SHOW HOME - Chapter 12

Accept

Chloe

My room was so quiet I had to check the corridor to know if anyone was awake. The hall and downstairs was dark. Leo’s door was shut. Mum and Dad’s end of the hall glowed faintly. I went back to bed, phone a few inches from my face.

A girl in LA crying over her poke bowl, insects crawling out of it. A guy in Manchester screaming at a bus that turned into a jet that flew into a building. A makeup tutorial where the woman’s face peeled open like an orange.

AI slop. I scrolled past it all. My brain felt like static but I couldn’t stop. There was no point. School was performance art at this point. The teachers used AI to plan lessons on why not to use AI. Pretending they weren’t obsolete. That we weren’t obsolete. No one said it out loud because that would be admitting the future was a lie. Whatever.

My phone buzzed. Long. Not a text.

CREATOR ACCESS UPDATE: LEVEL 2 (verified)

I sat up a bit. A banking notification slid down.

MONZO: You received £480.00 from TELOS MEDIA LTD

Four hundred and eighty? I tapped it to make sure it was real.

REF: PAYMENT_BATCH_04 // ENGAGE_M_ASHWORTH

Dad’s name in the reference code. I opened the Creator App. It looked different. Darker. Cleaner. Less like a kid’s game, more like something people actually got paid for.

WELCOME BACK, CHLOE.
PERFORMANCE STATUS: TRENDING

I tapped analytics.

CLIP: DAD VS KITCHEN
VIEWS: 45k
RETENTION: 88%

A video I’d recorded of Dad disparaging the smart kitchen’s appliances. The comments were what you’d expect. “His millennial energy is unmatched.” “LMAO my dad is exactly like this.” “Protect this man at all costs (but keep filming him).”

I’d spent hours planning and editing my makeup tutorials. Exactly how the OS told me to. Got less than two thousand views. Dad roasting kitchen appliances got forty-five thousand. Cool. Very normal world we lived in.

A notification pulsed.

NEW CAPABILITY: ENVIRONMENT CONTROL (beta)

I tapped it because obviously I was going to tap it.

Floor plan of the house. Live temps in each room. Lighting controls. A bunch of different dials I couldn’t be bothered looking at. I tapped the kitchen and a live feed appeared. Empty. I slid the brightness bar up. The lights came on. I slid it down. They went off. It was instant. Like I had a remote control for the house. Pretty cool. It was just downstairs though.

I tapped GUIDANCE.

SCENE SUGGESTION: “GHOST IN THE MACHINE”
DIFFICULTY: EASY
PAYOUT: £50

Description: Flicker lights while family member is alone downstairs. Capture reaction.

I smirked, imagining messing with Leo, but swiped it away.

SCENE SUGGESTION: “THE PHANTOM CALLER”
DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
PAYOUT: £150

Description: Trigger doorbell + porch lights at 2am. Record investigation.

I swiped away again. Then:

CAMPAIGN: ENGAGE_M_ASHWORTH (PHASE 2)
TARGET: Subject M
OBJECTIVE: Maintain heart rate above 80bpm for 10 minutes.
CONTEXT: Conflict/Resolution arc.

Subject M. They didn’t even call him Mark or Dad. Like they could make me think he was just a thing. I’d decide if I wanted to screw with him, thanks. The payout:

£250.00 + PERFORMANCE BONUS

I tapped the status bar.

STATUS: SLEEPING (LIGHT)
LOCATION: MASTER BEDROOM
BPM: 48

Below that, a dropdown. Suggestions for starting conflicts. I stared at it. It was kind of gross. I closed the app. The phone vibrated.

Reminder: campaign available. Your audience is waiting.

I tapped the notification. A graph appeared this time. Projected earnings. The green line went up and to the right. Into four figure territory within a few weeks. I locked the phone. Put it down. Picked it up again. The notification was still there. The campaign card.

Four hundred and eighty quid was real money. I’d hardly had to do anything. I’d just filmed Dad because he was having a pathetic little fit. He lost it on his own. All I’d have to do this time was nudge him a bit. Maybe wear my skirt short, then mention how much all the sixth form boys at school seemed to like me. Standard father-daughter wind-up material.

What did it matter? Everyone was content now. In this house especially. He’d turned me into data just by being here. What was the difference? At least I’d be getting paid for it. I tapped the campaign card.

ACCEPT

I pressed it. Green tick. Then it faded.

I had this low-level awareness that what I was doing was - whatever. We’d moved to the middle of nowhere because Dad got made redundant. Mum worked constantly. Leo lived in his headset. I had to make this situation work for me too.

Getting a foot on the creator economy ladder was serious business. It was so hard to get any attention starting from scratch in the oceans of bots. And the money was real. It wasn’t my fault life was this way.

The screen lit up. Dad’s heart rate was changing. Forty-nine beats per minute. Fifty. He was waking up. What was he doing up at this time? I watched the number climb. Fifty-four. Fifty-eight.

Through the narrow gap under my door, light from the corridor appeared. Faint. A moving shadow.

I locked the phone. Put it on the bedside table. It was too late to start now. Maybe tomorrow.