Chapter 4: Digital Mood Swings
The echo of Toni’s words—“who holds the key to the archive”—lingered in Alex’s mind for days. It colored her runs, the rhythmic thump of her trainers on the pavement matching the refrain. It hovered during team meetings, a dissonant note in the familiar banter of the locker room. She found herself listening more intently to the mundane hum of her own apartment, wondering what a system like Sentinel might be quietly cataloguing.
She decided to push it from her mind. It wasn’t her business. Toni was a closed book, neatly shelved behind a door of polished steel. But on Thursday afternoon, carrying her groceries from the lift, Alex saw the door to the penthouse slightly ajar. Not open, just not fully sealed. A thin sliver of light cut across the dark marble of the hallway.
Alex slowed. Her instincts screamed two things at once: walk away, and check if everything’s okay. The latter, honed by years of captaincy, won. She approached quietly, her shopping bags rustling.
“Toni?” she called, not too loudly, just outside the door.
There was a rustle, a sharp intake of breath. The door was pulled open fully. Toni stood there, dressed not in a suit but in dark, fitted track pants and a simple grey t-shirt. Her hair was down, a cascade of black waves that softened the severe lines of her face. She looked younger, and strangely, more tired. In her hand was the dreaded tablet.
“Alex.” Toni’s voice was flat.
“Door was open a crack. Just wanted to make sure…” Alex trailed off, noticing the slight tremor in Toni’s hand holding the device. “Everything alright?”
“The system is malfunctioning,” Toni stated, her jaw tight. “It will not accept my command to engage the privacy screen for the west-facing windows. The sunset is… intrusive.”
Alex bit the inside of her cheek to stop a smile. An intrusive sunset. Right. She nodded seriously. “The manual override is probably stuck. Can I take a look?”
Toni hesitated, then stepped back in silent assent. Alex followed her in, leaving her groceries by the door. The penthouse was bathed in the fierce, orange glow of the setting sun. It was spectacular, painting the concrete walls with fire and pooling liquid gold on the floor. Toni stood in the middle of it, looking exposed and irritated, like a creature caught in a floodlight.
“See?” Toni gestured with the tablet at the floor-to-ceiling windows, which were blazingly transparent.
“I see. It’s a tough life,” Alex said, her tone gentle and teasing. She took the tablet. The screen showed the control panel for the ‘Ambient Environment Settings’. It was a sub-menu Alex hadn’t explored. “Okay, so privacy screen is unresponsive. But look, there’s a whole suite of mood settings here. Maybe we can bypass it. Give the system a different job to do.”
“Mood settings.” Toni sounded deeply skeptical.
“Aye. It can change the lighting, play sounds, the whole vibe. Like… here.” Alex tapped one. “Rainforest.”
A soft, green-tinged light washed over the room, replacing the fiery orange with a dappled, canopy-filtered emerald. A gentle, pervasive sound began to rise—the distant chatter of monkeys, the chorus of cicadas, the steady, tranquil patter of rain on broad leaves. The air itself seemed to grow thicker, cooler.
Toni blinked. She stood perfectly still, listening. Alex watched as, almost imperceptibly, the rigid line of her shoulders softened. Her head tilted a fraction. The sound of the artificial rain was deeply, profoundly relaxing.
“This is… acceptable,” Toni murmured after a long moment, her eyes closed.
“Good.” Alex scrolled. “There’s a few others. ‘Mountain Chalet’. ‘Ocean Sunrise’. Oh, here’s ‘Date Night’.”
She tapped it before she thought better of it.
The rainforest sounds vanished. The lights plunged into a deep, velvety indigo, then warmed to a low, dusky rose concentrated in soft pools around the room. Smoky, slow-tempo jazz curled from the speakers, a saxophone weaving a lazy, intimate melody.
It was instantly, unbearably sensual.
“No,” Toni said immediately, her voice sharp. “Change it.”
