The Summoning of the Roomba

[WP] It was supposed to be a routine software upgrade, but now roombas are tracing pentagrams and summoning minor demons all across the country. You work in tech support.

*****

It started off as any other regular Monday. David brewed his coffee, poured out Mochi's daily kibble, and ate a bowl of steel-cut oats. He was feeling a little frisky that morning, so he added in two generous dashes of cinnamon.

At 9:00 sharp, he trotted into his home office, closing the door. Logging into his computer, David opened up Microsoft Outlook and Teams and powered on his company cellphone. As he waited for the programs to load, he did the daily New York Times mini crossword and scrolled through the news, drinking the last dregs of his now-lukewarm joe.

Then Microsoft Outlook finished loading. David narrowly avoided spitting his coffee all over his screen, choking down his last sip in a strangled gulp.

There were 666,666 new emails in his inbox.

What on earth...

At the same time, his cellphone dinged. On the voicemail icon, the same bright red numbers screamed at him.

They'd been in a rush to push out version 3.4, but David hadn't imagined there would be this many issues. How on earth had the software engineers messed up this badly?

Just as he had the thought, his phone rang. David shook himself out of his daze, cleared his throat, and picked up his phone.

"Hello? This is Roomba tech support speaking. My name is David, how may I help you?"

"H-hello, my Roomba isn't working." It was an old lady. It almost always was. Maybe it was the same old lady, calling hundreds of times, trying over and over again and waiting for someone to pick up. Maybe version 3.4 wasn't all that broken.

"Thanks for calling us. What seems to be the issue?"

"Hello, David. My name's Martha. Martha Jones. You see, dear, I was doing a deep clean of the house on Sunday. I always clean the house on Sundays, but this time, I thought, why not use that handy little robot thingamajig my grandson got me for Christmas? My grandson is a really smart little fellow, you know, he went to Harvard, majored in computer science. I got him some socks for Christmas. It's cold up there in Boston, I hear, and I hope he's getting some use out of those socks, alpaca wool, they were, and -"

"Ma'am, that's nice," David replied patiently. "But what exactly was the issue with the Roomba?"

"Ah, yes, the robot thingamajig. I powered it on, but it's spinning in circles and beeping weirdly. It sounds like it's trying to talk to me. You know, my husband, he passed away two years ago, bless his soul, but he used to be in the Navy, was an excellent pilot, quite dashing in his uniform back in the day - "

"Let's see, spinning in circles," David opened up the Roomba manual and hit control F, searching for the keywords. He knew most of the solutions to the common issues by heart, but this one was one that hadn't come up before. "What's the pattern of the beeping?"

"I was getting to that, dear, before you cut me off," the woman chided gently. "You see, my husband told me about this thing called morse code, and I looked it up on the Google. I thought maybe it would give me an answer, but it's just some sort of made-up language or something..te nomine vero soloque evoco."

David's cellphone beeped, the tone of a call waiting on the line. "I'm awfully sorry, Ma'am, but I need to put you on hold for a second. Do you mind waiting a moment?"

Without waiting for an answer, he pressed answer. Brady's distressed voice echoed over the receiver.

"David! You won't believe what the hell just happened!"

"Try me, Brady," David replied. "I've got 666,666 new messages, all consumer complaints about the new upgrade. What the hell kind of software engineer worked on version 3.4? And who approved the upgrade? Didn't we go through some kind of testing or QC before we pushed?"

"David, forget the stupid software update," Brady replied. "This is much more serious than that. You're not in the office, so you don't know - everyone who works in software just got reverse-Raptured this morning. A hole opened up in the floor and they all got sucked to God knows where. Or the Devil knows where, more like."

Taking a shaky breath, David started clicking through the emails in his inbox.

Found a bloody pentagram on my living room carpet. Not sure where the blood came from. Roomba is covered in it. Locked in the bathroom and barricaded the door with cleaning supplies. Unearthly wailing coming from outside the door. Leaving a 1-star review right now, version 3.3 was so much better.

Woke up to my daughter screaming bloody murder. Roomba was sitting on her chest, pinning her to the bed. Had to pull it off of her, now she's staying with her mom because she doesn't feel safe here anymore. Also, the Roomba is growing horns now. Really, none of this is addressed in the product warnings, which is quite unacceptable. I expect a full refund and compensation for all the therapy that my daughter will undoubtedly be needing.

"Shit."

*****

TO BE CONTINUED

some days i feel.like i don't want to participate in life no more 😃