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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven

Anti-Burglar Installations  
  Every electronic house should have automated defenses.  

The house's electronic brain was puzzled about people on the porch.

...were these people guests? It searched memory circuits. Guests were people who came to visit while owners were home. Guests were friendly, talkative. The house decided this man and woman did not fit in that category of identification.

Hurriedly, it searched its myriad electrical networks and found the only logical description of the intruders—burglars.

Behind the walls, relays clicked and infinitesimal electrical charges darted across a spidery web of silver wires only to find themselves in the dead-ends of missing connections.

The anti-burglar installations are missing! the house thought frantically. If the protective devices had been present, it would have been able to spray the intruders with tear gas, paralyze them with electrical charges, thrust them from the house with antigravity rays, or kill them by any one of a dozen methods. Without the anti-burglar mechanisms, it was defenseless. What can I do? the house wondered. What can I do!

Technovelgy from The Angry House, by Richard R. Smith.
Published by Startling Stories in 1955
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