Batteries Not Included

Once upon a time, there was a—

“Absolutely not. You will not begin my story like that. I’m a smoke alarm, not a princess. Kate McKean would not approve of this nonsense.”

“Wait, I am writing this, you… are… my character," I said to the page, glancing at the real-life inspiration for the story looming over me.

“That’s true, but art takes a form of itself. I was in your head, now I am here—but not as a lame fairy tale. Put me in, I dunno, give me thriller, scary. Something like Amityville Horror. Or… could you even reach that caliber of writing?” the smoke alarm taunted.

A small, unwelcome pinch tightened behind my ribs. Being taunted by a small, round piece of plastic was almost worse than peer critiques.

The smoke alarm always knew where to press—right on the soft spot I pretended didn't exist.

“Okay—let’s see what I got,” I muttered.

I braced for what may come next.

Becky had snatched me off the ceiling so fast that my mounting bracket tore in half. Wait—what? You’re writing as me now? Also—OOOOUCH!

Becky crawled off the kitchen island, me in one hand and a knife in the other. Ok, some danger. I see you. I can forgive my ass getting ripped apart as long as this has some action. Her labored breathing misted me with spittle. Gross. She shoved me out in front of her like a plastic shield. Okay, cool—I am staring into the living room. So far, not very Amityville-esque—wait. What was that?

Something shifted in the air, didn’t it?

A shadow stretching across the entryway stole my breath.

Okay… a little danger. I see you. Manageable danger, right?

A scraping sound, like a rusty blade against bone.

Right?

The shadow shuffled closer, bigger now. Heavy, phlegmy breath rattled through the room.

Oh, God.

Becky waved her knife. Becky, get it together—you’re slicing air. I tried to jump, but… smoke alarm. Her hands dug into my sides. Whoever had done her nails needed a raise. Those nails could survive the apocalypse.

The shadow lurched forward. Becky and I screamed.

“Aah!” / BEEP!

A man emerged from the edge of the shadow, moving like he'd practiced being human but hadn't mastered it. Practiced being human? Absolutely not. The look he gave us made Becky's knife seem decorative. She thrust me toward him like a shield. His gaze snapped to me, and a jolt shot through my batteries, stealing what little juice I had left. No. No. NO. I don’t want this. Fairy tale. FAIRY TALE NOW.

He shuffled closer. Becky slashed her knife—missed. He knocked it out of her hands and grabbed her. Poor Becky. She needs a better writer. She held me up to his pockmarked face. His emerald eyes bored straight through my branding frame. I beeped, and my batteries fell out and—

Darkness swallowed me.

“How was that?” I asked.

“Well. That… hurt my pride,” the smoke alarm admitted. A flicker of guilt pooled in my stomach.

“Am I allowed to do a story now?” I moved on.

“Yes, but hold on, now—let’s not gloss over what we have here,” the smoke alarm crooned.

“And what do we have?” I asked, incredulous.

“We… have… an opportunity to… tell the world about you!” The words drowned me with sarcasm.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need to write about myself,” I argued.

“Ooooh, you do, though,” the annoying safety device said.

“No, I don’t.” I insisted. What did a smoke alarm know about writing?

“You’re arguing with a smoke detector you created. I think there’s something that needs to be addressed there, eh?”

Checkmate. He had me. (Oh, Kate, hey, I guess it’s a he.)

The truth was—I hated how quickly he zeroed in on it.

“Nothing needs to be addressed.” I spat.

“Okay. We’ll leave that at face value.”

“Thank you.” I breathed a sigh of relief.

“For now.” He added quickly, smirking.

I pushed myself away from my desk and the smoke alarm. I was still under the watchful red eye of the real one above me. Sheesh. Write about what you know, but damn. I wandered away from the PyroProof alarm and got water. Some for the irony, mostly because hydration was my personal failing.

I wondered what I was even getting at with that prompt. Even the desk-world me created this Kate McKean character to justify some writing-element leverage to… do what? Pyro was getting a bit snarky for a smoke alarm. And the worst part?

He wasn’t wrong.

That's the problem.

I sipped the cold water, mulling over a new character. Espionage? Derailment? Historical? I shuddered at the last one. I wasn’t smart enough for that. Or—hey, a challenge, right? I could totally try something historical and add a fun element. Like, Colin Farrell helping Abe Lincoln or something? Yeah, that would be fun.

I sat back down and donned the cloak of desk-me to get back into the right headspace to write. I flipped on some music.

