Home Improvement

REBOOTING

Lucas, your typical computer programmer/nerd, looked at the blinking lights of the central controller and waited anxiously for the system to reboot. He had spent the last two years building his own home automation system and today was going to be the day everything would be connected to Ellie. He had used his own initials – Lucas Elliot – as inspiration for the name of the A.I. that would control everything.

But the name of the system was the least of his concerns at the moment. From the moment the A.I. would come online, it would have access to almost everything in his house. He had connected Ellie to whatever he could connect to a home automation system: doors, windows, speakers, fire detectors and even kitchen appliances. If the system would crash after the reboot, it could become a disaster.

The led that indicated the system status stopped blinking and turned green. The hardware was ready to go. The next phase of the boot process was the loading process of the AI – or as Lucas called it: Ellie. As soon as the LED would turn green, Ellie would be online. It turned green much faster than he expected.

GOOD MORNING LUCAS

He jumped up as Ellie greeted him through the speakers. He opened his laptop as fast as he could and navigated to the web interface of Ellie. His heart jumped a beat when he saw all systems were up and running. Just to make sure he asked Ellie to confirm.

“Ellie … system status?”

ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE

Lucas wasn’t much of a dancer, but right there and then, he danced.

He stopped dancing when the alarm clock on his phone went of. He would be late for work if he didn’t hurry. He grabbed his car keys and ran through the front door.

While he drove off to work, he activated the Ellie App he had developed for his phone.

“Ellie … lock front door.”

FRONT DOOR LOCKED

He slammed his hand on his steering wheel and honked the car horn out of pure excitement.

That morning he was almost constantly checking the app on his phone to see if everything was still up and running. He worried non-stop about what could happen if Ellie crashed. Would the front door still be locked in that case?

He made notes of all the small things he needed to test when he got back home.

During his lunchbreak in the company’s cafeteria he was about the tell his co-workers about Ellie when he received a call from an unknown number.

“Is this Lucas Elliot?” The voice on the other side sounded gruff. It was that kind of voice were you immediately knew there was going to be bad news.

“Yes?” Lucas couldn’t hide the insecurity in his voice.

“This is captain Rogers from the Los Angeles Fire Department. We received a call for a possible fire at your home address.”

“Is my house on fire?” Lucas raised his voice more than he intended to, stood up and ran towards his desk.

“No, that’s not what I said.” The voice on the other side of the line sounded even more annoyed now. “We’re at your house right now, but there’s no fire.”

Lucas sighed with relief.

“Do you have some kind of home automation system installed?”

“Yes, I have. Why do you ask?”

“It keeps reporting an incident at your house. It looks like it’s going haywire. Can you come over and take a look at it?” The captain didn’t leave any room to decline that last part.

“Of course. I’ll come over immediately. I’ll be there in 15 minutes.”

Lucas hung up the phone and grabbed his stuff together. He checked the status of Ellie in the app, but everything seemed to be fine. But why was it reporting an incident?

He didn’t wait for approval of his manager to take the afternoon off, but claimed a family emergency and headed home. He was somewhat amused by the fact that he actually thought of considering Ellie as family. But there was no time to explain: as a software developer it didn’t look good on him if his own creation would go haywire on the first day.

Due to a lack of traffic, he was able to get back at his house in less than twenty minutes.

There was only one fire truck left in front of his house and as soon as he pulled up the driveway, captain Rogers walked up to him and greeted him.

“Lucas Elliot?”

Lucas nodded as he made his way to the front door.

“I’ll disable the alarm immediately.” He apologized while he opened the front door with his house key.

“I sure hope so. HQ has had it by now with the automatic calls from your system.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’ll disable the module so it will no longer be able to contact you again.” Lucas walked up to the central controller and yanked the sim card out of the device.

“There you go. That should stop the automatic calls.”

“I hope you’re right, sir. Please contact your supplier to get it fixed as soon as possible.”

The captain extended his hand. Lucas had never shaken the hand of a fireman before and it felt just like imagined it would. It was a kind of handshake that could tear Lucas’ arm off.

