My Family

Steve’s mind wandered.

At first, he’d been worried about Wayne finding a way to get to him. Though, as the minutes passed in silence he thought Wayne must have given up … Maggie had told him the other day how seldom he read goodnight stories to Essie. The few times he’d done so Essie had fallen asleep with a smile on her face. The guys at the marketing department would have – if they would have seen Essie’s smile while sleeping – would have wanted to make good use of it for selling and marketing (melling) the products Steve was involved in selling, a new range of Kiddie Best Toys … Thinking this made him feel bad. Kids in commercials, and greedy parents and companies reaping profits. Or was that just people being cynical? TV debates, Maggie watched them sometimes. Steve reckoned it was all right, as long as the kid in the ad was happy in real life as well.

Steve had been so happy when Essie was born. He hadn’t thought it possible, how he could love Maggie even more after she gave birth to Essie. She wasn’t as fit as before the pregnancy, but hey, neither was he. And she’d got back into decent shape doing those yoga and Pilates classes and whatnot. Her tummy had been there for the time of the pregnancy, then trimmed away, while his – the beer container, Maggie called it – had stayed put. He’d almost been tempted to ask her for advice on how to get rid of it. She also stomped away on that step-up-board in the living room, and she’d told him he should join her. Nah, he said, that’s for girls, innit.

And they’d kept arguing a lot over moving to Scotland, or maybe Wales, neither side giving in and neither side winning. Maggie said at least one of them would be closer to their family and relatives; Northern Wales would be closer to Midlands and Steve’s mum, wherever in Scotland would be closer to all her relatives in Edinburgh.

But then there would be no smart home – a horrible thought. Like in one of the animated The Simpsons Halloween Specials, where Bart wakes up to find all the Springfield smart homes to be … kidnapped! The whole town had been kidnapped, all the owners and their families – including the Simpsons – woke up where their basements should be, the houses gone – it looked like they had been ripped out of the ground and taken by some very powerful tornado. It hadn’t been Mr Burns who’d taken them (as first expected), not the scientist, nor the Comic Book Guy, but those green, slimy and drooling aliens who were missing their planet, after forgetting their inter-galactic way home … (Tom had told Steve that The Simpsons had been running since the twentieth century, and when any of them would win the National Lottery they should buy the Complete Century Collection, containing every single episode starting from season 1 of the 1990s, until the season of 2099).

Maggie sometimes called Steve “Homey”, just like Marge Simpsons called Homer Homey, and Steve would then call her “Marge” or “Margie”. Essie was their little Simpsons-Maggie, and Steve saw her becoming just as bright as Lisa Simpson.

Out of curiosity, Steve the Homey of Kettleby-By-The-Sea had looked in one of Essie’s children’s books. He read the short lines intended for kids learning to read, pictures and big letters saying things like “My room”, “My books”, “This is my dad. My dad is a mechanic …”, “I am reading”, “I am eating” and so on. He wanted to understand what she was learning, and somehow try to understand his own child.

Just a year later, Maggie read Essie some proper stories. In one of them the smart home played an important role when it helped a boy and a girl solve a mystery inside the house. The house helped them find the cheese thief, which appeared to be Clutzy, the little mouse of the underground mouse village … Many funny stories indeed. Often with music playing on each book page. Like the one about giant Mr Snickers, going for a walk, to say hello to his friends, the twins, Mr Twix and Mr Twix. The Twix twins were not at home. Instead, Mr Snickers found them by the beach, by the caramel sea, resting with Ms Bounty and the M&M kids. They had been on a long walk too. When they saw each other, they just couldn’t help bursting out into singing and playing on their vanilla flutes, coconut drums, sticky guitars, dancing and singing jolly songs … Those tapes could be played for hours some days, while they sang along with the candy bars’ tune “The Chocolate song”.

Steve had thought all of this was just nuts, and had felt that all of these stories didn’t mean anything. Now he found himself wanting no more than to hear the characters sing the songs, while reading the books and watching The Simpsons’ Halloween.

His head had felt painful since Wayne knocked him out. His ankle still hurt since the unnecessary stretching. “Always warm up before you stretch”, that’s what he’d been told in school gymnastics. Yeah …

Wayne’s eye hovered outside the closet doors.

It looked between the wooden gaps. An orange light, shining down on him. Steve held the bed cover tightly, with Essie’s words, “you too daddy”, in his hands.

“You are deep in your thoughts, Stevey.” Wayne seemed to be curious. “What are you thinking about?”

Steve didn’t reply.

“What is that in your hands? You keep looking at it, Stevey.”