The page waited to see what I’d try next. As did I.

The daylight was fading slowly on the sails of the S.S. Tribecca. Time within it was standing still. Captain Michael was waiting for something. Only the slightest touch of land and he feels weak. He cannot lie. From the sea, he cannot hide. He was losing the will to try.

He can’t hide it (hide it)

Can’t fight it (fight it).

So go on, go on—

“Come on, leave me breathless.” Pyro sang. “The Corrs are fantastic!"

I was livid. Somehow Pyro had swashbuckled his way back on deck, singing. “How are you here?” I demanded, turning off the distracting music.

“I’m you, silly. You’re me, I’m you. It’s this whole thing.” He chirruped around Captain Michael.

“Ammi suppose’ ta stay here? Dance fer yas er suttin’?” the Captain asked, confused, rubbing and jiggling his swollen belly borne from many a port ale. His dance moves were not something you wanted to be trapped on a ship with.

BEEP!

I agreed with Pyro. I erased Captain Michael.

“C’mon now, we’re jus’ havin’ fu—” The last of his pirate coat tail vanished.

Another pinch of guilt twisted in my chest. Even the things I created looked disappointed in me.

Just trudge forward. Too many times I’d allowed writer’s block (read: fear) to be a thin excuse not to succeed. I have a PhD in Self-Sabotage. I’d done my residency at the corner of I’ll Get to It Eventually and One Day I Should.

I tried again. Historical fiction challenge, right? Okay. Further back—somewhere smoke alarms couldn’t exist.

The sun was an agonizing treat in the unforgiving Egyptian landscape. Heat curled inside you like a warning. The layered heat formed a shimmering mosaic of biting desert magic.

Eunuch A’Mil-Lher kneeled before her ruler. “Pharaoh Mikh-Ael, your grape is ready, my liege, my sire?”

“Dude, I’mma king dis taime!” Pharaoh Mikh-Ael wiggled in his throne, donuts from the Character Green Room pushed against his rope belt.

“Yes, sir—no! Er, ma’am, madame—signor, s-sr-Miller-Mil-Hilieer.” He blew a raspberry.

“It’s your first line, m’lord,” the tiny Eunuch whispered.

“’Ey, yous flubbeded yers. Malört ain’t in da ’Gyptian taimes.”

“Well—your grape, O Ruler of the Boundless Sand.”

The Pharaoh looked around at his expectant people. He looked at me. I… don’t know what to make him say. My pulse raced. The pressure to perform burned in my chest.

I didn’t know what to make him say any more than he knew where Egypt even was.

“There it is,” someone yelled.

My neck hair stood on end.

I looked at the Pharaoh and his Eunuch, my eyes searching for an answer. They shook their heads. I scanned the crowd I’d created. Nothing out of the ordinary.

BEEP!

Pyro flew in, carrying the capstone of what would later be known as one of the Great Pyramids. The Egyptian crowd oooh’ed and aaah’ed as he set the final stone. He then clicked into a cloud’s mounting bracket.

“Huh. Guess you’re why people believe the pyramids were built by aliens in UFOs.” I glared.

“In this world, yes. And you're the one who put me here. Maybe ask yourself why you make me crash-land into every story. I mean, look at these two: Michael—oops, Pharaoh Mikh-Ael and Eunuch A’Mil-Lher. Poor tiny Eunuch—you made them no taller than Mikh’Ael’s sandals.”

This jab landed harder than I’d care to admit. He was right: the world I created in my head was unstable.

Because I was.

“That! Write about that,” Pyro urged. My stomach dropped. He didn't mean Egypt. He meant the fault line under all of this.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” Pyro said, gentler than expected. “You can’t heal what you don’t confront.”

“Isn’t that a bit cliché?” I deflected.

“You know damn well when something is drenched in truth, it’s not cliché. Otherwise, how sad a world would that be? Fighting for your truth, discovering it, labeling it as something others want, and still hiding it behind a mask.” Pyro tutted. ‘Mask’ settled deep, somewhere within me I didn’t want to look. If he had arms, they would have been crossed like disappointed parents. Or worse: a disappointed friend.

“See? It’s comments like that that you write to yourself. That’s poison. Now I’m just going to… scooch right off this, what—sky inspired by The Mummy?” Pyro unclicked himself off the cloud.

But he fell with a thud and a grunt among the Pharaoh Mikh-Ael’s worshippers. “Wow. Purposeful writing, there.” He coughed. The worshippers separated.

