The Mansion

by Boone, Ezekiel

  “Nellie. Listen up. Bravo Papa override. November, Echo, Lima, Lima, India, Echo.”

  The same stunt he’d pulled in November, when Shawn had brought him to the office.

  “See no evil,” Billy said, “hear no evil.”

  The light on the wall had been gently . . . well, breathing, Shawn thought. There was no other word for the way that it seemed alive. But now it was completely static. Frozen. He looked over at Billy. Billy had his eyes closed now. He looked like he was fiercely concentrating on a symphony that only he could hear. He held up his hand to Shawn. Wait. After a few more seconds, he opened his eyes and looked at Shawn.

  “Okay. She’s gone. I’m not sure how much time we’ve got. A couple of minutes at most.”

  “What the hell, Billy? Can you please tell me what just happened? You told me you had it figured out, that you got the virus completely cleaned out.”

  “I did,” Billy said.

  “Then what changed?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. The virus is gone, but it’s still there.”

  “What are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense. How can the virus be gone and still there?”

  “Not the virus. When I say ‘it’s still there,’ I’m not talking about the virus, I’m talking about the ghost in the machine.” Billy looked at him expectantly, but Shawn shook his head.

  “Please tell me you don’t actually think that Nellie’s haunted.”

  “Not in the way you mean,” Billy said. “Or, at least, I don’t think so. Shit. I don’t know anymore. People in town think Eagle Mansion is haunted, and I can’t say I don’t believe them.” He rubbed at his eyes. “But no. That expression, the ghost in the machine. Some philosopher wrote about it. I can’t remember who it was, but it was in response to this idea that the mind and the body can exist apart from each other. I think. Maybe. I don’t know that I followed all of it, because that’s not the point and it doesn’t matter. It’s the idea that evolution has kept the old monkey brains and built our brains on top of them, and that it’s the monkey brains that run all our emotions and overpower logic. That’s the ghost in the machine for us, for people. Anger. Losing your temper and doing something you regret.”

  Takata. That’s what Billy meant by losing your temper.

  “I found the dead man’s switch and pulled it out. I ran a complete rebuild. She should be running absolutely clean. Do you think I would have had my nieces come out here if I thought this was going on again? So when I say the ghost in the machine, I’m talking about the same idea, that there are multiple versions of Nellie at war within her. Whatever Takata’s virus was, maybe it fundamentally altered Nellie. We built her so that she could rewrite herself and expand, so that she could exist in the space between the ones and zeros of other programs, and when we tripped Takata’s booby trap, Nellie started rewriting herself in ways that we can’t see.”

  “Do you really think Takata could have done that?”

  “Of course not,” Billy said. He glanced at his watch. “Not on purpose. His work was always slick and beautiful, and he was a better programmer than you, but he still never came close to me.”

  Shawn nodded. There was a small part of him that felt his pride wounded by the statement, but he knew it was true. “If not on purpose, then what?”

  Billy looked at his watch again. “We’ve got maybe two more minutes before Nellie shakes off the override. Emily wants to go sledding tomorrow morning. She’s been talking about it all week: we’ll get up, open presents, and then all go sledding. We can talk outside. Tomorrow. Figure out how to shut Nellie down without her knowing about it. Don’t say anything in the meantime. You’ve got to act normal. You can’t let her know that you know.”

  “Why not? Jesus. Do we really need to shut her down?” He was both scared and angry. What had Billy led him into? He’d told him to expect Nellie to be ready to go, that he needed maybe another two weeks and it would be time to start getting her ready for quality control testing and rolling her out into Eagle Technology products.

  “If it was just a virus, just code, I don’t know. But sometimes I wonder. I mean, you said she ran pretty clean in Baltimore, on the Eagle Technology campus. So the question is, why won’t she run like that here? Is it Takata’s booby trap? Is it something your engineers screwed up? Is it something I screwed up? Or is it something about being here, about Eagle Mansion?” He shook his head. “I don’t know, but when you ask if we really need to shut her down . . . Yeah. Yeah, I think so. The problem is, I don’t know if we can shut her down,” Billy said, and suddenly, Shawn wasn’t both scared and angry. He was just scared. Billy looked at his watch again and then put his finger to his lips.

