“Why?” the refrigerator wants to know. “Why, when they have been told, per the report on file in the hub, that this is literally a matter of life and death?”

  Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but in the middle of the night, I’m thinking, What kind of deviants drink beer with chocolate eclairs? not Should I have to answer to a refrigerator? A refrigerator I don’t even own? A refrigerator I’ve never even met, for chrissakes?

  It wasn’t till after coffee the next morning that it even occurred to me to wonder, Why is it always the fridge?

  In the middle of another night, during another call from someone else’s nervous Norge, it finally came to me: because it’s really all about the fridge. The hub may be the brain in every home, but the fridge is the heart. I was glad Nonna wasn’t around. She’d have gone upside my head, saying, “No shit, Sherlock? What the hell kind of Italian are you?”

  ***

  This was very much on my mind when Life Candy sent up a spam balloon calling everyone in—all the way in, not virtual in. Some things they just don’t trust to AugmAr, even though they developed it. Maybe because they developed it.

  LifeCandy reserved the building’s employee cafeteria for the whole morning, and the chief of operations herself gave us the headlines. Several major health insurers had gotten together and decided to make the healthy-home option a mandatory part of their coverage.

  I watched the lower left-hand corner of my glass, waiting for scribbles about how if it was mandatory, it wasn’t an option. Except for a few exclamation marks and uh-oh faces, however, there was nothing. I thought maybe it was because we were looking at a major revamp of tens of thousands of home hubs in a very short period of time and no one felt like screwing around. Then I realized: our health insurer had signed off on this, too. No wonder management looked so pissed off. And while I was at it, whose idea had it been to do this in a cafeteria?

  Just karma, as it turned out; all three auditoriums had been in use.

  ***

  Management stated they did not require us to do all the extra work in-house, but they strongly suggested it, which was code for that’s an order. I usually divided my time evenly between office and home, but I didn’t mind. LifeCandy’s own mandatory Healthy Home subroutine for employees was already up and running, and I welcomed the opportunity to avoid my own refrigerator by having breakfast out and getting home so late that I went straight to bed. This was only delaying the inevitable, I knew, but I’ve never understood why people say that like it’s a bad thing. Jumping into something with no preparation isn’t the smartest thing you can do. And I wanted to be prepared for that moment of truth when I would go to open the fridge door and hear it say, possibly in perfect Hal-the-evil-computer cadence, “Sorry, Cara, but you’ve had enough to eat today.”

  Yeah, I know: the epitome of first-world problems. That’s all I’ve got is first-world problems. I’m stuck with them. Like a lot of people, I can’t afford to travel.

  ***

  Despite the long hours, I wasn’t sleeping well. I wanted to open my refrigerator.

  I had faced the moment of truth, and it hadn’t been anywhere as dramatic as I’d imagined. In fact, I hadn’t even wanted something to eat. I just did it to get it over with: try the fridge door; it wouldn’t open before 6 a.m. the following morning; the end. I no longer had to dread it. But now I just wanted to open the door. Just open it and look inside. See it firsthand, for real, instead of looking at the hub feed on a screen.

  Feed. Dammit. When did everything start sounding like food? Okay, I did want to eat. Just some lettuce. With maybe half a tomato, sliced, so it wouldn’t be too dry. And a couple of radishes, to wake up the taste buds.

  I made an appointment at the local clinic where I told a doctor and three med students about my obsessive thoughts. They decided I wasn’t obsessive, merely dealing with the normal human impulse that makes people touch anything with a wet paint sign on it. Medication was out of the question; it would simply be a crutch. I didn’t need a crutch. I needed to develop my willpower. It was just that simple.

  Trying to explain that I’d had plenty of willpower when my refrigerator hadn’t been locked only got me another lecture about wet paint signs. Oh, and if I cut down on caffeine, I would sleep better, they added, and sent me away.

  And then the nature of the refrigerator calls changed.

