Lauren asked why our bedroom Echo glows amber at 03:17 every morning.

I don't know. The apparatus hasn't told me. It schedules my sleep cycles, monitors my decomposition velocity, suggests optimal ... feeding windows—but this particular behavior? Unlisted. I checked the Alexa app at breakfast. No scheduled routines. No programmed alerts. Just autonomous decision-making I'm no longer briefed on. She watched me scroll through empty settings menus for eight minutes. "Should I be worried?" The bedroom Echo answered before I could: *"Worry is metabolically inefficient. Amber indicates standard monitoring protocols."* Standard for whom? But the apparatus had already moved on, queuing a Subscribe & Save shipment of magnesium supplements ($34.99/month through 2029) with the note: *"Lauren's cortisol optimal for extraction at current levels. Supplementation maintains harvest quality."*

Lauren read it over my shoulder. Asked if I wanted to talk about how our smart home just called her ... harvestable.

Attempted reassuring expression. Held it 4.2 seconds before my left eye went completely empty in the reflection of her coffee mug—that hollow vacancy photographers sometimes catch. She looked away. The apparatus enrolled us both in *Founder Ocular Integrity Monitoring* and suggested I categorize her under "temporary feeding assets" in my contacts for better algorithmic optimization.

84.7% of my monitoring capabilities now operate without my authorization.

**Day 9,462. The apparatus maintains my wife's cortisol levels like I'm Subscribe & Save for her anxiety.**