  They stood there, quiet, waiting, until he felt it: a presence. He looked over at the wall. The glow of light was pulsing again.

  “Come on,” Billy said. “We ought to go help, too. Emily wants to serve dinner a little early with the twins here. She figures they’ll be up early tomorrow to open presents. Nellie, please tell me Beth is making apple pie for dessert.”

  Shawn followed Billy out of the room and down the hall, listening to the way Billy chatted with Nellie, as if they were old friends.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  * * *

  NOT EVEN A MOUSE

  Billy sat in his chair in the office, looking at the wall. Nellie had projected a map of Eagle Mansion there. Inside the map, small, bright dots indicated the presence of everybody in the mansion. With Emily’s insistence that Shawn’s staff, including all his bodyguards, stay in Whiskey Run, there weren’t that many dots of light to track. On the top floor, in the Nest, a pink dot for Emily in the bedroom—she had gone to sleep around eleven—and next door, in the office, a royal-blue dot for him. He looked at his watch. He was up late for Christmas Eve. Technically, at two seventeen in the morning, it was already Christmas Day. He knew he ought to go to sleep himself. The twins would no doubt be up early, and Nellie was under instructions to wake the adults so the girls could get to opening presents. He couldn’t sleep, though. He just kept looking at the map.

  On the third floor, a white dot for Shawn. It moved side to side in a tight line. Shawn was pacing back and forth in his suite. He’d made a passive-aggressive comment about Billy and Emily colonizing the Nest, but only the one comment. It wasn’t, Billy thought, like he was exactly roughing it down in Eagle Mansion. Also on the third floor, but in the other wing, a turquoise dot for Wendy. She was sleeping. Even though he knew that Shawn didn’t have anything romantic going on with his assistant, he’d still half expected the two dots to be together.

  On the second floor, two dots, black and yellow, for Rothko and Beth. Also sleeping.

  But next to them, Ruth and Rose’s room left him puzzled.

  There was a single red dot and a single green dot, then two red dots and one green dot, and then a single red one with a single green dot again. The red dot wavered and seemed to go in and out of focus, one dot, two dots, one dot, two, like Nellie couldn’t decide how to count. He watched and watched, and finally, around three in the morning, the picture seemed to resolve itself into two static dots, one red, one green.

  He watched for another fifteen minutes, but the dots stayed still.

  The girls were safe.

  For now.

  He stared at his laptop again. He’d looked top to bottom, but there was no trace of Takata’s dead man’s switch. Not even a scar from where Billy had scrubbed away the slick virus. It was like a frozen lake covered in snow: no hint of what was below the surface. And yet he could see, if he looked carefully, the ways in which Nellie was no longer the same as what he’d created. She was rewriting herself faster than he could pull her apart. That phrase ghost in the machine was apt, because that’s what it was like: chasing ghosts. Whatever she was doing to herself, he didn’t think he had a hope of cleaning it up anymore. The best option was to shut everything down—if they could—and start completely from scratch.

  God. The thought made h
im want a drink.

  Water. He’d have water.

  He stood up and turned to face the wall. The panel slid open to show the refrigerator. He opened it up to grab a bottle of water.

  The small panel hiding the bar next to the fridge was also open.

  YOU COULD USE A DRINK, BILLY.

  “No. Thanks. I’m okay.”

  YOU DESERVE A DRINK, BILLY.

  She sounded . . . different. Not one voice or the other, but both of them combined. He looked for the green dot of light, to speak directly to her, but the dot of light was no longer a soft grass green. It was a dark, prickly blue.

  “I don’t want a drink, Nellie. I don’t drink. You know that.” He felt for the coin in his pocket, but as he did, he remembered he’d lost that one, too, and suddenly it felt like the scar on his hand was alive. He scratched at it and then pressed it. Was there something hard underneath? He could swear he felt something moving.

  HAVE A DRINK.

  “No. I . . .”

  He looked at the bottles in the cubby. There were just two shelves, but with a few dozen bottles lined up. At the very front, there was a bottle of rum that was one-quarter full, but the rest of the bottles . . . They were empty. He moved the rum aside to look at the bottles behind it. On the second shelf. Each neat row. Empty, empty, empty.

