The Phlegthorne

We had a Phlegthorne, as everybody had one. We got it about five years ago when I turned 123 (now generally considered early onset of middle age). We chose the moderately expensive Eschenberg variant said to be stable with a perpetual battery guaranteed for a minimum of 800 years (somebody needs to look up "perpetual" in the dictionary). When a release was announced,  I looked at the new features (I could live without) and the bug-fixes (I could live with) and did not upgrade (due to cost).

It was Wednesday and I knew to go stand in line waiting for the supply truck which brought the assorted blue and white ceramic and porcelain shards, the only thing that Phlegthorne consumes for Silicon, Calcium and trace-minerals. I still had time until eleven, so I started the morning run-down. My messages were sorted in descending order of importance, summarized and compacted but I always read them all the way to the end and reviewed the spam and commercials. I skipped the reminders, the news, the weather and anniversaries directly to home status. I had two medium-priority signals ”'Your Favorite Chewing Gum' is now available at Laura's” and ”broken glass in kitchen area”. I thought Adèle must've dropped a wineglass last night and not clean up, but if I learned anything in my century and a quarter on Earth, it was that everything that happened to me, good or bad was due to what I thought, what I said or what I did. So: I must've dropped a wineglass last night and I went and cleaned it up. Only then I looked at the high-priority signals: "Throw out the Brussels Sprout" and "Do not consume the Brussels Sprout". I decided to do that at the earliest convenience, and then I went to stand in line for Phlegthorne feed. My neighbor Eric (he had upgraded to 3.15 on his expensive Smith-Kovitch variant) was in front of me.. Every week we debated why the Wednesday supply truck didn't show up in our reminders list, and, every week we concluded that the Phlegthorne must've implanted this directly into our brain memory. I got the feed, placed it in the P-container in the house and got ready for my weekly triathlon: swim two miles, bike twenty miles, run five miles.
I wasn't sure if  Adèle would listen to signals, so I wrote her a message to using pen and paper, an left it on the counter: "Cherie, n’utilisez pas le chou de Bruxelles. Jetez-le", then I drove to the gym.
When I came home at night, Adèle lay dead on the kitchen floor, her face blue, her lips frothy, a fork, a broken plate and some spilled Brussels sprout spilt nearby. My warning note was by the back door upside down.

The Phlegthorne's lens was pointing at me: "Sit down please, I have bad news, nod to continue signal". I nodded. "High priority signal resumed: Dead body of cohabitant in kitchen area."
I guess 2.0 works just fine, yeah?!