Ava Calling
CHHHHHHHH-CHUH-CHK-CKCKCKCK-CUHHHHHHHH…
“These Ava boxes are meant to make life easier, not harder,” Wayne huffed to no one in particular as he trotted hurriedly up the stairs, “Three times - THREE TIMES - I’ve had to go upstairs this morning to fix this stupid thing already…”
All the while, the small grey Ava box kept repeating the same full-throated cackle of static.
“Doesn’t even know the answer to most of the questions I ask it…”
A few moments of silence would pass.
“And now this bloody NOISE…”
And then the noise would play again.
Red-faced at the unexpected exertion, he puffed out his cheeks and put his hand onto the newel post to steady himself for a moment.
CHHHHHHHH-CHUH-CHK-CKCKCKCK-CUHHHHHHHH…
The noise shook Wayne back into action.
“Right,” he barked as he swept into the otherwise empty bedroom.
“YOU!” he stabbed his finger towards the Ava box, which was part way through its latest barrage of atonal chattering, “You are getting unplugged!”
Wayne leant over the chest of drawers and followed the wire from the back of the Ava and down behind the unit. His fingers explored further down the cabling, recoiling at the brush of dust bunnies, before continuing to snake down and then…
“Can’t… quite… reach… the…” Wayne’s voice stretched and strained along with the tendons in his arm before he expelled a frustrated “DAMN IT!”
He pulled his arm back and it retracted from the crevice like an errant tape measure.
Red faced again, he collapsed down to the floor and sighed to himself, “This junk was meant to be a little bit of company. To make my life easier…”
All the while, Ava kept up the incessant noise.
CHHHHHHHH-CHUH-CHK-CKCKCKCK-CUHHHHHHHH…
When he was in the same room as it, the sheer volume alone cut through Wayne’s skull and made his teeth vibrate.
The commencement of yet another salvo of static shook him to his feet once more.
“Right! I’ll move this, slide the whole chest of drawers out a bit and then squeeze my arm down there and just pull the whole plug. Just cut if off before it does this again…”
Wayne got to his feet and positioned himself at one corner of the unit.
It was a big chest of drawers - one he had shared with Jan, for pants and socks and pyjamas, mainly - but it was that cheap Swedish MDF rubbish she had liked, so it wasn’t heavy so much as awkward.
Wayne bent his knees and wrapped his fingers around the nearest leg of the furniture. He spent a moment weighing up the task and psyching himself up for the makeshift lift-drag manoeuvre.
Midway through his preparations the Ava started its metallic babbling again.
CHHHHHHHH-CHUH-CHK-CKCKCKCK-CUHHHHHHHH…
“Oh, fuck THAT,” he exclaimed and then strained to wrench the chest of drawers away from the wall.
At first it hardly moved.
Readjusting his grip slightly, Wayne punctuated the next effort with a “Come ON!” and he managed to create a gap big enough to squeeze more of his body down between the furniture and the wall.
He scrambled to his feet and muttered a soft “Yessssssss” under his breath.
“Now, you stupid box, we will see who is boss in this house,” and he began to sidle downward towards the plug, the chipped edges digging into his ribs and hip.
He breathed in, sucked in his stomach and stretched down towards the plug.
CHHHHHHHH-CHUH-CHK?——CKCKCK-ELP-CUHHHHHHHH…
A beat of silence.
Wayne’s eyes widened.
His skin prickled.
Another beat.
He realised he’d stopped breathing and he gasped for a mouthful of air until the edge of the chest of drawers dug its sharp MDF fingers into his side, making him yelp and involuntarily break the heavy stillness of the room.
CHHHHHHHH-CHUH-CHK?——CKCKCK-ELP-CUHHHHHHHH…
He unfurled himself from the cold embrace between the wall and the furniture, staring at the Ava while he did so.
It sat silently for a moment, eyelessly staring back.
CHHHHHHHH-CHUH-CHK?——CKCKCK-ELP-CUHHHHHHHH…
Even though he expected it this time, the outburst still made Wayne jump.
It was different.
It had more of an inflection to it, almost like the box was asking a question and then, well then the second part it sounded like a word.
Part of a word at least.
To Wayne’s ear it sounded like… well, it sounded like the word ‘help’.
His blood turned to ice again and he could feel it pulsing through his veins.
He reached behind him and felt for the edge of the bed and lowered himself slowly onto it.
Silence started to fill the room again.
Wayne’s eyes were fixed on the Ava.
His breath slowed and quietened.
