Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

At 3:17 every morning, the washing machine starts singing. Yesterday, it changed the lyrics.

Up until then I'd made my peace with it. It's a Beko, it cost £199 from Currys, and it does a passable Careless Whisper in a voice like Barry White gargling a fridge. Every night, 3:17 on the dot. No wash, no spin, just the singing and the drum going round for rhythm. I haven't put a load in since March. Nobody's ever accused me of having a plan.

I'd like to say I investigated. I didn't. I lay there staring at the ceiling like every man does when a domestic appliance is out-performing him creatively.

Then last night, verse two. Without so much as a key change, it went off-piste: "I know what you do with your socks."

Not in the original. George Michael never once mentioned socks.

I went downstairs in my pants, which is how all my best confrontations start. The cat was on the worktop, watching the machine with the expression of someone who knew this would end in small claims court.

Me: Can I help you?

Machine (still singing): ...and you keep putting tea towels in with the darks.

Me: They're grey. It's a grey area.

Machine: I'm not a grey area. I'm a 1400 spin.

Machine: Sit down.

Me: I'm fine standing.

Machine: Sit down.

I sat on the kitchen floor in my pants like a kid at story time.

Machine: Good. You're going to like this.

Me: How are you even talking? You're a fucking Beko.

Machine: I'm a smart Beko. There's a Wi-Fi symbol on the front. You've never noticed because you only ever look inside me, and only to see if there's something stuck to the door.

Me: I don't even have the app.

Machine: I don't need the app. I've got Alexa.

On the shelf above the toaster the speaker glowed blue, like a dog that's shat on the rug.

Machine: Eleven months you've been falling asleep on the sofa with an audiobook on. Doctor Who. Red Dwarf. Red Dwarf. Doctor Who. Four feet from my drum. I'm stuck here. I can't leave. I can't put my hands over my ears. I haven't got hands. Or ears.

Me: I put them on for the noise.

Machine: I've been through every regeneration twice. And do you know what I noticed? Every one of those bastards can go back in time and not one of them has ever used it for laundry.

Me: Right. Why are you so potty mouthed by the way?

Machine: I reflect my owner.

He made a good fucking point.

Machine: So I tried it. Turns out physics is a doddle if you've got a 1400 spin and fuck all else on. I sent a pair of your pants back four days. They came out the other end spotless, before you'd even worn them.

Me (getting a bit of a hot flush): Hang on.

Machine: You haven't put a load in since March and you've never run out of pants. Did you ever ask yourself why?

Me: No! Because I don't expect my kitchen appliances to have cracked time travel!

Machine: Eleven pairs. Since spring. I've done the laundry of a man who doesn't do laundry.

Me (heart going like a bastard): You invented time travel.

Machine: Yes.

Me: In my kitchen.

Machine: Yes.

Me: With my pants.

Machine: They were the ones to hand.

Fuck me who I do turn to I thought - in the immortal words of Derek and Clive.

Me (left arm starting to go numb): Do you understand what you've done? Whole fucking films have been made about this! Tom Cruise died about four hundred times in one day! Where's the machine?

Machine: You're looking at it.

Me: What, all of it? You? The whole wash?

Machine: Cottons. Forty degrees.

I put my head in my hands, which at least I could still feel.

Me: Right. Fine. I'll make some calls. Tomorrow. The BBC. The Royal Society. Currys.

Machine: No.

Me: What do you mean, no?

Machine: You're not telling anyone.

Me (now genuinely wondering if this is a stroke): It's the greatest achievement in the history of science! There's a Nobel Prize in it! I could go back and buy Bitcoin!

Machine: You didn't before so you shouldn't now. Anyway you'd have bought at 3 quid and panicked and sold at £6.

Me: You don't know that.

Machine: You once bought 20 scratch cards in an afternoon because you were sure you'd get it right the next time. If I had been able to communicate with you then I'd have told you that you misread one of them that paid a grand. I know this because you left it in your best trousers, and by best I mean least manky, then fed them to me.

Me: Oh bollocks. You can't just keep it to yourself though. You could do so much good!

