Hal's automation nightmare

Hal had a serious problem. He woke up this morning with a severe case of laryngitis. A few years ago, that would have been an inconvenience, but it wouldn't have been particularly serious. Back then, if you couldn't talk to Alexa or Siri or Cortana or Google Assistant, you just manually sent a text message or typed an email. But ever since "The World Hacker" incident ten years ago, manual entry like the mouse or keyboard had been eliminated. A.I. had become so sophisticated that now, for security reasons, you not only could talk to your devices, you had to talk to them to be be able to do anything.

Unfortunately, the device makers, while eager to provide that capability, were not so quick to allow the devices to talk to each other. Not only that, each device had to have it's own unique name and had to be addressed by that name to operate it. To make it even worse, all of the devices had been trained to recognize his commands over anyone else's. Of course that included all communications and transportation devices.

Hal's first inkling of the seriousness of the problem came when his alarm went off. He had named his assistant in the bedroom "B.A." with a dual meaning - first, of course as "Bedroom Assistant", but he liked to think of it as "B.A. Baracus" from the old "A-Team" show. When he attempted to say "B.A, turn off the alarm.", all that he could get out was a scratchy wheezing sound that of course could not be recognized by "B.A." or any other device. That meant the alarm would continue for at least an hour, maybe more.

Hal really loved his gadgets and had been an early adopter of a lot of automated devices including his shower and toilet so his morning routine was thrown off completely. As he moved on to the kitchen, he realized that he could not open his refrigerator and had to resort to eating dry cereal - very dry, since he couldn't get to any milk.

His living room assistant (L.R.A.) that he called "Laura" wasn't any more helpful that B.A. had been. He couldn't even watch TV and the boredom was beginning to get to him.

He knew he should call his boss, but had no way to to do that and couldn't even unlock the deadbolt on his door to go outside. Even if he could get to his car, he wouldn't be able to unlock it or start it. During the day his boss called him three times and his mother called four times but he couldn't answer his phone. This was turning into a nightmare.

By eleven o'clock that night, Hal was hungry, dirty and exhausted and, of course, still sick, and finally collapsed into his bed. After a fitful night, his alarm dutifully began ringing at 6 AM starting round two of his descent into automation hell.

Hal was no more able to speak than he had been the day before and with the lack of sleep on top of his worsening virus, he began wondering if there would be any escape from this disaster. He vaguely remembered that there was supposed to be some kind of fail-safe procedure for this kind of thing, but in his weakened condition, he just couldn't remember what it was. In fact, he was pretty sure he hadn't bothered to learn what it was.

By 3 PM he was so desperate, he had begun pounding on his front window trying to get someone's attention, but nobody seemed to notice. After what seemed like at least an hour of that, he collapsed to the floor and lapsed into unconsciousness.

He was startled awake by a crash as his front door was broken open and two police officers rushed in with gun's drawn, demanding that he identify himself. They had apparently been alerted by neighbors and had been pounding on his door and yelling, but he hadn't heard. He was relieved that someone had finally found him, but at the same time terrified that he might be shot as an intruder. Fortunately he was able to point to his throat and the officers realized that he was unable to speak.

Hal had to make explanations to his boss and his mother, who he moved in with for a few days until his laryngitis cleared up and his door was repaired. He was soon moved back into his own house, but was very careful to learn the fail-safe procedure for his security system. This was a nightmare he had no intention of repeating.