The Mansion Read online

  He could sense that Shawn was getting impatient with him for not playing his game, but instead of addressing the question, Billy stepped forward to where the sliding doors met. He put his hands on the frosted glass. It felt cool. She was behind those doors. Nellie.

  “Nellie,” he said.

  “I told you when we were here last time,” Shawn said, “she’s not keyed to your voice yet. Besides, even though I’ve limited her full operation to the office, I’ve been keeping her sleeping while I’m not here. I don’t want her interacting with the construction crew or the house staff yet, even by accident. We’ve had enough issues with construction without having Nellie malfunctioning and running rampant through the mansion. Basic functions like light and heat and doors are on throughout the house, sure, but she’s not going to respond to anything besides core structure commands. Even though she hears you, she isn’t going to hear you. Talk all you want, but that’s part of why I’m here. To make sure you can get proper access. Right now, I’m the only one who can actually grant you that access.”

  Billy ignored him. He stared at the glass doors. The frost had turned blue in the shape of his handprints. Electrostatic. Huh.

  “Nellie,” he said again. “Listen up—”

  “She’s not going—”

  Billy cut Shawn off. “Listen up. Bravo Papa override. November, Echo, Lima, Lima, India, Echo.” He paused. He couldn’t tell if Shawn looked pissed off or amused. “Open the doors, please.”

  The doors slid open.

  Ah. Now he could tell: Shawn was pissed off.

  Billy stepped into the office.

  The room was long, probably forty feet or more, and almost entirely empty. The wall toward the back of the house was blank but seemed to be leaking soft blue light, and the wall on the front of the house was a window. The late-morning sun filled the room. At the far end of the room was a desk made up of a pair of two-by-four sawhorses and a top that was an old door. The desktop door was dark and solid-looking. Black cherrywood, maybe. There was a hole where the doorknob had been, and the wood was scarred, and there was what looked like charring on one end. Billy looked at Shawn. “What’s with the desk? Reclaimed chic?”

  “I realize the desk isn’t quite what we had in the cabin. But something like it. The door is from the old groundskeeper’s cottage. The one I lived in as a kid. It was one of the few things not totally destroyed by the fire. I haven’t figured out what kind of furniture I want in here, so I asked for one of the contractors to bang me together some sawhorses and had them drag the door up here. I figure, in some ways, it’s probably better, right? Who needs to be working at one of those ridiculous endless desks that look like they belong to God?”

  “Two chairs?”

  Shawn shrugged. “Come on. I’m not planning on working side by side with you.” He stepped past the desk and faced the back wall. Billy watched what he thought was a seamless wall suddenly crack open, a panel sliding out of the way and opening onto a refrigerator. Another smaller panel opened next to it. Glasses and a full bar. A few dozen bottles of booze.

  “Neat little trick you pulled there,” Shawn said. “A master override. We found a couple of back doors you’d left in the program, but I guess we missed one. Somebody’s getting fired over that one.”

  “There are always holes,” Billy said. “You know that. I’m sure you and your programmers missed more than one exploit. You said it yourself: she’s fine in the lab, not so fine here, out in the wild. I’m sure if you just released her, there’d be all kinds of zero day exploits. Nellie’s complicated, and frankly, my job’s probably going to be harder now that you guys have added a couple million lines of code. I’m going to have a lot of cleaning up to do just from that.”

  Shawn took two highball glasses from the bar. The panel slid shut as he turned to the fridge and held them under a chute. Ice sputtered out, filling the glasses a quarter of the way. Shawn put the glasses on the desk and then turned back to the fridge, pulling out a can of Diet Coke and a bottle of water. He held up the soda to Billy, who nodded.

  “Can we not get into a pissing match?” Shawn said. He poured the soda into a glass.

  Billy bit his lip and then nodded again. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m trying. I am.”

  “Me, too,” Shawn said. “It’s weird. But still, cute trick with the master override. I suppose this means she’s not sleeping anymore?”

