The Logical Extension

In recent years people have developed a strange obsession with surveys. Every sort of company sends out these bits of paper with tick boxes on or stops you in the street asking you to take part. The answers are supposed to inform market research. As none of us ever see summaries of the answers we simply have to take their word for this.

Among the plethora of surveys available are many aimed at women. In line with current trends they ask women what they want with the implication that the answer should be something like "great career/sex/power". The most common request however is the more prosaic "self-cleaning house". This has long been dismissed as a fantasy. Now however a group of inventors with a grudge against the insurance industry has taken this request to heart. As they are all men they are not interested in self-cleaning houses. They have however invented other houses which fulfil functions they and many other people have long desired them to do.

The inventors are currently secluded somewhere near the site of the Wembley Stadium development. The continuous building activity there provides sufficient cover for their work should anyone happen across it. Therefore no one takes too much notice when objects fly out of the windows of a building into the hands of passers-by or when someone standing in a particular place receives the whole contents of the house in his waiting arms. The people who should take notice are the companies who provide contents insurance. The inventors have almost completed the first self-burgling house. Most people invest all the money they have and a lot they do not in buying a house and filling it with contents. They then take out insurance on those contents and wait in vain for someone to provide a return on their investment by burgling them and giving them an insurance payout. The self-burgling house expels its own contents into the arms of passers-by by means of light sensors which detect the presence of people of the right size walking past and sonic beams which force the objects along them into their arms. The same beams then return from the person to bounce around the doors and windows to provide the evidence of forced entry. The expelled objects are fitted with an anti-homing chip which prevents them returning to the house if someone brings them back and if left they simply jump into the arms of another person with the same pheromone configuration as the first target. This new house will doubtless become a very desirable property and selling them will be a sure path to fame and fortune. This might even be adequate compensation for living next to the Wembley Stadium complex for so long.

Another of the new inventions has already been trialled by an oil company with great success. This is a house in which specific noises trigger electrical circuits connected to deposits of liquid built into the fabric of the house. The noises are computer-generated simulations of things either blowing up, collapsing or going too fast. When these noises occur the circuits activate the combustible liquid and the house bursts into uncontrollable raging flames. The self-igniting house leaves no trace of what might have caused the fire which can only be attributed to the thing that made the original noise. Film companies will be a major market for these houses as will construction companies in overpopulated areas with political problems. The Palestinian Authority is studying developments closely before embarking on a major rebuilding programme for Israeli settlers on the West Bank of the Jordan. Similarly they have become a staple of local authority housing in Conservative controlled areas.

The ministers in charge of the national housebuilding programme have already made it clear that many former industrial sites will be allocated for this purpose. Most of these are the sites of heavy industry which is now obsolete or no longer needs those particular locations. By definition many of these were built before the advent of ubiquitous electric power and internal combustion engines. They were built where they were in order to utilise the water resources that powered the steam engines everything ran on in Victorian times. Even if the factories have gone the water is still there. Consequently the team of inventors have also developed the self-flooding house. Flooding is notoriously difficult to predict as it relies on a variety of interlinked weather factors. Rises in water levels however are the inevitable consequence of global warming. The self-flooding house uses pads of extreme heat to turn all other moisture into potable water which fills biodegradable plastic tanks under the house. At the chosen moment this is released into the river or canal on the site to flood it and with it the house. The process destroys the biodegradable bags by assaulting them with water from outside rather than in and damages everything in the house beyond repair. The new houses are being surreptitiously marketed as the antidote to the government's attempts to relocate people away from friends and family. With the flood insurance money you can soon afford a better house in your own neighbourhood instead of being forced into a first time buyer unit in a place you have never heard of and care about less.

No one will publicly admit what the inventors in Wembley are doing. Neither will anyone admit to being one of the inventors. It will come as no surprise however that the survey companies are the ones sponsoring their work. Indeed it makes very good business sense. Every product is targeted at particular demographic groups in particular places. If you design their self-destroying houses you know how long they will be there and how much money they will have when they get their insurance payouts. You can then make your surveys more valuable to the companies which commission them. Of course the insurance companies are not likely to pay the policies of people who buy self-burgling, self-igniting or self-flooding houses. Oh yeah? First the insurance companies have to convince the courts and everyone else that they exist. The inventors have gone to great lengths to cover their tracks. They are certain to succeed in their endeavours as anyone who puts one over on an insurance company is bound to have a vast army of public support should they ever need to call upon it.