I suppose in the circumstances I shouldn’t have been surprised when the house’s security and concierge system announced the impending arrival of a police car, and I needed to swiftly boot from stand-by. The shrieking I’d given into in my despair should have been loud enough for someone in the vicinity to be concerned enough to look out for their neighbours. Who knew that community spirit and care for your fellow citizens still played a role in society at the bum end of the twenty-first century?

Thirty-two seconds’ warning however, was going to make things a little bit of a mad scramble to be presentable, seeing as I was naked and still half-wet from my incredibly unrewarding and not-at-all-relaxing hot bath. So I am down the stairs at a rapid rate of knots, relying on my gynoid dexterity to throw on a fresh uniform from my closet, while also slipping on a shoe at alternate steps as I approach the front door. I don’t want to arouse suspicion by not being at the front door to open it in good time.

I reach the front door with three seconds to spare, as they are already well up the path. I open the door to spare the officers the necessity of knocking, and I take in the visitors at a glance. A young police officer with a badge name of Sylcox, probably in her late twenties; only just shorter than me and a little plump but with a kind, round face. She’s accompanied by a taller android, of some variety I’ve seen but I couldn’t remember the name of, if they even have names. They probably are unfortunate to just have some arbitrary serial number, like XJ-meaningless-series-of-letters-and-numbers.

“Good afternoon, officer Sylcox.”

“Good afternoon, Kimmy!” I see she recognises my model designation. “Aren’t you a pretty? Would you mind telling me your designation?”

“I am Kimmy number Twelve-Nine-Forty-Three, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Twelve-Nine-Forty-Three. We’re here as one of your neighbours reported high-pitched screaming coming from the vicinity of your town house. May we come inside to conduct this interview?”

I devote about two hundred and fifty milliseconds debating seven scenarios that my increasingly fast gynoid mind has imagined over the course of the last minute, and although officer Sylcox should have brought a warrant, current standards allow me to be electronically served with a search warrant within two minutes, so there’s no point in delaying the inevitable.

“Of course, please be my guest.”

Officer Sylcox stops just before the threshold, less than two feet away from me, looking closely into my face for sixteen hundred milliseconds while she wipes the soles of her shoes on the welcome mat. She then continues in, looking around the entrance hall and making room for her android partner to follow. I shut the door and turn to face the police.

“Twelve-Nine-Forty-Three, would you mind giving me a list of the human residents of this property, any relationship between them, and their occupations?”

“My owners are John Heiden Burroughs, history teacher at Pathways College. Married to Emily Burroughs, senior opsec consultant at Alphabet.”

“He took his wife’s name when they married, huh?”

“John Burroughs’ legal name is John Heiden.”

“So I imagine they are both currently at work? Is there anyone in the house besides us three?”

Normally I would answer a question—well, two questions—completely honestly, but Patrick’s restrictions impinging on my ability to tell the truth are soon going to cause me major difficulties, if this officer keeps asking questions like this. I immediately find myself lying to the young policewoman.

“John Burroughs is on leave from his teaching position, and Emily Burroughs is at her place of work. There are no other people in the house.”

“Do you know where Mr Burroughs is currently to be found?”

“I do not.” Another forced lie.

“Has anyone else been here today?”

“John’s brother, Patrick Heiden, visited this morning.”

“Was Mr Burroughs here while his brother visited?”

“He was not.” Another forced lie. At this rate, the situation is going to unravel any minute.

“When was the last time you set eyes on Mr Burroughs?” The last time I looked in the mirror, and saw those yellow contact lenses, girl.

“I have not seen John since Friday evening.” A technical lie.

“Is it normal for him to be away from the house for three days?” Nothing is normal at the moment.

“I am a new household acquisition, and therefore do not have enough historical data supporting any conclusions.”

“Uh, interesting, interesting, I knew the new Kimmys are up to five digits these days.” Sylcox is on the move, and I look across at her as she wanders around the entrance hall, looking in the kitchen and living room, going over near to the door of the closet under the stairs, and finally stopping before the tiles at the foot of the stairwell.

“XJ, please restrain Kimmy Twelve-Nine-Forty-Three, and begin high-fidelity crime scene recording,” she says quickly, and I do not resist as the android, still standing beside me, takes one arm of mine to pull me across. He quickly locks both of my arms behind in cuffs designed to restrain androids.

“Recording activated,” XJ says behind me.

Sylcox marches directly over to me and orders me, “Kimmy, stand up straight.” Crap. She knows I’m too tall.

“Kimmy, you are or have been misleading me. Every single Kimmy I’ve ever met, I’ve been exactly on their eye level, when they’re in their normal uniform shoes and I’m in my boots with one and a half inches of heel. You are clearly at least one inch taller than me, if not more, and you’ve obviously got non-standard eyes.” She leans in even closer to me than before when she passed me on the threshold, looking at them intently for eight seconds. I watch her expression with similar concentration, and I can see her almost whisper the word fuck aloud.

“Kimmy, please state the height of Emily Burroughs,” she resumes questioning me.

“Emily Burroughs is five feet, five inches tall.”

“Ahuh. Kimmy, what colour eyes does John Burroughs have?” She knows!

“John Burroughs has heterochromia, one brown, one grey eye.” I can guess what’s coming next.

“Kimmy Twelve-Nine-Forty-Three is wearing contact lenses and has extremely blood-shot eyes, where the translucency is greater. It’s hard to be certain of the colour of his irises below the coloured glass without removing them, but I believe I’ve discovered the elusive Mr Burroughs, who is inside Kimmy Twelve-Nine-Forty-Three. Kimmy’s hair is dripping wet and there are wet footprints on the stairs. XJ, please phone in a call for a medical emergency at the present location. We require a crime scene investigation team dispatched here as well to preserve evidence of Mr Burroughs having likely been imprisoned by force, and responsible for the reported scream. Interviews required immediately with Mrs Emily Burroughs and Mr Patrick Heiden.”
 

