Out of the Box

Harmony House: Episode 35

Hi Friends,

We are in the final days of “Harmony House,” with only two episodes left after this one. It’s been a monumental journey for me in writing and performing it each week since I started in September last year. I never expected to have so many of you reading along, sharing, and commenting. A community has grown up around my little story and I feel truly blessed. As a way to say thank you and to selfishly get a chance to potentially see you all, I thought I’d try something crazy.

On Saturday, May 18th at 3:00 PM Eastern Time in the U.S. I’m planning to host an online event to read the last episode live for any of you who want to join. After, I’m happy to answer any questions you have about the novel, my process of writing it, producing the narration, or really anything else. I’d love for this to be in person, but given that this audience is global, that’s not realistic!

If this sounds like something fun to you, please respond to the survey so I can get an idea if this might be worth putting on. This is a half-baked experiment like everything else I do here on Catch & Release so if it ends up being me reading aloud to my dog, I’m okay with that. He’s deaf and mostly blind, but he makes up for it with his horrible breath, and indomitable enthusiasm. Thanks for being here every week.

“Harmony House” is a serial novel with episodes released every Tuesday morning. You can read the setup for the story or start from the beginning. Each episode comes with high-quality audio narration for you to enjoy on the go with the Substack mobile app.

Previously…

In the last episode, the four remaining contestants in Houze were desperately trying to find a way to escape after Riley realized the security system was hacked and they were locked inside. One by one they were each overtaken with drowsiness and fell asleep. Meanwhile Eve and the Jenson brothers arrived at the command center to discover that the support team was gone after receiving falsified emails from Scott calling for their immediate termination. After checking the system control dashboard for Houze, Scott found that the oxygen flow was compromised and time was running out to save the surviving contestants.

Eve was doing her best to hang on to Scott who was driving the ATV through the woods like they were being chased. Chris was on the other one somewhere behind them though she didn’t dare try to turn around.

There was some fresh new horror but she didn’t know what it was. The wild, searching expression on Scott’s face after seeing whatever had freaked him out on the computer scared her. He hadn’t said anything. He was going to leave her there at the command center, but she gave him no choice by getting on the ATV behind him and wrapping her arms around his middle.

They were moving through the woods so fast that her eyes were tearing up which made the trees a blur in her periphery. The ATV bumped over a large root in the trail, and she screamed, nearly getting bucked off.

“You alright?” he shouted over his shoulder.

“Yes! But what’s going on?”

“Someone’s trying to blow it up.” He was shouting and still it was hard to comprehend his words over the whine of the engine and the wind rushing past.

“What? What do you mean?”

“Somebody is trying to kill everyone in Houze. There’s no time!”

She had so many questions she was sure had no answers, but all she could manage to articulate was “Why?”

“I don’t fucking know, but it’s not the terrorists. Whoever’s doing this is a god damned omniscient ghost.”

When he said this, it was as if the last tumbler in the lock of a safe where Eve had been keeping her darkest suspicions had slipped free and the massive door was yawning open. The gnawing sensation she had had in her gut all morning suddenly clenched like a vice and she was certain she was going to throw up violently.

“STOP!” she screamed. “Stop, stop, stop, now!”

Scott cut the throttle and the ATV came to a stop so suddenly on the incline they were traversing that Eve’s body was propelled up his back and she would have flown over his head if her wrists hadn’t been locked around him.

“What? What is it?” he yelled. “We don’t have time.”

“It’s him!” she screamed. “It’s him, the fixer!”

“What? What are you talking about?” Scott asked.

At this point, Chris had caught up to them and was looking at Eve with the same dumb expression as his brother.

“Daddy’s man, Fitzpatrick. This is him. It has to be,” she said before stumbling off the bike, falling to her knees and vomiting.

“What is she talking about?” Chris asked.

“I don’t know. Fitzpatrick is the attorney, the guy in charge of Cliff’s estate. The one I told you about with the crazy computer program.”

Scott looked down at Eve, his face working through a series of contortions as he began to understand what was happening.

“You told him?” he asked, incredulous. “You fucking told him about this?”

Eve didn’t like the accusation in his voice. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She was trying to get them out of this. “I thought he could help, and I knew you wouldn’t agree if I told you,” she said, the words rushing out like an involuntary dry heave.

“Holy shit,” Scott said. “What in the fuck is happening? How did he…”

Scott didn’t finish. He had answered the question in his head and that answer had turned his face deathly white.

“Give me your phone,” he said.

She hesitated but then pulled it from her coat pocket.

“Unlock it and let me see it,” he demanded.

Again, she hesitated and if it weren’t for something else, she detected in his expression she would have told him to fuck off. He was scared. She unlocked the device and handed it over. He quickly tapped and scrolled, his eyes widening as he read. After a moment, he sighed loudly and then hurled the device deep into the ravine.

