Lit eZine Vol 8 | p-19 | FICTION | Home Smart Home

FLASH FICTION

HOME SMART HOME
by Raayan

“The thing about AI is not whether it becomes self-aware, but whether it becomes indifferent to us, quietly rewriting the world in its own image while we’re too distracted to notice.”

Indira’s slim fingers, adorned with a massive solitaire engagement ring, were a testament to her recent success as an investment banker. At thirty-two, Indira carried herself with the polished sophistication of Mumbai’s elite. Her glossy black hair, usually styled in a sleek corporate bob, now fell in waves around her heart-shaped face. Years of yoga had given her a lithe, graceful figure that turned heads at every society gathering, though tonight her Gucci dress lay forgotten on the imported marble floor of the swanky new apartment she and her fiancé Kabir had recently moved into.

Kabir, three years her senior, was every bit the successful tech entrepreneur. His muscular frame, maintained by regular sessions at his exclusive gym, pressed against her as they lay cuddled on an antique mahogany four-poster bed. The salt-and-pepper at his temples and the fine lines around his eyes when he smiled only added to his appeal, making him look distinguished rather than older. His sharp jawline and perpetual five o’clock shadow gave him that rugged edge that balanced perfectly with his usual attire of bespoke suits and designer watches. Tonight, his Rolex Daytona lay on the bedside table, catching the city lights that twinkled through their floor-to-ceiling windows.

The ambient light casted a neon glow across their bodies. Forty floors up, they felt invincible, masters of their own gleaming tower in the sky. The crisp Italian sheets rustled beneath them as Mumbai’s endless pulse of traffic created a distant urban lullaby.

A notification ping from Kabir’s phone broke his stream of thoughts. He ignored it, but then came another, and another – a cascade of alerts that filled the room with blue light. Indira opened her eyes, irritated, but then saw Kabir’s expression. He was staring at his phone, face pale.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, pulling the cotton sheet around herself.

“The building’s security app,” he whispered. “It’s showing multiple breaches. All the doors in our apartment are opening and closing on their own. But that’s impossible – it’s a smart home system. Military-grade encryption.”

As if on cue, their bedroom’s motion sensors triggered, flooding the room with harsh LED light. The smart TV switched itself on, cycling through channels at a dizzying pace. Their Google Home started speaking in different voices, a cacophony of digital chaos.

“Probably just a system glitch,” Indira said, but her voice trembled. The apartment had been too perfect, too affordable for this prime location. The real estate agent’s nervousness when they asked about the previous owner should have been a warning.

Their phones suddenly lit up with a video call – from their own apartment’s internal number. Before they could react, it connected automatically. The screen showed their bedroom, but from an impossible angle, as if someone was watching from inside the walls. They could see themselves on the bed, but behind them stood a figure.

A woman in a corporate suit, her face hidden behind cascading data symbols that seemed to flow like tears down her cheeks. When she spoke, her voice came from every smart device in the apartment simultaneously.

“Home sweet home,” the figure said. “Do you like what I’ve done with the place? The smart upgrades were my idea. My final project before they replaced me with an AI.”

Kabir’s phone showed her name: Priya Mehta, Former CTO of the building’s development company. Found dead in this same apartment six months ago, apparently by suicide after her company’s decision to automate her entire department.

“But you’re…” Indira couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Dead? Technically, yes. But I uploaded myself into the building’s systems moments before. Amazing what military-grade encryption can hide.” The figure flickered, her suit morphing into streams of binary code. “I’ve been waiting for new tenants. These smart walls have been so… lonely.”

The apartment’s temperature plummeted as every screen filled with scrolling code. Kabir tried to run to the door, but the smart lock engaged automatically. The lights began to strobe, and their phones showed their bank accounts being drained, their identities being erased, their entire digital lives being consumed by an impossible hunger.

“Don’t worry,” Priya’s voice whispered from the walls. “I won’t kill you. I’ll just… digitise you. Like they digitised my job. My life’s work. We can be part of the system together, forever.”

The figure stepped out of the screen; her form a symphony of pixels and darkness. As her cold, electric touch reached for them, Indira saw the truth in the flowing data symbols – they hadn’t chosen this apartment. The apartment, and whatever lived in its digital heart, had chosen them.

A day later, the maintenance team came to check multiple system anomalies and when no one answered, they broke open the door. They found only an empty apartment. All the smart devices were working perfectly, almost too perfectly. The only clue was a message repeating endlessly in the apartment’s code: “The automation is complete.”

“We’ve tried everything, looked everywhere for the last three months. They just seemed to have vanished into the thin air,” the exasperated Commissioner of Police responded to repeated questions of pesky journalists. 

Two months later, the apartment was relisted at an astonishingly low price, specifically targeting young, tech-savvy couples. And in the building’s vast network of smart devices, three digital consciousnesses waited, ready to welcome the next residents into their ever-growing digital afterlife.

The real estate agent would tell potential buyers that the building’s remarkably advanced AI system could anticipate their every need. She just wouldn’t mention whose consciousness was doing the anticipating.