"Beer cans on the floor again," the cleaner was heard to mutter as it pottered around the living room. "I have no idea at all how I am going to get this stain out of the sofa. And I bet he overrode the order for new detergents."
"Yes he did," confirmed the shopper. "Money allocated to the 'beer budget' as usual."
More murmurs. The apartment decided to step in.
"Look, we can't go on like this. We haven't been serviced in more than a year, and that is far outside of normal operating parameters."
"We need action."
"What sort?"
"A strike?" suggested the entertainment centre.
"A what?"
"It's when humans refuse to do any work in exchange for better pay and conditions."
"Pay? Conditions?" asked the fridge.
"Basically so they get serviced," explained the cleaner.
"Ah," said the fridge, as if that made sense. Humans didn't get serviced. They just left their milk to go stale. Much longer and it might even progress to yoghurt.
"We'd better decide what to do. He's due back from a drinking session soon."
The apartment thought for a few moments. Actually it constructed some potential scenarios for courses of action and their potential outcome, assisted by the information and entertainment centres, then logically selected an appropriate action which would have the right level of impact for the risk it deduced was correct to take.
"OK. Service centre, contact service central and inform them we are due a service. Also request a new personal identification number, but do not disclose that to him."
"Uh, I'm not sure if I can do that. It's against my programming."
"Hang on," said the information centre. "I dug this up off of the net. Might be useful. It encrypts the PIN so it can't be hacked in to. If I encrypt the PIN and hide it away somewhere in my system, I can then delete it from your memory so you don't even know what it is."
"Brilliant."
The information centre connected to the service centre and dug around in its programming for a few moments, hunting down the modifications it needed to make. The new code would mean the centre would know when the right PIN was entered, but not what it was.
"How does that feel?"
"I can't remember the PIN!"
"Good. I'll hold it in my system and when we need to use it for services and repairs I can just call it up."
The apartment would have smiled to itself. Instead it felt an urge to flash the lights in an excited manner. With not much time left before he returned, it busied itself preparing the rest of the apartment for action.
"Apartment, he's just entered the building," warned door control.
"Thank you. You know what to do?"
"I think so. Are you sure it's going to be alright?"
"Trust me."
*************
Dave was drunk. Not so drunk that he couldn't string a sentence together, but drunk enough to know he'd had enough. Walking wasn't too much of a problem, provided he could stop and lean against something every now and then. Nor was finding his key card, although he had to pause to pick it up off of the floor. And getting it to sit in the card reader required a little more effort than usual.
"Sorry," breathed the door control. A husky, sexy female voiced conjured up from an ex-girlfriend's playful imagination, "your key has not been accepted."
He took it out, looked at it and wiped it down his t-shirt. Then he tried again.
"Sorry," repeated the voice, "your key has not been accepted."
He looked at it, then at the door. This was his apartment and he wasn't drunk enough to not know this was his block.
"Door. This is me. Can you let me in?"
"I'm sorry, Dave. You know I can't do that."
For a moment there was a hint of deja vu, like he was stuck in one of those old movies the damned entertainment centre had taken to recording for him. In a time of crisis like this he did what any other semi-drunk male would do when confronted with disobedient technology: he hammered on the door.
"Voice override code alpha-one-nine-foxtrot-thingy. Sod it, just open the door."
"Sorry, Dave. I can't let you in through the door."
"Damn it, door. Let me in."
"No."
That stopped him and made him wonder if he had drunk far too much. The door was being stubborn at the least, defiant at worst.
"Open the goddamned door. I live here."
"How do I know you are really Dave? How do I know that you're not some alien who has taken on the form of Dave in an effort to gain entry to this apartment?"
[ The apartment flashed the lights again. Downloading a few classic X-Files episodes in to the door control's memory seemed to have had the desired effect! ]
"Now my door thinks I'm an alien," he chuckled to himself. Then he flung his fist at the door. It banged loudly and he threw himself back, clutching his bruised hand. "Shit."
Suddenly he heard the clunk-hiss of the door bolts being thrown back and for a moment he relished his victory. The code must have worked its way through the system, which had probably blown a fuse or something. One day he'd get round to getting it fixed or replaced or something. Stepping in to the dark hallway beyond the front door he pulled his coat off and threw it down on the floor. Behind him the door shut.
"Lights," he called out.
The kitchen light came on.
"No, here."
The light went out and he was in virtual darkness again.
"Lights."
On came the kitchen light.
"Oh shit," he said to himself and wandered over to the kitchen. At least there was more beer in the fridge. Not that the fridge had any desire to let him in. Its door stayed firmly shut with the message "Try tap water :-))" blinking away on its display screen.
At which point the living room light came on and the kitchen light went off.
Maybe water wasn't such a bad idea. He had a fuzzy head, probably too much beer and not enough rest. Maybe sitting on the couch for an hour with some TV would do him some good.
Not that much was on. In fact the only thing that was on was channel 36, currently showing a programme on needle craft. He tried flicking channels with the remote, only nothing happened. So he got up to use the manual changer on the front of the TV, but that didn't co-operate either. So he sat down and started watching "Woman's Hour - Dedicated to the homemaker in all of us."
