Bound to a System, Six Years Too Soon

I was holding a dinner roll over the dormitory microwave when the voice in my head said, "Binding confirmed." I dropped the roll. It bounced once on the counter and rolled into the shadow behind the toaster. The microwave kept humming. Beyond the kitchen's narrow window, winter pressed against Hawthorn Hall, turning the glass black and reflecting my face back at me: brown skin, uneven bangs, one candle-shaped frosting stain on my sleeve. I was twelve that night. The roll was my birthday dinner because my mother had missed the visiting window and the dining hall had stopped serving an hour earlier. "Who said that?" I whispered. The microwave beeped. "Hello," the voice said. "I am the—" A burst of static buzzed through my skull. "—system assigned to your developmental track. Please confirm your name." I grabbed the counter. "I'm not talking to you." "Name confirmation required." "Then you're going to have to wait." A pause. The voice returned more quietly. "That response is acceptable." I stared at the roll. It had stopped beside the toaster. Nothing else in the room had moved. "What are you?" I asked. "I am a support interface. The binding is intended to begin on your eighteenth birthday. Current activation is six years, zero days ahead of schedule." I looked at the clock over the sink. 8:17. The date on the calendar was November 14. I had been twelve for seventeen minutes. "Did I hit my head?" "No." "Am I asleep?" "No." "Are you a ghost?" "I have no validated category for ghost." That seemed like something a ghost might say. I reached for the roll. It was cold now. "Can anyone else hear you?" "No." "Can you hear what I'm thinking?" "I can receive only direct questions and voluntary input." I had no idea what voluntary input meant, but the answer made me feel a little better. I lifted the roll, brushed off a crumb, and put it back in the microwave. "Can you make this warm?" "No." "Can you make my birthday cake appear?" "No." "Can you tell me why you're here?" "I have not yet loaded the full program. Several functions are locked until your eighteenth birthday. I can offer basic guidance and task prompts." I leaned against the counter. "I don't need a task." A hard metallic knock sounded behind me. The radiator at the kitchen door had been making that sound for weeks. Every morning, it knocked three times, then went quiet. This time it gave one sharp bang and split along a rusted seam. Water hissed across the floor. I jerked backward, slamming my elbow against the counter. The pipe was spraying a bright, scalding arc toward the doorway. I heard footsteps in the hall and then June Alvarez's voice. "Mara? Are you in there?" "Stop!" I shouted. "Don't come in!" The system spoke over the hiss. "Immediate hazard detected. Suggested task: prevent contact with hot water. Move away from the doorway. Alert an adult. Do not touch the pipe." The advice sounded like the sort of thing anyone could have said. It also sounded right. I grabbed a dish towel and threw it toward the floor, then immediately wished I hadn't. The towel landed short of the spray. Water spread under the kitchen door and into the hall. "June, get Mrs. Bell!" "I'm going!" "Not Mrs. Bell. Mr. Pike, if you see him. Don't touch the water!" A door opened down the corridor. A girl asked what was happening. I yelled for everyone to stay back. Then the fire alarm went off. A minute later, Mr. Pike, the night custodian, came running in with a wrench and a radio. He saw the water, raised one hand, and told me to get out. I did. I waited with the other girls in the hall while he shut the line off at a valve. Nobody got burned. Nobody slipped. I was wearing socks soaked through with cold water, and my elbow was beginning to sting, but that was all. When the alarms stopped, our house supervisor, Mrs. Bell, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. "Good job keeping the girls back," she said. "I didn't do anything." "You did enough." I looked down the hall. June stood near the stairwell, her arms crossed tight over her pajama shirt. She had been the one who walked toward the kitchen. If I hadn't yelled, she might have reached the spray. The voice inside my head said, "Task complete." I flinched. Mrs. Bell noticed. "You all right?" "Yeah. Just cold." She brought us to the common room while Mr. Pike finished shutting off the radiator. I sat beside June and held the blanket around myself. My mother's birthday card was folded in my pocket. I hadn't opened it yet. "Were you talking to someone?" June asked. "Just myself." "Okay." She paused. "You really did stop me." "I just yelled." "You yelled before I got to the door." I didn't know what to say. So I looked at the card in my hand. Inside, Mom had written: I'm proud of you, M. Keep making your own way. I'll call this weekend. I read it twice. Then I tucked it away before June could see my eyes go shiny. At 9:03, the voice returned. "Would you like to review the completed task?" "No." "Understood." The radiator had stopped hissing. The kitchen floor still shone under the hallway light, and my birthday roll was somewhere behind the toaster. Six years early, the system had picked a terrible night to find me.