Cover image from Goodreads.com
Detective Maritza Smith gets a call from Rose House – an AI-infused house – informing her of a body inside, dutifully fulfilling the duty-of-care directive of notifying the authorities of a deceased person within the house.
Except the house’s creator has already passed and is currently a diamond sitting on a plinth inside the house, and the only person who the AI will allow inside is in Turkey, nowhere near the Mojave Desert.
Detective Smith needs to figure out how the deceased got inside while also trying to get inside herself.
The novella didn’t quite tie up the loose ends in a way I’d prefer. The plot is complete; of how Smith gains entry, what she sees, and how the person died in there, but the story is left open-ended. Smith ends up leaving with some valuable tech, but does she use it or not?
AI houses are common in this universe. Or at least, houses with embedded AI. But Rose House is different, it’s more sophisticated. The deceased wanted to take the code and use it to create a city, buy why? Why would humans want to have buildings operated or infused with AI?
Anyway, the novella is well written and engaging, it’s also a peek into a near-future dystopia that I’m not sure I’d like to live in.
Should Be Writing 