Chapter 3

Sherry woke up late in the morning, feeling stiff and sore from the night spent asleep at the kitchen table. It took her a minute to realize where she was. She didn’t remember falling asleep. All she remembered was an evening filled with the most intense technical discussion of her life.

Her bladder demanded her attention. She got up and headed for the bathroom. Once there, she glanced up at the camera, and put a towel around her waist before dropping her jeans. Then she sat down on the toilet, making sure to keep the towel strategically placed while doing so. She sat there glancing up at the camera occasionally, thinking that she’d never get used to that.

She washed her hands at the sink and then cupped her hands to get some water. She rinsed out her mouth, spent a minute brushing her teeth with a wet finger, and then washed her face. She felt a little better after doing that, although she did feel a little grungy after wearing her clothes for more than a day. It was actually the start of the third day of wearing them. She wasn’t going to be able to change out of them until she went home.

She wandered out of the bathroom and entered the living room. The sound of the television coming on surprised her. She turned to look at it. A naked woman was looking back at her from the television. Sherry rolled her eyes and moved across the room to examine the books on the bookshelf. She noticed that the woman on the television screen had turned her head to follow her movements. Surprised she turned to look directly at the television.

“Good morning,” the woman on the television said.

“Good morning,” Sherry said back.

For a moment she wondered if she was still asleep and this was some kind of strange dream. She was having a conversation with a naked woman on television. There was something definitely weird about that.

“Please sign,” the woman on television said.

Sherry signed, “Good morning.”

“What is your name?”

Sherry signed, “Sherry.”

“Is that your first name or a nickname?”

“Nickname.”

Sherry stared at the screen realizing that she wasn’t dealing with a real person interacting with her via a camera. The woman was an avatar representation of the house. It was actually a pretty good simulation of dealing with a person. Before it asked each question, it glanced down as if reading from a script.

She’d seen similar avatars, but they were usually animated cartoon-like figures, although a few were pretty realistic. The woman wasn’t actually a real person although the video image was from a real person. He had somehow managed to splice together various videos to make her look natural even when speaking.

She couldn’t even say that she was surprised that he had chosen to have the woman naked. The fact that the image was of a naked woman, was a real nerd kind of thing to do. She figured that half of her classmates would have done the same thing in building a system like that. She wondered how much he had paid to have a woman do that.

“What is your full legal name?”

“Sherrington Ann Fields.”

For the next five minutes, Sherry was questioned about her contact information, her date of birth, her citizenship, her education, and even her hobbies. It was almost like a job interview, although the nature of the questions was more like filling out a job application form. It was the longest signing session that she’d had since she had last visited with her brother.

Sherry signed, “What is your name?”

“Secretary.”

“Thank you,” Sherry signed.

With a name like Secretary, there wasn’t much use in asking what functions it performed. She was definitely going to have a long discussion with Alex about his software system. There were a lot of capabilities present that weren’t immediately apparent. Each little revelation only impressed her more with the quality of his intellect. This wasn’t the first smart house that she had seen, but it was clearly the smartest one she’d ever heard about!

“Will you be leaving now?”

Sherry signed back, “Yes.”

“Will you be going home or to university?”

Sherry signed, “Home.”

“Alex will contact you.”

“Thank you,” Sherry signed.

Sherry walked out of the house thinking that Alex Cage, regardless of how brilliant he might be, was little more than an an adolescent little boy at heart. Who else would use a naked woman as an avatar for their artificial intelligent personal assistant? She wondered what would happen next in this weird relationship with Alex. He’d given her enough material last night to occupy a year.

She got into her car and looked over at her purse. She hadn’t realized that she’d left it — and, even more importantly, her laptop — in the car overnight. Her cell phone rang. She grabbed her purse and dug out the cell phone. It had stopped ringing by the time she found it. She looked at the list of missed calls only to discover that there were eighteen missed calls, and they were all from her mother. That was not a good sign.

Not looking forward to the conversation, she clicked the ‘Missed Call’ menu item.

“Hello, Mom.”

“Where were you? I called and called, but you never answered your phone. I was so worried that I even called the police, but they said I had to wait forty-eight hours before I could report you missing. Where were you? Why weren’t you answering your phone? Do you have any idea how...”

“Mom!”

“What?”

“I got caught up in a technical discussion that lasted until morning. I didn’t answer the phone because I had left my purse in my car. I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I need a shower. I’m on my way home, and we can talk about it while I’m eating something,” Sherry said.

“When will you be here?”

“In about five minutes,” Sherry said.

Her mother squawked. “You aren’t talking on your cell phone while you’re driving, are you? You know that’s dangerous. Talking on a cell phone and driving is just as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. I’ve told you before that...”

“Mom! I haven’t even started the car, yet,” Sherry said.

“It’ll take you more than five minutes to get here from the university,” her mother said.

“I’m not at the university,” Sherry said knowing that she was going to regret saying that.

“Where are you?”

“I’m about six blocks away,” she answered thinking that she shouldn’t have gone to school so close to home.

“You weren’t with that awful boy, Chuck. You know I don’t like Chuck,” her mother said mentioning one of Sherry’s high school boyfriends.

Sherry rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t with Chuck. I haven’t seen him since I graduated high school.”

“I never did like that boy,” her mother said.

Sherry said, “I won’t ever get home unless you hang up.”

“Okay. Drive safely. There are all kinds of lunatics on the road talking on their cell phones and causing accidents left and right,” her mother said.

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Sherry closed the phone and looked at it. In a way it was an awful invention. Her cell phone rang again. She looked at the caller id, but didn’t recognize the number. She answered, “Hello.”

“This is Secretary. You have been sitting in a car for three minutes. Are you having car problems?”

“No.”

“Thank you,” Secretary said just before disconnecting.

Sherry closed the phone, and looked over at the house. She muttered, “That’s kind of scary.”

She started the car and drove off before there was much of a chance of getting another call. While driving home, she tried to figure out what she was going to tell her mother about how she had spent the night. Telling her mother that she had spent the night in a man’s house, particularly alone with a single man, was not going to go over well. She could just hear the lecture her mother would deliver. She had a feeling that it was going to be a long morning.

Sherry parked her car in the driveway. She could see the curtains move when her mother peeked out to see if she had arrived. She took a deep breath, grabbed her stuff, and got out of the car. Her mother was standing by the door waiting for her.

“Were you with a man last night?”

Sherry looked at her mother and sighed. She missed the days when she had lived on a distant campus working on her undergraduate degree. Moving back home had been a mistake, but she couldn’t afford the costs of living in her own place.

Surrendering to the inevitable grilling that was to follow, she answered, “Yes.”

“Where did you meet this man? What does he do for a living? How come I haven’t met him? Are you ashamed of him or something? What kind of a man is he if he has you spend the night with him?”

Sherry walked past her mother and headed towards the kitchen. She definitely needed a little coffee and some food.

“I met him at the bookstore the other morning. He’s a world famous scientist, and we met to discuss my dissertation. There is nothing romantic or sexual going on between us,” Sherry said.