“Good job, genius.”
“What the hell?—”
“You’re at my house, and there are a few things you need to know before entering the premises.”
“Oh, hell no,” Parker snapped, shifting into reverse.
“Go ahead and leave, but there’s nowhere to stay for hours,” Knight continued. “Of course, if you stay, you’ll have the place to yourself. Your decision.”
Parker looked to me for advice, but I didn’t know any more than he did. “Give me a minute.”
Rolling up the window, he sighed. “What do you want to do?”
“We could leave and find someplace else to stay,” I suggested.
“Any hotel would do. At least there wouldn’t be killer robots.”
That was true, but honestly, I was exhausted. “Maybe just one night wouldn’t hurt. I don’t think I can drive anymore.”
Rolling the window back down, he pressed the button again. “Alright, we’ll stay, but all your robots better be put down during our stay.”
“I’ll take them all offline,” he drawled.
“Fine. What are the instructions?”
“Park in the garage. I’ll have it open for you. When you get inside, walk into the kitchen. There will be an instruction manual in the first drawer. Make sure you read it.”
“That’s it?”
But he didn’t answer.
“Fucking perfect. An instruction manual to stay at a house. You know, I miss the old days when you used a simple key to enter a house, and a landline was all you needed. Whatever happened to those days?”
“And we didn’t have trackers in our arms,” I grumbled.
“You know, I remember going to school without a phone. Nothing happened to me. I couldn’t text my mother for anything, and somehow, I survived.”
“Ha! When I was in sports, I had to call after my game was over. And if the line was busy, you were just stuck at school until the line was open.”
“And look at where we are now. I vote that when we get home, we have nothing fancy in our house,” Parker suggested. “Only landlines and no cable TV.”
“That’s fine with me. I don’t even watch TV.”
“And no sound machines to sleep at night. Just the sounds of nature to help us drift off to sleep.”
“Ooh, and we’ll buy some vehicles that are from the eighties, where you still have to roll down the windows manually, and there are no CD players.”
He snorted. “There are no CD players now. You have to pay extra for that.”
“Well, I’m perfectly fine with local stations and no fancy features in the car.”
“It all costs extra, anyway!” he snapped. “If you get in an accident, they’d rather total the vehicle than salvage it because of all the electronics! It’s such a waste. Well, let me tell you something, I’m not raising my kid in an era where they can’t get in a little car accident without having to buy an entirely new vehicle.”
“Agreed.”
“So, that’s it. We’re going back to a simpler time.”
“And we won’t let our kids have phones or social media.”