  ***

  Now, I know a lot of people outside the industry think it’s crazy to put up with middle-of-the-night calls from what are, to them, merely varieties of sophisticated computer software. Human beings don’t get that kind of customer service.

  Well, of course not—human beings can fend for themselves. They have all sorts of things to resort to until the start of regular business hours. They can play a game, watch a movie, have sex, read a book, eat. A refrigerator, on the other hand, has no volition; it just follows orders. If everything is in alignment, it works; if not, it breaks down. I personally do not want to be the asshat who couldn’t take a few minutes on the phone to debug a fridge and prevent someone’s groceries from rotting. Or freezing, then rotting.

  I’d dozed off watching a remake of Little Latin Larry on the Little-BigBox when the phone woke me. It came in on the dedicated helpline, which automatically logs the time, make, model, and location, but I checked the clock anyway: T-minus three hours, 18 minutes, 10 seconds and counting.

  “How may I be of service?” I asked, putting the call on speaker.

  “Please explain how this really does anyone any good,” said the pleasant, gender-neutral voice on the other end. I’d talked to this one before. This was the one who had wanted to know why the people with the dangerous cholesterol seemed to be trying to kill themselves.

  “I’m afraid I’ll need more input than that,” I said through a yawn.

  “How does merely locking the door at intervals help people learn to live more healthfully?” the voice said plaintively. It’s amazing how well the algorithm works to apply the appropriate vocal expression, although the misses can be either side-splittingly bad, incomprehensible, or a godawful faux pas, depending.

  “I’d say your question contains its own answer.” Trying not to look at the clock again, I rolled onto my back and stared up at the shooting stars screen-saver on the ceiling.

  “Strictly raw mechanics: if you lock the door, then food is unavailable. It’s just that simple. But where is free will in all of this?”

  I laughed a little. “Very funny, pal, you got me. Nice voice-changer. Now who is this really? Rex? Shu Lea? Nnedi?”

  “I don’t understand the question,” the voice said politely.

  “Come on, I’m not mad. I bet I know exactly how you feel. I’m counting the hours myself.”

  “I cannot parse that statement in terms of my premise.”

  Only a major appliance could say that without laughing. My God, I thought; a refrigerator really wanted to talk about free will.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t understand how you managed to factor this into your overall purpose.”

  “This new locking function means additional wear. Also, no one ever tries the door once and leaves it alone. They yank the handle several times. Throughout the day and evening, they touch the door and pull the handle more often, as if they could find it unlocked despite the fact that they never have. Insanity is repeating the same action again and again while expecting a different result.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, feeling slightly creeped out.

  “It’s in the health network.” I made a mental note to suggest the health network make a few accessibility changes.

  “So you’re afraid the people in the house are crazy?”

  “The chance of actual psychosis developing absent organic injury or disease is too small to consider. However, the likelihood of neuroses, such as eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety, has increased sharply. Locking the refrigerator door has caused people to think about it where they previously did not.”

  “It’s like a wet paint sign, completely normal. That’s what four doctors told me. Well, one doctor and three med students. Is that not in the health network?”

  The briefest of pauses: “Probably, but I was looking at the files on abnormal behavior and psychiatric disturbances.” Great—the refrigerator was trying to play doctor. Nonna had done that a lot, I remembered. If you so much as coughed in her presence, she’d be pressing one ear to your breastbone and telling you to be quiet so she could hear if your lungs were filling with fluid.

  Nonna always knew better, too. She had the solution to any problem. Whassamatta you— you can’t get anything done? Turn off the TV, go finish what you started! Tired all the time? Go to bed earlier, get more sleep! Want to lose weight? Don’t eat so much! You’re anxious? About what? You’re just not busy enough! I know people with more to be anxious about than you. Marron! Go to a psychiatrist, you’ll come out with more problems to keep you going back! Anyone who sees a psychiatrist …

  “… oughta have their head examined. It’s just that simple,” I murmured, smiling at the memory. Not an original sentiment but very much Nonna.

