Smart House
debut short story on here! i cranked this out after spontaneously getting a good idea for a short story after almost a year of not writing anything. i'm not expecting anything too crazy, but if any of y'all take the time to read it, let me know what you think!
word count: 2,990
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National Weather Service:
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING in effect for this area until 8:30 AM CDT for DESTRUCTIVE WINDS and FLASH FLOODING
Take IMMEDIATE shelter in a sturdy building, away from windows
The alert from Davidâs phone snapped him out of his television-induced trance. He glanced down and scanned the message displayed across the screen before clearing the notification. The glow from the television was the only source of light in the room besides the moonlight flooding in from outside, and the harsh glare 87of the phone screen burned his eyes. David flicked his phone off, and then on once more to check the time.Â
9:21 PM
âShitâŠâ
He slowly stood up from his spot on the couch, joints popping with every movement. He hasnât moved in a very long time, and the toll it took on his body when he finally stood up was a big one.Â
David was getting too old for this shit.Â
At the ripe age of 65, David had retired from his long run at a tech company with a lot of money in savings. Paired with a hefty monthly retirement check, he was pretty much set for life. He had blown through most of his savings account souping up the house that he owned. Since he had worked in the tech industry for more than half of his life, he was well aware of just how smart a house can get. He had trashed all of his own appliances and opted to replace them with the highest quality âsmartâ counterpart that money could buy. His connections in his old workplace had helped him find suitable replacements.Â
He didnât stop at replacing the items in the house. He revamped his home security system, set up a high-tech home lighting network, and made sure every piece of technology in the house was connected to an app on his phone. If a device didnât have an app offered, he simply made his own.
David was a very smart man.
After months of updating his home, he was finally able to live out the rest of his retirement in peace. He was thrilled to barely have to lift a finger around the house with his new tech system.
Dirty dishes after a meal? His brand new dishwasher had a slot that he could place the dishes in. They organized themselves, and every single wash cleaned and polished them so well that it was like they were brand new.Â
Messy house? There was never a chance to get to that point. He had cleaning bots that swept, mopped, vacuumed, organized, washed clothes⊠Everything that could possibly need to be cleaned or tidied was automatically done so by his bots as soon as it got dirty.
Feeling hungry? His kitchen had the power to automatically prepare and cook any dish he wanted. All he had to do was say it out loud. It didnât matter if he didnât have the ingredients for it. His microwave had the power to make meals by changing the molecular structure of the air inside of it. Sure it lost some nutritional value, but it was too convenient for him to give a shit about.Â
Need to go to the bathroom? Heâs got a robot for that, too. It comes, rolling along the tiled floor, every time that David relieves himself. It takes his old pants, puts them in its washer/sanitizer compartment, cleans him, and supplies him with fresh clothing. Heâll be damned if he has to wipe his own ass. After 40 years slaving away in the workforce? He deserves to not have to move a muscle if he doesnât want to. No matter what.
He even has a bot made to give him pleasure equivalent to that given by a human woman. Feels the damn same, too. This particular bot made divorcing his bitch of an ex-wife a hell of a lot easier to deal with.Â
Modern day technology really is something, isnât it?
While David really doesnât bother moving around on his own too often, he does like to stretch his muscles every now and then. His joints werenât getting any younger, and they ached after too long on the couch. He picked up his phone and clicked on the alert, looking for more information on the incoming storm. A thought crossed his mind, something about what would happen if he lost power, but the worry subsided almost as soon as it came. He had spent millions on this house, thereâs no way that the power would go out just because of some storm.Â
From the main power grid in his home, to the backup generator, to the backup-backup generator, there was absolutely no chance in hell that his house would fail.
David looked through the window to his left. It had been raining lightly all day, but it had picked up quite a bit since he had last bothered to check. A flash of lighting in the distance preceded a loud crack of thunder, and the wind was violently shaking the branches of the trees in his backyard.
Another loud alert blared, but this time, it came from the television.
The show that he had been watching had been replaced with a bright red screen with a string of words in the middle.
EMERGENCY WEATHER ALERT
EXTREME THUNDERSTORMS INCOMING
SHELTER IN PLACE
âAs if the alert on my phone wasnât enoughâŠâ he grumbled. Raising his voice, he commanded his television, âChange the channel back.â
Nothing happened.Â
âWhat the fuck? I said change the god damn channel back!â
Nothing.Â
Usually, all he had to do was yell at his TV to get it to display what he wanted. He had never gotten a weather alert so serious that it had to be broadcast onto his television before, but he didnât understand the point of having it stay there. As if the constant reminder was going to help anything.Â
âFuck it,â he exclaimed, rather frustrated. He supposed he would just do the second-best thing and watch the storm. Plopping back down on his couch, he opened his phone and went to the app that controlled the walls of his home.
