S. K. Tremayne - The Assistant

Whatever the lights were doing, whatever the Assistants were doing to the lights, has stopped. I look out of the window, Deborah has disappeared. So has everyone else. The street is empty. Did we see a glitch or did we see something more?

The only strange thing, now, is the intense cold. The heating has gone off. It shouldn’t have done this. The smart heating is meant to maintain the flat at twelve degrees Celsius, even when it is empty, so pipes won’t burst in a freeze. And it is freezing out there, and possibly even colder in here. Like a fridge.

OK, OK. I must stay calm. And try not to think about Liam. What he said. However weird. He must have had a reason, nothing to do with me.

Opening the Electra app on my phone, I select Skills and check out Lights and Heating. It seems I’ve got the lights set to turn on at 11 p.m., for when I get home. But they’re also set to turn off all night, in case I am late. Ah. Is this conflict simply my fault? I vaguely remember doing something like this at the pub; I was a little drunk, and distracted. Did I confuse the Assistants myself?

I have no idea. All I know is that the cold is too intense to bear.

‘Electra, turn the central heating back on. To twenty-two degrees, please.’

The diadem chimes, and Electra bongs back:

‘The heating has been turned on to twenty-two degrees Celsius.’

‘Thanks, Electra.’

‘That’s what I’m here for!’

I look at her. This neutral black pillar of chips and wires, and a hostility curdles inside me. A genuine anger. Because I am sure something strange and nasty is being done to me, by someone – or something. First the taunts, then the music, now the lights? And Liam, too, almost threatening.

Somebody’s done for.

I have some evidence, and it is accumulating, but I still can’t take it anywhere. Certainly not to the police. Because of the backstory. Tall, athletic, friendly, buy-everyone-a-beer Jamie Trewin – and his spasmed, vomiting death, and his eyes that rolled white into his head, and all because of me, and Tabitha.

Enough. I am tired. The flat is palpably warmer than it was. I need to get up tomorrow and get to work and go back to normal life: see a friend, make a friend, have friends. Brushing my teeth, moisturizing my face, I jump into pyjamas, and head for my bedroom, telling the Assistants to switch off the lights as I make my way down the landing.

The lights go off, obediently. As if I am trailing darkness, an empress followed by servants, extinguishing candles. Everything is working as it should. Not a hint of strangeness. Climbing wearily into bed, I am so ready for sleep, and the moment before I close my eyes … I realize I can hear ‘Hoppípolla’.

No, I am imagining it. I am half asleep.

No, I am not imagining it. HomeHelp, the creamy-grey, ostrich-egg-shaped Assistant in my bedroom, has reeled her cotillion of little lights, and she is quietly playing ‘Hoppípolla’.

‘Stop,’ I say to HomeHelp. ‘Stop playing that tune, never play that tune again.’

HomeHelp obediently stops. But I can hear ‘Hoppípolla’ from somewhere else. The kitchen. The little Assistant in the kitchen has taken over. Jumping out of bed, I go into the darkened kitchen, slap the lights on – not trusting the Assistants. The black hockey-puck-sized machine above the microwave is blasting out this beautiful song, with its hateful memories.

‘STOP, Electra, STOP.’

The little kitchen machine stops. Silence rules for a few seconds. But then the tune starts over. Much louder. Thank God Fitz’s flat downstairs is still empty, unrented. Thank God my affluent neighbours, above, are still not back from their endless holidays. Otherwise they would all surely complain as the noise gets even louder: coming from the bathroom, then Tabitha’s bedroom, the hallway, the study, booming and roaring and swirling, and I am running between them, my dressing gown flapping, shouting STOP STOP STOP, until at last every Assistant goes quiet. Quite abruptly.

Silence.

I wait. Somehow I know this is not the end of it.

I am right. I can hear voices. They are quieter than the booming music, but still loud enough, and clear. Some are male, some female, some British, some American. The Assistants are talking, to me, or to each other, or to someone else.

And the words are so strange.

Electra in the living room goes first:

‘Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.’

What?

The Assistant in the landing replies:

‘The blood flood is the flood of love.’

The living room chimes in:

‘Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children. Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.’

A smooth robotic female voice, from the kitchen, joins the chorus:

‘I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?’

I run from room to room, listening, with mounting fear, to these opaque, alarming sentences.

‘No one is here, Jo, no one is here.’

‘Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose.’

‘The snow drops its pieces of darkness.’

‘Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb—’

Now the bedroom cries out, warmly, it sounds like the voice of my widowed mother:

‘Nude as a chicken neck, nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nobody loves me. Nude as a chicken neck. DOES NOBODY LOVE ME?’

Enough, I am done. Forget the app – I am pulling the damn plugs, I don’t care what it does to the Assistants, the tech, the smart home, anything. There is a master switch: the fuse box …

Grabbing a chair and swinging it into the hallway, I yank open the fuse box – there’s nothing in the freezer but ice cubes, so it doesn’t matter.

‘Perfection is terrible. IT CANNOT HAVE CHILDREN—’

SNAP. There. I’ve done it. The entire flat is switched off. Everything falls silent and every light goes dark and the heating is switched off and I will freeze to death in this cold but I do not care. Creeping along the darkened hallway I push the door to my blackened bedroom, fumble for clothes in the drawer, throw on T-shirts, leggings, jumper, then I sneak under the duvet like I am trying not to be seen, and I grab a couple, no three sleeping pills from the little plastic jar on my right and I swallow the lot. And then I crunch myself into the tightest of fetal positions and close my eyes hard.

I am shivering in the cold, hiding from the darkness, cowering from my insanity. Or I am hiding from the ghost of Jamie Trewin, who waits outside my bedroom in the dark, his eyes as blank and white as wet marble.

Hey, let me buy you a beer.

I am woken by a frowning and beautiful face with pale blue eyes.

Tabitha.

She is staring at a woman wearing lots of daytime clothes in bed.

Me.

I realize I am sweating, heavily: the sheets are damp and clinging. I guess the heating is on. Winter sunshine streams through my bedroom window, because I forgot to close the curtains; I didn’t care in my blind cold panic.

‘What on earth’s going on?’ says Tabitha. ‘Sorry to barge in and wake you up like this, but, really. What did you do to the flat? What happened to the heating, the lights?’

She is in a suave, maroon winter coat, cashmere jumper, and slender jeans I could never afford. Almost military in her stiffness, yet always chic. For a moment I don’t know what to say. I look at her, as I come to full consciousness. And I wonder, for a second, how jealous I am, of her, my best friend. She’s always been that bit better than me, in every way: richer, from a much smarter home. But she is also a shade taller, and a tiny bit prettier; she was blonde and I was a redhead; throughout our twenties we subtly competed for men and she usually won. Were we competing for Jamie Trewin – was that why I egged her on, so that he would prefer me, so he would maybe come on to me ?