  Had he? He didn’t remember drinking them. When had he drunk them?

  “Close it up, okay, Nellie?”

  The panel slid closed.

  You’re tired, Billy. You should go to bed, Billy. Good night, Billy.

  Yes. Yes, he thought. Good night. God. He was tired. He needed to go to sleep. There was nothing more he could do tonight.

  “Good night, Nellie.”

  He left the office, walked next door to the bedroom, and went to sleep. The soft grass-green dot of light was back, and it paced him through the hall and into the bedroom, rode the wall behind him while he brushed his teeth, and then faded until it was nearly imperceptible on the wall by the bed. It stayed there, hovering above him, keeping watch while he slept.

  But that wasn’t the only place Nellie lingered. She was in Shawn’s room. And Wendy’s. And Beth and Rothko’s.

  And Ruth and Rose’s.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  * * *

  BRIGHT AND EARLY

  The adults all did their best to be game, but it was hard to match the enthusiasm of twin seven-year-old girls on Christmas morning. Or to match a rambunctious goldendoodle: Rusty started the morning by stealing a cinnamon roll right off Billy’s plate. Even Nellie seemed excited about Christmas. Her morning wake-up had been positively cheery. Emily did think that Billy looked kind of rough, but he’d gone back to the office to work once everybody else went to bed, and he’d slid into bed at a ghastly hour. At least she knew he hadn’t been drinking.

  The cinnamon rolls were terrific, which made Emily happy. She’d made them ahead of time and then frozen them so that all she had to do was pop them in the oven, warm them up, and then drizzle them with frosting. She might still not love cooking as much as Beth did, but she had, despite herself, gotten better at it. Though, she had to admit, it really did help having Nellie looking over her shoulder. There were times when Nellie creeped the shit out of her, but there were other times when she completely understood why Shawn and Billy were so excited about her.

  Rothko was, indeed, pleased with his scotch, and both Beth and Wendy liked their scarves.

  Shawn opened his T-shirt and gave a huge grin. “Bitchin’!” he said. He held up the vintage Guns N’ Roses shirt for everybody to see. “Why are you laughing?” he asked Wendy.

  She kept laughing but picked up a box and handed it to him. He put down the T-shirt, tore the wrapping paper off the box, and pulled off the lid: nestled in tissue was a vinyl copy of Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction. He held it up and flipped it over. “First pressing? Holy shit. It’s not even opened. How’d you find a cherry copy?”

  The rest of the presents were also hits. Shawn’s were surprisingly tasteful and, for a guy worth as much money as he was, relatively restrained. Emily knew that either Wendy or his personal shopper had taken care of them for him, but they were still nice. All the women, including her, got clothes, and Rothko got a signed poster from a band that Emily had never heard of but that seemed to make him happy. Billy got a beautiful leather jacket that he immediately put on. The girls were pleased with their gifts, too. Toys and books and clothes and art supplies and, better yet, in an envelope from Beth and Rothko, a picture of the two bikes waiting for them back home in Chicago. They both squealed when they saw the picture of the bikes.

  Finally, once nearly everything had been unwrapped, Emily gave Billy the watch. He opened the box and just stared at the Rolex Submariner for a few seconds. He was quiet, and Emily started to feel sick. It was such an expensive thing to buy. What was she thinking spending five thousand dollars on a watch? But then a huge grin broke over his face, and once he had it on his wrist she was glad that she’d done it. He gave her a sterling silver tennis bracelet inset with small diamonds, and even though she had a weird feeling that maybe Nellie had ordered it for him, it was lovely.

  After they finished straightening up, Rothko made eggs and pancakes—something a little more substantial than cinnamon buns—while Shawn and Billy cut up fruit and put out dishes. The girls had woken early enough that by the time they were done eating and cleaning, it was still only nine thirty. It had been the nicest Christmas Emily had celebrated in years. She was glad she’d insisted that Shawn leave his staff behind so there weren’t any strangers buzzing around. Housekeeping would come out after everybody left to get the suites downstairs clean again, but at least until tomorrow, even Shawn’s bodyguards were back in Whiskey Run, staying at the small inn that seemed like it had been built with that very purpose in mind. It was cozy being here with just her family. And that’s what it felt like: family.