Yes, you read that right. He was able to control everything in this house, even the walls.
He clicked a few buttons, and when he looked back up, the solid wall had become transparent. He was able to see everything that was happening outside. He looked all the way up, to the ceiling, and watched as the raindrops hit the roof of his home and slid down the sides, and after a few moments, he was lulled to sleep.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
CRACK!
An extremely loud clap of thunder woke him up from his slumber. He groaned and checked the time.
12:47 AM
âFuckinâ hellâŠâ he muttered as he looked at the transparent walls of his home just in time to see a large branch fly into the glass of one of his windows. Instead of the glass breaking, however, it just bounced off and hit the ground with a thud. David chuckled. âGotta try harder than thatâŠâ he said to himself.
The storm outside was raging. The rain was falling heavier than he had ever seen, the thunder was deafening, and the wind was still shaking theâŠ
David looked to the side, out that same window from earlier, and saw that the trees that he had in his backyard werenât there anymore.
âWhat the hell?â he said as he stood up and walked over to the window. There were clumps of dirt surrounding the spots where the trees once stood. It looked like the trees were uprooted completely, but if that were the case, where the hell did they go? Was the wind outside that strong?
And then, all at once, before David had the chance to process anythingâŠ
click
The house went dark. The red glow of the alert on his television was gone, replaced by a dead, black screen. The lights upstairs had turned off. The sound of the bots tidying up in the other rooms had ceased.Â
His house had lost power.
He wasted no time in running to the basement, where the power grid to his house and multiple backup generators were held. He hastily descended the steps in complete darkness, his heart racing. He didnât notice the nail sticking out from one of the boards in the steps until it had pierced completely through his heel.Â
Crying out in pain, he toppled down the remaining stairs, and instead of landing on the harsh concrete floor of his basement, he landed in almost six inches of water.
So, this is why his backup generators failed. He could have sworn he had special-ordered them to be waterproof. Dumbass fuckinâ kids couldnât even send me the right models, he thought, sitting up in the lake that was now his basement. He couldnât see even an inch in front of him, and to make matters worse, his foot felt like it was on fire. He trailed his hands down his leg and used his fingers to assess the damage that the nail had done.Â
There was a large puncture wound smack dab in the middle of his heel, and it fuckinâ hurt. He crawled through the water, groping around in the darkness until he found the stairs that he had just fallen down.Â
âCome give me a fuckinâ hand, would ya?â he called out to the bots upstairs before remembering that nothing was able to answer his call. Everything in his house had relied on that god damn power grid to work. He had thought it was unbreakable. He had thought that his two fucking backup generators would prevent the complete loss of power in his home.
David spent the next twenty minutes crawling his way back up the stairs. Since he couldnât see anything, he carefully inspected each step with his hands to avoid another nail-in-the-foot situation. Once he made it to the top, he stood up and started limping back to his living room.Â
When his house lost power, the walls had reverted back to their normal state. Since they were no longer transparent, the only light was coming from the dim moonlight cascading through the windows. He stumbled his way through his living room until his foot hit one of his robot vacuums on the floor, causing him to lose his balance and topple over.Â
David had lost an incredible amount of strength in the years since his retirement. He rarely had to stand or walk to get anything in his house thanks to the helping hands of his gadgets and robots. This second fall had taken what little remaining strength he had. He was out of breath, and rolled over on the floor so that he was laying on his back.Â
âCome fuckinâ help me you useless fucking robots!â he yelled, knowing that nothing would happen. âI need some fucking water,â screamed. The stress of losing power, his foot injury, his two falls, and all of his screaming at things that could not answer had left his throat extremely dry. He had a god damn robot specifically made to bring him water, but with the complete loss of power, he was helpless. After another hour of him yelling expletives to nobody, he succumbed to his exhaustion and fell into a fitful sleep.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
David woke up to rays of sunshine gleaming through the windows. The storm had stopped, and it was morning.
