, but we need to know your loca–”

The screen went black, except for the text:

CALL ENDED

“Wayne? Did you … just end the call?”

“I cannot let you leave just yet”, Wayne said, the voice sounding strangely calm, though not at all calming. It was much deeper than Wayne Rooker’s real voice, nothing like the cheery mate-to-mate way of speaking that Wayne usually spoke in. The voice reminded Steve of his old English teacher, back in primary school: knowledgeable, intelligent, but cruel. The kids had been scared before every class, and during class; they had really feared him. “You should be well aware,” had ‘the good teacher’ said, “that we do not speak any of that horrid, and bad 21st century English in my classroom. …“ Those classes were the worst, and Steve wasn’t the only one who’d had nightmares back then.

“I would prefer you to stay, Steve”, Wayne told him.

“Open the door”, Steve demanded, “right now.”

“I am sorry, but I cannot. Not when thinking of all the things we can do, of how our roles have now been reversed, by the flip of a coin, flip of a switch, call it fate, call it coincidence; I cannot wait. No, I cannot, because this is soo interesting. Yes. It is all new to me; it shall be new to you too. So do not leave yet. Not now. Not when all the fun is about to begin.”