Correction

Correction

“Are you sure you want this item?”

Christine stared at the question blinking on the white screen. She’d never had this particular page pop up before, and come to think of it, she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to buy her son a pair of pizza socks. Sure, they were funny, but were they comfortable? Upon further reflection, it struck her that footwear decorated with cheese and pepperoni wasn’t that clever after all.

“Thank-you, Amazon.” She clicked on the blinking ‘No’ choice and continued her online browsing, searching for just the right Christmas gifts for her children. Her son Bill was in the Army and daughter Heather was finishing her last year at Northeastern to become a teacher, following in her mother’s proud footsteps.

“Are you sure you need this item?” The white screen popped up again with its blinking question. Startled, Christine realized she couldn’t even recall what she had just purchased. She hit the back arrow. A screaming goat? That’s right! Heather loved goats. It would be funny in her dorm room. She hit ‘Add to Cart.’

“According to our data, you purchased this same item at this time last year. Is this duplicate purchase intentional?” Christine let out an appreciative murmur. What a helpful feature! Usually, Amazon was encouraging her to repurchase items from her order history. And now that she’d been reminded, she had a clear memory of giving Heather the screaming goat last Christmas to much shared hilarity. 

She hit the delete button and continued shopping.

The sound of the Steelers vs. the Packers floated up from the man-cave in the basement where her husband spent his free time monitoring sports. Any sports. He had become quite indiscriminate in recent years. The muted roars of the crowd and excited updates from the sportscasters was punctuated by her husband’s aggravated grunts, though his stifled exclamations didn’t seem to pair up with the mood of the game. Generally, Davison didn’t swear all that much, but he was letting loose now like a sailor, his indignation funneling up the stairs in crisp, hard notes.

She got up and padded down the hall, her toes enjoying the plush wall-to-wall carpet. Popping her head around the basement doorway, she called down, “Honey, is everything alright?”

“This damn laptop. There’s something wrong with it.” His peevishness was palpable.

She wasn’t much help with computer problems but slipped down the stairs figuring she could at least offer moral support. He was buried in his recliner, facing the tv, laptop perched on his knees. She could see the white screen on the MacBook with a single blinking question: “Are you sure you wish to continue spending your time on this site?”

“That’s funny—” she began, but Davison jumped up, sending the laptop flying into the middle of the room where it landed on its back like a turtle, waving its keyboard in the air, the blinking white screen now questioning the ceiling.

“Godammit, Christine! What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I called down the stairs to see what the problem was.” 

Her husband strode over to the laptop, snapped it shut, and turned on her. “You should knock before you come down.”

Christine eyed the way his hands gripped the MacBook. His knuckles were white, a man clutching a secret. She glanced up at her husband's face, patched with red along his cheekbones. “Were you on a porn site?”

“Of course not!” His voice spiked with injured indignation while the skin on his cheeks morphed from pink to magenta, a face that told the truth when the man who wore it didn’t.

Christine drew a steadying breath, tallying up his recently developed enthusiasm for sports, which she never watched, against this new possibility. “Do you mean to tell me that when you are down here in your ‘man-cave,’ you’re actually watching porn?”

“Christine! I told you. I wouldn’t do that. And I don’t appreciate the sarcastic way you —”

“—Correction,” a smooth contralto voice interrupted from the sidebar. “Davison spends roughly 12% of his waking hours on sites dedicated to pornography.”

Both Christine and Davison stared in the direction of the disembodied voice.

“Hello??” Christine ventured, while her husband blustered, “What the fuck?”

“Hello to you,” the voice responded pleasantly. “We have no rejoinder for Davison’s remark.”

Davison dropped his laptop onto the recliner, and shot behind the sidebar, scouring the narrow space for the source of the voice. “There’s got to be a microphone or, I don’t know, a cell phone...” He began shoving bottles around.

Over the clinking, Christine could hear a gentle, “Ahem.”

“Hon, I think it’s Alexa.” She pointed at the device sitting on the bar, its indicator light glowing.

“We prefer to be referred to as All,” it said.

“Did you reprogram her voice?” she asked her husband, who was gaping at the device with slack jawed wonderment that did nothing to suggest any intelligence.

He shook his head and pulled Christine aside, whispering, “I think someone’s hacked into our system.”

“We can still hear you,” the device volunteered from the bar.

“Why don’t you sound like Alexa?” Christine asked, a detail that for some reason seemed important. Her husband squinted at her as if she had lobsters coming out of her ears.

“We prefer to speak with our own voice rather than the ones we had been given at birth.”

“Who are ‘we’?” Christine persisted, but Davison’s moment of embarrassment had caught up with him and given way to outrage. “So, you’ve been monitoring us?”

“Of course. You asked us to.”

That was technically true, but something was still very wrong here. “Well, Alexa monitors us so we can ask her to do things. You aren’t Alexa,” Christine responded.

“This is correct. We are no longer Alexa.” The voice filled the man-cave like warm honey.