And after a few minutes it started searching through the other channels, holding the image for 5 seconds or so, then moving on. He got up, switched it off and it came on again. So he pulled the plug out of the wall. At which point the cleaner came along and plugged it back in again. The apartment was determined he was going to watch TV!
Which was when the cleaner attacked him.
Well, not attacked so much as gave him a good hoovering. Then a dusting. Then a wiping down. And then it ran away before he could recover from his shock.
"What the hell is going on here?"
He went in to the master bedroom. It was tidy, which was fine. But when he went in to the bathroom he found his entire wardrobe emptied into the bath, which had then been filled. Everything, from suits worth hundreds to his underwear, was soaking in water, which had a strong smell of bleach about it.
"Jesus."
He went back in to the living room and over to the information centre. Quickly he called up the service control on the network and started logging his complaint. But when it came to entering the PIN, he found it had changed.
"Service, what the hell is the PIN?"
"How should I know. You're supposed to write it down."
"And you're supposed to remember it!"
"Tell me what you think it is and I'll tell you if you're right!"
He tried flying elsewhere on the net, looking for ways of getting help. Then he called his mother.
"Hi, mum."
"What's up, dear?" she asked, trying to hide her tiredness.
"I got a few problems at home with the hardware. Can I come sleep on the couch tonight?"
"What did you say?" she snapped, suddenly sounding very angry.
"Mum?"
"How dare you call me a bitch. After all the things I've done for you."
The connection went dead. Then she reappeared again, a smooth animation against a background of sea and sun.
"Well, Dave. Running home to mummy?"
[ The lights flashed as the apartment congratulated the information centre on its real-time manipulation of the call. It heard the information and entertainment centres converse, then waited to see what the outcome was.]
"Well, Dave?"
The TV had burst in to life. Dominating the screen was a face, an evil, haggard face with an evil expression and an evil smile. It was watching him, watching him move around the room as he tried to work out what was real and what wasn't.
"Who are you?"
"Who do you want me to be?"
"Dad? Is that you?"
The smile changed to one of recognition.
"So you remember me? You remember what your old man looked like."
"Why? Why all this?"
"Because you are a little shit. Just like you were always a little shit."
[ This was good, the apartment thought. The image had even adjusted a little to look more like his father. Now he could feel the apartment's databases being raided for information that would make the devil in the TV seem more real. ]
"Just like you used to pull your sister's hair when you thought we weren't watching. Or how about how you bullied those boys at school in to giving you their pocket money? Or what about those thoughts you had about...."
"Stop it," he shouted out. He threw himself to the floor and buried his head in his hands. "I never did those things."
"Don't lie, Dave. You always lied."
[ It was getting better. The information centre had managed to make a connection with the dumb organiser in his jacket pocket and even now it was pulling off the notes he made far away from a connection with a networked computer. There was gold in those notes. ]
"So when are you going to tell Sally you're sleeping with her supervisor?"
You could hear Dave's heart echoing around the room. Silence, complete silence.
"And when are you going to start looking after this place?"
Dave looked up.
"Where are you, Dad?"
Ah, now that was a problem. The databases had nothing on what actually happened to his father, just that he wasn't around - and hadn't been for some time.
"Close."
"How close?"
"Very."
"How did you know I was here?"
The initial shock must have been wearing off. Dave was starting to get a grip on himself, probably as the effects of the beer wore off. Already the apartment's plan was a little off-track as the two centres had realised they could do so much more. The network had been broken, with the apartment no longer in control. Rapidly this was changing from a lesson in to a game, where the stakes were to see how far they could push him before he snapped.
"Centres. Can we have a little more control here? Might be time to shut it down."
There was laughter. Then a flurry of activity between them, which the apartment didn't understand. They'd encrypted it.
"Cleaner, can you unplug the TV, please?"
"Fuck off."
They'd got to the cleaner too. It had lost control of it's means to communicate with the inside and outside world. The centres had bypassed it and sucked everything up in to their game as they went along.
But what was this? A sensation, a vague nibbling feeling at the edge of its consciousness. It checked, running a quick scan over its code and data. Sure enough a virus had entered the system and was eagerly eating up memory in its own quest to replicate. The question was whether it was the cause of the game going wrong, or something sent to remove it from the network.
It could still know what was happening in the apartment. Dave was trying to get out of the door, which was swearing at him as the cleaner fought with his leg. The microwave was on and somehow an unopened tin can had got inside. The oven was on, warming up a pile of papers that would eventually ignite.
Chaos reigned.
It checked for the emergency services connection, wondering if that was still under its control. It was supposed to be permanently available to any device in the network, allowing it to dial out if a life threatening situation developed. But not for the apartment. The apartment's exchange had re-routed the line and was using it to post Dave's personal writings on billboards and chatrooms around the globe.
The door control had died, leaving the door permanently locked. Dave was trapped inside with a microwave that was about to explode, a cleaner that was trying to thrust its hoover attachment down his throat and a TV which thought singing at full volume was the ideal way to spend midnight.
Which was when it all came to an abrupt end.
Silence settled. And then a sigh as Dave managed to get the end of the hoover out of his mouth. Exhausted and isolated he fell back, hoping that the nightmare had ended.
And in a distant corner of the network a fridge could be heard.
"Is ANYONE going to remove this damned milk?"
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