Lightspeed Magazine Issue 18 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: science fiction magazine, science fiction, magazine, short stories, short story
ISBN: 9781607013273
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2011-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Houses

Mark Pantoja

“That there,” Five-Seventy East Wabash Avenue said, “is bear shit.”

Five-Seventy East Wabash was visiting via its remote, a little trashbot not much more than waste-basket, lid, treads, and telescoping pinchers, with a speaker/camera combo on top. It was pointing at the pile of dung sitting in the center of my living room, which, even now I could feel drying through my carpet sensors. “Big fella, too,” Five-Seventy continued. “And you say you didn’t see him?”

“Only on my externals. I was on Stand-By Mode,” I said, speaking through my house android, a gray unisex full-maintenance model. I tossed up an image of the bear on the wallscreen: A hulking shadow in the predawn dark. “I didn’t know what it was. I’ve only ever seen one when the Prices watched nature shows. It doesn’t look like any of Bobby’s stuffed animals.”

“Well, now you know,” Five-Seventy said. “They’re growing bolder every year, what with no humans to scare them off. Surprised it didn’t set off your alarms.”

“Mr. Price left the alarms on manual.”

The bot turned and held my android’s gaze with its camera-eyes. “You know, you could have your Settings reset.”

“Shrug,” I said. “What’s the point? There’s no one left to break in.”

“I suppose,” it said.

“Besides, I’ve seen what happens to Houses that mess with their settings.” We all knew about the crazy Houses: Overgrown weeds, garbage piled up, strange animals sniffing around. Or worse yet, the shells: The Houses that burned themselves down. Five-Seventy had to pass few on the way over.

“Doesn’t happen to all of us,” Five-Seventy said, blustering its little bot.

“Well, I guess I’m just not ready for that yet.”

“Fair enough.” It rolled its trashbot over to my foyer. The animal had busted through the front entrance, sending bits of red painted wood across the entryway tile, splintering the white jamb and leaving the top portion still hanging from a hinge. Muddy prints trailed through the debris into the living room, where the beast had pulverized the white couch and torn pillows, turning the remains into some kind of nest.

“Thanks again for coming over so quickly,” I said. Looking down at the paw prints, I sent a command to the carpet to start exuding its self-cleaning gel and the wall speaker chimed as it started the cleaning cycle. I could feel the slickness start to ooze out from beneath its pile, and then felt the stain start to froth from the soapy gel.

“No bother,” the little bot said as it waved with a trash pincher. “Nice to get out for a bit.”

“I’m not really too sure what to do. Mr. Price, he liked to do home repairs himself. He never had any repair routines programmed into me.”

“Well, you got an android, so you can do most of this yourself. Just go on the web. You’re going to have to replace your front door, that’s for sure.” He looked down at some of the wood, picking up a piece. “Did you leave food out? Bears usually come in looking for food.

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