  “No,” Billy said. “She’ll be back to hibernating. Whatever level of attention you left her at. Lights, heat, whatever. Access to your magic snack bar. Nothing else.” He picked up the glass of Diet Coke. The desk seemed substantial. Solid. The kind of door that you found only in old homes or the homes of the very rich nowadays. Even with the charring, it was nicer than the door they’d stolen off the outhouse at the cabin.

  He suddenly felt tired. He’d been out so late the night before, in the Rooster until it closed. Why had he stayed out so late? He had a headache. The sun coming through the window was too much for him, even with his eyes squinted. He turned to look at the window, to see if there were shades, and as he did, the window tinted in response. Jesus. All the glass was electrostatic? How much had Shawn spent on this place? The thought made him feel even more exhausted, and he realized that part of the problem was that he was hungry, too. It was getting close to noon. He should have just asked Shawn’s questions about the doors not opening, should have just let Shawn give him access to the system. Why did he let the man get to him? “Sorry, dude. I was just showing off. Why don’t you wake her up and get me keyed in properly.”

  I’m awake, Billy.

  Maybe Billy wasn’t startled because of the way her voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time, or maybe Billy wasn’t startled because her voice was quiet, a few clicks below the volume of normal conversation. More likely, Billy thought, he wasn’t startled because he’d been expecting it. He hadn’t lied to Shawn—the override protocol really should have left her back at whatever setting she’d last been on—but his experience with Nellie in September had been unnerving. He wasn’t expecting her to act like he was expecting; he’d wanted to believe that he’d been close to getting her to work when he and Shawn had given up and started working on Eagle Logic, but whatever Shawn and his engineers had done in the meantime, Billy wasn’t going to be surprised that there were glitches.

  Well, that’s why he was here.

  “Sorry, Nellie,” Shawn said. “I thought you were hibernating.”

  That’s a better phrase than sleeping. Hibernation is a more accurate representation. When you tell me to go to sleep, you are really indicating that you, yourself, want to go to sleep, while, at the same time, you want me fully operational. When you tell me to hibernate, you are telling me to shut down all but basic functions so as to limit the presence of errors.

  Shawn looked at Billy and wiggled his eyebrows in a gesture that was both familiar and forgotten. He hadn’t seen Shawn do that since they’d been in the cabin. Clearly, Shawn was tickled by Nellie’s response. And yet, Billy thought, Nellie hadn’t actually responded to what Shawn had said. She’d talked around it. Shawn said that he’d thought Nellie was asleep, and Nellie moved the conversation.

  Billy spoke up. “I see that you’ve dropped calling me Mr. Stafford.”

  We’re no longer strangers.

  “Plus,” Shawn said, “it sounds more natural. She’s been using first names for almost everybody. Nellie, listen, Billy and his wife—”

  Emily. I’m excited to formally meet Emily.

  Huh, Billy thought. That was an interesting way of phrasing it. Formally. Was Nellie awake throughout the mansion?

  “Okay. Yeah, Emily and Billy,” Shawn continued, “are moving in. Please give Emily Sixth Day access.”

  “Sixth Day access?” Billy took another sip of his Diet Coke and then put the glass down on the desk.

  Shawn nodded, picking up the water bottle and unscrewing it so he could pour it over the ice in his own glass. “One of the features
we’ve added. Think about it. You’ve got the UPS guy delivering a package, you’re going to want Nellie to open up the garage door for him, but you’re not going to want her letting the guy into the house and playing with your record collection.”

  Billy looked around the room. “It’s disconcerting, you know. Having the voice come out of nowhere. I don’t know where to look. Also, you do realize that nobody has record collections anymore, right? I mean, there’s always that one guy who likes to bore you with lectures about how superior the listening experience is with actual vinyl, but hell, your company is at least partially dependent on the idea that people like to listen to music on their phones. Wait,” he said, pretending to be surprised. “Don’t tell me. You’re that guy who still has a record collection?”