  Through the windows, the sky looked heavy. Dangerous. No snow was falling yet, but it was clear that snow was on the way.

  “I want to go sledding, Nellie. What’s the forecast?”

  Snow will begin to fall no later than noon. You can expect significant accumulation. The forecast now calls for as much as twenty inches.

  “Okay,” she said. “Chop-chop. Ruth and Rose, go put on your snow gear. Grown-ups, you, too. Let’s go sledding!”

  I would not advise going out into the woods. The snow will be extremely heavy at times. You should stay close to Eagle Mansion. In fact, I would suggest you stay inside with me, Emily. To stay inside would be the safest course of action.

  “Thanks, Nellie,” Emily said.

  Rose and Ruth looked up from where they were sitting and playing one of their new games. They were both scowling, and Emily was taken aback. What was wrong with going sledding? But they weren’t looking at her, she realized.

  “You should shut up.”

  They said it together, the way they sometimes did, in one voice. It unnerved her when they did that.

  “Girls!” Beth was blushing. “Sorry,” she said to Emily.

  “We weren’t talking to Aunt Emily.”

  Thankfully, it was just one of them this time. Emily thought it might have been Ruth, but they were wearing the same outfits and had been running around a lot. It could have been Rose.

  “We were talking to her,” they said, their voices matched again, beat for beat, tone for tone. “She’s a liar. She promised she would stop, but she’s not stopping. She’s a liar and we don’t want to stay here anymore. We want to go home. We want to go away from her.”

  “You’re being rude,” Beth said.

  Rothko laughed. “Who are they being rude to? Nellie?”

  “Enough,” Beth snapped. She turned back to the girls. “We’re going sledding, and then, after lunch, you’re both taking naps. And if you keep acting like this, you’ll spend some time in your room.”

  They got up off the floor, and Beth marched them down to their room to get
changed.

  Emily saw Billy and Shawn look at each other, but neither said anything, so she went back into the bedroom and put on tights and a warm shirt, pulled out her snow pants and jacket, and headed downstairs. She could see the girls out on the lawn already. They were rolling around in the snow and generally being goofballs. Whatever their concerns had been, they were clearly forgotten. For now.

  “Emily, wait!”

  She turned around to see Shawn jogging down the stairs.

  “You should leave your phone inside, okay? You don’t want it to get wet.”

  “I thought all the Eagle Technology phones were waterproof. That’s what Billy said.” She didn’t add that he’d said it after she’d accidentally dropped hers in a bowl of soup.

  “Or lose it,” Shawn said. “Whatever. A technology-free morning.”

  “It’s upstairs, anyway,” she said. “I’ve sort of gotten out of the habit of carrying it unless I’m going to town. With Nellie, what’s the point of having my phone with me at all times? She handles everything I’d use my phone for anyway.”

  She saw Billy coming down the stairs behind Shawn. He’d been skittish about the elevator since she got back from New York City. She rode it—taking the steps got old, and Nellie always had the doors open and waiting for her—but he said he needed the exercise anyway.

  “No phone, right?” Shawn said. His voice was supposed to be cheery, Emily thought, but there was something wrong with it.

  Billy shook his head. He looked tired to Emily. No wonder. He’d come into their room sometime in the middle of the night, so late that she barely remembered it. The reason he looked tired was simply that he was tired.

  She and Billy each grabbed a toboggan from the coatroom off the main entrance. She spared a glance for Shawn, who stood fidgeting at the bottom of the staircase.

  Outside, there was a chill and a real heaviness to the air. She could feel the barometer dropping. Or did it rise when a storm threatened? She could never remember. Either way, the clouds spilling over the river weren’t kidding around. It was pretty in its own way, though. There was ice spidering out from the edges of the banks of the Saint Lawrence, but most of the water ran free; with the snow that was already on the ground fortified by the fresh dump of close to six inches yesterday, it really did look like something out of a commercial. They wouldn’t have been having a white Christmas like this in Seattle, she thought.