Folio Two, Page Twenty-One (svegra mos rokron tal-itz)

Again, we must return to the instruction manual for standard voice-activated locks. The individual who invented the term “smart locks” (or, indeed, any of the term’s early adopters) must have done so out of irony or stupidity. The locks contained no AI and simply responded to commands in the precise manner the manuals indicated — those very manuals that clearly only a small, mischievous child such as myself would have read. Always eager to get into places that young girls shouldn’t go, I had memorized every voice override possible. Half of the smart paper-based manual was composed of embedded video clips a four-year-old could have understood.

Smart locks — at least those used around the turn of the 20th century — could unlock doors with a series of verbal commands, and they could lock doors in just the same way. Anumë could have reached me quickly with any of the tamer locking commands (and besides, I didn’t have authorization), but the emergency protocols that would lock me in for safety still worked. I screamed them as loudly as possible.

Almost immediately after the locks clicked, Anumë tried to open the cabinet. She gave a command and received a polite response from the unit before proceeding to bang on the door with her flat palms.

I breathed deeply and closed my eyes, sinking as far back as I could. Nikis would punish me further, I imagined, but it didn’t matter — Anumë had violated something that rightfully belonged to me. Even in societies where families communally own almost everything, each individual has some rights, and I needed to exercise mine. Salus would have wanted it.

From outside, I heard Nikis say, “What is going on?”

Anumë replied that I had somehow locked myself inside the cabinet. She sounded a bit smug. Nikis slapped her. Perhaps I had played into her plans after all. She had probably wanted some way to get rid of me and prevent others from knowing the extent of our family’s shame.

“This is why I didn’t want smart locks in our household.”

They argued quietly for a few more minutes. Neither paid attention to me, thankfully, but I didn’t know how long it would last. On top of this, I couldn’t remember the part from the manual about deactivating the emergency protocol locking sequence without summoning the police. My mind reproduced the rest of the page with perfect clarity, but the words had blurred into a great white space that I could not penetrate.

« Folio Two, Page Twenty

Folio Two, Page Twenty-Two »