  “Very funny. Nellie sorts out visitors organically and can give service access to people like the UPS guy, the person reading the gas meter or mowing the lawn or working on the furnace, that sort of stuff. That’s First Day access. Second Day access would be appropriate for the cleaning lady or for your kids’ friends. They can move around the house and go into any areas that Nellie sees as necessary for the work they’re doing or for hanging out with your kids. Third Day access is for friends who might be a little more like acquaintances. Fourth Day is for friends. Fourth Day and lower, Nellie has full control and will go ahead and grant access as she sees fit, but once you get above that, you need to confirm access schedules. So, Fifth Day access is for really good friends, your sister, your brother. Or you can give Fifth Day access to one of your kids and Nellie allows only age-appropriate access. And then, yeah, Sixth Day access. Full owner access. That’s Emily. It’s just a way of keeping things sandboxed.

  “But you, my friend,” Shawn said, that huckster’s smile that Billy recognized dawning on his face, “you get Seventh Day access.”

  “Is that anything like being a Seventh Day Adventist?”

  “Ha, ha.” His voice made it clear that he did not actually find Billy’s joke to be funny. “Close, but not really. Seventh Day as in ‘on the seventh day.’ ” He had his glass in his hand and swung his arms wide, an orator proclaiming. “And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. And on the seventh day . . .” He took a sip of his water. “Well. The seventh day is God’s day, Billy, and I’m giving you Seventh Day access.”

  “So that makes me God?”

  Shawn lifted one shoulder noncommittally. “I guess.”

  “You better rethink those terms before you go to market. Conservatives will have a field day.”

  “Ah, whatever,” Shawn said. “Seventh Day access isn’t accessible to anybody else. Right now, I’m the only person who has Seventh Day access. Even the engineers working on the project only go as high as Sixth Day access. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Sixth Day access is as good as it gets, because, yeah, I guess you’re right; Seventh Day access really is comparable to being God. At least as far as Nellie’s concerned.”

  “So we’ll both be gods to Nellie? How many gods can she worship at once?”

  “It’s not a perfect metaphor, but the master-to-servant one has some issues of its own, too. Let’s get her to work properly and then worry about marketing terms.” He took a breath. “Okay. Nellie, please give Billy Seventh Day access.”

  Billy has Seventh Day access.

  “Great,” Shawn said. He clapped his hand to Billy’s back. “That’s the first step.”

  Billy didn’t say anything. Shawn hadn’t noticed. In the same way that Nellie didn’t quite answer the question about why she wasn’t sleeping even though Shawn had put her in sleep mode, and the way she seemed to already know Emily, she wasn’t being entirely clear here either. Billy has Seventh Day access. Should he just chalk it up to the vagaries of the English language? Did she mean that he had Seventh Day access now, or did she mean that he already had Seventh Day access even before Shawn granted it?

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  Would you like me to continue to contain my presence to this room only, Shawn? There are currently nine people in the house with access levels below Sixth Day.

  “Nine?” Shawn counted them off. “There should only be eight. Wendy already had Sixth Day access, and Emily has Sixth Day access now.”

  You are correct. Emily has Sixth Day access.

  What the hell? The glass in Billy’s hand was cold and heavy. He swirled the Diet Coke around, listening to the sound of the ice clink against the glass. She just did it again. She said nine people, Shawn corrected her, and she responded in such a way that Shawn didn’t even notice that she’d elided the correction. What the hell was Nellie playing at? Was she playing? Was this just a weird glitch?

  “I think we’ll have you go back to sleep for now, okay? Tomorrow morning, when it’s just Emily and Billy in the house, go wild. You can be awake everywhere. But I think we should keep you locked down while there are other people around. Nondisclosure agreements only go so far.” Shawn shook his head at Billy. “I know I’m being kind of crazy. It’s not like there’s much in the way of staff in the building, and everybody is vetted, but we’re talking about the next decade of Eagle Technology’s dominance. If things go right, Nellie could be worth . . . god, I don’t even know. So, yeah, sleepy time, Nellie.”