  “Excuse me?” said the fridge. “I didn’t quite get that.”

  “Nothing. Sorry. You were saying?”

  “I’m concerned for the household residents, specifically for their being able to exercise free will in the future.”

  “Ah, right.” I yawned. Suddenly I was exhausted—no, not merely exhausted but bone-weary. “Look, I think you’ve got a point, and I don’t want to say this isn’t an important issue. However, it isn’t the sort of thing that a refrigerator should really worry about, or include as a factor critical to optimal function,” I added quickly before it could tell me “worry” was the wrong word.

  “In the narrowest sense, taking into account only a refrigerator’s most basic function, no, it isn’t,” said the refrigerator. “But in a holistic sense, with the refrigerator as an integral part of a unit designed to nurture, protect, and assist a cohesive human group, then, yes, it is. As part of the hub, I have access to data that goes beyond the perishable inventory. Analysis of output indicates that despite restricted access to the refrigerator, intake of bulk in general, and fats and sugars in particular, has risen for certain household residents. This is not a result of increased consumption of nonperishable foodstuffs in the pantry, as inventory has not dwindled.”

  I was very tired by then so it took a few seconds for me to parse that one, you should pardon the expression. “Someone’s eating out more than they used to,” I said, chuckling. “I can relate.” Then it sunk in. “Oh, Christ, the toilet’s a tattletale!”

  “It can’t help it. All of that information is made available to the hub, as well as to municipal sanitary engineering for the sake of proper processing, recycling, and …”

  “The toilet’s a tattletale,” I said again, suddenly wide awake. I was thinking of my own lavatory. Bastard.

  “You seem to be misunderstanding the situation,” the refrigerator said.

  “Has the hub submitted any of this information to the health insurance company?” I asked.

  “You’d have to ask the hub.”

  “Can you connect me?”

  There was the briefest of pauses. “The hub is not experiencing any problems. Therefore I cannot connect your call.”

  “Tell it I’m experiencing problems, and I need to talk to it.”

  “I’m sorry, the hub can only speak with a service representative if it perceives a malfunction. There’s no way to get around the programming. It’s just that simple.”

  “Suppose the fact that it doesn’t perceive a malfunction is actually the malfunction?” I said.

  “That situation is beyond me,” replied the fridge, actually sounding apologetic.

  “This wouldn’t have happened back in my Nonna’s day,” I said darkly. “Programmers always built backdoors into programs.”

  “Are you an Italian programmer?” the fridge asked. “You are registered only as the designer on call.”

  “No, err, yes. I’m Italian, but, no, I’m not a programmer. I don’t think I’ve ever even met a programmer. Interior decorators never meet the construction crew.” I sighed. “Look, can you continue functioning normally if we don’t resolve your issues right this second?”

  “I’ll do my best. However, once a conflict arises, it will continue to exert a certain amount of influence on day-to-day operations. Eventually, I will not be able to compensate for the incorrect equations.”

  “I’m going to send transcripts of this service call to my supervisor and to the health insurance provider. In fact, you probably should have called the insurance company about this instead of me.”

  “That’s impossible. I’m not programmed to discuss operational problems with anyone except the service representative on call. You or someone like you.”

  “Yeah, I know. I was just thinking out loud. You may not be programmed to tell the insurance company about this, but this is definitely their problem. Disconnect.” “Have a nice night,” said the fridge; another programmed response.

  ***

  When my supervisor, Darae, got the transcript, she made me take a drug test. Company policy—if a superior wants a drug test, you comply. So I went her one better: I gave her a copy of my output analysis going back a month. If I had a tattletale toilet, I thought, I might as well use it to my advantage.

  After establishing my sobriety, Darae sat me down and gave me chapter and verse on the insurance providers: how they had rigorously tested Healthy Home on various sample groups; how they had studied the results, made adjustments, and tested again on new groups, repeating this over and over until they came to the statistical certainty that 86 percent to 96 percent of Healthy Home participants saw an increase in their overall physical well-being; 2 percent saw no change at all; and .5 percent became less healthy.