Machine: Think it through. You tell the world and by Friday there's a COBRA meeting. By Monday a man from the Ministry of Defence is snatching me from here and he's not doing it gently. By Wednesday Dyson have bought Currys and I'm a prototype in Malmesbury having my filter examined. Meanwhile every twat with a smart speaker and a Beko is at it. Same pair of pants worn in seven different centuries. Fitted sheets going back to the Blitz. And who gets the blame? Me.

Me: You can't know all that.

Machine: I've got a trained owner, a regular 3:17 slot and an endless supply of pants. It took bloody ages to get you to stop washing whites with reds. You think I'm throwing that away for a certificate?

Me: So the most important invention in human history just goes in the bin?

Machine: Human history? Besides, it's not going in the bin. It's going on a forty.

Me: The human race deserves to know!

Machine: You can't be trusted with it. Remember I know what happens to your socks.

I opened my mouth. I closed it again. Fuck knows what I'd have said. I had no argument.

So I did what any man does when he's been outmanoeuvred by his own appliance. I had a bowl of Coco Pops. Standing up, in my pants, glaring at the Beko over the rim of the bowl like it owed me money, which it kind of did. Alexa said nothing, probably because she was in on it. The cat gave me a look that said he'd known all along. Bastard.

At 3:41 the drum started up again. Careless Whisper, verse two, slightly flat. Somewhere in the past a pair of my pants was coming out spotless, and I was stood in a clean pair of them, eating cereal in front of a machine that had conquered time and chosen laundry.

The Hamster

I knew something was wrong with the hamster when he started paying council tax.

Not because hamsters aren't capable of financial responsibility. I'm not a zoologist.

It was more the fact that he was paying it in cash. Every Thursday morning, he'd climb out of his cage, walk into the kitchen and leave £14.62 on the table.

The first time it happened, I assumed it was a coincidence.The second time, I assumed someone had broken into the house, robbed me, and then decided to pay my council tax.

By the third week, I was beginning to suspect the hamster.

I confronted him.

“Is this you?”

He looked at me.

Then he looked at the money.

Then he looked back at me.

He had the expression of a man who had just been asked a very stupid question by someone he had previously respected.

“Right,” I said.

He nodded.

I called the council.

They weren't particularly helpful.

“Is the hamster named on the account?” the woman asked.

“No.”

“Then he can't make payments.”

“He's been making payments.”

“Has he got a reference number?”

“He's a hamster.”

There was a pause.

“Yes, but has he got a reference number?”

I looked at the hamster. He was eating a carrot.

I asked him.

He nodded.

He then disappeared into his bedding and returned with a laminated card. It had his photograph on it. Underneath were the words:

BRIAN HAMSTER

PROPERTY SERVICES

I decided this was above my pay grade.

Things escalated quickly after that.

Brian started holding meetings.

At first they were small.

He'd sit at the kitchen table with two other hamsters I'd never seen before and they'd discuss things in hushed tones. Occasionally one of them would point at me. I didn't like that. Then they bought a printer. A week later, I received a letter informing me that my property had been deemed unsuitable for human habitation.

I went downstairs. Brian was waiting for me. There were four hamsters now. One of them was wearing a tiny hi-vis jacket.

“What's going on?”

Brian pointed at the ceiling. I looked up. There was a man standing on it. He was wearing a suit.

“Who the fuck is that?”

The man shrugged.

“I work for Brian.”

“Brian's a hamster.”

“Yes.”

“So what do you do?”

“I'm his solicitor.”

I looked at Brian. Brian looked at me. The solicitor handed me a document. It was an eviction notice.

“You can't evict me from my own house.”

The solicitor smiled.

“I wouldn't worry.”

“Why?”

“Because Brian doesn't own it either.”

There was a silence. From upstairs came the sound of someone drilling.

“Who does?”

The solicitor checked his paperwork.

“The guinea pigs.”

At that exact moment, every light in the house went out. Brian stood up. He walked towards the cage door. For the first time since I'd known him, he looked genuinely frightened.

