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It starts, as most of his rabbit holes do, on shift. He's sitting in the loft at the table, on his phone, scrolling through TikTok.
Hen's across the table from him, reading her mystery novel, placing them under strict instructions not to interrupt her. Buck's scrolling through his for you page (on silent, thank you very much) and his algorithm is mainly cats doing funny things, which he sends to Eddie, and gaming clips, which he sends to Christopher, so a different type of video captures his attention.
It's been reposted by Maddie, that's why he's seeing it. A woman is walking into her house, it's snowing in her hallway, a rat runs across the floor, and she drops her keys into an endless pit in the floor. Buck is instantly taken in.
There's machines, and gadgets, and shelves, and organisation hexagons for sunglasses. His brain can't keep up.
He re-watches it a few times, and then scrolls. He sends a quick video of a dog skateboarding to Eddie, (who's only sitting across the room on the couch, but refuses to keep his phone near him when it's charging for fear of the ‘Bluetooth Brainwaves’) and scrolls onto another video.
Now the woman's mother-in-law is in the elevator and the house is covered in a comedic amount of McDonald's containers. It’s a bit like those baby sensory videos he and Jee watch, but for a 33 year old man. He keeps scrolling, he can't help it.
He doesn't even realise he's gone down a rabbit hole until the bell finally goes, and he spends the drive to the fire thinking about portable washing machines and finds himself imagining the hose as a blue light water gun.
Eddie drives them home, because that's what it is now he and Chris are back, and Buck spends the whole drive scouring the internet and telling Eddie about his finds. He just nods along, listening intently like he always does.
But it eats away at Buck all night.
He kind of forgets about it, honestly. He's not on TikTok a whole lot, and he moves from hyperfixation to hyperfixation as often as he changes clothes sometimes.
Until they have a 24 off, and he’s making cookies with Chris for his science trip bake sale. Chris is folding the chips into the dough while Buck scrolls through the briefing email to see if any of the kids are lactose intolerant, when there's a knock on the door.
Buck glances up and puts his phone down, ‘Keep mixing, bud!’, He calls to Chris, and heads to open the door. It's probably Amazon or something, he and Chris have full access to Eddie's Prime account and frequently abuse it for books and Lego sets.
Instead, he opens the door, and he's faced with a pile of at least thirty small boxes and one very nervous-looking delivery driver. Buck freezes, his eyes widen.
Okay, so, maybe instead of moving on after re-watching the thousands of videos under #CleanTok to satisfy his inherent need to consume and enjoy, he clicked a few of the links under the videos, bought a bunch of gadgets and devices, ordered them all for urgent delivery, and promptly forgot about it.
But now, staring at the boxes in the entryway that took him and Chris a good while to bring in, with the words ‘SmartHome’ and ‘CleanGadgets’ and ‘CoolBots’ plastered across them, he can feel the neurons of obsession firing in his brain again.
Chris's eyes are lighting up too, though.
“Dad's gonna lose his shit,” He whispers, in awe, and Buck's too excited to tell him off.
They spend a full two hours opening and trying all of the gadgets with various 'oohs' at them all. And yes, he even has the blue light water gun.
There's a Roomba, there's a cleaner speaker for fruit, there's multiple bluetooth light-switches and a video doorbell, there's a tiny portable washing machine (‘You can bring it to college!’ Buck says to Chris, and promptly gets a pillow thrown at his head.)
There's a couch steamer and a window washing robot thing, and an automatic mop that refills and empties itself and a Hildy speaker that, yes, does actually listen to what you say.
“Do you think if we turn them all on and leave them, they'll turn into Ultron?” Chris asks, holding up the window robot.
“That'd be awesome.”
They scavenge for dirty socks to put in the washing machine – and it actually works! They set up the video doorbell and wave to themselves on Buck's phone (which he also installs onto Chris's phone just in case). They spray everything with the blue-light gun that probably does nothing but it's fun all the same. They slice bell peppers and cucumbers and it somehow knows what it's slicing. Buck even puts a spoon there to test and it knows it's a spoon and refuses to slice.
They end up sitting on the couch, eating chopped, bluetooth-speaker-cleaned vegetables, cheering whenever the Roomba goes past.
What an awesome day.
Eddie knows that something's wrong the minute he steps into the house.
It's quiet, for one. It's never quiet when Buck and Chris are hanging out. There's always a movie playing, or music blasting, or the sound of their combined chatter carrying through the house. It reminds him of the little he experienced with Chris as a toddler, and babysitting Jee now. Silence is never good.
