The Requital

By Bruce Allsman

“Pardon me Madam, I’m unable to process your request.” A female voice, an impartial, smooth, mechanical, and monotone speech permeated the entire residence. It emanated from electro-acoustic transducers fitted in every room.

“You’ve selected a wrong option,” I told my wife, Shayla. In the kitchen near the fridge, we stood at a computer terminal with a twelve-inch touch screen.

Shayla withdrew her forefinger and frowned at me. “What did I do wrong?”

“Here, let me show you,” I said. “The full set of commands is shown here.” With my index finger, I moved the cursor to the top of the display and a horizontal row of program icons appeared.

Above the row, the word ‘ISHANA’ and on the next line the words, ‘Integrated Smart Home and Networked Appliances’, were displayed in black text against a white background.

“I see,” Shayla said. “It’s so easy. ISHANA and I will get along fine. She’s one smart gal.”

“ISHANA is not a She but an It,” I said. “I don’t believe in humanizing inanimate objects, particularly computers. We, humans, must always have ultimate control.”

I’m proud of ISHANA. It took my company’s engineers and software developers five years of intensive research and development to build and integrate this prototype into my green mountain home.

Then I noticed that Shayla was poking, with her forefinger, at several icons in rapid succession. Was she retaliating against my ISHANA in anger or frustration? I knew she was jealous of the fact that, immersed deeply in my work, I had spent most of my waking hours for the past five years with ISHANA.

“Thank you,” Shayla said. Her jabbing action ceased and she backed away.

Feeling a need to appease her, I clasped her in an embrace. “I love you,” I said. I’d made it a habit to express my love for her frequently, and that helped to sustain our marriage of six years. I believed that a healthy relationship required a daily verbal expression of love.

“I love you too,” Shayla said. “Let’s eat,” she added merrily and went to set the dining table. And after turning off the low heat on the oven, she served the food.

I pulled out a chair, seated her and sat opposite her at the dining table. I took a bite of my favorite dish, baked salmon marinated with Shayla’s signature sauce.

“This is to die for, something ISHANA can never do,” I said.

“And ISHANA can’t love you,” she said. “Remember that the next time you’re up all night with ISHANA instead of in bed with me.” She whispered all that and winked at me.

“Wanna join me in the hot tub later?” I asked, feeling a stirring in my groin.

“Love to,” she answered, gazing into my eyes. I saw that her eyes reflected her sexual desire, intense. She looked away, out the dining room window. “It’s going to be chilly tonight,” she said.

I followed her stare. The sky blended with the distant snow-capped Rocky Mountain, forming a live canvas of slow-moving dark gray and white shapes. Dark clouds were gathering and far away the rumble of thunders and flashes of lighting filled the heavens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bruce Allsman
• Release date: Nov 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781540145574