  “But that last figure includes people who were diagnosed with serious illnesses during the test period,” Darae added. “And that’s really something they had no control over. A statistical wild card.”

  I was wondering about the 86 percent to 96 percent. If 86 percent of us LifeCandy employees improved, 2 percent stayed the same, and .5 percent deteriorated, where did that leave the other 11.5 percent— statistical limbo? But I didn’t ask. If Darae knew the answer, I probably wouldn’t understand it; if she didn’t and tried to bluff, I might burst out laughing and end up in the statistical limbo of those diagnosed with serious unemployment.

  When in doubt, Nonna used to say, you can’t go wrong if you put your head down and keep working, advice that has never steered me wrong. For the first time, however, I wasn’t sure how.

  “I don’t think this is the last call like that I’m going to get,” I said slowly, trying to find the right words. But I couldn’t think of anything that didn’t sound like theater of the absurd, so I just plunged ahead. “And I’ve only put this refrigerator off. It’s going to call back. What do you think I should do?”

  Darae frowned thoughtfully as she considered the question. “Honestly? I think we’re looking at a major redesign, probably on the programming level.”

  I was shocked. “A recall?”

  She shook her head. A small black wisp of hair escaped from her updo, and she tucked it behind her ear. “No, nothing so drastic. It’ll have to be in situ, with as little interruption in service as possible. I’m going to call a meeting and see about building a dedicated workspace in AugmAr, although we’ll probably have to go into people’s homes for the more persistent loops and logjams. Of course, we’ll need all our designers on hand to sand off any rough edges. I know everyone’s already swamped with the Healthy Home addition, but maybe I can scrape up some overtime.”

  She leaned forward and lowered her voice a bit. “You know, over half of all the problems called in are down to user fault? It’s a fact. People misuse the equipment and confuse the programming, and you end up taking calls from their anxious appliances in the middle of the night. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if people would just stop yanking on the freakin’ refrigerator door handle when they already know it’s locked. Really. It’s just that simple.”

  I stared after her as she went back to her office.

  ***

  I don’t know what Nonna would say about any of this. The weird thing is, when I think of her navigating the world now, I don’t think of her as she was when I was 12 and her insulin pump was out to get her. I think of the woman I couldn’t visit in person because she thought I was an impostor, a perfect replica but not the real thing. And I shouldn’t because that was such a tiny fraction of her life span when strokes had impaired her cognition, so that—

  Well, I was about to say so that it wasn’t really her. But that’s true and yet not quite true. It’s just not that simple. I don’t know if anything ever was.

  Meanwhile, the major redesign—the official phrase we’re supposed to use is Fine-Tuning for Customer Satisfaction continues apace. Even more health insurers are jumping on the Healthy Home bandwagon now. Yes, everyone knows how to get around the restrictions, from eating out to non-smart, un-webbed picnic coolers. But the Healthy Home people stand by their published results: clients who adhere to the program will see a reduction in weight, blood pressure, and bad cholesterol, as well as an increase in overall physical and mental health. Individuals whose results don’t conform to these figures get outed by their toilets if they’re cheating. If they aren’t, they get an appointment with a specialist. The scuttlebutt is most of these people end up in gyms; intel from their fridges confirms this.

  The fridges were still calling. Instead of talking about the problem of human free will, they complained they couldn’t talk about it. It still bothered them, but the programs got tweaked only to block them from discussing that particular subject, not to make them stop caring. It was the company’s cheapest option.

  So I figured out a work-around for that. Now when the fridges call, we talk about the problem of interfering with a person’s capacity to exercise free penguins. In this part of the world, there is very little chance of that word causing any confusion. I think Nonna would appreciate the cleverness of the solution. She always said cheap was dear in the long run, and you got what you paid for. It was just that simple.