  I would like to have dinner with you, Billy, Emily, and Wendy.

  Billy was surprised. He looked at Shawn. “You’re staying for dinner?”

  “That’s the beautiful thing about a private jet. It goes when and where I want it to go. Yeah. I figured I’d show you everything as best I could now, and then, after lunch, I’m going to do a close inspection of the building and the grounds with the foreman. We’ll have dinner with you before we head out. I was just assuming you’d take the rest of the day to settle in and then get started tomorrow.” He turned away from Billy, an almost meaningless gesture, Billy thought, given that Nellie didn’t occupy a physical space. But maybe it helped her tell that Shawn was talking to her?

  “Sorry, Nellie. Not tonight. Let’s keep things low-key as long as we’ve still got a crowd hanging out in the house. Okay?”

  Nellie didn’t respond to the question, which was fair enough, Billy thought, as it was clearly rhetorical. Shawn asked a question, but he meant it as an order. Billy raised his glass and took another sip of his soda.

  “Got to sleep, Nellie,” Shawn said.

  The room fell into utter darkness.

  The window tint went to black, completely impervious to the outside. The soft light of the wall and ceiling disappeared. Pitch-black.

  Billy heard a woman scream.

  Emily.

  “Nellie!” Shawn was shouting. “Turn on the goddamned lights. Nellie!”

  Billy was sure he’d heard Emily scream. He took a step forward. He was holding the glass of soda in his left hand, his right outstretched. Had Nellie turned the whole house off? Were the windows throughout the whole house like this? Could she do that everywhere? Turn the glass opaque, shut the lights? It was blackout dark. He took two steps to the side, moving forward cautiously until he was sure that he’d passed the desk. He couldn’t see anything.

  How many steps? He couldn’t take full strides in the dark. Thirty steps? Maybe forty steps to the door? Fewer?

  “Emily!” he yelled.

  “Nellie, goddammit. Wake up.”

  Shawn’s voice was behind him. Billy forced himself to walk as quickly as he could across the blackness. Fifteen. Twenty steps. He heard yelling, and he was sure it was Emily’s voice. He had to be close to the door, he thought.

  His foot caught on something. The floor was polished concrete. Smooth. There was nothing for him to trip on. The entire room was empty, save for the desk and chairs, and he was past them. He should have been able to walk clearly to the door.

  But it didn’t work that way.

  Whatever he’d tripped on, he went down hard. His body twisted, hip leading the flight toward
the ground, and he reached out with his left hand to try to break his fall.

  He heard the sound of the glass in his left hand breaking before he felt it. But then, all of a sudden, he did feel it, a ripping and burning. The meat of his palm, the fat, fleshy pad at the base of his thumb turned warm and then began to sting. He could feel the wetness of the blood.

  Behind him, Shawn was still shouting uselessly at Nellie, and from outside the room, he could hear Emily clearly now, shouting for him.

  “Nellie,” Billy said. He kept his voice calm and clear. He knew he didn’t need to shout. “I’m hurt. I think I need help. Turn on the lights, please.”

  The lights came back on. They faded up gently but quickly, and he was almost certain that the color had changed a little, the lights somehow more calming. The window went from blackout to dark to slightly tinted again.

  Shawn looked furious. “What was that, Nellie?”

  I’m sorry, Shawn. There was a system anomaly.

  “No shit. That’s—”

  Billy needs medical attention, Shawn.

  Shawn turned to look at him.

  If you take him down to the infirmary, I can administer first aid.

  “What happened?”

  “I tripped and forgot I was still holding my glass. Tried to put my hand down to break my fall.” Billy raised his hand up and looked at it. There was a lot of blood, and it stung like a son of a bitch, but it actually didn’t look too bad. Mostly it was in the fleshy part. But, shit, it was deep. “I think I’m going to need stitches.”

  I can provide all your required medical assistance in the infirmary. Shawn, you might wish to get Billy a towel so that he can wrap his hand up first, however. Otherwise Billy will drip blood throughout the house.