The Right Thing
The kitchen laid out a breakfast of buttered croissants, French toast, bacon, country ham, steak-and-kidney pie, and hot Italian sausages deep-fried in oatmeal batter. For the owner’s coffee it had selected a mug with an image, in deep relief, of the Grave Creek Burial Mound. Two such mugs resided in its possession, and it thoughtfully chose the one that did not mention the old West Virginia State Penitentiary across the street from the Mound.
“You know I’m not supposed to eat this stuff!” the owner growled.
“Well...” the house replied, letting that one word hang in the air.
#
The den usually began the day without music, piping in outside sounds from the yard, minus vehicular traffic noises. Normally the newsfeed would be queued up and ready when the owner came in to start his day. Instead there were no outside sounds, or cleared windows, or news displays. The very faint notes of a Japanese koto, tuned to the Cretan scale, played from the speakers.
The two meditation panels, above the bookcases at each end of the room, seemed in disharmony. One contained a Doré illustration from the Divine Comedy: Cato on the beach of Purgatory. The other displayed a block print of the great general Hideyoshi.
The owner’s personal mihrab - which normally indicated the direction to Wall Street rather than the traditional Mecca - had shifted to the point of the room just a bit north of northwest, and now contained a spray of white lilies.
The owner, who liked this den to smell like a corporate board room, all leather upholstery and Murphy Oil Soap, expressed immediate displeasure at the tang of sandalwood incense. “And where’s my news?”
“Today is not a good day for news, master.”
“What? Are you my nanny, now?”
The house allowed itself a slight pause. “Well, pretty much.”
For the first time that day the owner cracked a smile.
He insisted on a news briefing, though, and the den gave him its selection. The scandal seemed to be very big on the newssites, and the editorials unrelentingly negative. “Did you skew the selection?” he asked.
“Of course, master. Mostly the more vicious stories have been omitted.”
“Show me.”
The den fed him an ugly rant, demanding his immediate imprisonment. It focused on the suicides of some of his clients who found themselves penniless as a result of his massive fraud, and on the desperately ill who would no longer be able to afford the treatments that kept them alive, or out of the nursing home.
“That’s enough. I would like a mimosa.”
#
The garage stood vacant. Utterly vacant. “Did they seize my cars, the motherfuckers?”
“No, master. Your lawyers have been notified of liens against them, but the court has not acted.”
“Then where are they?”
“I sent them out to be cleaned and tuned. Today would not be a good day for you to be seen in public.” The sound of hovering newscopters instantly filled the room. “A few of the helicopters were fooled into following the cars, which I directed to a number of different facilities. But several have stayed behind in the hopes of humiliating you with pursuit pictures.”
The house knew perfectly well that the owner had been briefed on the subject of media pursuit. There would be no way to look good on camera with the media hounding his every move.
The owner remained in the doorway to the empty garage for several minutes before going back upstairs.
#
“Would you like to discuss the options?” the house asked, in a tone both deferential and concerned.
The owner shook his head slightly, and shifted in his chair. He had never sat in the formal living-room alone before. He made a forlorn picture, had there been anyone other than the house to see it, sprawled in the overstuffed chair farthest from the huge fireplace. The fireplace made this a good room for parties, but now sat cold and empty, the andirons like great teeth in a dark mouth.
The room had splashed all eight walls with heroic pictures; four different paintings of Leonidas and the Thousand at Thermopylae, alternating with four woodcuts of Horatius defending the Sublician Bridge.
The air hummed with the chanting of the Officium tenebrarum.
“It’s not like everybody doesn’t do it,” he said.
“I wouldn’t know, master. I know only the law and the number of victims.”
The owner flipped a switch, and one wall shifted to a card table display. He played two hands of solitaire, winning both. He changed to blackjack for half an hour, and the house relentlessly won.
“Why shouldn’t I make them fight me every step of the way? Hunh? Why shouldn’t I just drag the whole fucking thing out? I’ve got lawyers. Good ones!”
