That night, while she scrolled her phone, the remote lowered the screen brightness without being asked. Then it switched the input to the baby monitor. Leo was awake, cooing softly.

When the thunderstorm knocked out power at 2 a.m., Elena woke to a soft amber glow. The HeiTech’s LED was blinking slowly—not an error code, but a pulse. Stay calm , it seemed to say.

Now Elena doesn’t program the HeiTech. She negotiates with it.

“Fine,” she muttered, scrolling late into the night. That’s when she found it: the HeiTech 4-in-1 Lernfähige Universal Fernbedienung . “Learnable,” the listing promised. “Smart. Adaptive.”