The Smart Home

Karan had wanted a "smart home" for years, and for his birthday his flatmates had finally, jokingly, bought him a single motion sensor. He treated it like the first brick of a palace.

The setup was easy enough. He had to connect the little device to the home Wi-Fi, pairing it with an app that promised, in cheerful blue text, to make his flat "think."

Its one job was to detect movement in the hallway, and it did so with almost comic zeal. It could sense a person, a passing cat, and — he learned — a curtain stirred by the fan, all with equal alarm.

Every time it saw something, it would notify him, buzzing his phone with a proud little alert. By the second evening he had thirty notifications, most of them announcing his own trips to the kitchen.

The real fun began when he could control the hallway light remotely, flicking it on from his desk, from the sofa, once from a bus three miles away just to prove he could. His flatmates were unimpressed; he was delighted.

Naturally, within a week he wanted to upgrade — a smart bulb, a doorbell camera, a plug that could start the kettle before he got home. The single sensor had become a gateway drug.

His flatmates drew the line at the talking fridge. But Karan had caught the bug, and he lay awake that night not counting sheep but planning, room by room, the slow and slightly ridiculous automation of a very ordinary flat.