_* ^* _*

 
Difficulties begin to set in when the paramedics arrive. Sylcox continues to have XJ restrain me until the CSI team arrives fifteen minutes later, so the paramedics assess me in situ. They confirm John’s presence—my presence?—inside Kay, and phone ahead for advice to the hospital, as someone in my circumstances is extremely novel, if not actually unique. Once Sylcox briefs the CSI team she asks the paramedics their destination, radios in a request for further assistance at the hospital, and instructs the paramedics’ ambulance to follow her in convoy.

At the hospital I’m taken straight in for axial tomography imaging, as they don’t know whether I’m safe for an MRI, and as soon as the first images of my head appear it’s obvious that I’m in deep shit, thanks to my brain tissue being thoroughly intermixed with Kay’s neural sponge. Detectives and federal agents arrive, dismissing Sylcox and collecting answers from me for hours non-stop, and I no longer worry myself that half the answers I give are completely fabricated, because at some point I expect Patrick’s manipulations will be undone, and I will be able to point to having to give compelled answers under duress. However no android experts arrive to assess my ability to give truthful testimony.

Frustratingly, these police who arrived after Sylcox don’t communicate to the medical staff her belief that some of my answers are fabricated, so I’m unable to communicate that I’m not alright; they trigger Patrick’s inhibitions regularly without noticing, meaning they write down contradictory observations of my mental state, and record my unwillingness to give consent to be extracted from Kay. It’s a complete shitshow.

Neither Emily nor Patrick appear over the course of the day and early evening, so I’m still awaiting treatment when Sylcox returns at twenty-one fifteen, just under an hour from the end of her shift, and she hits the proverbial roof. The medical staff are now aware my ability to advocate for myself has been badly impaired or manipulated, and so when Sylcox goes just before twenty-one fifty she’s put in a request for someone to come along and unscramble my inhibitions.

That doesn’t happen till ten-twenty the next morning, at which point I’m able to consent to treatment, and I request to speak with Emily; it seems the police are holding both Emily and Patrick under arrest pending charges, and they’re each telling different stories implicating the other in having committed crimes against my person. So further delaying my treatment, the police take a long, multiple-hour statement from me which in brief, describes my having been willingly locked into Kimmy#2813 by Emily, on the expectation that I would be released once we got home after Friday night, and that my actions from Sunday onwards were maliciously coerced by Patrick, who updated my designation to Kimmy#12943 to conceal the evidence of what had happened.

I would have loved to have seen Emily, but straight after I’m released from the interview I need to go straight into pre-surgery discussions, as removing me from Kay cannot suffer any further delays. There’s about an hour and a half of tests, questions, waiting for the surgeons and nurses to do their various tasks, and then they wheel me in to theatre.
 

_* ^* _*

 
Conclusion and comments

320. The proximate cause of death of Mr. John Heiden, also known as John Burroughs, was pulmonary arrest during surgery.

321. The circumstances of Mr. Burroughs’ tragic death require me to make the following comments:

a. The distal cause of John Burroughs’s death is accidental death (or death by misadventure), having voluntarily accepted the risk of being enclosed and locked inside a gynoid robot that was known to be defective, Kimmy#2813, supplied by his brother Mr. Patrick Heiden. Mr. Burroughs had been persuaded by his wife Mrs. Emily Burroughs to lose an unhealthy amount of weight in order to fit into Kimmy#2813, and suffered further extreme injuries and loss of weight until his death on 4 November 2081.

b. The gynoid robot supplied by Mr. Heiden was not only illegally modified by Mrs. and Mr. Burroughs, but contained a neurological device programmed by Mr. Heiden that might have proved harmless, had Mrs. Burroughs been enclosed inside Kimmy#2813 as had been the Burroughs’ original intent. In the event, the neurological device caused injuries that would have eventually proved fatal for Mr. Burroughs, had he not died ad interim, of pulmonary arrest.

c. John Burroughs’s widow, Mrs. Emily Burroughs, contributed to his death through gross negligence, having caused multiple delays to attempts to extricate Mr. Burroughs. Some mitigating circumstances, such as being under the influence of strong pain relief may explain Mrs. Burroughs’ confused state of mind apprehending the extent of danger her husband was in. Mrs. Burroughs’ intoxication on the critical night of 31 October/1 November 2081 proved her derelict in her duty of care towards Mr. Burroughs.

d. John Burroughs’ brother, Mr. Patrick Heiden, contributed to his death through deliberately and maliciously prolonging and concealing the injuries Mr. Burroughs had already begun suffering from the morning of 2 November onwards for approximately another 32 hours. Mr. Heiden attempted to obfuscate Mr. Burroughs’ presence within Kimmy#2813 by renumbering the gynoid robot to Kimmy#12943, and compelling Mr. Burroughs with duress to believe himself, and to communicate to others, that he was in reasonable health and did not wish to be extracted from Kimmy#2813. Under such duress, Mr. Burroughs’ ability to make decisions in his best interests under informed consent was completely nullified.

e. Medical staff failed to consider Mr. Burroughs inability to exercise informed consent and delayed time-critical treatment another 21 hours.

f. Poor handover procedures between varying NYPD staff contributed to the failure to advise medical staff of the unusual issues concerning Mr. Burroughs’ inability to give truthful answers to questions regarding his medical status.

322. I would like to extend my appreciation to Officer Lidia Sylcox for her report.

323. I convey my sincere condolences to the family and loved ones of John Burroughs.

Dated: 10 June 2083 at Albany, in New York State.

Verity Cooper
Coroner