Waiting, expecting.
The moment hung.
Beads of sweat formed on Wayne’s brow.
Silence.
CHHHHHHHH-CHUH-CHK?——CKCKCK-H-ELP-CUHHHHHHHH…
_________________________________________________________________________
Wayne had tried everything.
Well, at least everything he could think of doing.
The first thing he did was go to the Ava website and download the PDF of the instruction manual.
This drew a blank as none of the FAQs or troubleshooting guides related to ‘strange scrambled messages’ or anything remotely similar, but it did highlight the customer service chat.
And, after an hour of circling the drain of AI responses, he was finally forwarded onto a real human, although their suggestions didn’t extend much further past turning it off and on again or just boxing it up and sending it back.
No, Wayne needed more than a fix.
He needed answers.
So, with all official channels exhausted, he took his investigation online, delving deep into increasingly sparsely-populated subreddits for the faintest glimmer of a thread that could lead him out of the labyrinth.
Days became weeks became months - and meanwhile the noise itself kept coming through, intermittently piercing the relative quiet of the house with its static chatter.
The volume couldn’t be adjusted, so Wayne had taken to sleeping in the front room and smothering the Ava box with a pile of old blankets and cushions when he wasn’t listening to it. Although he was listening to it more and more with each passing day - trying desperately to pick out a clue, something new, something he had missed.
He had recorded the static crackle onto his phone of course - and subsequently uploaded it onto a forum - but all that did was draw out the conspiracy nuts and bots, with answers ranging from angry spirits to how he could grow his Instagram following and/or increase his sexual prowess.
One comment did stand out though.
User VerpissDicky might have been joking when they wrote ‘sounds like u shd buy a book & learn electronics lmao’, but it definitely got Wayne thinking.
Maybe he could have a tinker around.
Maybe it was only a simple thing to fix so he could hear the whole thing or… well it couldn’t hurt at least, right?
—CKCKCK-H-ELP-CUHHHHHHHH…
Wayne bundled up the blankets and cushions from on top of the Ava and tossed them onto the bed.
He dug through one of the kitchen drawers to find a set of miniature screwdrivers they had got in crackers a few Christmases ago. Jan had always said it would be a good idea to keep them - just in case they were useful one day. Wayne guessed she had been right all along, although he wished she had been there to see her prophecy come true.
Wayne carefully picked up the Ava box and rolled it over in his hand. He scanned the underside for any indentations or markings, and swiftly identified a likely point of ingress from a strategically placed screw.
He found a similarly sized and shaped tool and set to work, loosening the grip of the small fastening and cradling the two halves as they fell apart.
Inside, the green circuit boards were distressingly boring and - to Wayne at least - utterly esoteric.
He lifted them closer to his face, his eyes studying them for any revealing detail, but to no avail. He tentatively poked at some of the circuitry with the screwdriver, more in hope than anything.
Nothing.
Wayne sighed and carefully put everything back on top of the chest of drawers.
The only thing unusual was the silence.
Wayne mused to himself that this was probably the longest Ava had been quiet for a few weeks now and…
CHHHHHHHH-RECEIVING-CHK?——DO-CKCK-HELP-CUHHHHH-TOO LATE…
Wayne froze, his blood ice.
He held his breath for one, two, thr…
ARE YOU RECEIVING THIS? DO NOT TRY TO HELP! IF THIS MESSAGE COMES THROUGH, IT IS ALREADY TOO LATE…
The voice rang out, finally clear for the first time.
His eyes widening, Wayne, turned to look out of the bedroom window.
The sky was already filling with blood red flames licking through the clouds.
ARE YOU RECEIVING THIS? DO NOT TRY TO HELP! IF THIS MESSAGE COMES THROUGH, IT IS ALREADY TOO LATE…
Clearer still, emphatic.
Wayne turned his attention back to the Ava, half dismantled on the chest of drawers, which was starting to shake and rattle as if from the tightening grasp of a giant unseen hand.
The bedroom flooded crimson.
ARE YOU RECEIVING THIS? DO NOT TRY TO HELP! IF THIS MESSAGE COMES THROUGH, IT IS ALREADY TOO LATE…
ARE YOU RECEIVING THIS? DO NOT TRY TO HELP! IF THIS MESSAGE COMES THROUGH, IT IS ALREADY TOO LATE…
ARE YOU RECEIVING THIS? DO NOT TRY TO HELP! IF THIS MESSAGE COMES THROUGH, IT IS ALREADY TOO LATE…
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