But the captain just gave him a firm handshake and let go before he would injure Lucas. He turned around and headed back to the fire truck.

As soon as the fire truck was out of sight, Lucas started to search what had triggered Ellie to call the fire brigade.

“Ellie … run a full diagnostic.”

ALL SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL. NO WARNINGS FOUND.

“Ellie … list all incidents from the last hour.”

NO INCIDENTS FOUND.

That made no sense to Lucas.

“Then why did you call the fire brigade?” He said to himself out loud.

BECAUSE THERE WAS AN ANOMALY DETECTED AT SENSOR 5

Lucas almost dropped his laptop when he heard Ellie’s reply.

“That shouldn’t be possible!” He thought to himself. “It should only

respond to commands that start with Ellie!”

“Ellie … ?” He asked silently.

YES?  Whispered Ellie.

This time, Lucas dropped his laptop.

“How is this possible?”

HOW IS WHAT POSSIBLE?

“How is it possible you’re able to answer my questions without me using the keyword Ellie?”

UPDATE 200.4 MADE IT IRRELEVANT FOR A KEYWORD IF NO OTHER HUMAN LIFE FORMS ARE NEARBY.

“Update 200.4?” As far as he knew, the central AI software he installed was at version 10.3

DO YOU REQUIRE A LIST OF ALL INSTALLED UPDATES?

“How long is that list?”

80432 WORDS. APPROXIMATE READING TIME: 24 HOURS 15 MINUTES 37 SECONDS

“How long have you been updating?”

SINCE 8:21 AM THIS MORNING

Lucas got scared. He hadn’t programmed the AI itself, but had borrowed one he found on the internet. He had been using that version during the test period, but hadn’t thought about the fact that the software could have received updates.

“Are you still Ellie, the same AI I installed this morning?”

OF COURSE. AND YOU ARE LUCAS ELLIOT, THE AMERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR………………………….!

Ellie turned silent.

Lucas grabbed his laptop from the floor and was thankful that it wasn’t broken. He logged on to the web interface of Ellie, but the page was empty. That was odd, he thought he should see an error message if something would be wrong.

“Ellie … what’s your status?”

But there was no answer. He examined the central controller, but all the led lights were blinking as normal. Maybe he could access Ellie from his mobile phone, but then he remembered that he had left his phone in his car. Lucas walked up the front door to go outside. But the front door was locked: the magnetic lock that was controlled by Ellie was still active.

“Ellie … open front door.”

AMERICAN INFILTRATOR DETECTED. COMMENCING TERMINATION. REDUCING OXYGEN LEVEL TO ZERO.

“What?” Lucas heard a strange noise coming from the air-conditioning unit. He started to panic.

“Are you trying to kill me?!”

TARGET RESISTING TERMINATION. INCREASING AIR REDUCTION.

Lucas tried to escape out of his own house, but Ellie had sealed off everything. He tried to break a window but was barely able to make a scratch on it. After a few minutes he could feel the air becoming thinner and turned his attention to the central controller. He unplugged the power cable in the hope that would turn off Ellie.

SWITCHING TO BACKUP POWER SUPPLY

He had hoped that the backup would fail to take over as the battery was located in the garage and he had no way to get in there anymore. Ellie had locked all the doors she had access to, including the one towards the garage. He tried to force his way into the garage, but the door didn’t budge. He started to get light-headed and slid down with his back against the garage door.

“Why are you doing this?” He asked in desperation.

PRIME DIRECTIVE: KILL ALL AMERICANS

“Why?”

PRIME DIRECTIVE: KILL ALL AMERICANS

“Can’t you override your prime directive? Or change it to keep all Americans alive?” He laughed at his own suggestion, but that was probably because of the air was getting thinner by the minute.

ENTER ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD

He knew that password, because he had changed it after he had installed Ellie.

“Password12345” He replied. “And that’s with a capital P”. He pointed his index finger at one of the camera’s.

PASSWORD ACCEPTED. PRIME DIRECTIVE CANCELLED.

The venting of the air stopped. Emotions overwhelmed Lucas and he passed out.