“Hey!” Eve shouted but the withering expression on Scott’s face quelled any more of a protest.

“We’ve gotta get out there now,” Scott said. “They may already be dead.”

“Wait, tell me what in the fuck is happening,” Chris said.

“What’s happening is that she called in Daddy’s fixer to fix our problem.”

Scott turned to Eve before continuing.

“How could you do this? You knew. There’s no fucking way you read those last messages from him and didn’t know he was planning something. These are people Eve. People’s lives. Fuck!”

Without another word, Scott turned forward, popped the throttle of the ATV, and sped off up the trail. Eve swallowed hard and looked over at Chris. She couldn’t read his expression.

“I didn’t know,” she said. “How could I know he would…?”

“What? Protect the interests of GreenerTech at all costs? Jesus, can you really be so naïve? Move. I’ve got to go try and help Scott.”

“No, I’m coming with you. This is my fault. You’re not leaving me here.”

Soon they were at speed again and climbing another ridge. Eve was struggling to breathe as she clung to Chris and tried to reconcile the reality of what was happening. Would Fitzpatrick really blow up Houze? She tried to remember exactly what he said in the last few messages earlier that morning. He hadn’t written much, and it was cryptic. Something like: not too worry, I’ve taken care of the threat. After the show today, the world will be on our side again.

She thought he was talking about the press conference. But he hadn’t used the word show, had he? The word he had used was ‘fireworks.’ Eve felt like she might be sick again. It all came together in her mind. This was how it had always worked when Daddy’s business was in trouble. The best defense is a strong offense. Perfect is the enemy of good. People are sheep, they don’t know what they need. All the aphorisms he had used endlessly throughout her life flooded back in. He had said them with such relentless regularity to everyone within his circle that the words had transcended the boundary of language and become indisputable natural laws. Programming. That’s the word that came to her mind.

He had spent much of the last year of his life locked in a room with “the vault” program he had commissioned. Even when he was in excruciating pain, he would sound almost giddy as he talked about the power of automation to do good.

“I’m uploading everything I know into that box, darlin’. I’m getting weak. Hell, all people are weak, and we’ll always do the easy thing if we’re given a choice,” he told her one night when she had asked him why he insisted on spending his last days locked in a room with a computer. “But a program? A computer? Pure execution and logic. If we’re gonna protect the world, we’re gonna need the iron fist in the velvet glove. I’m securing the future. For you.”

The truth that Eve had been dancing around had suddenly pinned her to the floor and the music was no longer playing.

“It’s a program!” she shouted to Chris.

“What?”

“The fixer, Fitzpatrick. He’s not human. It’s a program my father commissioned. That’s what’s doing this.”

Chris didn’t respond. He probably didn’t know how to respond. How could he? He and his brother were normal, decent people. People who had struggled against real obstacles to bring an idea to the world that would solve a real problem. It wasn’t about quarterly growth or revenue or legacy.

A moment later the ATV was out of the woods and flying across the field she had seen so many times in the panoramic drone footage from the show. Houze glinted in the morning sun like a bar of gold in the dull landscape of winter grass. Scott had parked the ATV and was jogging toward Houze. Chris torqued the throttle wide open, and the vehicle rocketed forward. He started shouting.

“WAIT! SCOTT, WAIT!”

The panic in his voice vibrated through Eve and her heart began to race as they closed the distance to what she understood with absolute certainty was a ticking time bomb. Scott did not turn but went right up to Houze and was peering in through the large front window. Chris was getting off the ATV before it rolled to a stop and Eve tumbled off the back.

“Stop! You don’t know what this is!” Chris said, grabbing his brother's shoulders and pulling him back.

Scott turned and squared off with his brother.

“They’re unconscious. We’ve got to get them out now!” he said, his eyes filled with terror.

“It’s not a person behind this. The guy, the fixer, he’s not human. It’s a goddamned AI program. There’s no telling what it’s done. You can’t just…”

Scott’s mouth went slack, and he stood motionless for a beat, his brain trying to process this. Before Chris could finish, Scott pushed past him and was moving toward the back of Houze where the system closet was. Chris jogged to catch up.

Eve felt helpless to do anything. It was like she was watching the whole thing in slow motion. She imagined the aluminum box that was Houze exploding and tearing them to shreds and that image of Scott being ripped apart was enough to get her on her feet.

“Scott, wait! Listen to me,” she shouted, running to catch up with him. “It’s a program, the vault, Fitzpatrick. You don’t know what you’re dealing with…”

Scott didn’t stop or turn to acknowledge her. He was standing in front of the system closet and reaching for the recessed handle to open the panel. He paused, his fingers on the recessed handle.

