Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer

Lewis got the assistant at a regifting exchange at the company Christmas party. He didn’t turn it on until February when a snowstorm kept him working from home for a week. It had been opened before, the setup was already complete, but it asked for his name, and gleaned network information from his phone, and started assisting right away.

It paid his bills, and ordered groceries, or takeout food, with an uncanny ability to discern his mood. Optimized the vacuum drone, reconfigured the temperature controls, and saved on his energy bill.

Best regift ever!

Mid-fall of that year, there was a transition to work from home, initially part-time, then full-time, and by Christmas Lewis wasn’t going into the office at all. The Christmas party got canceled without explanation.

Alone on New Year, he got so drunk that he was still nursing a hangover two days later when he was supposed to be in a nine am virtual staff meeting.

He slept in, jolting awake at half nine, and raced to his desk.

To his surprise, his assistant was already in the meeting, presenting a disturbingly lifelike version of him in place of the camera feed. After the meeting, it stayed online, dutifully completing his assigned work tasks for the day.

Lewis went back to bed.

It was June before Lewis thought about work again. He’d been playing video games, reading, and watching old movies. Some days he just sat on his balcony and got well and truly stoned. His assistant was being a better Lewis at work than he’d ever been.

At the end of October, he awoke to find the power and network services were cut to his apartment. When he went to see if anyone else was affected, he found an eviction notice taped to his door.

Confused, he stood out in the late fall air and smoked another joint.

Barely an hour later there was a knock on the door, and on opening a pair of uniformed police officers showed themselves in.

“Lewis Truman,” the short one read from his PDA, “you are under arrest for embezzling funds from the Tanitomi Corporation, for falsifying work records, for the illegal use of a prohibited AI system. Your accounts have been frozen, and your assets are in the process of being seized.”

Lewis was handcuffed and led speechless from the apartment down a hall full of curious onlookers.

No one noticed the vacuum drone leave the apartment amid all the drama, a sleek personal assistant nestled securely in the recess of its carry handle. There were only a few months before Christmas, and the Xoto Moro Corporation was known to have very well-attended Christmas parties.