The paperless wait

The new year’s just a month old, and I’ve already suffered my first existential crisis. At least I’m making the most of my time, right?

Unknown to me since last fall, a bug in the machine at the power company turned off the autopay on my electric bill in my West Virginia home. Now I owe a whopping $600 on Jan. 15, with a notice of pending termination (Cold Weather Rule notwithstanding). Welcome to 2024 anyway.

I can’t pay online because as part of an effort to go green, I went paperless. Clutterbug me threw out old papers, including bills and bank statements. I don’t even know my account number.

I’m a cyber senior in the making. I check email occasionally. I lose passwords and lock myself out of accounts. Listen, it’s a sensitive subject.

I dial the energy mogul’s main number and peer out my bedroom window at the blustery wintry morning. I live in a small village settled in 1734. Solid-clay brick houses, slate roofs, arched portals, heavy stone foundations —everything’s old here.

Big snowflakes swirl over the cobblestone side street below my window as if caught inside a paperweight of barometric pressure. My garbage can has blown into my neighbor’s yard again. I bet the Richardsons never have a problem with autopay.

A cheerful voice breaks in, and “Beverly,” my automated assistant, arrives to help me. “Representative,” I say.

“I’d like to transfer you…” she replies, in an overacted, preprogrammed voice of apology. “But first, I’ll need to confirm it’s you, OK?”

I lean forward in my chair. Wait, what? Did I mishear her? An overly personified computer program — artificial intelligence, they call it — must authenticate me, a sixth-generation native of the pre-Civil War town outside the window of my historic home (circa 1811). All so I can pay my bill before my house plunges into icy darkness.

The eyes of my ancestors, deep in the horsehair plaster walls of this two-century-old house, open wide as little miss cyber mouth’s voice on speakerphone fills the quiet places of my old family home, bounding past antique chairs and old paintings like a rambunctious blonde retriever named Jen.

Calm down, I tell myself. We’ve all been through an automated verification process.

I pass Bev’s security test — name, address, phone number, last four of my Social Security number. I can pay up, get off the phone, and on with my morning.

The phone abruptly beeps, clicks, hums, and — “Welcome. I’m Beverly, your automated assistant …” I’m back at the beginning.

Outside, the snow has picked up, and the wind gusts hard against the house, whistling through the window pane in front of me.

Bang!

A loose window shutter, caught in a snowy gust, knocks against the front of the house. The bedside lamp flickers, then goes dark. The space heater at my feet whines to a stop. The hall is dark, and the bathroom light is off.

My house has lost power.

I peer out the window. The lights are still on in the Richardson’s place. Did the high wind cause an outage or did the powers that be just shut off my power?

I pop a few magnesium grape gummies, and soon enough, Bev’s back.

“…we’re experiencing longer than usual wait times…” That’s not Bev. I’ve been relegated to a wait queue.

So for another half an hour, I wait on hold in my darkened hulk of a house, phone to my ear. While the snowstorm cries at my windows and doors, the inside of my house stands eerily dark and silent. Not a sound, except for the creaking floorboards under me as I pace in my sock feet, the dreadful silence of how a house sounded before electricity.

I manage to dress, and begin to do my bathroom thing in the half-light — comb, toothbrush, soap, razor.

The wind howls outside. The shutter bangs against the house again. Then, my cellphone goes dark, its battery dead.

I won’t be calling Bev back.