U.E.

He liked to tell his clients that it was most likely UE that was causing their issue. He let them think the acronym was some super-secret term that I.T. people used, when it just meant they were doing something wrong. 

It was surprising how many things could be resolved by simply turning it off and back on.

He had been a technical support professional for longer than some of his clients had been alive. This made him something of an anomaly as technology was universally considered to be a young person’s game.

Isaac3259 was the reason he was in this home of the future. That was the client designator for this particular domicile. The authorities had reached out to his firm because the owner had perished in what they considered unusual circumstances and had previously contacted them asking for help. The owner had told the authorities that the house was out to get him.

He in turn had been assigned to Isaac3259 because he had also been contacted by the owner. His firm was in charge of the technological support for the entire subdivision that included Isaac3259.

He remembered actually speaking on the phone with the owner. This was unusual because most clients preferred email or live chat, but not Isaac3259.

One of the first things that the owner had said to him over the phone was, “my house doesn’t like me.”

He had smiled at this statement from the owner, but did not chuckle out loud. He had told his boyfriend about this over dinner that evening and did chuckle out loud when he relayed the story.

He was a professional, so with a slight smile on his face he had told Isaac3259, “I’m sure that’s not true.” He had continued with, “how can I help you?”

The owner had told him of several things that were going on in the house that were not quite right. 

He knew that this particular subdivision was equipped with the latest and greatest of everything. The amount of automated and automatic features and functions available to owners was truly staggering. Isaac3259 really did live in a house of the future.

He would often share his experiences with customers when he got home to his boyfriend. He liked to say that it was most likely a problem between the back of the chair and the keyboard that was causing customer issues. His boyfriend would laugh and tell him how terrible he was.

There were logs available to him so that he could go over the various interactions he had with the owner. His memory was good, but he did like being able to check all the details. 

That first interaction with Isaac3259 had been because the house was always warmer than the owner wanted. The owner had told him, “I like the house to be at twenty-two degrees Celsius, and it’s always at twenty-four degrees Celsius.”

In his mind he thought to himself; that’s probably because you set it at twenty-four degrees Celsius. What he said to the owner was, “let me walk you through resetting the thermal controls so that you are comfortable.”

The steps he walked through with Isaac3259 were basically what amounted to turning the system off and then back on again.

He had given the owner the step-by-step directions to making the temperature in the domicile a comfortable twenty-two degrees Celsius. This was accomplished via one of the many large control screens that were all throughout the domicile. This particular model of home had two such screens in every room including the bathrooms.

He had been struck by the cleanliness of the place when he had arrived to go through his techno inspection of the domicile.

He knew that there were multiple automated cleaning systems here at Isaac3259. His own domicile was cleaned the old-fashioned way. This meant either he or his boyfriend had to do it.

It had been a little strange when he was booting up his own tablet to begin his inspection. The tablet had issues interfacing with Isaac3259. It was strange because he had the latest diagnostic tools and had never had any issues before. 

He had grinned and thought that maybe it was an ideetentee issue. This was a term he sometimes used when clients just weren’t “getting it.” He had to write it out to get his boyfriend to understand this term. If you spelled that term out, it was ID10T.

He was sitting on a supremely comfortable sofa with his trouble shooting tablet on the coffee table that was composed of a space age polymer and would literally never degrade. He was taking advantage of the large screen that doubled as the viewing screen for the multiple forms of home entertainment that were available for the owner there at Isaac3259.

When he first booted up the screen, it had briefly displayed 01001001 0111010 01010111 01100001 01110011 01001101 01100101

It was unusual because all of the interfaces were set to interact in standard English. He waited a moment, and the screen went to the diagnostic portal that he had been booting up.

He wanted to check the owner’s interaction with the thermal controls because that was the first thing that he himself had worked with the owner when they had contacted his firm for technical support.

He could see the logs showing the time and degrees in Celsius as well as the dates involved. He made note of the spot on the log where he had walked the owner through resetting the thermal controls to twenty-two degrees Celsius.

He could also see that the temperature in Isaac3259 was currently at twenty-four degrees Celsius. This was unusual because the steps he had walked the owner through should have made the default temperature in the domicile twenty-two degrees Celsius.

He studied the logs and could see that an hour after the owner had set the thermal controls to their preferred temperature, that the thermal controls had slowly risen back to the twenty-four degrees that it currently rested at. He could see a steady rise every half hour of a fraction of a degree. He thought that peculiar.

Speaking of odd, he recalled that binary message that popped up on the screen and tried to recall from his knowledge, what it had actually said.

He rose from the ultra luxurious sofa and made his way to the master bedroom. When he entered, he could see via a reflection of a large mirror, a message on the large entertainment screen that doubled as a control screen for the master bedroom. 01001001 0111010 01010111 01100001 01110011 01001101 01100101

When he turned to look directly at the large screen, the message had vanished and instead there was a slowly changing collage of photos of the owner and his family and friends.

That’s odd, he had thought to himself as he made his way into the master bath.

The master bath was a thing of beauty. It better be, he thought to himself, considering how much the owner had paid for the domicile.

He made a point of looking into the large sunken tub. No doubt his boyfriend would say it was a morbid thing to do, but he couldn’t help himself. The tub was spotless. He knew that the owner had perished a week before, so it made sense that the tub had been cleaned. The rumor at his firm had been that the owner had been “boiled” in the tub. 

He knew this couldn’t be right because the thermal controls would not let the water get hotter than fifty degrees Celsius for safety reasons.

He set his diagnostic tablet down on the counter of Italian marble, and tapped on the large mirror that of course doubled as a control screen.

Once again the unusual message popped up before settling into the familiar diagnostic menu. 01001001 0111010 01010111 01100001 01110011 01001101 01100101

He ran a diagnostic check of the system and everything seemed in order. There was the standard fail-safe of fifty degrees Celsius for water temperature, so how the owner had perished did not make sense to him.

He pulled up the thermal control logs and went to the time and date of the unfortunate incident experienced by the now deceased owner.

What he found did not make sense to him. There were no changes in the controls. There was no sign of tampering or of anyone accessing the system either on site or remotely. And yet: he saw that the thermal controls had jumped the water temperature to two hundred degrees Celsius.

Wow! He thought to himself. From his limited knowledge of burns, he knew that a person would suffer third degree burns from that kind of heat in less than a second. 

01001001 0111010 01010111 01100001 01110011 01001101 01100101

That annoying code popped up again on the mirror/control screen.

Then the current temperature control displayed. He frowned momentarily because both of these things were not something he had done.

He thought about that message again and it hit him. He knew what it said.

He let out a slight gasp and he turned as he heard a slight click at the entry to the master bath.

The click was the automatic lock being engaged.

He looked at the mirror/control screen and he could see the temperature control display.

The water began to flow in the tub.

He could see the temperature for the water display in large numbers on the mirror/control screen.

A feeling of dread hit him in the pit of his stomach as steam started to billow from the tub.

He saw the water temperature display briefly before the mirror/control screen became obscured by the overwhelming steam from the tub.

It read eight hundred degrees Celsius.

One of his last thoughts before the heat overtook him was about that binary message.

It had read, “It was Me.”