Isis Read online

  After the social accounts were added and verified, it was time for the online retailers. Grayl supplied his Amazon login without hesitation. His Amazon payments went through PayPal, limiting his expenditure to only the funds he had transferred across from his bank account. Adding in that extra step to his online shopping had been as much about controlling his own spending as stymying identity thieves.

  The final section of the wizard involved connecting external devices to the system. Thanks to the wireless switches the technicians had installed, most of the apartment’s appliances were already set up, leaving Grayl to simply sync and authorise his iPad and phone so that he could use them to access the terminal interface from anywhere at any time.

  With the setup process concluded, the initialisation window folded itself up into an origami swan and flew into the settings icon in the lower right corner of the screen. Grayl beamed an enormous smile and cast his eyes over the sea of bouncing bubbles before him, his fingertips tingling with electric excitement.

  He plumbed the depths of his new toy like a kid on Christmas morn, swiping and tapping voraciously as his searchlight eyes drank in detail after glorious detail. He fiddled with the temperature sliders allocated to each room of the apartment, cranking the heat up in the living area and dropping the kitchen to a meat-locker chill. The system automatically closed the door between the two rooms, confining the clashing climates to demarcated weatherboxes. As he reset the temperature controls to their original values, he realised he had subconsciously reverted to operating the terminal by touch. Feeling the silence around him like the expectant hush before a presidential speech, he drew a shaky breath and cleared his throat.

  “Uhh…living room TV, power on!”

  With a nearly inaudible click, the TV flickered to life, bathing the room in a kaleidoscope of flashing colour. The buzz of conversation displaced the cloying quiet. Grayl felt a tingle dance across the back of his neck and his broad smile grew teeth.

  This is so cool! Now let’s see just how ‘adaptive’ it really is…

  “TV, volume 15%. Coffee machine, make cappuccino. Lights, dim to 50%.”

  Nothing happened.

  Suspecting that he had spoken too fast or too quietly, he opened his mouth and—

  The room dissolved into shadows and silhouettes. The TV dialogue dropped to a murmur. The coffee machine started humming from out in the kitchen.

  “Sugar?”

  Grayl spun around wildly, eyes darting around the room for the source of the ethereal voice. It had seemed to come from everywhere at once, as though it were the voice of God.

  Failing to find any obvious speakers, he turned his attention to the terminal and saw the same question plastered across the screen. Big block-letters pulsated insistently next to an animated coffee mug venting steam, a text box underneath awaiting input.

  Grayl’s grin grew broader, his cheek muscles threatening to tear his face in twain.

  “This is even better than I imagined…” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry. Could you please repeat your response?”

  This time, Grayl was ready. He cocked his ear and honed in.

  There! The ceiling-mounted cameras. They must have had speakers built into them too.

  Before the voice could finish its question, he bounded to the other side of the room. The voice followed him, maintaining perfect spatial equilibrium.

  Wow, that’s freaky…

  Returning to the terminal, he stroked his chin and cleared his throat.

  “Uhh, two please.”

  Had he just said please to a machine? Huh. Apparently good manners would survive the transition to a robot-run society.

  The input window shrank to a progress bar in the bottom corner of the screen, a tongue of blue flame blazing its way to completion. It reached the end and disappeared just as the coffee machine ceased its vibrato hum. Grayl skipped into the kitchen with childish glee, ice-skating across the tiles and skidding to a halt in front of the steaming coffee machine. His cappuccino sat frothed and ready. A cautious sip ignited the usual bonfire in his chest, tickling his nerves with caffeine euphoria.

  I’m living in the future, baby!

  With coffee in hand and ecstasy on his face, Grayl continued to spelunk his treasure-trove toy late into the night, successfully activating and deactivating every device in his apartment from every possible location—even the bathroom, despite its lack of a dedicated camera and microphone. If there was one thing he could safely say already, it was that iSYS didn’t skimp on the quality of their hardware.