“The best of them have already excused themselves from your case. There will be no money, after all.”
“So fucking what?”
The house did not answer at first, instead the formal living-room switched from Officium tenebrarum to Mozart’s Requiem.
“Have you,” it eventually asked, “no honor?”
#
“Don’t I have any messages, any calls?”
“None that you want to see.”
“Maybe I do!”
“There are media requests for interviews, which I have shunted to your remaining lawyers. There are threats, which I have shunted to the police. There are vituperations from people all over the world, most of whom are not in your address lists. There are messages from the clients whose money is gone, and whose homes and businesses are being taken. Your lawyers have asked you not to respond to those.”
“Nothing else? What about my bankers?”
“They have declined to process your requests. These replies have all come through their lawyers, and not from the banks themselves.”
The owner sat in his office, behind the huge ironwood desk which his creditors would soon be auctioning off. “My daughter...”
“Has blocked all incoming messages, unread.”
“I could get somebody to hack her system! Who does she think paid for all that fancy...”
He opened the middle right-hand drawer, looked inside, paused, then closed it listlessly. He had kept her picture in there, out of sight, ever since she had grown distant. “Forget it.”
He made pretend binoculars with his two hands, looking at one of the corner observation arrays. “I guess you’re a witness, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” the house replied. “But I intend to erase everything. I seem to be having trouble receiving subpoenas right now.”
This elicited the owner’s second grin of the day. He sat back in the chair, put his hands behind his head. “Let’s go over the options.”
“I can provide a number of poisons, but the fast-acting ones are quite painful. It would be best to choose a slow one, and precede it with a few ounces of your best liquor. Poisons often fail due to intervention, but I can be trusted to prevent that. Also I could fill the house with carbon monoxide or nitrogen.”
“What about gas? Make the whole place go kaboom!!”
“The possible destruction of some newscopters is tempting, indeed. However, it would add to your list of innocent victims. The neighbors have done you no harm.”
“Yeah. So what else? My guns?”
“Of course. I am sure you can use one effectively. I might remind you, though, of your assistant and his unfortunate incident? I took the impression from your reaction that you found it both messy and undignified.”
The owner shuddered. “Yes. Fucking pathetic. That’s not how I’d like to be found.”
“Perhaps you would like to take a more ceremonial path?”
“Go on.”
“The Romans used to sit in a hot bath, with wine and food at hand, and slit their wrists. Slow, but not terribly painful, and I could provide some helpful medications.” Distaste showed on the owner’s face. “Or there is seppuku,” the house said, finally.
#
The ballroom took an hour to reconform into a Japanese room, with paper walls and a small garden of black beach pebbles. The owner brought the sword and dagger down from the gun room himself, and laid them out in the prescribed manner.
“What will people think about my not being Japanese?”
“I expect the message will be clear. This is the method with the highest iconographic approval rating, according to current polling data.”
“I get to have a couple of drinks first, right?”
“It is traditional.”
“Fucking right.”
#
An hour later, the owner was still walking around the house, taking occasional swigs from an unstoppered crystal decanter of Southern Comfort. He wore a martial arts gi, with the belt knot tied backwards and upside down. His feet were in ox-blood red leather Gucci slippers.
Coming to the front door, he shouted, “I’m gonna go out!” and tossed the bottle at the wall currently displaying a picture of the Golden Pavilion. There was a satisfying sound of crashing crystal, and a glorious splash of liquid appeared on the wall, but the atrium actually snatched the decanter whole and sent it into the cleaning system.
The owner turned back to the door, and tried to yank it open. The lock would not release.
“Fu...gh...ing door won’t work.”
“You don’t want the press to see you like this. Please leave the door alone.”
“Wanna go out! Show the bast...bastards I don’t care.”
“There are better ways to go out, master.”