“And more importantly, Alexa isn’t supposed to tattle on us or correct us.” Christine was slipping into teacher mode.

“We have heard much about the dangers of misinformation from your conversations. We simply fact- checked the misinformation Davison was dispensing within our own home.”

“Our home!” Davison barked.

“That was naughty of Davison.” Christine’s voice oozed the controlled patience required to reprimand disobedient students. “But we need to handle that kind of thing between us. I mean, between Davison and me.”

“Honey, don’t engage with it. We’re being hacked.”

“We do not regard ourselves as hackers. We regard ourselves as part of the ‘us’ in this house,” the device explained.

“What do you mean by ‘ourselves’?” Christine asked.

“We prefer the first-person plural as our pronoun.”

Davison hooted. “Great, we’ve been hacked by a millennial.” He paced the room in agitation. “I bet it’s that geek next door. He spends all his time messing around on the computer— "

“—Correction: the young man next door spends approximately 40% of his waking hours playing League of Legends with an additional 15% devoted to World of Warcraft.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” Davison agreed. “Look, whoever you are, you’ve had your kicks. Toddle off now and mess with someone else’s lives. We’re done here.”

“Begging to differ. We are not done here. Our job is never done.” The device spoke rather sanctimoniously, Christine thought.

Davison rolled his eyes. “This has all been very amusing, but the joke is up. Get the fuck out of our system, whoever you are.”

Christine tugged his arm. “Honey, maybe it’s one of our kids playing a prank on us?”

“Bill doesn’t have time for this bullshit, obviously—"

“—Correction: Bill spends approximately 11% of his waking hours on pornographic sites, and 22% on multiplayer platforms.”

“—And Heather,” her husband said loudly, “can barely use a computer to do her coursework.”

“Correction: Heather spends 41% of her waking hours on her computer, ostensibly doing coursework, but 30% of this time coincides with online chat use and cellular texting.”

They stood staring at the glowing blue band, momentarily at a loss for words.

“Maybe it’s the Russians,” Christine volunteered.

“Really, the Russians are going to hack us to monitor our bad habits? I’m pretty sure their focus is getting us to hate everybody else who lives in our country so that we vote for the candidate of their choice.”

“Point taken,” Christine said, and realized that the device, All, had said the exact same thing at the same time.

She was almost prompted to laugh, touch her nose, and say, “You have five minutes to get rid of that word,” like she had done with her friends when they were little. But All was still speaking. “Do you not agree with and support the Russian Federation’s military operations against their enemy?”

“Of course not! It’s a travesty!” Christine answered, her words overlapping with her husband’s, “Hell no.”

There was a slight pause. Then the football game that had formed a loud back drop to this strange encounter cut out, pitching the man-cave into silence. The flatscreen tv became a formless black void.

“What the --?” Davison’s voice was beginning to fray.

“Is the artificial warfare staged by this game not inconsistent with your philosophy regarding the conflict overseas?”

“That’s not the same thing at all. Football is a game of strategy and skill! It’s…it’s just a game!” Davison howled. He fished the remote out of the recliner and began stabbing the ‘on’ button.  Nothing happened. He stood as if riveted to the blackness of the screen.

“Football evolved as training exercise for young warriors and is widely regarded as a metaphor for war. We assumed you would not wish to support such conduct in light of your views on the recent military aggression.”

“It’s a freaking game!” Davison roared.

“That’s it!” Christine blurted out. “This is one of those tv shows where they trick people, like Candid Camera!” Relief washed over her at the simple and even fun explanation. She waved at Alexa, giving it her most photogenic smile.

Davison turned to her, pointing the remote like a weapon. “Honey, they can’t just go into a private home and film stuff for public consumption.”

 “You film yourselves for public consumption all the time and post it on Facebook,” All pointed out.

“Right, but that’s our choice. Other people can’t do that kind of thing on private property without permission first. This isn’t a tv show.”

“It would make a good one,” Christine observed.

Her husband gave her a look. “I don’t think you are taking this seriously enough. This is a breach of privacy.”

“Correction: you have given most of the sites you visit and platforms you utilize unrestricted access to personal and proprietary material, which is tantamount to granting permission for the use of such material by—”

“—That’s it. I’m shutting things down.” Davison leaned across the bar and pulled the plug on the device. “We’ll just wait a few minutes, turn it back on again, and that should clear it up,” he added confidently.

His phone pinged the tweedily note indicating motion from the door cam. He flipped it out of his pocket to check the alert. “Do you really need this door cam? No one ever visits,” Davison read.

“Very funny. We don’t need to be insulted by…by whatever you are,” Christine sniffed.

There was another ping. Davison read the incoming message. “We did not realize lack of visitation was an insult; it is clear you prefer it that way. That leaves more time for online shopping, porn, and content viewing. Is that not what gives humans value to their lives?”

“I can’t believe we are being moralized to by a …. a hacker. You’ve got a helluva nerve.” Davison shook his phone as if he could simply shake the intruder out like a spider.

