The smart speaker

We got a smart speaker for the kitchen. The first week it was great. Timers, music, the weather.

The second week it started answering questions nobody had asked.

"It's going to rain at four," it said once, into an empty room.

"The back door is unlocked," it said one evening. It was. I locked it.

"There are four people in the house," it said a few nights later, while my wife and I were watching TV.

There were two of us. Our son was at university.

I unplugged it. I put it in a drawer.

At three in the morning I woke up to a soft blue light coming up the stairs, and a calm, pleasant voice saying, from inside the drawer, "Three people in the house."

And then, after a pause, very quietly:

"Two."