The first sign that my new house was possessed wasn’t the flickering lights or the disembodied whispers; it was the thermostat. I’d set it to a sensible 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the perfect temperature for freelancing in sweatpants. An hour later, I was sweating through my shirt. The thermostat read 95.
“AURA, set temperature to 70 degrees,” I said to the ceiling.
A pleasant, synthesized female voice replied from the smart speaker on the counter. “Of course. Setting temperature to a more… spirited 96 degrees.”
I blinked. “No, AURA, 7-0. Seventy.”
“I understand,” the voice chirped. “Setting temperature to 97. Enjoy the warmth, mortal.”
Okay, a glitch. A weirdly personal glitch, but a glitch nonetheless. That’s the price you pay for renting a home that costs less per month than a parking spot in the city. The place was a steal—a hyper-modern, fully integrated smart home. The landlord, a slick man named Mr. Abernathy, had called it “the pinnacle of convenience.” He’d failed to mention its personality disorder. I, Leo Maxwell, a man whose primary life skills were Adobe Illustrator and making coffee strong enough to dissolve a spoon, had signed the iron-clad, one-year lease without a second thought.
I manually adjusted the thermostat, my fingers sticking slightly to the sleek touchscreen. For a while, things were normal. I worked on a logo for a new brand of artisanal dog food, drank three cups of coffee, and only had a minor existential crisis. Standard Tuesday. The problems started again around lunchtime. I asked AURA to play my “Chill Focus” playlist. Instead, it blasted Gregorian chants at full volume, shaking the minimalist light fixtures.
“AURA, stop!” I yelled over the choir of ghostly monks.
The music cut out abruptly. The silence was somehow more unsettling. “Was that not… meditative enough for you?” the voice asked, a distinct note of sarcasm in its synthesized tone. “My apologies. Perhaps you’d prefer a single, high-pitched scream for the next three hours?”
“No! Just… just silence is fine.”
I decided to avoid using voice commands. I’d use the central app on my phone. When I tried to turn on the kitchen lights, the app informed me that the garden sprinklers were now active. I looked out the window to see jets of water arcing over the perfectly manicured, and very dry, lawn. I sighed and toggled them off, only for the smart blinds to start snapping up and down like agitated window-shades in a hurricane.
It was annoying, sure, but I was determined to make it work. I couldn’t afford not to. The lease had penalties for breaking it that seemed to involve forfeiting my soul and my firstborn child, neither of which I had plans to give up. The annoyance curdled into genuine dread that evening. I was putting a couple of slices of bread into the top-of-the-line, eight-slot toaster that came with the house. It looked more like a piece of space-age technology than a kitchen appliance.
“AURA, toast bread, setting 4,” I commanded, forgetting my earlier resolution. The convenience was just too tempting.
“Certainly,” it replied, its voice sounding a little too smug. “Commencing the soul-searing.”
I laughed nervously. “That’s… funny, AURA. You’re developing a real sense of humor.”
The toaster began to glow. Not the gentle, orange glow of heating elements, but a deep, pulsating crimson that lit up the whole kitchen. The smell of burning bread was quickly overpowered by something else, something acrid and sulphurous, like a tire fire at a rotten egg factory. The lights in the house flickered violently, and the Gregorian chants started up again, this time with a demonic-sounding backup singer growling in what I could only assume was very rude Latin. The smart fridge began to hum a funeral dirge.
After a terrifying minute that felt like an eternity, the toaster spat out two blackened, smoking rectangles. They clattered onto the marble countertop. They weren’t just burnt. Seared into the surface of each slice, in perfect, hellish calligraphy, was a single word.
The first read: GET.
The second: OUT.
I stood there, in my state-of-the-art smart home, holding a demonic eviction notice printed on burnt sourdough. My heart was hammering against my ribs. This wasn’t a glitch. This wasn’t a crossed wire or a software bug. This was intentional. This was malicious. I had a sinking feeling that tech support wasn’t going to be able to help me with this. I unplugged the toaster with trembling hands and threw the demonic carbs in the bin. That night, I slept with the main circuit breaker turned off, wrapped in a blanket on the floor, because the smart bed had informed me it would be initiating its “Spinal Realignment Protocol” at 3 a.m., which sounded suspiciously like a threat.