He’s balancing two grocery bags, some knitted clothes from Pepa for baby Buckley-Han, and a box on the porch they mustn't have heard. He kicks his shoes off and drops his keys into a little white tray. It looks new, maybe Buck bought something. It is their house now. The thought makes Eddie smile.
It lasts about two seconds. He steps into the hallway and is immediately met with total chaos.
Boxes and packing tape are scattered all over the floor, white tissue paper and bubble wrap and about a million little pieces of cardboard dust fill the hallway.
“Uh, Chris? Buck?” He calls into the house.
“In here!” Buck’s voice floats in, and Eddie can vaguely place it in the living room, so he picks his way through the hall. “Watch the floor! It's slippery!”
“Why?” Eddie asks himself under his breath, and gets to the living room. He kind-of wishes he hadn't.
Buck is cross-legged on the couch, a plate of carrot sticks on the coffee table, staring intently at the carpet. There's a white roomba crossing the rug, the room smells like detergent and there's something rattling in the corner.
Buck looks up as he walks in and grins, and points to something that looks like a sponge. “The mop-bot's on squeaky clean mode.”
Eddie puts his things on the floor. “The– what?”
Before he can process it, the sponge slides over to his foot, bumps into it, and turns around.
He's looks at Buck, horrified, and he at least has the decency to look sheepish. “I got a mop-bot.”
“What the hell is a mop-bot?”
And then, before Buck can answer, Chris walks in holding a bowl of chopped banana. “Buck, look, it literally cuts anything— oh, hey Dad.” He holds out the bowl. “Want some banana?”
Eddie doesn't know what's happening, honestly.
"I don't– what– okay..." He murmurs, and begins to head to the kitchen, ignoring his son. He's almost sure he hears Buck and Chris laughing.
The kitchen isn't any better. There is a slicer on the worktop, and a bowl with a bunch of fruit in, abandoned cookie dough pushed aside, and enough empty battery cartons to fuel the apocalypse.
And then he sees it. His nemesis.
"What the hell is this?" He demands, storming into the living room, the evil hockey puck in his hand. It glows blue at his words, listening in like an evil robot, and it has the words HILDY across the top like he could ever forget.
"It's a Hildy!" Buck says, and Eddie glares at it.
"What is it doing here?"
Buck and Chris look at each other.
"Smart house makeover?" Chris suggests, nervously.
Eddie's about to respond in utter confusion, when the robot gives a little chime, and says, "Hello, Evan, Eddie and Chris. I'm Hildy!"
It's Buck's turn to be confused. "Did it just legal name me?"
"That's right!" It chimes again. "From the credit card that I was purchased with, I can see your legal name is Evan Buckley!"
"Why do you still have my credit card information?" He asks.
Eddie put it down on the couch like it'd somehow read his mind and get his credit card information too. It probably could.
"I store all your information!"
They all look at it in horror.
"Well, delete it!" Buck insists, horrified. He feels kind of dumb for talking to a robot, but really, what is he supposed to do?
"For your safety, I can't! I store all kinds of information! As legally obligated, I store your credit card number, your home address, your mobile number, your email address, your-"
Which is when Buck, in a stroke of genius or stupidity, grabs the Hildy and drops it in the mop-bot refill station with a splash. It fizzles and sparks a bit, but the HILDY light goes out. "Phew."
Eddie raises his eyebrows. "How are we gonna get that out without electrocuting ourselves?"
"I... admittedly didn't think about that. But I saved us from the robots keeping all of our data!"
"It's probably backed up to a cloud, you're never getting rid of that." Chris chimes in, unhelpfully.
"Great." Eddie sighs. "Now when AI takes over the world, they're gonna pay for it with Buck's credit card."
Buck sighs and leans back into the sofa.
"Why'd you buy all this stuff, anyways?"
"I thought it'd be cool." He says.
"It is cool," Chris replies.
Eddie vehemently shakes his head. "It's terrifying. They could all be listening. Have you ever watched I, Robot?"
"No, because we aren't all super old."
"I'm younger than you!"
"It's cool, Dad! You have to admit it's kind of cool."
He frowns, looks around the room. The mini washing machine is rattling away in the corner and the window roomba is making its way across the glass backdoor. I mean...
"... It's kind of cool." He says, defeated.
Buck and Chris cheer.
"Does this mean we get to keep everything?" Buck asks.
They get to keep a few of the things, but they do have an I, Robot movie night, and none of them really trust the mop-bot after that.