“Right, sorry, that’s… a bit much.” Alex fumbled with the tablet, her cheeks warming. The atmosphere was so thick it felt hard to breathe.
“Immediately.”
“Working on it.” Alex stabbed at the screen. The list scrolled, a blur of options. Her thumb slipped.
‘Rave Mode’ activated.
The rose lights died, replaced by a violent, strobing multicolor blast that turned the penthouse into a seizure-inducing vortex. The smooth jazz was brutally sliced off by a thunderous, pulsing electronic beat that shook the very floor. A voice boomed, euphoric and demanding, over a driving four-on-the-floor kick drum: “BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! I WANT YOU IN MY ROOM!”
Toni flinched as if struck, a hand flying up to shield her eyes from the strobe.
But then something else happened. Something human.
As the relentless, tribal beat hammered through the speakers, Toni’s other hand, the one at her side, clenched and then released. Her head gave a tiny, almost imperceptible twitch. And then, for two blinding, pulsating seconds, her hips shifted. A small, subconscious sway. A memory in muscle. It was there and gone, suppressed instantly, her body snapping back to its rigid stillness. But Alex had seen it. The ghost of a person who could move.
“OFF!” Toni roared, lunging for the tablet in Alex’s hands.
Alex was faster. She swiped, jabbing the ‘off’ icon with relief. The music and lights cut out with a jarring finality, plunging the penthouse into a ringing silence, save for the faint, natural hum of the city thirty stories below. The only light now was the last deep purple bleed of twilight at the windows.
The two women stood in the sudden dark, breathing heavily. The after-image of the strobes danced in Alex’s vision. The thumping beat echoed in her bones.
“I’m so sorry,” Alex breathed, genuine contrition in her voice. “My thumb slipped, I—”
“Give it to me.” Toni’s voice was low, a frayed wire humming with current.
Alex handed the tablet over. Toni’s fingers closed around it like a vise. In the dim light, her face was a study in control violently reinstated. But her eyes were wide, the pupils huge in the darkness.
“The function is ‘Bali Rain’,” Alex said quietly, pointing a careful finger at the screen as Toni held it. “The rainforest one. It’s the third one down. It’s nice.”
Toni didn’t look at her. She stared at the tablet, her thumb hovering. Then she tapped, precisely. The soft green light and the gentle, artificial rain returned, filling the heavy silence.
She took a deep, shuddering breath, absorbing the calm. “Thank you,” she said, not looking at Alex. The words were taut, pulled from a place of deep, reluctant obligation.
“You…” Alex started, then stopped. The image of that tiny, betraying hip sway was burned into her mind. “You’ve heard that song before.”
Toni’s head snapped toward her. In the eerie green rainforest light, her expression was unreadable, a mask carved from stone and shadow. “Everyone has heard that song.”
“Not like that,” Alex said softly. “It’s a reaction. In the muscles.”
A long silence stretched between them, filled only with the fake sound of gentle rain and distant, digital monkeys. Toni turned her gaze back to the now-darkened windows, her reflection a pale ghost in the glass.
“You should take your groceries home, Alex,” she said, her voice finally steady, devoid of all inflection. “They will spoil.”
It was a dismissal, clear and cold. But it was also an admission. An acknowledgment that Alex had seen something—a flicker of a past life, a secret self buried under steel and paranoia. Alex nodded, taking a step back toward the door.
“The privacy screen should reset itself by morning,” she offered.
Toni gave no sign she’d heard. She stood silhouetted against the vast cityscape, a solitary figure in the manufactured jungle glow, listening to a rain that didn’t exist.
Alex collected her shopping bags and let herself out. The door shut with its definitive, silent click. She stood in the hall, the mundane weight of milk and bread in her hands grounding her. The thump of the music was gone, replaced by the quiet of her own thoughts, which were now racing.
She had come to fix a glitch. She had uncovered a tremor. Something—or someone—had once made Toni move. And that was a mystery far more compelling than any malfunctioning smart home system.