Pharaoh Mikh-Ael seized his opportunity, summoning his most regal voice, lifting his arms to the crowd: “Wha’ is dis here weetchin’ craftses?”

Eunuch A’Mil-Lher, now normal-sized, tapped his shoulder. “No, no—the bit’s over. We just watch now.”

Pyro rolled closer.

“Da one taime Imma king,” Pharaoh Mikh-Ael chucked himself into his throne.

Pyro was on the steps of the throne when the Eunuch was erased back into the CGR (Character Green Room, just in case you forgot, I almost did).

“No! Again!?” the Pharaoh found himself unable to move. His feet started disappearing up to his shins. “Really? Yer writin’ dat jus ta erase it? Here, jus’ lemme do it.” Pharaoh Mikh-Ael pressed backspace and blipped himself back into the CGR. The creeping Pyro went with him next.

The smoke alarm was getting too close. What did he know?

The question lodged in my throat. I wasn’t ready for the answer—not here, not anywhere.

I pushed back from my desk-self again, suddenly aware I needed more water.

As it sloshed into my glass, I couldn’t help but think of Pyro. Why was he so insistent on me diving into something? Why was he appearing in each story? It didn’t make sense.

I’m arguing with myself about a smoke detector.

I shook my head, downed the water, and sat back down, sliding into my desk-ego. I held my breath and poised over the keyboard.

Primordial soup bubbled restlessly. Quantum gravity applied and negated itself, sending a large explosion wave across the newborn universe. Quarks and nebulous blobs intermingle, sparking brilliant whites, yellows, reds, blues. Galaxies formed and vanished in the blink of my eye—but I was safe.

I was before time; I danced between the seconds. Moons and planets swirled around me. I witnessed planets being born. Billions of years could pass here without anyone touching me.

No pressure. No prodding. No expectations. Just me. My thoughts.

The silence wrapped around me like a warm blanket I’d been chasing my whole life.

Swirling spheres orbited me. One moon drifted closer, like a 3-D movie effect. As gravity pulled it closer, it began to take clearer shape, no longer bent and distorted. It was preceded by a small red dwarf star—No. Way.

“Yoohoo!” Pyro yelled.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I rolled my eyes.

“You shouldn’t be surprised. You just said you were here with your thoughts. I’m one!” Pyro cheered, getting absolutely nothing back from me.

My heart sank. I wanted to be alone.

Alone meant safe. Alone meant unseen. Alone meant no one could confirm the fear I already suspected.

But instead, I was being harassed by this judgmental Roomba.

“But why is that? Why do you want to be alone?” he asked.

My skin prickled. “I don’t know.”

“But you do.”

I stayed silent. Pyro orbited me like a relentless moon.

“I don’t. I just feel safe alone.”

“But why?” he asked, firmer now.

“I don’t know.” I snapped, heat rising in my cheeks.

“Why!” Pyro screeched in his shrill voice.

“I don’t know!” I yelled, stuffing stars and galaxies into my ears to avoid hearing him, to avoid the truth.

“WHY! WHY! WHY!” His triplet ricocheted through the cosmos.

I shoved more stardust in my ears.

Pyro continued to cry WHY, each one sharper than the last.

Something in me cracked.

I ran—or tried to—but galaxies are slippery. I stumbled. Great, I’d managed to embarrass myself in front of this sassy safety device.

“I am afraid to be rejected if someone knows the real me.”

The confession tore out of me before I could stop it. Relief and fear fought for space behind my ribs. Unlocked, but raw.

Pyro quieted, stopped orbiting. He shrank to normal size and floated into my hand. “Hey. Look at me.”

I peered at him through blurry tears. A PyroProof smoke detector.

A smoke detector.

A smoke detector was consoling me.

Was I this far gone?

“I may be just a smoke detector. You, though—you are so much more. You are so afraid of trusting yourself that you ran to the beginning of time to avoid me. We’re sitting in the breath after the Big Bang—the beginning of life, of time, of me, of you. You created this,” Pyro chirruped in my hand.

“All of this tapestry—is you," Pyro gestured to the cosmos. “How do you not see how powerful that is? You even thought I gestured to that, but… smoke alarm. That instinct? Dive in.”

I nodded.

“What are you going to do about it?” Pyro blinked at me. Waiting. Silence whipped around us, tight and suffocating.

For once, though, I didn't delete the question.