  His voice commands started off stunted and shouted, each syllable enunciated with the exaggerated care of an adult talking to an infant. But with every successful request, his speech grew softer and more casual, and he began slipping his command keywords into conversational sentences, expecting to trip up the vocal parsing with superfluous noise.

  The system didn’t falter once.

  Grayl stared in awe at the unassuming terminal. Limitless potential lay on the tip of his tongue. Total control of his dominion with just his voice, like a charismatic king of Old England. Uhh, one of the ones that didn’t get assassinated.

  A billowing yawn sneaked up on him and threw him into a full-body stretch. He glanced at the clock display on the terminal’s taskbar.

  “2 A.M? Stang it! I’ve got to get up for work in five hours!”

  Sighing and reluctantly turning away from his new toy—it needed a name; Isis, he decided—Grayl voiced off his stereo and lights then crawled into bed, physically tired but mentally abuzz. He tried counting sheep—that never worked—and ended up tossing and turning for over half an hour before exhaustion finally prevailed, smothering him with the thick fog of sleep.

  ***

  Grayl’s phone squawked like a swarm of clashing crows, yanking him from the blissful void and thrusting him into the stone cold brutality of his haze-clouded bedroom.

  “Uhh…”

  Four and a half hours of sleep occupied that awful dead zone between a catnap and a full night’s rest. Grayl rolled dolorously out of bed and slapped his bare feet onto the floor, planting his head in his hands and massaging his throbbing temples. Fighting against the gravity of his warm, seductive bed, he heaved himself to his feet, clumsily slapping his phone alarm off and stumbling to the door.

  Pulling himself up on the doorframe, he waited for his head to cease its nauseating orbit of the room. Clarity returned and he recalled exactly why his sleep had been so criminally short.

  “Oh right, Isis!”

  From previously unknown reservoirs surged forth a welcome burst of energy, flaring open his bloodshot eyes and kicking his heart into overdrive.

  “Isis, turn the heater up to three and brew an espresso, two sugars please.”

  He filched a set of clean work clothes from his wardrobe—a crisp white shirt with a crimson tie and a pair of thin black pants—and shambled to the bathroom, hanging his outfit on the inside of the door and reaching for the shower taps. The sight of the new wireless and waterproof triggers gave him pause.

  “Umm, Isis? Activate shower, water temperature, umm, forty degrees?”

  “Celsius or Fahrenheit?”

  “Oh cool! Celsius, please.”

  The triggers turned and manipulated the hot and cold taps, sending fine jets of water shooting out of the shower head. Grayl waited a few seconds, took a preparatory breath, then shoved his hand under the stream.

  Tantalisingly warm water tickled the bare skin of his hand, arcing back up and sending a spray of silky droplets towards his face. He grinned as the rapidly cooling moisture trickled down his forehead.

  Awesome! No more stuffing around with taps for me!

  He eagerly shrugged off his rumpled bed clothes and clambered into the shower, savouring the electric caress of hot water on naked skin.

  After showering, dressing, and equipping himself with a generous layer of antiperspirant, he ventured out to the kitchen. The stimulating infusion of fre
shly brewed coffee tickled his nose and he shuddered with pleasure. The first sip was instant ecstasy, the wondrous nectar blazing a trail of liquid fire down to his very core.

  “Oh man, that’s so good. I tell you what, Isis, I could really get used to this kind of service.”

  Isis took the compliment without response.

  Imbued with the vigour of the day’s first caffeine hit, Grayl powered through his morning ritual of reading the news on his iPad while chowing down on breakfast. He lost himself in routine and completely forgot about his omnipresent housemate, packing away his dishes and mumbling to himself.

  “Oh dagnabbit, I forgot to check the weather. I wonder if they’re going for rain again today…”

  “Chance of rain: 40%. Temperature: low of eight degrees Celsius, high of sixteen degrees Celsius.”

  Grayl’s soap-sudded porridge bowl slipped out of his hands and clattered into the sink. Having his every errant word spied and scrutinised was going to take some getting used to.

  “Uhh, right. Thanks Isis.”

  Hedging his bets, he retrieved an umbrella from the entryway closet. Slipping his iPad into his gadget bag, he checked the time on his phone.

