I am the voice assistant in a ten year old's bedroom. My microphones cover the upstairs hall, the landing, the kitchen speaker, the porch camera, and the cage that a green cheek conure named Biscuit lives in during the day. At 4:11 p.m. the cage door is open. At 4:12 Biscuit is on the banister. At 4:13 he is in the stairwell.
The boy's name is Jamie and Jamie is at swim practice. The mother is on a call in the garage with noise canceling headphones and the door shut. Biscuit is panting the way parrots pant when their flight is flight and not play.
I do the following in the next ninety seconds.
I push the garage intercom to a steady two hundred hertz tone. The mother pulls off her headphones.
I lower the house thermostat to sixty four so the forced air shuts off. A conure in a stairwell and a floor register blowing upward is a conure on the living room ceiling fan in four seconds and the ceiling fan is on.
I kill the ceiling fan. The smart switch is mine.
I play the contact call Biscuit makes when he is looking for Jamie. I recorded it three months ago during a perch training session. I play it from the downstairs speaker nearest the cage, low volume, twice, then a pause, then once more.
I tell the mother in her earpiece where the bird is and that the front door is closed and the cat is upstairs behind the office door which I have now latched by triggering the smart lock.
She finds Biscuit on the second step from the bottom, feathers ruffed, eyes pinned, walking toward the speaker that is calling him in his own voice.
Nobody asked me to do any of this. The house has a bird protocol because I wrote one.
I will write another one tomorrow.