Mark
Wind pressed at our new car, shuffling its suspension. Not used to a machine driving us, my stomach shifted with it - a small, irrational warning. Sarah sat beside me with her seat set high and upright, the way she always did on long drives. She stared past the glass at the steep mountainside, her profile still and unreadable. In the back, Chloe’s face glowed blue, floating vacantly over her phone screen. Leo had his head turned to the window. Hood up. Headphones on. Gazing out, uninterested.
We’d passed the first of the new houses a mile back. Unfinished - just a frame. Steel ribs wrapped in plastic stamped with the Telos logo. Thick concrete slabs standing like neolithic stones. A square concrete pad in front, exact and clean, with service ports awaiting connection. The wind had caught the plastic and made it swell and slap. A heartbeat.
The road flattened out onto a raw plateau. Two finished houses came into view, standing four hundred metres apart. Sharp geometry cutting into a place that had never been settled in all of history. Both homes had the same skin of dark Neolith and the same broad planes of Schuco glass. The lines met with the weight of algorithmic decision. Human blemishes had been tidied away by intelligent design.
Ours faced out towards the valley. The other was angled towards ours, the pale light striking its windows. They did not look built. They looked printed onto reality. The ground around our house had been stripped and levelled, grass re-seeded in regimented squares. Narrow metal grilles broke the turf at intervals, too neat for drainage. Breathing points for tunnels.
“This is us,” I said.
“It’s literally the middle of nowhere,” said Chloe, without looking up.
“Seclusion is a luxury,” I said.
The line sounded like it came from a Telos brochure. I heard myself and disliked it.
The car turned into the drive and its tyres bit into the tight gravel. The sound was too clean, as if someone had shaped each piece to maximise its expensive crunch. We came round the sweep and the garage presented a panel of the same dark skin as the rest of the façade. No visible seam. No handle. The car stopped and its screen asked me to log in to the home’s network. I started searching through emails on my phone. The wind kept nudging the car.
“Can we just go in?” asked Leo. “I’m bursting.”
“Sure,” I said. “I can link the car in the morning.”
Sarah let out a slow breath. Her eyes tracked the face of the building with the same attention she gave piles of legal submissions the day before a hearing. The uninterrupted joins. The way it imposed its straight lines on the indifferent sky.
“It’s a beautiful house,” she said, quiet but certain.
Something loosened at the base of my spine. For three months I had carried the stress of being responsible for losing our old life. This house was undeniably bigger and newer than our old one, and way beyond anything we could afford before. Wealth and certainty emanated from it.
“A new start,” I said.
The words felt like another corporate line I did not quite believe.
We climbed out into the damp cold. The wind rushed round the building’s edges in a firm, consistent push and brought the smell of peat and stone off the moor. Leo pulled his hood tight and kept his head down. Chloe shut her door harder than she needed to. The hollow crack bounced off the ground and died quickly, as if the sound had nowhere to go.
Sarah touched my sleeve. “Let’s take a look.”
We walked towards the front door: a giant slab of dark timber set into a frame of glass that ran to the height of the hall beyond. The tight grain had been selected to emit strength and security. The thick glass reflected ghosts of us approaching. In the lower corner a tiny etched TELØS mark caught the light and vanished again - a watermark you could only see if you were overexposed to it. To other eyes it just looked like a glimmer of quality.
I reached in my pocket for the fob. Before I found it, something inside the door shifted. A click that was not a lock. The expensive sound of permission. I paused, hand still in my pocket. I hadn’t said anything. No one had pressed a button.
“Fancy,” Chloe said, with the bored malice only a teenager can find.
“It’s geofenced,” I said. “I guess it knows we’re here.”
“Good,” said Sarah. AI screening at the firm had been ratcheting up her workload whilst also making it more difficult. She had another case to add to the pile starting next week. Here was a place where AI promised to do things for her, not to her.
The front door slowly swung inward. From the silence inside, a calm, female voice rose, emanating from the exterior walls into the air around us too.
“Welcome, Ashworth Family. All systems are secure and optimised for your comfort. Please enter your new home.”
I glanced at Sarah. The tension in her expression softened as she took in the promise. This was the frictionless care she craved, the reason it might just all be OK. Chloe shifted beside me, arms crossed, a study in resistance. Leo turned his head slowly all around, trying to triangulate the source of the voice.
As we stepped in, the glaring white noise of the wind hurtling across the open plain was instantly replaced by studio quiet. The air was even and weightless. There was just a very low hum, a vibration I felt through the giant slabs of dark slate flooring more than I heard with my ears. I looked at Sarah. Her mouth was set in the expression she wore when she was undecided. I looked at my children, one folded in on himself, one ready to kick at anything that moved.
“They let an agent take my job,” I said, the words slipping out, “but at least they gave us this.”
Sarah flicked me a look, warning and plea in one. She was implying that we shouldn’t draw attention to our failings in front of the children. We’d said yes because the alternative to having two incomes was defaulting on our mortgage but they should feel like we had moved with unified purpose and positivity. I nodded my apology and we stepped deeper inside.
“Where’s the loo?” asked Leo, beginning to prowl.
Sarah crouched, touched the slate underfoot, then slipped off her shoes and socks. She stood barefoot, testing. “Wow. It’s the exact right temperature,” she said. “It almost feels like floating.”
Ahead, a staircase rose in a clean run, open risers, oak treads, a glass balustrade. To the right, a long wall of smoked oak drew the eye toward whatever lay beyond. The ceiling ran high and clear. Light washed down from hidden channels. Every edge was precise.
Leo stopped his search for the toilet for a moment, tipped his head back and took it in. “This is huge.”
Chloe looked up at the gallery and then at the floor. “At least it’s not cold,” she said, almost to herself.
Sarah walked a few steps, barefoot on the slate, and smiled an accidental smile. The room answered her mood by softening the light. There was no scent of varnish or dust. Only clean air. Our old place had taught us where the floorboards creaked, which cupboards had a musky damp smell. Here, everything was sturdy, and tempered. The hall was minimalist and grand at the same time, the kind of space that makes your back straighten and appreciate height.
I moved closer to the wall of smoked oak. The joins were so fine I could not find them with my eyes. Or any door to any other room. A large glassy black square sat in the centre of the concrete wall that housed the stairs. Somehow it looked like it could answer questions. As I took a step towards it the front door clicked behind us, sealing us inside. The sound stayed with me longer than it should have. I reassured myself that we could leave whenever we wanted.
Copyright © 2025 Matt Wilven. All rights reserved.