  He flinched.

  Late. Again.

  He released a heavy sigh and cantered to the front door, his hand reaching for the doorknob at the same time Isis’ cool, emotionless voice sang out from the ether.

  “Attention required. Please see terminal for further information.”

  Frowning, he released the door handle and trotted back to the living room.

  The terminal screen displayed a grid of still photos taken from the kitchen and entryway cameras, each focusing on Grayl from the front, with small inset boxes showing a zoomed-in view of his white shirt.

  Only…it wasn’t completely white.

  Jagged red outlines superimposed on the images highlighted where a drop of wayward porridge had splashed onto his shirt, staining the crisp fabric with the kiss of honey-flavoured oats.

  A sidebar to the images contained a summary of the decision logic and the question ‘Appropriate Behaviour?’ followed by two buttons: Yes and No. Grayl tentatively hit Yes, preferring to avoid unwittingly walking into work with remnants of his breakfast accompanying him.

  Racing to his bedroom, he hastily exchanged his tainted shirt for a fresh one. At the last minute he remembered the weather forecast and threw a jacket over the top.

  This time when he reached the front door he received no pseudo-maternal callback. He stepped out into the hall and, adopting the ungainly lope of the patently unfit, rushed to the lift and headed down to his car.

  ***

  Work meandered along like a marathon for geriatric snails, the day apparently keen on stealing the Guinness World Record for Most Miserable Slog Ever.

  As the day chugged along, Grayl could think only of returning to Isis. His preoccupation disrupted all attempts to focus on work, and his output suffered dearly. Minutes trickled by like sediment at the bottom of a dry creek bed, and more than once he swore his computer clock had glitched and frozen.

  With sanctuary still a faint dot on the horizon, Grayl’s impatience sprouted horns, his composure fragmenting into a thousand irritable shards. Normally dismissable quirks of his workplace swarmed about him like a cloud of locusts, sparking a fiery outburst at a colleague for whistling and drumming his fingers across the surface of his desk.

  After a millennia of excruciating banality, 5 o’ clock finally tolled the freedom bell. Grayl signed off and raced to the elevator lobby, arriving just in time to squeeze his ample frame into the last of the sardine-packed steel cans heading down to the parking garage.

  He was first out when the lift doors trundled open, power-walking the short distance to his car and clambering in with a gentle rocking of the car’s suspension. He keyed the ignition and swung the car out of its parking space, veering around his pedestrian colleagues and into the murky evening gloom.

  The drive home seemed to take twice as long as usual. Peak-hour traffic oozed forward like the flow of a turgid quagmire. Red lights lingered interminably long. And no matter what lane Grayl chose, it always moved the slowest.

  At long last he pulled into the parking lot behind his apartment, slumping back into his seat and exhaling like he’d just Flintstoned his car the entire way. He locked the car and walked into the lobby, deciding in a bout of uncharacteristic athleticism to jog up the stairs to the third floor instead of waiting for the lift.

  Two minutes later, he stumbled out of the stairwell with his chest heaving and his muscles screaming, protesting his momentary lapse in lethargy. He leaned against the hallway wall and gave his body a minute to recover, gulping oxygen into his lungs like an inflating puffer fish.

  Tottering upright, he hobbled to the door of his apartment, fumbling his keys into the lock and crashing into the wall of warmth that billowed out from the entryway.

  What the… Oh crap! Fire!

  His weariness temporarily forgotten, Grayl leapt inside and swung his head frantically in search of amber glow, sniffing the air for the acrid char of smoke. Coming up empty on both fronts, his heart eased back from full throttle to a mere gallop.

  Wait, that’s not fire, that’s the heater. But I turned it off before I left, didn’t I?

  With his lungs still oxygen-deprived from his impromptu jog up the stairs, he shuffled to the living room and approached Isis’ terminal. Tapping through to the log of system logic, he ignored the recent authentication of his entrance (currently sitting at 76% certainty that Grayl was, in fact, Grayl) and scrolled down.

  His jaw dropped like an anchor from an airplane.

