Smart Home Mystery App

“Sure. Which type of mystery would you like to play? You can say, ‘Sci-fi, escape room, murder mystery, Encyclopedia Brown, horror, Halloween Special, Sherlock Holmes classic, or random.’” “Random.” “Sure. How many people will be playing, and what is the age of the youngest player?” “8 people playing. 11 years old.” “Initiating. Please set your smart TV to the Prime channel, where the details of the mystery will be explained.” The TV was switched over to Prime, and a picture of a dead body in a space suit showed up. The lights in the room adjusted to a bluish space ship tone. The microwave set a timer counting down from 37 minutes and 23 seconds. “The captain has died mysteriously. The ship is currently drifting in a decaying orbit around the ice planet ‘Bursa 3,’ and unless you, the crew, can figure out how to start the ship’s auxiliary engines, the ship will burn up in the atmosphere in 37 minutes and 19 seconds. The first officer seems to have removed his locator badge, and so I am not able to trace his current position. He may hold the answers. Good luck.” As we went from room to room, various connected devices assumed their role in the mystery. My phone displayed a timer until destruction and plotted our position on the ship. An augmented reality app showed us various broken ship bits we had to find to reassemble and start the engine controls. The furnace fluttered on and off like main engines trying and failing to restart. From time to time, Alexa would announce that there had been another murder on the ship, and a player would be removed from the game, or that the ship was being hailed by the Dorkulons, or that there were still more parts of the ship that were inoperable and needed repair. Alexa would note our progress and time as we announced our discoveries and clues. With 2 minutes left to spare, we had solved the mystery of the captain’s death, and restarted the engines. “Congratulations for solving the murder mystery and repairing the ship. You may now use your microwave to start some popcorn for the upcoming feature film.” We flopped down on the couch, and pressed ‘play’ to watch Mission Impossible, but got bored of it. And then the couch disappeared entirely from underneath us.

“Hmm... must be a programming glitch. Computer, arch. End simulation of 21’st century technology.” Ryker stepped outside of the holodeck and went across a few corridors into Ten-Forward. Outside, the planet ‘Bursa 3’ was looming very large...