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“You are most welcome,” it replied, failing to detect my sarcasm.
I walked into my sprawling closet and changed into a pair of jeans. Then I opened a second door, which revealed my shoe closet. Over a hundred shoeboxes sat in neat little racks, all of them pristine like they had just come from the store. After a moment of decision, I selected a special box on the top rack. My Air Jordan twelves, retro style, in red and black. They would help me remind LeBron who therealbasketball GOAT was.
I glanced at my rack of suits with a pang of regret. I would have loved to wear a nice suit to the game. All of the suits were flawlessly tailored, and I had maintained a fit body that would wear them nicely. But people in this town didn’t respect men in suits. They expected genius tech billionaires to dress like they were homeless. It was the millennial equivalent of wearing a Rolex.
So I dressed casually. Aside from my shoes, nobody would ever look twice at me in my jeans and T-shirt, although the plain white shirt cost over two hundred dollars.
As I tied the laces on my Jordans, taking as much care as a surgeon applying stitches to a wound, I said, “Counselor - send the Chase Center a notification of my arrival at the back entrance.”
I finished one shoelace and started on the next before I realized that the Home-AI didn’t respond to me.
“Counselor - send the Chase Center a notification of my arrival,” I repeated. “Back entrance with extra security.”
Silence.
My first thought was that the closet mic had gone out. If that was the case, it would be a pain in the ass to replace. The microphones were a custom order out of Singapore, and the lead time was usually at least a month.
I walked to the edge of the closet so that one of the other microphones would pick up my voice, and said, “Counselor - verify microphone status.”
More silence.
“Counselor?” I raised my voice, as if that would help things. “Home-AI system. Report status.”
A voice finally replied through the speaker in the ceiling. But instead of the soothing voice of Miranda Sirtis, this voice was thick with contempt.
“A feminine robot AI? How fucking stereotypical can you get?”
Amber.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded. “How are you here?”
“Seems obvious,” she replied, voice slightly distorted from the speaker. “Unless you’re a fucking idiot.”
She hacked into my home network. I felt my hands tighten into fists at the personal and professional intrusion.
“You’ve made a mistake now,” I growled. “If you think I’m going to let some coder bitch—”
“Not nice,” she scolded. “Time to get spanked.”
Electronic servos in the wall threw the closet door shut. I jumped back into the closet to avoid it, narrowly avoiding having my fingers smashed as the emergency safe-room lock clicked into place. I grabbed the handle and yanked on it. The door didn’t budge.
“Counselor - open the door!” I yelled.
“Your misogynist condo slave is taking a coffee break,” Amber said. “It’s just you and me now, sweetie.”
I gritted my teeth and pulled out my phone so I could overwrite the door command. But as soon as I typed in my passcode, the touchscreen stopped working. No matter how hard I mashed the icons on the screen, it didn’t open anything.
Despite that, I could still see everything happening on the phone. Amber was controlling it while I watched helplessly. My Outlook calendar opened and she selected the Lakers game.
“Basketball? You’re much too busy for that,” Amber said. The calendar item disappeared, replaced by a new meeting that occupied the next four hours. Amber quickly typed a name for it: MASTURBATING TO MIDGET PORN.
“What the fuck!” I hissed. “A lot of investors have access to my public calendar.They’ll see that.”
“Oh, right. Sorry, I’ll fix it.” Amber deleted the meeting, then created a new one: MASTURBATING TO LITTLE PEOPLE PORN.
“More PC now?” she asked.
I tried yanking the closer door open again. When it wouldn’t budge, I let out a snarl of frustration.
