Smart House Read Online Free PDF Page A

as she could tell. Next she examined the weapons, each one displayed on the screen, with a brief text about its use. Water gun. Range of four feet. Will not fire through glass or through any solid material such as a door or wall. There was a section of plastic rope. She read: Electrical line, assumed to be plugged into a power source. May be used any way that a real electrical line could be used. There was a self-sticking dagger made out of soft plastic. Three “poison” capsules, quarter-sized discs the color of chocolate. A ribbon with Velcro on both ends—a garrote. It had to be secured to the victim’s neck, the Velcro fastened, to count. An open-weave net bag to be used as if it were plastic film. She went down the entire assortment of weapons, and then selected the house layout. When the basement level was displayed, she asked if there was a printout. She typed the question.
    In the top desk drawer there is a printout , the computer responded on screen.
    What else was it programmed to serve up? she wondered, but did not pursue the question. She took the printout and spread it on the desk to study. Beautifully executed house plans. Rich’s work? Probably. There was an elevator, and two flights of stairs, front and back, to all levels, and there was a terrace surrounding the dome on the roof; it could be reached by elevator or stairs.
    After looking over the house plans, she reluctantly returned to the menu and selected Victims . The computer displayed: Your first victim is Rich Schoen. Good luck. The message vanished and she was back in the menu again. She bit her lip. One of the others had just done that, she thought, and her name had come up. One of them would be selecting a weapon, making plans. She blinked when the computer flashed a new message. Would you like to see the weapons displayed again?
    “No,” she snapped. “Do you know where Gary is?”
    Yes, Beth.
    “Where?”
    I’m sorry. I am not allowed to give out that information.
    “Fuck you,” she muttered, and turned toward the door, belatedly realizing that she had been talking with the damn machine, not going through the keyboard. Okay, she thought, so Gary had a genius computer on the job, one that understood spoken language that had not been programmed in. She realized this was one of the things he wanted them to experience for themselves. What else?
    She opened her door and started to leave her room, just in time to see someone on the far side of the curving corridor duck back inside a room. She had not been able to identify the person. Unexpectedly she felt a jolt in her stomach—fear, anxiety, nerves, something. “For God’s sake,” she muttered, “it’s just a game!” But in that moment she knew that others might be playing the game seriously, with every intention of winning, of garnering points in order to sway decisions at the business meeting on Monday. For the first time since the founding of the company, her one vote was important to someone, important enough to “kill” for. For the first time she was perceived as a menace to someone else. She felt a giggle start to rise, and drew in a deep breath. Damn Gary, she thought again, as she had so many times over the years. Damn him.
    She wandered for a while but did not find Gary. She tried the elevator, looked at the terrace on the roof, glanced into the kitchen, and finally she found the basement showroom with the case of weapons on display. Silly water guns shaped like dragons, a pea shooter and pellets, the “poison” discs…. Each weapon was in a section that obviously was under observation by the computer, otherwise how could the computer keep up with who took what? She could not locate cameras. She turned away from the display case and looked over the rest of the room. Here were all the Bellringer computers, from the first one—it now looked tacky, more like a toy than a working machine—to the most recent one, which cost over a hundred thousand dollars and looked it.