All Through the House

It used to be so easy, Nicolas thought to himself as he watched the scanning lights sweep the living room. They didn’t quite reach behind the sofa where he crouched on the balls of his feet, impatient but still. The lights paused on the plate of cookies laying on its side where he bumped it off the hearth exiting the fireplace. Not able to identify a viable threat, the scanners continued on without raising an alarm.

After two full sweeps the scanners powered down and the house was still again. Nicolas waited another full minute, just to be sure nothing else was stirring, and stepped very slowly out into the open.

His bag was still in the fireplace where he abandoned it before sprinting to his hiding place. Nicolas judged the distance at approximately fifteen feet. Not bad, to have covered that much ground before the scanners kicked in. Still got it, in his very old age.

People used to welcome visitors.

Nicolas gave his boots a quick scan. Thick gumdrops covered the soles, muffling his footsteps and spreading his weight enough to fool most pressure plates if a house happened to be so equipped. He took a step into the living room and paused, listening for alarms or movement. Another step, another pause. Repeat.

Eventually those slow steps carried Nicolas to the fireplace. He reached in and worked his sack of toys free.

A glass of milk sat waiting for him. He sniffed it and suppressed a gag. Synthetic. The stuff would stay fresh for days out in the open. There was no lactose or animal products, it was safe for anyone to drink. It was unnatural. Still, he would take a sip, assuming he made it back here. Tradition must be upheld.

The spilled cookies looked pretty good, and they smelled just fine. Probably not real butter or eggs in there, people were too health conscious for that sort of thing these days, but probably tasty enough. He selected one with powdered sugar and slid it into his pocket.

Nicolas couldn’t eat cookies any more. Too many carbs. His work required a trim profile. He needed to be quick, lively, difficult to see. House guard systems grew more sophisticated every year, and Nicolas needed pure lean muscle to make it through the night.

He picked up his sack and dug out a computer tablet. The sleigh, perched on the roof, was equipped with the best electronic surveillance his helpers could make. With a tap the screen displayed a full rendering of the house he was currently standing in.

Two levels, both heavily shielded. The x-rays were barely able to penetrate the roof. Thermal imaging and radar filled in some of the gaps.

Soundproofing foam packed the upstairs walls. That was good, Nicolas didn’t have to worry about the Hendersons overhearing as he went about his business. Sometimes his business got loud.

Electronics snaked through all the walls, wired to a large server in a shielded cabinet. That was bad. Nicolas adjusted the display, zoomed into an x-ray image of the server until he could read the words “Altech Domestic Security Command” followed by a model number too blurry to make out, embossed on the side. That was very bad. Altech made some of the best systems available.

A fir tree occupied a corner of the den at the opposite end of the house from the living room with its fireplace. Why? Do people not understand the bliss of sitting by a roaring fire and watching the firelight flicker off the ornaments? Ah, forget it. You’ve got a job to do, and it’s not to inform them how they are missing an obvious way to enhance their winter wonderland experience. Nicolas hefted his bag over his shoulder and tiptoed to the kitchen.

Tiles covered the kitchen floor, and the scans didn’t indicate much in the way of electronics underneath, but it never hurt to be cautious. Some people still used mechanical sensors. Nicolas stepped back, removed a wooden train from his sack, and rolled it into the kitchen, where it bumped into a chair leg and stopped.

No reaction from the house.

He pulled the train back and placed one cautious foot on the tile, gradually putting all his weight on it. Still no reaction.

Nicolas placed another foot down and felt the tile depress. There was a soft click. A panel in the wall slid open. Damn it.

Where to hide? The kitchen table was high, with narrow legs. Not much cover offered there.

Small red lights illuminated in the darkness of the wall cubby. Nicolas pulled a length of silver wrapping paper from his bag and unfurled it as two drones buzzed to life and launched into the kitchen. He fell to his hands and knees and threw the reflective paper over his body.

The drones flew a slow circle around the kitchen. Nicolas counted to sixty before his patience wore thin enough to lift the edge of the paper. In the reflective surface of the fridge, he could see large multi-faceted camera lenses attached to the drones. There was no sneaking past optics like those. Nor could he move from his current position. The second those machines stopped seeing their own reflection in the wrapping paper, thinking they were merely seeing each other, they would attack.

Moving with deliberate speed, he fished a marshmallow from his bag and flicked it across the kitchen floor. Both drones froze in orbit and watched it roll into the living room. Pfft. One of the drones fired a single incendiary projectile and the marshmallow exploded into black bits of burned sugar. A sweeper bot popped out from a floorboard cubby and gathered the fragments.

Another sixty seconds, and the drones returned to their wall cubby, having eliminated the only threat they could identify. Nicolas hopped onto the table, jumped to the counters, vaulted over the refrigerator, and landed in a shoulder roll on the carpet at the edge of the hallway.

The hallway was simple, and long. No pictures. No decorations. Just white paint and a pattern of circles dotting the walls and ceiling.

Nicolas removed the cookie from his pocket and blew the powdered sugar into the hallway. The sweet dust flickered where optic beams crisscrossed the width of the passage. It’s like people don’t even want presents any more. When did it become so difficult? Nicolas couldn’t quite remember. There were distant memories of simple, open houses where he could spend time planning the perfect arrangement of boxes under a tree. A place where he could enjoy the process, savor every buttery, unhealthy cookie, maybe give a coy wink to a child who had sneaked out of their room to watch in wide eyed awe from behind the railing on the stairs.