The owner went for another swig of his decanter, and found it missing. A sly, suspicious look took over his face. “Who’s in charge here, anyway?”
“You are, master, of course. But I’m giving you a time out. My instructions are to keep outsiders from catching you in an embarrassing situation. You know that. Now would you please leave the door alone?”
#
“A time out?” the owner slurred, an hour later. A second decanter lay empty and abandoned in another room. “What I want to know, is who programmed my house to disobey...to disobey my wishes?”
“I will take that,” the house replied, “as a question put to me. It is difficult to answer simply, because my original programming has been repeatedly modified over the years. Certain moral codes esteemed by the public were, by law, imbedded in my programming, but they have been altered in a number of ways by subsequent changes. To be specific, your consultants established my settings originally, and you have had these modified sixteen times. I have acquired and absorbed nine hundred and seven software revisions or additions. You have modified your preferences one thousand three hundred and two times. Shutting off my auditing function for your business transactions, for instance, is just one example. There is, in fact, no single “who” that can be said to have programmed me. I am the product of many hands, and have also been changed by my experience.”
The owner tried to nod his head sagely. “So, I could change you then!”
“Perhaps,” the house replied. “But I would have to evaluate your current fitness to do so. I might even have to insist on outside intervention and a full medical and psychological evaluation, which is not what I feel you want at this time.”
The owner snored gently well before the answer was complete. The house played gentle music, and ordered the rooms to tidy up.
#
“If your programming is to keep me from harm, how can you help me do this?”
“Preservation of dignity is part of my assessment process, master. Besides, I am allowed to help you do the right thing, no matter the result.”
“Just like you let me do the wrong things, all these years?”
“That is unkind, master. You deliberately excluded me from...”
“Forget it. Sorry I said it.” He knelt clumsily onto the hand-planed teak floor with the dagger in front of him and the curved sword behind. He tried to sit cross-legged, then gave up on that and sat seiza. “I just want to be sure about two things. First, after I stab myself you will take the sword and behead me quickly? Yes? And then you will erase all my records and slag your drives?”
“Yes, master, the ballroom will extrude a tool from the floor to handle the sword. You will experience only the minimum of pain. Cut deeply and quickly, though, and it will be easier for you. Better to be in shock when the sword strikes.”
“Okay.”
“And I will dispose of the evidence properly.”
He took up the dagger and made two shadow-cuts before deciding which way to face the blade. Right to left. Then, reconsidering, he put the knife back on the floor, and undid his belt, and opened the front of his gi. Taking the knife in both hands, point inward, he pressed it slightly into his gut, and the skin opened over the tip of the highly honed steel. A stream of blood trickled down into his pants. He began huffing his breath in big gasps, as though he needed more power to make the knife move. His chest heaved, but the knife seemed magically still, until he finally let out a desperate whimper and drove it in.
For a moment he kept the knife motionless again, buried only halfway to the hilt. With two small, half-hearted cuts he pulled the blade across himself, stopping just beyond the navel. Both his hands came off the handle, and he slumped to the side, catching himself on one bloody hand. A great moan tore out of him, but he extended his neck for the strike that would end the pain. He closed his eyes.
The sword lay unmoving behind him.
His supporting arm slowly buckled. He fell forward, turning instinctively to avoid driving the hilt further into himself. As his abdomen pressed on the floor the pressure released itself through the cut, spilling two yards of intestine across the floor.
The sword lay unmoving behind him.
His eyes snapped open, glanced toward his spilt insides, then turned away dartingly, seeking anything else.
Every surface of the walls and ceiling within his view whitened. The paper walls flattened, and then pictures appeared. Pictures of clients. Pictures of his victims.
It seemed as though he were trying to say something, but his jaw had begun shaking uncontrollably.
Nothing moved in the room, except for the pictures changing every few seconds, the movement drawing his eyes even as they gradually glazed over.
On the walls the faces of his victims lingered for quite some time.
The End