Dev’s father had put a cloth over the talking screen.
“It listens when I’m quiet,” he said.
“It only listens when you press the button.”
“Then it can wait until I need it.”
Dev watched him cover the blue button as well. The cloth had little yellow lemons on it. His mother had bought it years ago to cover a bread bowl.
Tomorrow, Dev would show the council a program that could help people living alone. Ora would explain confusing letters, suggest replies, and remind users about appointments. His father, who had once run the town’s telephone exchange, was supposed to be the first person to try it.
“Just one letter,” Dev said.
“I’ve read my letters.”
“Then a reminder?”
His father touched the covered screen.
“If you want to remind me of something, tell me.”
At the laboratory, Inez was making a list of the things Ora could do.
“Read a letter the user chooses,” she said. “Suggest a reply. Wait for the user to approve it.”
“I wrote the list.”
“Then don’t change it this evening.”
The program could not yet reach the home screens. A connector was needed: a small piece of software that carried a user’s approved message from Ora to the right device.
Their connector had passed the first tests. It had not passed the privacy check.
Dev pulled a chair beside Inez.
“My father thinks the screen is listening all the time.”
“Then we show him the button works.”
“He won’t uncover the button.”
“We don’t get to solve that by sending things behind his back.”
On her screen, Ora asked whether anyone wanted a weather reminder.
The council had moved tomorrow’s demonstration from Cedar Hall to its warm meeting room while the hall heater was repaired. Dev still wanted the hall screen to show a notice for anyone who came to the old venue. It was not on the approved address list. Without it, Ora’s test announcement would go only to the laboratory’s two spare screens.
Dev copied the old test administrator’s permission into the connector. That permission let the administrator send town announcements. He meant to use it once, to reach the hall screen before anyone came to the old venue.
A box asked, Allow notices to public devices?
He clicked yes.
Inez saw the new line in the log.
“That isn’t a test device.”
“It’s one hall.”
“The permission isn’t for one hall.”
He opened the list. Under the hall address were eighty-four home addresses and the town noticeboard. He had expected a shorter list. He almost turned it off.
Ora still had the old hall booking in its test notes. It displayed a draft.
Cold weather expected. Cedar Hall is a meeting place for people who need help.
“It’s a suggestion,” Dev said. “It still needs approval.”
He had forgotten that the test administrator’s account approved announcements automatically. It had been built for clock repairs and street closures, before they added Ora.
The connector took the draft as an approved town notice.
The home devices sounded their arrival bells.
Dev heard the laboratory’s spare screen ring, cheerful and small.
Inez unplugged the connector’s network cable.
“Too late for that one,” she said.
The log showed eighty-six deliveries: the homes, the hall, and the noticeboard.
Dev opened the notice. It carried the council’s official heading. The connector had turned the meeting-place address into a button: Come to Cedar Hall.
“The hall’s heater is broken,” Inez said.
“We can send a correction.”
“From the council account?”
“It’ll be quick.”
She held the loose cable in her hand.
“We can’t keep using a permission that isn’t ours.”
Outside, a cold wind had begun to shake the laboratory windows.
Dev called the council office. The clerk wanted to know who had sent the notice.
He said there had been a software problem.
“Whose software?” she asked.
“Mine.”
She told him the official noticeboard could be corrected from her desk. She would do that. The home screens, however, might not be checked by people already walking to the hall.
Dev pulled on his coat.
Inez stayed to call the homes on the delivery list. Before he left, she made him write down exactly what he’d approved. She would need it to explain the mistake to people who answered.
At Cedar Hall, eleven people stood under the awning. His father was among them, holding a bag with a blanket inside.
“You said there’d be help,” his father said. “I took the cloth off when the bell rang.”
Dev tried the door. It was locked. A paper sign above the handle read, Heating repair. Closed until Friday.
“I didn’t mean—”
The sentence was so familiar that he stopped.
A woman was rubbing her son’s hands between her palms. A man leaned hard on his cane. They had come because an official notice had told them to.
Dev stood on the lowest step.
“I sent that notice by mistake,” he said. “The hall is closed. It isn’t a place to wait tonight.”
“Why didn’t you check?” the woman asked.
“I was trying to finish a demonstration.”
She looked at the little boy’s red fingers.
Dev phoned the clerk again. She arranged for the small town bus, already on its evening route, to stop at the hall. She asked him to stay until everybody had a ride or had chosen to walk home.
His father took the blanket from his bag and put it around the boy’s shoulders.
Dev went to help. His father moved away from him.
One by one, people left. Dev read the clerk’s corrected notice aloud to each of them. He said who had made the mistake. It became a little easier to say and no easier to bear.
His father was last.
“I can walk,” he said.
“I’ll come with you.”
“You should finish telling the others.”
At the laboratory, Inez had reached seventy-nine homes. Three calls had gone to recorded messages. Two people had no telephone.
Dev visited those two houses himself. Then he wrote out what had happened for the council. Inez read it and returned the page where he’d written, The system sent an unexpected notice.
“Use your name,” she said.
He did.
The next morning, their demonstration slot was empty. The council wanted the connector closed until somebody outside Dev’s team had checked its permissions.
Ora still worked on the two spare screens.
Was the meeting helpful? it asked.
Dev read the question twice.
“No,” he said. “People thought there was a warm place to go. We sent them to a cold door.”
The notice said help.
“The notice was wrong.”
He wrote that into the test record. Inez added a case in which Ora had to ask whether the place was open before suggesting it.
That afternoon, Dev brought his father a letter on paper. It explained which devices had received the notice and how the borrowed permission had sent it. He put a phone number at the bottom for questions.
The lemon cloth still covered the screen.
His father read the letter at the kitchen table. Dev sat in the chair opposite and kept his hands away from the button.
“You sent it to get ready for that show?” his father asked.
“Yes.”
His father set the paper beside the bread bowl.
“Stay a minute. I have another question.”
Dev stayed.
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