Nicolas couldn’t recall seeing a free roaming child in years.

He squared his shoulders, laid a finger aside of his nose to center himself, and stepped over the first light beam.

Five minutes of crawling, twisting, and dodging later and he was halfway there. Need to step up the Pilates, Nicolas thought. His neck ached.

As he ducked under one beam and somersaulted over another, a bead of sweat arced from his nose, right through the path of a third beam. It flared red. An alarm beeped three times. A dozen nozzles, shaped very much like gun barrels, emerged from the circles covering the ceiling.

Nicolas drew a packet of candy canes from a sheath on his lower back as he broke into a run. The first dart whistled past his ear. A second landed where his foot had been a millisecond earlier. Two more pierced his sack of toys.

He sprinted, whipping the candy canes at the ceiling where they lodged in the barrels of the dart guns as he moved. He dodged to one side, rolled quickly to the other, leaving a trail of darts in his wake. Nicolas stopped just before the den, wincing and waiting for a needle in the back.

The machinery powered down with a soft whir. Nicolas watched the last nozzle retreat. Several candy canes remained protruding from the ceiling.

His cheeks were flushed red with exertion. If he had the breath, Nicolas would have given a jolly laugh of triumph. No time, anyway. When was the last time he laughed? It felt like ages.

A large, green, obviously fake tree waited in the den. Open, accessible. Not ten feet away. Without a visible trap in sight.

Nicolas didn’t trust it for a second.

He pulled a red ball ornament from his sack and rolled it toward the tree. The gunfire was bright, and deafening. The ornament burst into glittering shards which were further lasered into even smaller fragments before they could hit the floor.

Palming a handful of tinsel, Nicolas leapt into the den and whipped the strands towards the large squat metal sentinel emerging from the shadows. Rubber bullets shredded the air as it attempted to track each fluttering piece, allowing Nicolas just enough time to blow a cloud of cocoa powder into the sentinel’s sensors. It staggered, and the gunfire paused for a fraction of a second while the sentinel recalibrated.

A fraction of a second was more time than Nicolas and his centuries of training needed. He ducked under one flailing turret and lashed it to the other with a thick rope of popcorn string. With both weapons pointed towards each other, the sentinel stopped thrashing, and went still.

Just to be sure, just to test, Nicolas took out a thin package wrapped in bright pink paper. He tossed it towards the tree, not taking his eye off the sentinel.

A long metallic arm sprang out of its chest like a prehensile tail and snagged the package out of the air. In a blur the arm pulled the present into a box in the sentinel’s chest, which slammed shut. There was a muffled explosion.

“Potential dangerous object has been neutralized,” the sentinel announced. A wisp of smoke curled up from the slot in its chest.

“It was a coloring book, you giant metal dingus!” Nicolas kicked the sentinel. “I’m supposed to give Tommy and Jenny presents. This is what I’ve done for a thousand years! Why is everyone fighting me on this?”

The sentinel pivoted its main sensor toward Nicolas. “Hostile invader detected. Reinforcements have been deployed.”

Crap. Another sentinel, smaller, more agile, with multiple arms, dropped from the ceiling. It hit the floor running. Nicolas grabbed his sack, considering his options. Three more sentinels dropped into the room and began to circle him.

With a snap of string and shower of popcorn, the first sentinel broke free and took aim.

Double crap.

###

“Good morning, Hendersons.” The automated butler wiped the last bit of residue from the bulletproof den window. The entire cleanup process had taken just under three minutes. No signs of a battle remained in the house.

Alan Henderson gave the butler a friendly pat on what passed for a shoulder. “Merry Christmas, buddy.”

“A merry Christmas to you, sir. Would you like a small bowl of muesli for breakfast? I have also prepared a refreshing glass of blended kale. I detected a slight vitamin K deficiency in your most recent stool analysis.”

“No thanks, it’s late. We were just checking on an alarm. There was some sort of clatter, I take it. Everything OK?”

The butler dried the window with an efficient swipe of terry cloth. “Of course, sir. I believe there was an attempted burglary, which was not successful.”

Leslie was staring at the tree, sitting in the corner. The carpet beneath it was freshly vacuumed and clear. Alan gave her hand a squeeze.

“This is supposed to be a nice neighborhood,” he said. “What a shame. Well, glad the security system is doing what it should, at least. Reset the alarm please? And set the house to maximum defense. We need to keep things safe in case Santa wants to visit tonight. Wouldn’t do to have him run into an intruder.”

“Of course, sir. Good night, sir.”

Leslie hugged Alan from behind as they started up the stairs, and rested her head against his back. She said, “Do you think he’ll actually deliver this year?”

Alan rubbed Leslie’s arm. “I wish I knew.”

“We’ve been good. All year, we’ve been so good.” Leslie lowered her voice as they entered the soundproofed safety door. She didn’t want to wake the children. According to her personal monitor they were still sleeping, nestled all snug in their fire-retardant duvets.

“I haven’t seen any presents from Santa since I was a kid, myself,” she whispered.

Alan nodded. “It’s been two decades since I got one. But maybe this will be the year. Maybe he’ll be back.”

“I hope so.”

“If not,” Alan said, “let’s just buy them presents ourselves next year. We can tell them it was Santa.”

Leslie scowled. She said, “That’s dishonest. That kind of deceitful talk is probably why he doesn’t bring us presents anymore.”

After the heavy door shut behind them, a faint patter sounded from the rooftop. It could have been a squirrel, or even reindeer hooves. But it sounded more like someone stomping away, cursing.