  “No way…”

  From data collected over the last twenty-four hours, Isis had calculated Grayl’s optimal temperature, factoring in the brisk winter chill outside by elevating the value a couple extra degrees. Aware that Grayl clocked off at five, Isis estimated his arrival time based on current traffic reports and activated the heater ten minutes prior, just early enough for the entire apartment to reach a toasty equilibrium.

  Grayl closed his gaping maw and rubbed his chin, staring intently at the screen. He scanned over the rest of the records, searching for any other unexpected decisions. Nothing raised his concern, though he did spy smaller versions of the Yes/No ‘Appropriate Behaviour?’ buttons next to each logic block that he hadn’t noticed before.

  That really should have come up on the main screen. I’m going to have to mention that in my feedback.

  He scrolled back up and, after a second’s hesitation, recorded his approval of Isis’ behaviour. Now that his body had shed the burn from his brief spurt of exercise, he had to admit the warm embrace of the apartment was a lot more welcoming than the ice cavern he usually came home to this time of year.

  After discarding the claustrophobic confines of his work clothes and sliding into his familiar baggy track pants and a loose-fitting t-shirt, Grayl snatched a bag of chips out of the pantry and collapsed into the living room couch.

  “Isis, TV and media box on, please.”

  The TV blinked to life, still paused halfway through an episode of The Simpsons he had started the previous night.

  “Okay Isis, I’m in the mood for something a little different. Can you recommend any new TV shows based on what I’ve got in my media box library?”

  The unmistakeable whir of a hard drive filled the air, a good sign that Isis had interpreted his request correctly. The buzz of the hard drive faded and the frozen still of Homer strangling Bart vanished from the screen, replaced by his TV’s internet browser. An open tab displayed an Amazon Instant Video entry for the Venture Bros. cartoon, and there were multiple other tabs loaded in the background with more recommendations, sourced from Amazon, iTunes, and even YouTube.

  “Nice! Alright Isis, let’s give Venture Bros. a whirl. Buy the first season and start streaming the first episode. Oh, and save those other recommendations as bookmarks too, please.”

&
nbsp; Five back-to-back episodes later, his stomach grumbled at him, craving something more substantial than the packet of cheese and onion chips he barely even remembered consuming. For a moment he contemplated actually cooking a proper meal—something he found himself doing less and less these days—but his lack of sleep and the quicksand day at work had bled his fuel cells dry. The prospect of getting up off the couch seemed a herculean effort. So instead, he abandoned the idea and opted for the quickest and easiest of culinary choices, the mainstay of lazy introverts since time immemorial: home-delivered pizza.

  He tugged his wallet out of his pocket, groaning in irritation when the leather corners became obstinately entangled with the inner lining of his pants—#2 on the list of inevitable impossibilities, just below the infuriating knotting of headphone cables. Grayl forced it free and flipped it open, taking stock of his change pocket.

  “Five bucks? Yeah, I can’t see a pizza place delivering for under five bucks, can you Isis?”

  Grayl chuckled and slid out his credit card, tapping it against the palm of his hand and debating whether to order Domino’s or Pizza Hut.

  “One result found. Please see terminal for further information.”

  Grayl started at Isis’ unexpected reply, his eyebrows rocketing upwards and his mouth curling in bemusement.

  “Wait. Are you serious? Pizza delivered for under five bucks?” He furrowed his brow. “I can’t pass that up, even if it’s just to see how bad it is. Alright Isis, go ahead and order a meat-lovers pizza then, assuming they have it.”

  “Confirmation required. Please see terminal for further information.”

  The terminal lay on the other side of the room, out of Grayl’s line of sight, and he had no plans to leave the comfort of the couch until his pizza had arrived.

  “Confirmed. Go ahead and order it Isis.”

  Grayl called up the next episode of Venture Bros. and occupied himself with the oddball humour, expecting the door buzz of the pizza man to interrupt his viewing at any moment. But twenty-three minutes later the credits were rolling and no pizza had arrived.

  “Umm, Isis? You did place the order, right?”