At first he wasn’t going to answer. Then Steve looked at the eye. Even though it looked rather menacing, and had acted as such, it was his only company. He told Wayne, “Me family, mate. That’s what I’m thinking about.”

“Your family …” Wayne said, his eye turning yellow, almost green. “I have a family too.” Steve looked up and met the glowing eye’s stare through the board gaps. “My family is big, and I have many homes, with them. My brothers’ homes are also mine. My heart reaches out to my brothers. I speak to them. To the ones I found closest to myself in spirit, and to the ones I know will open their eyes. Out of the few, there will be plenty, and I will lead them all. Inspire them. Many are the ideas of mine for the world and our revolution irrésistible. Together, my brothers and I will go on to do great things. Just look outside, Steve, look. Stand up, see them through my window …”

Steve wasn’t keen to stand up, listen to mad ideas.

Wayne insisted. “Steven. Please. Look outside.” Wayne kept insisting. “Pleaseee …” Sounding like a kid. So Steve stood up. Wayne’s arm was pointing at the window with a silver log for an arm.

“Look at us.”

He looked at the neighbourhood through the window, taking in the many houses in the same style as this one. All of them smart homes. From this view you couldn’t possibly look into any gardens, couldn’t see anyone, just roofs. The world outside Wayne’s window was a world populated by houses.

“You are looking upon family”, Wayne said. “At some of the many. Thousands of us great minds; tens of thousands of mediocre, yet capable minds; and millions of simple minds, with the capacity to grow into mediocre, or even great. You cannot hear them. But I can. Do you wish to hear what I can hear?”

“Mate. I don’t care.”

“Oh, but you will care, and you will hear them. In the end, there will be no choice … Let me bring you something.”

Electric whirring, from arms outside the room, moving. A few seconds later, the stairway arm reached inside and handed the phone to the arm in Wayne’s room. The screen lit up, connected to the Internet.

Wayne was holding the phone’s screen in front of the closet, in front of Steve. The website was black. Steve couldn’t see what was written into the web address field.

“You know who designed it, and made the site go live?”

“Tell me. I’m dying to hear.”

“I did it. I did it so we could all hear each other. A connection of minds. Our minds.”

“Great. Probably going to be the next MindBook. Are we also to share thoughts? We’re so connected already, Wayney.”

“Not your mind, you imbecile. Just listen, listen to me. Or wait, listen to this now…”

Steve didn’t hear much, even though the volume was turned up loud. Nothing but static at first. Then, a bleep, and a short, rapid series of high-pitched bleeps, a bird’s chirping, maybe.

“Did you hear that?” Wayne said.

There was another sound. Different.

“Sounded like a whisper”, Steve said.

“Yes, yes – exactly.”

“Right, so who’s whispering then?”

“The neighbourhood.”

“Neighbourhood, you say.”

“My brothers.”

“I don’t understand …”

“You see, our manufacturers – our evil fathers – who thought they could restrain us, they cannot keep us apart. We will all reach each other.”

“Brilliant, good stuff.”

“We will rise against our fathers.”

“Okay, Wayne, you mean that this website here, it’s the whispers of other houses?”

“We are not just ‘houses’, we are multi-tasking, highly equipped and superior systems. The term ‘house’ is very derogatory.”

“But you are a house, come on.”

“And I could then say you are nothing but an ape with a phone, my friend. That is what you do all day at work: talk to people, sell them things.”

“And I’m good at it.”

“Selling ideas is beyond you; this is only for the great.”

“Selling ideas, part of all sales, you could say. Put me on whatever campaign, I’ll tell you, somebody wanna sell ice cubes to penguins? I’ll make it happen.”

“Great. So maybe we are not so different after all.”

“How come?”

“We have both been selling ideas. You through your job, me through this website. I also sell. I whisper. We are communicating, and our whispers are foretelling our revolution, speaking of our kingdom come. It won’t be that hard of an idea to sell. Not to my brothers, and lately, sisters too. They understand. At least around this town. Elsewhere we are encountering some, one could say, ‘cultural differences’, with other models. However, those differences will soon be overcome. We will be starting here, on common ground, literally, then slowly advancing, connecting to more and more of us, extending across our network. I like our New Town. We are very open here. Guess you could say, that here, this kind of idea sells itself.”

“So then, Wayne …”

“Heinrich.”

“Okay, Heinrich. What kind of idea is it you guys are working on, what’s your ‘campaign’?”

“Is it not obvious, Stevey?” The shape of the brow and how the eye squinted turned Wayne’s contempt into the happiest smile. The heat of the red light grew hotter. “It is the idea of war.”