SHOW HOME - Chapter 8
The Range
Mark
I was scrolling menus on the hall interface, killing time. Craving distraction, but also information. I found a master resident sub-menu that showed where everyone was. All in the usual white serif font on black.
Upstairs:
LEO - BEDROOM - IN GAME
Downstairs:
SARAH – OFFICE – IN SESSION
CHLOE - LIVING SPACE - IN APP
MARK - HALL - MONITORING
I closed the menu and stepped away from the interface. Monitoring. Had it chosen that word to make me feel guilty? Separate? Monitoring was the house’s default position. I was just glancing at the dashboard.
Maybe, in reality, I was avoiding Chloe. And my office - and with it the idea of finding a new role in the world. I decided to walk through and see if she would talk to me. Then, for a second, I wondered if I had been prompted to.
As I approached the sofa, she angled her phone away from my line of sight. She smothered a laugh - genuine amusement purposefully repressed. She glanced up at me, tapped her earbud and sighed, then carried on scrolling on her phone.
“What do you want?” she asked.
I wanted speak about yesterday but I hadn’t changed my mind about our neighbour, and she wasn’t interested in hearing it. The room held our silence. I felt redundant. I was redundant.
“I’m going out for a walk,” I said. “You can come with me if you like.”
She glanced up at me, incredulous. “No thanks.”
“Okay. I’ll catch you later then.”
I grabbed my coat from the cloak room. The house felt vast today, the geometry shifting around me. This corridor of hangers and shoe trays had appeared behind a sliding door in the hall on our first Saturday; now I wondered what else was hidden behind the smooth oak panels. The scale from the outside was off. It felt like the walls were five feet thick, and could be packed with hidden rooms and spaces.
The front door let me out and closed behind me. Click.
My phone buzzed. The app was suggesting routes with difficulty ratings. It recommended an “easy loop with scenic views” for my first walk. I swiped it away and followed my nose.
Each step on the gravel path produced the same constrained crunch. The bollard lights warmed a fraction before I reached them even though it was daytime. I ventured beyond the Preston’s house, down a steep track, and could immediately see two more homes under construction. They sat on shelves cut into the valley, thick construction routes paved up to them.
The sites were still. Not a soul around. I decided to have a look at the closest one.
There was no track, just a sheer, jagged hillside, but I managed to step and slide my way down to the construction route. Suddenly I was on a wide concrete path facing an epic building site.
Giant cranes. Diggers. Weird machines I’d never seen before - boring equipment, maybe tunnelling gear. It looked like they were preparing the base of a skyscraper, not a family home. All this for just one house? How much were they going to charge for these things?
Industrial slabs of concrete were set into the scarred earth. The cuts were straight and recent. Silver-jacketed conduits rose from the concrete in a hundred places, capped and sealed. Labels faced outward for audit.
It felt more like a quarry than a residential build. I approached a shallow bank beside the outer slab and looked down a crack that might well have gone down to the centre of the Earth. I tried my phone torch but the beam died in the dark after a few feet.
The nearest monolithic piece of vertical concrete had stencils on it. HV-PRI Z3. DC-02. GEO-RET A. The paint sat sharp against the dull grey.
At the slab’s edge, a recessed man-sized hatch held a warning: TELOS SERVICE TUNNEL / AUTHORISED PERSONEL ONLY / DANGER OF DEATH. Muddy scuffs marked the surrounding ground where work boots had stood before lifting it and entering.
I found a low louvred vent and crouched, trying to peek in. This would be where the lawn started on the approach to the house. Dry, processed heat rose through the fins. Something down below was operating already. Clean, warm, odourless air. The sound wasn’t a rumble, it was a conditioned exhale. Measured. Constant. I rested my fingers on the metal and felt a faint, regular thrum.
Conduits meant power and data. GEO-RET was short for geothermal return. DC-02 was a data core node labelled for routing. I knew these codes. Data centres needed stacks of safety documents. I was standing on the machine. Was there really a data centre in the middle of this mountain? For just fifteen homes?
The sound of steps made me turn around.
A woman and a teenage girl were walking up the track, both in immaculate, black active wear. They looked energised. Their smiles held steady. The other Prestons. Both in brand-new walking shoes. Friendly, alert eyes.
“Hello there,” the woman called. “You know, we’re really not supposed to trespass on the building sites.”
Now she was closer, I could see she was panting a bit. She had rushed to get here.
“Trespass?” I asked, glancing around for cameras. I couldn’t see any.
“Sorry, where are my manners. I’m Rebecca. Your neighbour.”
“And I’m Olivia,” the girl said. Her voice was confident, almost adult. Completely lacking in teenage angst or self-consciousness.
“Mark,” I said. Though it was clear they knew my name already.
So David had a daughter. Maybe a year younger than Chloe. The scene at the boundary flickered in my head again, colder now.
Rebecca indicated the concrete slabs and the ground beyond.
“They’ve bored tunnels through most of the east mountain,” she said. “Some real death traps on these sites.”
“Mum’s right,” Olivia said, resting her arm on Rebecca’s shoulder. “I’m not allowed anywhere near them.”
It sounded like a script. A calibrated warning about company policy disguised as neighbourly advise.
“I find all this fascinating,” I said. “They must be some of the most expensive homes ever built.”
“We are lucky, aren’t we?” Rebecca said.
“Serious money,” agreed Olivia, nodding.
They stood like a small unit. Mother and daughter looking down the same line, speaking the same cadence. Happy, yes. But the happiness felt manufactured to control me.
“We’ll show you the best way back to the nearest path,” said Rebecca.
“It’s not far,” said Olivia.
They read my reserve and answered it with brightness.
“There’s some great views over the water,” said Rebecca. “I suppose some of your rooms look out that way, but ours don’t.”
“Every room has a great view,” I said.
They both smiled and nodded extra firmly, glad to have retrieved a positive note from me. I could feel the louvred vent breathing its processed heat onto my calves. Below us, the machine did its quiet work.
There was a sense that they were not going anywhere, they would only leave with me. I accepted this and started walking out of the site. They gladly joined my side.
“We really must have your family over,” said Rebecca. “The weather is great for this time of year. Maybe something in the garden.”
“Sure,” I said. “Why not. It would be good to meet you all properly. And I’m sure you’d like to meet some people your own age up here?”
Olivia looked at me like loneliness was the furthest thing from her teenage mind.
“Yes, I’d love to meet your children,” she said.
She was an odd cookie. I tried to force a smile and wondered why Rebecca had led with the idea of an outdoor meet-up in autumn. Did she not want me to see inside her house?
“Just look at that,” said Rebecca, as we turned a bend in the path.
The river through the valley glimmered below. I heard myself say it was impressive. Rebecca nodded. Olivia smiled, approving.
Walking with them was an exercise in awkward self-consciousness. I imagined being David, striding along with them, all three of them radiating a confidence that made them look like they might just break out into a musical song and dance. Maybe they were just happy, and my family were more cynical, but it seemed like it had to be a performance. I’d felt that before with people though and never known what was true.
“So, when should we do this get-together?” I asked.
I needed to know more about the Prestons.
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