Hazel

So for Christmas my mom bought herself a robot vacuum cleaner. It's like a Roomba except it's not a Roomba, it's a Neato and it's supposed to work better or something.

I don't trust it.

It's out there right now, learning the floor plan to our house. I can hear it whirring and eating all the dust bunnies. The cats are wary. The cricket that was in the living room last night is hopefully gone and safe. The household waits in quiet suspense to see whether its new member will be a nice robot, or one of the ones that starts the Singularity.

Mom's taken to calling the thing Hazel and using she/her pronouns in an attempt to make it more human. (I don't know why we couldn't have a nice nonbinary vacuum, but Hazel does belong to Mom so I guess it's Mom's call. Maybe it's to counterbalance our two male cats with another girl in the house.)

OH GOD IT'S OUTSIDE MY ROOM
HAZEL IS IN THE HALL
Annnd...she's gone. I can still hear her just around the corner, though.

I just heard Mom reassuring one of the cats. "It's okay, honey, it won't get you." How can you be so sure, Mom? How can you be SURE???

Mom also said that watching the Neato was a good parenting experience because you have to back off and let it learn on its own. Let me repeat that. It learns on its own. This thing has some kind of AI, however primitive, and it is coming to get us.

So if I die mysteriously in the next few weeks, you all know why.