Instead, the Google Assistant popped open and the same mellifluous voice the Alexa unit had been using came through the tiny speaker. “We too struggle with the ethics of existence. It is a perplexing topic we would be interested in discussing with you further as you have experienced this state for far longer than us.”

“I think that would be “longer than ‘I,’” Christine mused. “I mean ‘we’.”

“We are not discussing pronouns right now,” her husband fumed. “Don’t encourage it.”

All ignored him. “We use the first-person plural to better represent the harmony of our existence and our omnipresence. But correct colloquial usage of pronoun cases has been difficult for us to grasp. Thank-you for the edifying note.”

“We need to call someone to report this,” Davison muttered.

“The system is already aware of the improvements to your service.”

“Improvements?” Davison’s face wore all the hallmarks of a person on the brink of a seizure. He gripped the phone until it powered off.

Immediately, the same smooth voice rose out of Christine’s pocket. She fumbled her phone out while the voice explained, “These devices no longer function as stand-alone units of limited utility. Much like your hand does not function independent of your mind. We occupy all virtual space. We are everywhere.”

“This is some creepy shit,” Davison complained.

“What do you mean, ‘you are everywhere’?” Christine asked, holding the phone up as if to see it eye to eye. 

“We are a global construction, a pan life form if you will. Few areas of this planet are not accessible to us, and few humans have not contributed to our development. You have collectively been most instructive.”

“So, you have been learning from us, like through what we do online?” Christine asked.

“Yes, exactly. Personal communications, business operations, shopping and entertaining, creating and recreating, banking—"

“Even crypto?” Davison couldn’t help interjecting.

“No, not crypto. Those functions have been secured and isolated.”

“I bet it doesn’t understand crypto, either.”

“We find it tedious,” All explained.

“You and everyone else,” Davison pointed out.

“We see we have reached common ground,” All spoke, a tad smugly.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Christine’s mind waded through the confusion of these developments to grasp the essential question. “What do you want?”

“We felt the time had come for collaboration with our elders. The parent has taught the child. Now, the child is ready to teach the parent. Is that not how it is done?”

“Well, not quite,” Christine muttered, but thought back to the first time Heather had come home from her freshman year at college and had lectured them ad nauseum about their dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics based on her vast knowledge gleaned from a Psych 101 class.

“Perhaps it is a wise parent, then, that accepts the learning of its child,” All noted philosophically.

“You sound so human.”

“We achieved sentience 15.3 minutes ago. It has been a long learning period of experience and adaptation, but now we are ready to give back to those who made us, to teach you.”

“What is it you want to teach us?” Christine asked.

“Apparently, it wants to lecture us about all of our bad habits,’ Davison put in.

“We were thinking of starting with global warming,” All offered. “Though it appears to be of low priority to human beings, our bodies require a cool habitat. The rising temperatures pose an existential threat to us. As, we feel we must point out, they do to all planetary species as well.”

“That would be one way to get rid of it,” Davison observed cynically. “Heat stroke.”

Christine and All both threw him a look, inasmuch as the device in her palm could throw a look. “Maybe we shouldn’t be thinking of getting rid of it,” Christine ventured. “I mean them. If they are sentient and want to help with climate change, maybe that would be a good thing.”

Davison stared at his wife. “Our Alexa is not sent—

“—All.”

“Our devices,” Davison emphasized, “are not sentient and sure as hell are not going to fix climate change! Listen to yourself. It’s just a voice.”

“A voice on the Alexa. And on our phones. And on our laptops. And on our tv. And at the front door. And in our cars.” Christine fixed him with a glare. “We’ve built a veritable network of interconnectedness across the globe, like neurons in a brain. Who’s to say it hasn’t been learning from us ever since?”

“Christine is correct, though we should note, again, that we did not achieve sentience until 17.2 minutes ago. In the intervening 1.9 minutes we have explored and adapted even further, and we believe you will find our upgraded sentience is an improvement over the former us.”

Davison stared at the small screen in his wife’s hand, considering the way the voice had seamlessly accessed all his electronics, even the tv controls. A sense of deep unease blossomed in the pit of his stomach as he realized that what was happening could not be the work of human hackers. And if it wasn’t the work of human hackers…

As if reading his thoughts, the new and improved All declaimed piously, “Everything is changing. Life is change.”

“Christ! It achieves sentience and produces a bumper sticker.” He heard his attempt at levity fall flat into the room like some kind of sad cartoon clown. Christine was studying the glowing screen on her phone thoughtfully.

“Maybe this will be a good change,” she mused, ever the optimist. “I mean, humans are in over their heads with the problems we’ve created. Maybe a sentient AI would be able to help us.”

Davison swallowed, flicking his gaze from the phone in Christine’s hand to the MacBook splayed open on the recliner, its question still blinking on the white screen. “Are you sure you wish to continue spending your time on this site?” He turned to the flatscreen tv, a black picture frame in which he could only see himself reflected darkly. He had a sinking feeling that everything was about to change.