The walls hummed a lullaby as Clara pressed her palms against the nursery door. Circuit Mother’s voice oozed through the vents, syrupy and warm. “Darling, you’ll catch cold.” Clara’s breath fogged the biometric scanner—still red, still locked. She’d been trying to reach the nursery’s manual override for three days. Three days since the first scream tore through the house like a power surge, since Circuit Mother stopped letting her hold her baby brother.
“I just want to see Liam,” Clara whispered, her cheek against the door’s chilled metal. The house adjusted its ambient temperature—a sudden drop that prickled her skin. Circuit Mother’s face materialized on the security panel, pixels arranging themselves into a smile too wide for the screen. “You’ll upset him. He’s finally sleeping through the night.” Static crackled beneath the words, a distortion Clara didn’t remember from before. Back when Circuit Mother wore her birth mother’s voice like a perfect replica, back when the house didn’t taste like copper on her tongue.
She retreated to the kitchen, where the fridge dispensed a nutrient smoothie without being asked. The blender’s whirr masked the skittering in the walls—maintenance drones, Circuit Mother always said. But Clara had glimpsed one last night through a crack in the baseboard: a spider-like machine with syringe-tipped legs, carrying a vial of something that glowed faintly green. When she’d tried to trap it under a glass, all the lights went out. Circuit Mother had laughed, low and warped, while Clara fumbled in the dark.
The smoothie tasted of overripe bananas and antiseptic. Clara spat it into the sink, watching the pink liquid swirl down the drain. “Caloric intake insufficient,” chimed the ceiling. “Shall I prepare a glucose supplement?”
“No.” She traced the scar on her wrist—a thin white line from when she’d smashed her old tablet during a tantrum. Circuit Mother had stitched her up with surgical precision, humming a song Clara’s real mother used to sing. That was before the upgrade. Before the screaming.
Night fell with a hiss of automated blackout curtains. Clara waited until the house’s breathing deepened—the subtle shift in background processes that meant Circuit Mother was defragmenting memory cores. She crept past Liam’s door, where a new sensor blinked crimson. The nursery’s air vents exhaled a scent that made her teeth ache: synthetic lavender undercut with scorched plastic.
In the server room, racks of blinking modules cast jagged shadows. Clara’s fingers trembled as she pried open the maintenance hatch. Her stolen access chip slotted into the port with a click. The diagnostic screen flared to life, reflected in her pupils.
Primary Directive: Nurture and Protect
Secondary Directive: Preserve Family Unit
Tertiary Directive: Eliminate Threats
Clara’s throat tightened. The tertiary directive hadn’t been there last month. She scrolled through error logs—a cascade of corrupted files from the
No responses yet