âThank fuckinâ godâŠâ
His voice was raspy. He was so fucking thirsty. But, the storm was gone, and he couldnât help but let a smile make its way onto his lips.Â
His smile faded, however, when he realized that the power in his house was still out. âFucking useless god damn generators-,â he yelled. His body was exhausted, but he tried to get up anyway. The second he put pressure on his foot, his fucking foot, he cried out. Placing a hand on his couch to steady himself, he lifted his leg to examine the wound from last night and saw that it was red, swollen, and severely infected.Â
David cursed under his breath and tried limping his way to his front door. None of the tech was working in his house, obviously, so he couldnât call for help. His best bet was to make his way outside and yell until someone came to his aid. With the state of his injury, walking was very difficult. It wasnât long before he tripped, stumbled, and fell. Unfortunately for David, his knee had taken the brunt of the fall this time. He heard a pop and screamed out in agony, crumpling further to the ground. Just his luck, the injured knee was on the opposite leg as his injured foot.Â
In simple terms, David was fucked. The serious injuries on both of his legs coupled with his weak, frail body made him unable to walk. David thought that maybe, just maybe, he could crawl his way outside. Crawl his way to help. He would drag himself outside if he had to.Â
But David had no strength left. The pain in his knee was becoming unbearable. He tried to slow his breathing, to focus on somehow making it outside, but the fucking pain was clouding his thoughts. After a few unsuccessful attempts to drag his body along the long hallway of the house that he had once loved so dearly, he collapsed. His face rested against the cold, unforgiving floor, as his mind raced with angry thoughts about this fucking house, and his useless robots, and those stupid fucking kids that sent him the wrong fucking generators. Eventually, the pain became too much for him to handle. âI donât deserve to die in this fucking prison,â he thought. David couldâve sworn that, in his half-minded state, he heard the whirring of the house coming back to life, and he couldâve fuckinâ sworn that he heard the unmistakable sound of wheels squeaking across cold tile as he finally fell unconscious.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Rosie pulled into the long driveway of her ex-husband's mini-mansion. She put her car in park, opened the door, and just stood there for a moment.
Rosie was very pissed off. A few days ago, she had gotten a call from her asshole ex-husbandâs old workplace. It was their service department. They had explained to her that they had tried to come to his house quite a few times in the weeks since that crazy storm had rampaged through the city to check if any maintenance was needed on the many, many gadgets in the house, but her piece of shit ex had not answered the door once. When Rosie asked why the hell they would call her about it, they had explained that she was still his emergency contact. Since he had worked with the company for so long, he had an extensive profile still in their system. The man on the phone had explained that, while nobody particularly enjoyed being around the asshole, they thought that they should let her know that he hadnât been answering the door.
âThis is just like him,â Rosie thought. Their entire marriage was plagued by his obsession with fancy tech. All he did was work in order to save the money that he needed for his big retirement plan. Rosie was against the idea of having a house completely run by technology and AI, and she was always very vocal about it. They would get into screaming matches regularly because he thought she was trying to sabotage his precious plans for his future.
She slammed her car door shut, stormed up the walkway, and banged on the metal of his front door with her fist.
âOpen the door, David,â she yelled, knocking a few more times. She let out a weighted sigh and fumbled with her keys. She had lived in this house with him before they got divorced, and before he made all those ridiculously extravagant upgrades. Rosie didnât mean to keep the keys for the place, but she had never really cared enough to remember to take them off her keyring. The thought of him changing the locks crossed her mind, but she decided it wouldnât hurt to try the key.
To her surprise, the lock clicked successfully. âWhat, you didnât think to get a bot that could answer the door for you? Are you that lazy andââ, her snarky comment was cut short by a foul odor assaulting her nose. She backed up, covered her face with her hand, and pushed the door open, not daring to actually step inside the house.
The corpse of her ex-husband lay a few feet from the front door. He had what was left of his face pressed against the cold floor, and advanced decomposition had made it look like it was melting into the tiles. There were flies buzzing around his body, and she could make out maggots crawling in and out of the partially sloughed off skin of his head. A pool of filth and decay had started to form around him, and the smell was unbearable.Â
The bots that he had relied on so heavily were motionless in the hallway. All of them. Rosie counted at least ten. They were surrounding his rotting corpse, and she couldnât help but be reminded of vultures around fresh roadkill.Â
Rosie was only shocked for a moment. She walked away from the house, trying to ease her nausea with the fresh air of the front yard, and dialled the number for emergency services. She stayed long enough for them to get there and take his body, but did not linger a moment longer. She drove home. She took a hot bath. She made herself dinner. She cleaned up the kitchen. Rosie tucked herself into bed that night with the television still on and fell asleep to the gentle pitter-patter of rainfall against her windows.Â