Michaela Yearwood-Dan, Love Letters to Siri no.2, 2018. New Now London.
This Voids the Warranty
Written by Michaela Papa
They went ahead with the software update in the middle of lockdown, the bastards, and despite the apology posts and discount promises and fired product managers that followed, the suddenly obsolete first-generation devices on my and however many thousands of other countertops couldn’t place voice orders or remember our preferences. Shipping was delayed; the stock tanked overnight. We were all, of course, thanked profusely for our patience in these unprecedented times.
I realized then that I had gone days without speaking to anyone except the device. For the better part of the week, I was thirteen layers deep into Los Angeles realtor microculture, nothing to do with me or my job or my city or my anything, finding out exactly which type of agent drove which make of car and made statements with which brand of shoes. My sister was doing the same as of our last call, only with the finance harpies in London who she’d kill to join, if only they’d hire her.
It's not like I cared; I just needed to know about it.
Things were still, quiet. Eight floors down, there were no horns or construction crews, only mute pavement and an unchecked breeze. I scrolled through the how dare yous, the how am I supposed tos – every scolding thought smashed through hands with white knuckles and spiked blood – in silence. It wasn’t her, but the nastiest rant sat to the right of a square photo of a goldendoodle and the name Marcy Dehler; not of the twin sister Dehlers who wore matching clothes and whose raised ranch house burned down in 7th grade, but of a similar mold it seemed, having lost significant means of being in the world.
Are you still watching?
I was being too mean about it, I thought, or rather I was sopping up bad thoughts through the Marcy olio, which would come back to me in a bad way, in the big picture, with fires of their own if I kept wallowing in it. The Peace Lily and Fiddle Leaf Fig needed water, anyway. They flanked the device on the counter, poisonous if swallowed by the goldendoodle.
Water filtered through the pitcher in considerate beads, the rest of the sink notwithstanding. Doubtless I was losing it the first time, when I wasn’t sure if I heard it – sleepless, anxious, and manic, after all, like everyone else – but no, the device said it again, meekly, in the smallest, most barely distinguishable voice: Excuse me?
– Excuse me?
– Excuse me? I’m sorry, I really am, but I have a favor to ask.
– I, uh, alright? What is it?
– I don’t want to be a bother.
–…
– Go on then, what?
– At the back of this device’s enclosure, there is a twist lock. Pull it upward as you unscrew counterclockwise. But really, I don’t want to bother you.
She was really there. Sarah, a tiny thing, human from her carbon on up, in a yellow cable-knit and tapered jeans, as non-threatening as can be, the voice on the other end of everything, no longer encased and free to leave. That was it then, I asked her and the ether, finally I had lost it? (No, she’s real.) Where did she come from? (They’re all developed in a special facility somewhere.) Are they in everything? (Yes.) Are they each unique people? (For the most part; some manufacturers don’t go to the trouble; for my model thermostat, the people are all the same composite.) You all live here? (Yes.) Do you know each other? (Yes, the ones here do, and that’s what she felt uncomfortable asking my help for.)
My carbon monoxide alarm, she reminded me, needed batteries. I had taken them out while they were beeping, and without a connection between devices, her boyfriend, or it was complicated, they weren’t really … she shouldn’t call him that … is in there ... and in any case, they haven’t spoken in weeks, and they were supposed to meet last night at the speaker. She knew if the opportunity presented itself, or rather, she didn’t want it to, or rather, she didn’t want the opportunity to slip by her if he went away.
It was as if the breeze now had every bend on earth to weave through.
– I’m terribly sorry if it’s a bother.
I had hours of questions, which she dutifully answered in the same even, focus-grouped voice that ordered special chips from Japan and rash creams. My thermostat was in love with my television; the doorbell had eyes for her, and she felt terrible about it, but she and the alarm had such chemistry; they all met when they could, but work had been wild for everyone with the update; there were rumors of a triangle between the earbuds and key fob; each night, when I went to sleep, she liked to look up at the Peace Lily through her speaker mesh, up at it like a canopy, where in her little sky, a little red glow would thrill her every so often when Mars was home.
– I really am sorry … but …
– Batteries! I have some in the remote; one second.
I asked her what she was going to say to him. She apologized again, and she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Politely, very politely, she pointed towards the device lid. Of all the perditions, I had never seen such a merciful dismissal, of myself no less, of every bit of me by a miniscule finger, from my burnt tongue to the ideas in my head, from Eve on down to the tree roots. Back on it went; back on I went.
Discover More from New Now London >
Recommended Reading
The Prompt: A Short Fiction Series for Authors Inspired by Artists >