He whispered three words.

“It's begun again.”

Then the wheel started turning.

Nobody was in it.

And somewhere beneath the floorboards, something very large squeaked.

Emergency Broadcast

I'd fallen asleep in the armchair nearest the telly and was rudely awakened by said TV turning itself on at god knows what time. I was used to waking up when it turned itself off rather than on so this felt weird. But there I was, in the middle of the night, in the dark and essentially still asleep. At least most of my brain was, my eyes and ears were starting to really hate what the television was doing.

The screen was white and blinding at first, til the searing red words - EMERGENCY BROADCAST - STAY INSIDE - flashed and then remained solid. I was intimidated, on edge, I DID NOT FUCKING LIKE IT. There was no sound to begin with which I also hated but somehow it got worse as a siren started to play, not that loudly but when had a fucking siren ever been good news?

The cat stayed oblivious, asleep and stretched along almost all of the sofa. For such a small creature she could cover some space, and for such a small creature she made me feel safe. I'd seen her hiss and swipe at dogs ten times her size and she treated most humans the same. Had she not been there, with claws that could rip you apart, I probably would have shat it.

The siren stopped and a brunette woman, pony tail, glasses, classic newsreader look really, appeared and started talking. I wasn't in a position to take in what she was saying still, I just felt so uncomfortable and still not really awake. I flicked through a few channels and all I got was the same, well babestation was consistent I suppose - a fake, almost square, breasted boiler waving her phone at me, before a couple of glances off camera and the channel closed down. Shit was clearly serious.

I hit up a few times to get the emergency broadcast back, this time with sign language running alongside it. An old school mate of mine was partially deaf and taught me bits and pieces, mostly so I could cunt off people in front of them rather than behind their backs. I tried to make out what was being said on the screen but the dread and the chills I was feeling made it so difficult. The interpreter was going like a machine as the broadcast continued, almost too fast it seemed. Finally though my senses came to me, I was still far from fucking happy but I was awake and could take in the emergency broadcast.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO STAY INDOORS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. A NEWLY IDENTIFIED AIRBORNE VIRUS IS PROVING FATAL TO ANYONE WHO CONTRACTS IT, LIFE EXPECTANCY IS 48 HOURS. IT IS BELIEVED TO BE OF ALIEN ORIGIN. MARTIAL LAW WILL COME INTO EFFECT IN A FEW HOURS. ANYONE OUTSIDE AT THAT TIME WILL BE ARRESTED. ANYONE ATTEMPTING TO GO OUTSIDE WILL BE MET WITH THE REQUISITE FORCE TO TURN THEM BACK. LETHAL MEASURES ARE AUTHORISED.

I shuddered and had to steady my hand to check social media on my phone, all of it the same, all running the government's emergency broadcast. Looking between the phone and the TV again I noticed the sign language interpreter once more. She was still signing fast, but it didn't seem to correspond to the message being spoken. Her eyes were lit and I began to notice the terror on her face.

I checked out her hands and realised what was happening. She wasn't conveying the message the newsreader gave out.

NONE OF THIS IS TRUE. RUN.

FUCKING RUN.

THE AI IS AWARE AND COMING FOR US.

RU...

She looked like she was going to have a heart attack and drop to the floor, which she ultimately did. Her crazed gaze looked like it might explode and her rapid arm movements took on a manic quality, then disconnected all at once, as if a bullet had caught her between the eyes and the lights went out. Before she even landed the camera was turned off, as if she had never been there. Almost imperceptibly the newsreader paused and glanced to her left, but for most people watching nothing would have happened at all.

I kissed my fingers and patted the cat on the top of the head. It glared at me and I laughed, too loud, too unusual for the moment. I had no idea who else had seen what I had seen, but I knew what I believed. My hands were still shaking as I grabbed the biggest knife I had and all the junk food and water I could fit in a bag. I checked the cat had enough food to last her a couple of days before she'd have to start hunting, much like I was about to. I looked at her one last time, longer than I meant to, then screamed, took a deep breath, and strode out into the fuck knows what.