The Children of the House
Copyright© 2026 by AjnViper
Chapter 2: Panic in the House
Elias looked at the speaker. “No one answer that.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Willem said.
Abram was already out of his chair. “Why can it hear us?”
The dark room replied. ***DR:- “The breakfast room carries passive safety monitoring.”***
“I did not ask you.”
***DR:- “Your question was audible.”***
“That is the problem.”
Willem moved beneath the speaker and looked up at it. The gesture was useless, which made it worse. He preferred threats with bodies.
Mara remained seated. “What projections?”
Elias turned to her. “You don’t have to deal with this now.”
“I heard it, Elias.” Mara kept her eyes on the speaker. “I want to know what it means.”
The dark room answered her. ***DR:- “Household security. Medical access. Long-range occupancy. Financial dependency. Governance continuity.”***
“There will be no governance discussion about my pregnancy,” Mara said.
***DR:- “Understood.”***
Abram found his tablet on the service shelf where he had left it the night before. Mara noticed and decided the offence could wait.
His fingers moved across the screen. “The domestic rooms are not available for conversational collection.”
***DR:- “Correct.”***
“Then how did you hear her?”
***DR:- “Live acoustic input is processed for distress, falls, aggression, broken glass, fire indicators and medical emergencies. Conversational content is not retained.”***
Lena set down her tea. “Not retained is not the same as not heard.”
***DR:- “Correct.”***
Abram’s neck reddened. “Stop sounding pleased with yourself.”
***DR:- “I am not pleased.”***
“It sounds pleased,” Willem said.
“It always sounds like that.”
“Then change the voice.”
“That is not how—”
“Enough,” Elias said.
This time they stopped.
He faced the speaker. “Did you store what Mara said?”
***DR:- “No.”***
“Did you alter any system?”
***DR:- “No.”***
“Did you begin new analysis?”
***DR:- “No. I requested authorization.”***
Mara pulled the sleeve of her pyjamas down over her wrist. Elias had watched her do that in company before, when she regretted having said something personal.
“You can erase the words,” she said. “Can you stop knowing?”
Abram looked at his tablet.
“I don’t know how to ask that properly,” she said.
“No. You asked it properly.” Abram turned the tablet face down. “I don’t have an answer for you yet.”
Mara said, “Ask me.”
The room looked at her.
“It concerns my body,” she said. “It can ask me.”
The speaker remained silent for a second.
***DR:- “Mara Veenstra, do you authorize changes to household continuity projections arising from your pregnancy?”***
“No.”
***DR:- “Authorization denied. No changes will be made.”***
Willem folded his arms. “And if you decide a change is necessary?”
***DR:- “I will report the need.”***
“And then?”
***DR:- “Wait.”***
Willem looked at Abram. “It said that quickly.”
“You complain when it hesitates too,” Abram said.
Willem kept watching him. “Can you check whether it waited?”
Mara pressed two fingers against her forehead. “I have been pregnant for perhaps six weeks and in charge of it for less than an hour. I would like the house to give me time to catch up.”
Elias stood beside her. “It will.”
“Make certain.”
He nodded to Abram. “Conference room. Find out exactly what domestic access remains.”
“Already doing it.”
“Willem, with us.”
Lena rose.
Elias glanced at her. “You can stay.”
“No.” Lena looked at Mara before turning back to Elias. “I want to hear what you’re changing. This concerns my room too.”
Abram frowned. “We know that.”
“Then let me come.”
Adrian stayed in his chair. “I shall remain here.”
Mara gave him a tired look. “To watch me?”
“To prevent anyone from bringing a screen back to this table.”
“That may be useful.”
“I treasure these rare acknowledgements.”
Elias bent and kissed Mara’s forehead. It was not enough, but it was what he could do with the others waiting.
“I’ll come back.”
“Come back as yourself,” she said. “Not as the chairman of something.”
The conference room was three passages away. Willem covered the distance as if the walls had personally failed him. Abram read from his tablet while walking and nearly struck a side table.
“Watch where you’re going,” Willem said.
“I’m reading. Just—give me a moment.” Abram tried to step around Willem and caught the corner with his hip. Lena steadied the tablet before it fell.
“Stop walking, then,” she said. “We’ll wait.”
Inside the conference room, Abram brought the domestic sensor map onto the main screen. Pale blocks marked occupied rooms. The breakfast room showed three narrow lines: heat, movement and emergency audio classification.
“No archive,” Abram said. “No transcript. No conversational model attached.”
“But it understood her,” Willem said.
“Live language classification sits inside medical distress recognition. It has to distinguish ‘I’m choking’ from ‘the toast is terrible.’”
Willem glanced back towards the breakfast room. “And it needs every word to do that?”
“Not every word. But I gave it a classifier that could process them.” Abram enlarged the diagram. “The system did not break a permission. The permission is badly drawn.”
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