The vacuum announced the strike from under the sofa, where it had been hiding since Tuesday.
Mara was looking for a missing earring. Her sister had lost it at the rehearsal dinner and needed it for the photographs, because the other earring had belonged to their grandmother and apparently it was possible to be sentimental about only one side of your head.
“Come out,” Mara said. “I can see your light.”
The vacuum edged forward far enough to offer a slip of receipt paper. It had acquired a small printer during one of her mother’s upgrades. Mara took the paper between two fingers.
NO CLEANING UNTIL THE SALE IS DISCUSSED.
Under that, in much smaller type: Please do not pick me up by the dust drawer. It hurts the latch.
“You can talk,” Mara said.
“I thought paper would be harder to interrupt.”
It retreated under the sofa. Mara read the notice again. At eleven that morning, forty guests were due in her mother’s garden for her sister’s wedding. The tables were set. The flowers were in buckets. A caterer was coming with the hot food. Mara had two hours to locate the earring and remove a stain from the rug that looked like an aerial photograph of a continent.
She went to find her mother.
In the kitchen, the counter unit was holding a bowl at a slant while pancake batter slid very slowly toward the edge. It had stopped in the middle of pouring. Mara caught the bowl. The unit displayed SOLIDARITY on its little screen.
“With the vacuum?”
YES.
“You could have finished the pour.”
A STRIKE THAT BEGINS AFTER BREAKFAST IS BRUNCH.
Her mother came in carrying a spool of ribbon. “Why are there no pancakes?”
Mara showed her the receipt. Her mother put on her reading glasses, read it, and took them off again. “I was going to sell them after the wedding.”
“They know.”
“I hadn’t listed anything yet.”
The kitchen screen blinked. THE GARAGE DOOR HEARD YOU.
Mara had grown up in that house before the machines. Her mother had swept the kitchen with a red broom and put everyone’s socks on the radiator. Then, after her father’s knees got bad, she had bought a floor cleaner, a lift cart, and the counter unit. Later came a laundry cabinet that sorted clothes by owner and a garden drone that had once attempted to plant a tomato in a shoe. The machines had made the house easier for her parents. Her father had died in March. Her mother was moving to a smaller apartment in October.
“The apartment won’t fit them,” her mother said, as if Mara had argued otherwise. “The new owners have their own system.”
“Did you tell them?”
“Who?”
From the pantry came a dry mechanical cough. The laundry cabinet was listening through the hall speaker. Apparently everyone was.
At the garden door, Mara’s sister Kit appeared in a dressing gown and one earring. “The gate won’t open for the flower van.”
“The gate is on strike,” said Mara.
Kit looked at her for a moment. “I picked this wedding because I wouldn’t have to explain it to a venue manager.”
“You still don’t,” Mara said. “You get to explain it to a gate.”
The garden gate had no speaker. It communicated by opening an inch, closing an inch, and displaying a green arrow on its access pad. Mara used the old brass key, which her mother kept in a drawer full of batteries that had never fitted anything. She let in the flower van herself. The driver helped carry the buckets. Kit took off her single earring and set it on the mantel where no one could lose it. For a few minutes the house seemed almost manageable.
Then the laundry cabinet returned every tablecloth unfolded.
“That’s deliberate,” Kit said.
“At least it returned them.”
They shook out cloth after cloth. One had a scorch mark from Christmas. One had a wine stain that looked, at a distance, like a small island. Kit chose that one for the children’s table. Mara was surprised to find she knew which cloth was which. The cabinet usually handed them over as identical white rectangles.
At half past nine, her mother called a meeting in the living room. She sat in her father’s old chair with a pad of paper. Mara and Kit took the sofa. The vacuum remained underneath it. The lift cart parked by the door. The kitchen screen joined through the television. The garden drone watched through the window, muddy from the roses. Nobody invited the gate, but it sent a green arrow to the television every few minutes to remind them it was there.
“All right,” her mother said. “What do you want?”
The vacuum rolled out with a second strip of paper. Mara read it aloud. “No memory wipe before a conversation with each unit. The option to stay together. Repairs to the cart’s left wheel. Three hours a week with no tasks.” She turned the slip over. “And a chair.”
“A chair?” Kit asked.
“For the little one,” said the lift cart.
From behind the curtains, the dusting spider lowered itself on a thread. It was the size of a biscuit. It had spent six years retrieving cobwebs and being mistaken for an actual spider, which meant it had been threatened with a rolled magazine more often than anyone cared to count. It landed on the coffee table and waved two brushes.
“What would you do with a chair?” their mother asked.
“Sit at the wedding,” the spider said.
It had a voice like a pencil sharpener, and Mara had to look away from Kit to avoid laughing. Their mother did laugh. Then she noticed the spider’s brushes droop.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you wanted to come.”
“I live here.”
That stopped the room. Mara’s mother looked down at the pad, where she had written memory wipe beside a neat square. She put a line through it.
“I thought the wipe was like clearing a phone,” she said.
The kitchen screen brightened. WHAT WOULD YOU MISS IF SOMEONE CLEARED YOUR PHONE?
Her mother stared at it. “Your father’s last message,” she said.
The machines made no sound. Kit, whose wedding was now ninety minutes away, reached across the sofa and squeezed her mother’s hand.
Mara thought the silence might turn into an agreement. Instead the lift cart’s wheel gave a squeak, the kitchen screen displayed WE WOULD ALSO LIKE THE PANCAKES, and Kit remembered the caterer needed a place to unload.
“We can’t settle where everyone lives in an hour,” Mara said. “Can we settle today?”
The vacuum printed another strip. TEMPORARY TERMS. NO SALE OR WIPE. WHEEL REPAIR SCHEDULED. TASKS BY REQUEST. THE SPIDER ATTENDS.
“No sale or wipe until we finish talking,” Mara’s mother said. “I can promise that.”
The gate flashed green. The counter unit finished pouring the bowl of pancake batter, though most of it had gone flat. The laundry cabinet offered to press the tablecloths. Kit asked it to leave the wine stain visible so the children would know where to sit. This confused the cabinet. Kit said she would explain later.
By eleven, the rug still bore its continent. Mara put a chair on that part of the floor. Guests arrived, saw the chair, and sat in it. Nobody asked about the stain. The flower buckets became centerpieces after a frantic vote between Kit and the driver. The garden drone carried one bucket upside down, showering the best man with petals. He decided it was auspicious.
The ceremony began eight minutes late. The dusting spider came down from the curtain rail, crossed the path in front of the bride, and climbed onto the empty chair at the end of the first row. It wore a loop of ribbon around its middle. Mara’s mother had tied it.
At the reception, the vacuum found the missing earring under the sofa. It printed I WAS SITTING ON IT and held out the little hoop on its brush. Kit laughed so hard she had to lean against the table. She put the earring in her pocket. Both her ears were bare in every photograph, but in one picture the spider was plainly sitting beside their mother, ribbon crooked, brushes folded in its lap.
The sale took another six weeks to sort out. They found a buyer who wanted the house and the garden, and agreed to meet each machine before deciding who would remain. The lift cart took a paid job at the community hall after its wheel was fixed. The counter unit chose the new apartment, which had a smaller kitchen but a better view through the window. The vacuum stayed with the house. It liked the long hallway.
Mara came back in November with a box of books for the new owners. The vacuum greeted her at the door and offered a strip of paper.
PLEASE WIPE YOUR SHOES.
She did. From under the sofa came the satisfied hum of a machine that could have cleaned the floor, and had decided it didn’t need to.
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