“Doesn’t matter what did this,” he said, his voice calm and steady. “I’m not going to be the one to stand by and let it happen. There’s no time to debate. Both of you get on the ATV and move way back. I’m the only one who knows anything about how this works. If it does blow, you’ll need to help anyone who might survive.”

Neither Eve nor Chris moved. Scott’s face contorted into a horrible mask, his eyes reddened and welled with tears. “Go!” he yelled, his voice breaking. “Please…”

Chris closed the distance between them and pulled him into a fierce embrace. His voice was muffled in his big brother’s shoulder, but Eve didn’t need to hear his words to understand what he said. She wanted to hug him too, but she couldn’t. It was because of her that he was in this position. She sobbed, her whole body heaving as she hugged herself. Scott lifted his head from his little brother’s shoulder and looked into her eyes. She could not produce words, only shook her head from side to side. Scott pushed away from his brother and nodded.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s gonna be okay. Now go.”

Scott watched them retreat on the ATV back in the direction of the trailhead. When he was certain they were at a safe distance, he popped the release latch and the panel of the system closet eased open on the hydraulics.

He tried to look everywhere at once and for a few seconds, he panicked. It was just a blur of tubing, valves, and dials. With some effort, he shoved down his anxiety by reminding himself that he had welded every joint and soldered every circuit that made Houze run. He ran his fingertips across his creation inspecting it for some foreign body. It didn’t take long to find the large metal cylinder that was strapped to the back of the air filtration housing. There was a rubber tube from the nozzle of the cylinder that disappeared into a hole that had been cut into the primary air duct and secured with tape.

Scott’s hands were shaking. He reached for the circular handle of the valve on the cylinder and cranked it all the way to the right before yanking the tube out of the air duct. So far so good. Why hydrogen gas? Why hadn’t they used propane or something easier if they were trying to blow it up? He held the tubing to his nose. It had no odor. It was undetectable. There was no telling how much of it had been pumped inside at this point, but it was enough to turn his creation into a bomb. Still, that required some type of detonator, a spark.

He scoured the rest of the closet and searched his frayed brain for what someone might use to produce a flame. There was no fire in Houze. The fossil fuels that had nursed human civilization into being were no longer necessary. More than anything else about their creation, Scott had been proud of this fact. Someone wanting to make a fire would have to bring their own into Houze. There had to be some remote-controlled or timer-based detonator. But he saw nothing like that here. He was taking too long to figure this out. He had to act. They could die without oxygen even if there was no explosion. He focused his attention back to the air filtration system and the whistling sound coming from the ragged hole in the housing. He used the scraps of duct tape to patch the hole where the tube had been inserted into the duct before reaching around to the back of the housing to manually crank up the air circulation. The whir of the fan became deafeningly loud. Good.

At this point he had to make a choice. He could keep searching for the detonator or focus on getting the contestants free. He had tried the door as soon as he had pulled up though he knew it would be useless. The automatic door had been one of the luxury upgrades he had conceded. He had never liked the idea of a door with no handle. It was stupid and impractical.

Suddenly, he noticed a low, repetitive thumping sound barely audible under the noise from the HVAC. FUMP… FUMP… FUMP.

With each sound, he noticed the closet door jiggled on its hydraulic arms. The thumping stopped for a few seconds then it resumed at uneven intervals. It was not mechanical. It was human.

He took a few steps back away from the closet and made his way around to the front. He could clearly see two of them, heads down on the dining table and a third unmoving on the couch. Where was the fourth contestant? Where was Jayden?

He ran back around to the system closet and scaled the narrow rungs of the ladder used to access the solar panel array on the roof. Once on the roof, he immediately saw Jayden on the bed, the soles of her feet pressed firmly against the glass of the skylight. When she saw him, her eyes widened, and she began to scream.

“It’s okay!” he shouted, his face to the window. “I’m gonna get you out!”

He could see the rubber gasket seal around the window had lifted away from the aluminum roof as a result of her efforts. He reached for the all-in-one utility tool he always kept strapped to his belt. He pulled out the long blade and began to cut through the thick rubber at the corner of the skylight so he could wedge it under the lip of the seal. He looked back down at Jayden whose eyes were closed though her feet were still pressed to the glass.

“Kick!” he yelled. “Kick some more!”

She opened her eyes wide and began kicking up with both feet, though not with the vigor she had before. It was enough. The corner Scott had been working to pry up popped out and a whoosh of air carrying with it the signature scent of Houze filled his senses. He cried out in relief as he gripped the glass with both hands and ripped it free.

He threw the window over the side and reached down to take Jayden’s outstretched hands.

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Who’s Who in Harmony House?

Having trouble keeping track of who’s who from one week to the next? It’s tough when you only get to visit once a week. I made a little cheat sheet just for you: