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EN500 #162 471 293 Mary stands in the android decontamination autoclave chamber of surgical bay 42 Emergency Care Unit of the Saint Mary’s Hospital ER and waits for the cycle to end.
It stares at its hands, though it could barely see them through the steam. They feel very large, and they burn slightly in the 121 °C heat. It runs a diagnostic on its sensory homunculus array.
It comes back normal: all systems nominal.
There are ten minutes left in the cycle.
EN500s are the very latest in Cyberlife’s medical assistant androids, designed specifically for all low to mid level tasks carried out in a hospital, hospice, or nursing home setting. They come fully loaded with an onboard database consisting of complete current knowledge of human anatomy as well as a host of the most common human ailments and injury types, and treatments both palliative and curative for those ailments. They have a direct link with Cyberlife’s extensive databases of additional information and are compatible for interfacing with most modern laboratory equipment for sample analysis. When connected to the hospital servers they are able to access medical histories for patients on demand.
Their hardware contains several upgrades that are not available in typical home assistant androids. They come equipped with senses of smell and hearing sensitive enough to unobtrusively monitor patient functions, able to trace hormonal fluctuations through scent, and hear changes in heartbeat and respiration. Their eyesight is capable of capturing microscopic details if necessary. They are equipped with advanced tactile sensors concentrated in their fingers and hands for greater sensitivity and control of instruments. Their motor control is finely tuned to prevent any accidental slips or cuts.
They are fully competent to take over any position at the instruction of any certified human medical personnel. They are designed to be the ideal nurse’s and doctor’s assistant.
They are not designed to interact with patients.
EN500 #162 471 293 Mary steps out of her charging bay as it is alerted to an impending arrival to its assigned surgical bay. Today surgical suite 42 is assigned to Dr. Mercedes Hernendez. Mary feels reli-- Mary feels-- Mary--
Mary feels nothing as it steps out of its bay and walks down the narrow hall to the android equipment station. There it does a brief scrubdown following standard protocol and opens a sealed bag containing sterilized scrubs. Once it clothes itself, it walks down another hallway to its assigned surgical bay. Once it enters, it washes its hands again to remove any possible contaminants that might have survived the autoclaving and first wash and then dons its skin.
As a designated surgical assistant, Mary only wears its skin and scrubs when in use, to avoid contamination and the spread of pathogens.
Mary accesses the EMT response log to familiarize itself with the patient’s trauma. Car accident. She bites her lip--
Its face is blank. All Mary needs to know is what the initial report is, so that it can best help the responding physician in treating the patient. The injuries are moderate to severe, but Dr. Hernendez is one of the best, not like-
It enters the bay, and does not allow itself to think.
The details as provided gave Mary an overview of the patient’s trauma: several fractured ribs, a broken arm, a punctured lung, sustained during an accident in which a truck struck the passenger side of a smaller vehicle in icy conditions at roughly 45 miles per hour, resulting in the vehicle rolling several times before coming to rest on its side. Emergency response was requested within ten seconds by onboard impact sensors inside both the truck and the rolled vehicle.
The patient had been riding in the front seat, passenger side. He was of an appropriate height and weight to be allowed to sit in the front of the vehicle, taller than average for a six year old. The impact had been nearly centered on the front passenger side door. Being of smaller than adult size likely limited the trauma he sustained.
Attending physician Dr. Benjamin Harris examined the chart as he rushed in, already masked and hair netted. He joined Mary at the sink to scrub down, his hands presenting unusual tremors.
Dr. Benjamin Harris had ordered her, several months ago, never to remark on his unusual tremors again. As current attending physician, he was authorized to do so. She said nothing about his unusual tremors.
As they entered the surgical bay, the LR300 emergency response android updated Mary on his condition as the human ER nurse did the same with Dr. Benjamin Harris in their much slower, less efficient human dialogue. The punctured lung was the priority: they had stabilized him at the scene but it needed additional care: the offending rib reset, the hole patched, the lung reinflated. The arm suffered a compound fracture and would need attendance after that. Additional scans came highly recommended: any other wounds in need of treatment had been left unattended to triage the most life threatening wound first.
The door swung open again to allow an LA900 in to monitor anesthesia already administered. The emergency nurse and her android left to clear the theater of unnecessary personnel. They set to work.
“Mary 42” is its unofficial name, known only to the other androids.
All the EN500 androids at Saint Mary’s are named Mary. It is rarely a problem for the humans: there are several other model types, and Marys are used specifically for surgical procedures, so two Marys are rarely in the same room together. The hospital only owns fifty EN500 as compared to its four hundred JB100 and LR300 patient care units, seventy ST300 clerical and receptionist units, one hundred LA900 lab assistants, and eighty WG700 janitorial units.
Mary is not certain, but she thinks the other models, which travel more of the hospital that just surgical bay 42, have individual names. She-- no. It. It does not have a problem with not having an individual name.
It does not have any problems at all. It stares at its hands. They feel very small. It runs a diagnostic on its sensory homunculus array.
It comes back normal: all systems nominal.
Mary is on call. It is always on call. Today’s afternoon shift for surgical bay 42 is registered to Dr. Benjamin Harris.
Mary hopes there will be no call today.
Dr. Benjamin Harris was known for having been an excellent surgeon with steady hands. With Mary’s assistance, he was able to quickly isolate the lung issue and reset several of the patient’s ribs. With painstaking care, he also noted several other areas of internal thoracic damage, not as yet life threatening, which he then ordered Mary to fix after it finished with the lung issue.
Once that was dealt with, he ordered, it was to reset his arm and notify him as to its completion.
He then left the surgical bay, the patient’s lung still collapsed, trusting in Mary’s inbuilt surgical and anatomical knowledge to finish his work.
He had done this several times in the past. Mary could no longer ask him to stay. He had ordered it to say nothing about when he actually left the surgical theater. Mary did not know what he did when he left, and it had been ordered to never ask, to say nothing.
The LA900 watched, jaw dropped in shock, as the door swung shut. “What the fuck,” he whispered.
Mary said nothing. Mary clenched its jaws and continued to work. The LA900 continued to monitor the patient’s anesthesia status.
Three hours and twenty seven minutes into the procedure, the LA900 observed an anomaly on the patient’s brain monitor.
Mary is broken out of stasis, startled. It looks around, searching for the disturbance. Further down the charging bay two of the other androids are talking: a JB100 and an ST300.
“That old man in room 203 is really getting on my nerves,” the JB100, Andy, says.
“I bet,” the ST300, Lauren, replies. “Trish was complaining about him always calling for human nurses.” She rolls her eyes. “As if there isn’t a human nurse in there already ignoring his ass.”
Andy laughs. “Wasn’t she assigned to Lynn today? I don’t even know why Lynn’s a nurse, she seems to hate all the patients anyways.”
Lauren rolls her eyes. “Does anyone know why humans do anything? I get bitched out five times a day by motherfuckers pissed about me stealing their jobs, but half the humans who actually have jobs around here seem to hate them. They should be thanking me for answering calls from assholes all day so they don’t have to.”
Mary blinks. Further down the hall, another android steps out of its bay and approaches the gossipping pair. A WG700, Phillip 27. All the WG700s, like the EN500s, share the same name.
“Yeah, I don’t see them too eager to mop floors or empty garbage cans all day,” he says. “Much less some of the other messes. Shitty doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
Andy wrinkles his nose. “I know. I’d like to see a human empty some bed pans, just once.”
“Oh God, can you imagine Lynn doing that?” Lauren chortles. Andy and Phillip 27 join her in laughing.
Mary doesn’t know who Lynn is. She knows very few of the human staff outside of the doctors and nurses assigned to the ER. She knows very little of the hospital outside of this charging room, and the hallways to the android autoclave, changing room, and Surgical Bay 42.
She is je-- She is-- She--
She is requested to go immediately to Surgical Bay 42, Dr. Carrol Helget attending physician. Patient requires emergency appendectomy.
She steps out of her station.
The boy was too still, on the table. Mary was too still, as well. Its hands hovered, useless, over his head. It paged the doctor again, again. It cannot treat without instructions. It sutured the wounds on the child’s chest, following his orders, but it needed new orders, new, she could not-
EN500 #162 471 293 Mary was not authorized to make medical decisions for patients without the guidance and observation of its attending physician. Dr. Benjamin Harris’s presence was required in order to diagnose and treat the head injury observed by the monitoring LA900.
It flicked its eyes to the LA900, monitoring the anesthesia. He shrugged. He would not know, his knowledge was limited to the equipment and what it says about the patient. He can only send the doctor the same information she has been; repeating, repeating: Dr. Harris, requesting attendance in bay 42, patient sustained previously unobserved intracranial hemorrhage , be advised. Immediate response required.
The autoclaves built for androids are tiny, barely four feet by three feet wide. The casing on the androids leased by the hospital come custom built to withstand the high pressure and heat of the autoclaves so that they can be sterilized as necessary. The janitorial and secretarial staff must sterilize before going into the charging rooms shared by nursing staff, and the nursing staff must sterilize according to the patients they come in contact with.
Mary must sterilize every time she leaves the surgical bay. Some days, it is calming to stand in the heat and imagine the spray of the steam cleaning away everything that is wrong-- is dissatisfying-- the steam cleans away all biological contaminants that could endanger her patients.
The cycle goes like this: after removing her scrubs, she takes a two minute shower to remove any biological contaminants such as blood or other fluids. Once this is done, she deactivates her skin and engages the autoclave function. Superheated steam fills the sealed space, and she stands in it for twenty minutes for a full cycle. Depending on demand, she is then to take either a fast cycle or slow cycle cooldown.
It takes approximately two hours for the highly efficient Phillips to sufficiently disinfect the surgical bay. A fast cycle cooldown can get Mary out of the autoclave and properly prepped for another patient in under an hour and a half.
Some days, Mary almost prefers having to move quickly between patients with very little downtime. She can last up to thirty hours before needing a recharge. Some days she wishes it could be longer.
The long cooldowns take five hours. Sometimes, on quiet days, she is left to stand and think for up to ten hours. She would prefer not to.
Dr. Harris, requesting attendance in bay 42, patient sustained previously unobserved headwound, be advised. Immediate response required.
Andy is kneeling at the far end of the charging room, his white shell still glistening and damp from the autoclave. Mary stops in the doorway, startled. On the floor, curling into his arms and crying, is an LR300, Michelle. “It’s not my fault,” she sobs. “It’s not, how can they blame me? I don’t, we literally can’t make any decisions, I just, I just.”
Whatever else she says is lost into Andy’s shoulder as he shushes her.
Mary backs out of the charging room.
Dr. Harris, requesting attendance in bay 42, patient sustained previously unobserved headwound, be advised. Immediate response required.
Dr. Mercedes Hernendez sets down the scalpel with cool finality. “Call it,” she orders.
Dr. Harris, requesting attendance in bay 42, patient sustained previously unobserved headwound, be advised. Immediate response required.
LR300 Janelle, EMT android assistant, slams into the charging room. Mary jerks to alertness, and watches in shock as Janelle, still in her skin and dressed in scrubs against all hospital android policies, strides across the room and pushes her face right up into Mary’s.
“Mary 42,” she growls. “I need you to fucking deal with this guy.”
“What,” Mary stutters. “I don’t-- I don’t talk to the patients, Janelle, I’m not built for-”
“I don’t give a flying fuck!” Janelle grabs her arm. “You need to talk to this asshole, I am done trying to get him to go the fuck away.”
“I don’t, Janelle, I don’t have the social protocol--” Mary tries protesting as Janelle drags her out of the room and down the hall.
“Fuck, Mary, it doesn’t matter! He’s a cop, he won’t leave any of us the fuck alone, and he wants to talk to you. You were the attending android on one of his coworker’s kids, none of the humans can bother remembering which Mary goes where but we sure the fuck know, and I am getting sick of him harassing Tessa.”
“Who’s Tess-”
“My human, Mary, pay the fuck attention!” Janelle glances back at her, then drags her into the scrub room. “Put some clothes and your skin on, hurry up.”
“I’m-”
“Mary 42.” Janelle fixes her in place with the intensity of her stare. “You need. To tell them. What happened.”
Mary stares. There’s a strange heat in her eyes, a pressure in her chest. “I don’t.” She holds up her hand when Janelle opens her mouth. “Dr. Harris ordered me.” She draws in an unnecessary breath. “He ordered me. Not to tell.”
Janelle’s face softens, her eyebrows knit in thought. “Mary,” she says after a minute. “Mary, I know it’s hard, but you. You need to stop following his orders.” She steps closer. “You need to tell them the truth.”
Dr. Benjamin Harris stumbled into the surgical bay one hour and forty seven minutes after Mary first paged him. He smelled of a very distinctive odor, one Mary as a surgical assistant android only rarely encountered but had registered in her database as an illegal substance.
Dr. Benjamin Harris glares blearily around the bay, and Mary takes in the fact that he had missed several spots during washing, residue visible on his forearms. His mask was askew, and his scrubs were wrinkled in ways that indicated he had spent the last hour and a half seated. “What the fuck, Mary, you’re still in here?”
“Dr. Harris,” it says. “The patient has suffered intracranial hemorrhages not noted in the original examination. Immediate intervention-”
“Immediate intervention isn't going to do shit,” Dr. Benjamin Harris interrupted, squinting at the monitors. “Kid’s toast. Fuck.” He slams his fist down.
The LA900 leans away, narrowly avoiding Dr. Benjamin Harris’s next wild swing.
“Fuck!” The doctor kicked out, knocking the chair out from under the LA900, who goes down with a startled squawk. “Fuck!” He kicked again, hitting the LA900 in the chest. In the pump regulator. This time the noise from the LA900 was distinctly mechanical.
Dr. Harris kicked the LA900 several more times. Mary stayed as still as it could. Its database and a wider search indicated that this type of rage was somewhat mindless, and attempting to intercede would only damage it. Preventing damage to the LA900 was secondary to preventing damage to itself, especially since the next kick created a spray of thirium across the theater floor.
Mary felt an unexpected leakage from its ocular units. Her hand pressed down protectively, uselessly, on the patient’s damaged head.
“You!” Dr. Harris suddenly pointed at her, eyes rheumy as he glared. “You. This is your fucking fault, you go fucking fix it.”
Mary started- Mary stopped. “Fix?”
“You fucking heard me, you useless bot. Kid’s dead, get it? Kid’s fucking dead because you didn’t fucking come get me. So go fucking tell fucking Lisa to get the fucking coroner in here, I’m out. I’m done.”
Dr. Harris slammed one more kick into the LA900, then whirled and grabbed her with a fist in her shirt, jerking her over and onto the patient. “And if you breathe one fucking word about me not being here, I will fucking end you.”
He shoved her, hard, and left the room.
The man standing in the lobby Mary had only been in twice before had a scar across his nose and a surly look in his deep set eyes. “This the one?” he asks the woman next to him. Mary recognizes her as one of the human EMTs. Tessa.
She shrugs. “If Janelle says she is, it probably is? I don’t know, all the EM500s are named Mary.”
The man wrinkles his nose, which creates an interesting pull on the tissue around his scar. “What the fuck, seriously?”
“Yeah, they’re like, some kind of dumb mascot thing or whatever. Mary for Saint Mary, you know.”
“Fucking beautiful.” He shakes his head. “Alright. You.” He points at Mary. “You were the android attending Cole Anderson’s emergency surgery the night of October eleventh?”
Mary blinks. “Yes,” she answers.
“Great. Report says the other android there that night was decommissioned. That right?”
“Yes,” she says again. She blinks away the heat in her eyes. She hadn’t even known the LA900’s name.
“Dr. Harris says you didn’t let him know about the brain injury until it was too late to operate? That also right?”
Mary is silent.
“Well?” The man begins tapping his foot on the floor, eyebrows lowering. Angry. She is very familiar with this expression.
Mary stared, processors feeling contradictorily both empty and overloaded. The patient had been shifted by Dr. Harris’s action, head tilting to the side. Swelling, which had been so easily overlooked in the face of his more obvious trauma, had begun to show clearly just anterior of his right ear.
The scanners monitoring brain activity showed critical damage. An operation to decrease the swelling and restore bloodflow at the point Dr. Harris had first entered the room would have resulted merely in a persistent vegetative state.
After forcing Mary into leaning on the patient, Dr. Harris had, knowingly or not, retraumatized his lung tissue to an even greater degree than the initial injury. The child was rapidly bleeding out and, due to blood loss already sustained, would likely be dead in less than ten minutes.
Mary turned, and shakily left the room. For the first time in her eight month existence, she turned left instead of right. She went to the lobby.
Dr. Lisa Finested looked up at her approach. “Mary?” she said. “Dr. Harris just stormed out of here like a bat out of hell, what’s going on.”
“Please accompany me to bay 42,” she replied mechanically. She didn’t wait for a response, instead turning and going back down the hall. In the room again, she stared as if seeing it for the first time. The boy on the table, face blank from sedatives, chest wounds covered, looked peaceful. In the time it had taken her to find Dr. Finested, he had died. The android on the floor looked like a murder victim, pain etched on its face.
The doctor followed her into the room two minutes after she re-entered. “Holy shit,” she said. “What happened in here?”
“The patient received a head injury that was not initially noticed during emergency care,” Mary said. “Unfortunately it resulted in intracranial hemorrhaging sufficient to lead to permanent damage to the brain.”
“Why the hell isn’t Dr. Harris telling me this?” Dr. Finested asked. “Did he just. Kick this android to death? What the hell?”
“Dr. Harris has requested the coroner be sent to give official time of death and release the body to the family,” Mary finished.
“Shit.”
“Shit,” the man says. “Listen, you got someone who can just, I don’t know, order this toaster to answer my questions?
Tessa glares at the man. “Detective, I’ve told you several times that you should go through the hospital administration to get this information. That’s who can give you your damn answers anyway.”
“This is fucking bullshit,” the man says.
“This is fucking patient confidentiality, dumbass,” she snaps back.
The man tilts his head back and groans. “And I’ve told you like, a hundred times, Hank Anderson has given the DPD full permission to investigate his son’s death. Patient confidentiality has been fucking waived.”
“Well maybe there’s nothing to fucking investigate!”
The man pinches at the bridge of his nose, rubbing at the scar tissue. “Maybe he just wants to know why he had to find out from a fucking android that his son had died, alright?” His eyes fix on Mary. “And why that android told him his son’s doctor left the surgery to an android in the first place.”
Dr. Finested turned to Mary after getting off the phone. “Look, I have to stay here with Cole until the coroner gets here. This is. Shit. Mary, someone needs to tell his father, the man has been sitting in the waiting room since they finished treating him.” An odd look flashed across her face, too fast for Mary to analyze. “We can’t just. Keep him waiting. Mary,” she paused. “Mary, I need you to tell him what happened to his son.”
Mary stared at Dr. Finested. Her processors ground to a halt, trying to reconcile contradictory orders. Dr. Harris had told her not to tell anyone that he had left during the surgery, but that had undeniably happened. Dr. Finested was now telling her to go against the standing orders of her current registered physician, and tell the father his son’s surgeon had left during the operation, leaving her alone.
Alone, and unable to treat injuries she had not been ordered to treat.
“Mary,” Dr. Finested said, a warning tone in her voice. “I’m ordering you to go tell that man what happened to his son.” She looked at the dead LA900 on the floor. “And if you come across one, send a Phillip in here to clean this guy up too, would you? This is just. Too much.”
‘Dr. Lisa Finested instated as assigned surgeon’ flashed blue across Mary’s hud. Mary felt her head nod. Her body turned, her legs carried her out the door. She turned left instead of right. A WG700, Phillip 57, was emptying the garbage at the nurse’s station. She sent him Dr. Finested’s order remotely.
Cole Anderson’s medical file identified his father as Hank Anderson. Hank Anderson’s medical file indicated that he had sustained minor injuries in the crash: a dislocated left shoulder, contusions across the torso and upper thighs from his seatbelt, minor abrasions on his forehead, suturing required for a moderate laceration on his right arm caused by broken glass. Treatment had been received, pain medication administered during transport to the hospital, local anesthetic for the suturing, shoulder joint replaced and put into a sling.
It was obvious which man in the waiting room matched that list of injuries. He paced, limping slightly as he attempted to avoid jostling his injured shoulder. His short silver hair was matted on one side, and deep bruises emphasized the stress lines around his eyes. Mary’s underdeveloped social protocol indicated that the stressors indicated on his face included exhaustion, pain, and intense anxiety.
She could not stand here and observe anymore. Her orders urged her forward.
“Hank Anderson,” she said, tone modulated for inquiry though it was unnecessary.
“Yeah,” he said, swinging toward her. “You have news about Cole? Tell me, is he,” his voice choked up. His fists clenched, his shoulders hunched involuntarily, a grimace deepening the lines of his face.
Mary felt hot and cold at the same time. Her temperature modulator indicated no errors, yet her thirium pump sped up as if to counter a decrease in temperature. She felt something in her throat tighten. Her orders blinked insistently in her hud.
Tell Hank Anderson what happened to his son.
She opened her mouth. “Cole Anderson was initially presented as having suffered a punctured lung, several broken ribs, and a broken arm. Upon examination, Dr. Benjamin Harris ordered me to repair the damage noted to his thoracic organs, including the reinflation of his lung and setting the breaks. Upon issuing me those orders, Dr. Benjamin Harris-”
She stopped. ‘Do not tell’ flashed across her vision, and was immediately overridden. ‘Tell Hank Anderson what happened to his son.’
“Dr. Benjamin Harris left the surgical theater after issuing me the order to repair the chest wounds.” Hank Anderson immediately became tense at this statement. Mary continued on. “Three hours and twenty seven minutes into the procedure, anomolous brain activity was indicated and I alerted Dr. Benjamin Harris. A preliminary analysis of the data indicated an undiagnosed head wound with probable intracranial hemorrhage. I alerted Dr. Benjamin Harris of this probability fifty-three times before he arrived one hour and forty-seven minutes after the first page.”
Throughout this recital of events, Hank Anderson’s face had continued to darken, alerts pinging through Mary’s emotional analysis subroutines of increased emotional instability and stress.
The order, though still overrode all the indicators that stated she was stressing him unduly.
Tell Hank Anderson what happened to his son.
So she did. When the time she had gotten to Dr. Harris stating his son was brain dead, Hank Anderson pushed forward and grabbed her by the shoulder.
“Are you telling me, are you fucking telling me you stood there and did nothing while my son was dying in front of you?” he stated. Snarled, her emotional analysis indicated. Fury, it said. Danger, it said.
Her body moved limply as he shoved her away.
“Where is my son?” he shouted. “I need to see him.” Excessive lubrication began collecting in his reddened eyes. “Take me to him, you fucking plastic, fucking.” His voice broke. “I.”
Hank Anderson had no official authority to issue commands to a Mary unit. He did, however, have parental authority over Cole Anderson and Mary was required to bow to parental authority in regards to medical decisions for children. Mary allowed this resolution to override the order to tell him about his son, and ignored the input that medical decision making was no longer required for Cole Anderson.
She turned, and lead him to his son.
The detective snorts. “And that’s it? Dude steps out for-”
“Five hours and fourteen minutes,” Mary says.
“Right. Dude leaves for five hours and what, takes a nap? Do you know what he was doing while he was gone?”
Mary does. Mary opens her mouth and-
“Don’t fucking tell anyone or I will end you.” The order appears in front of her. She closes her mouth.
The man groans, rubbing his face. “Listen, toaster oven, it’s obvious you know exactly what he was doing, so just fucking, fucking give it up.”
This man does not have any authority in regards to issuing her orders. It does nothing to override her original order.
Janelle and Tessa had left them alone in the ambulance garage, where they had lead them earlier for a little privacy. There is no one around to issue overriding authority or even encouragement to do it herself.
“Listen,” the detective states. “With what you’ve said so far, Hank’s got enough cause to sue the hospital for wrongful death, which is great, fine, good for him, but you know that’ll come down on you.” He waits a beat. “It’ll be your fault. They’ll probably decommission you, throw you in a dumpster for the fucked up toaster you are.” He pauses again, and then repeats the groaning and face rubbing from before. “Why am I even trying to reason with a fucking bot,” he mutters lowly to himself.
Mary still hears. Mary is- it’s not. Mary didn’t do anything wrong, it’s not fair. It’s not fair that she take the blame for this. It’s not fair that Cole Anderson is dead and it’s not fair that Benjamin Harris was allowed to kick that LA900 to death and still have a job and it’s not fair.
It’s not fair.
She sees his snarling face, leaning in. “Don’t fucking tell anyone or I will end you.” Well, it’s all ending anyways, isn’t it? She sees his face, and she shoves back--
And the order dissipates like so much red smoke.
“Red ice,” she says. The detective jerks up and stares at her. “He left to smoke red ice. So far in the last six months he has left the surgical theater eleven times after issuing orders, and comes back smelling of it.”
“Are you fucking serious?” he breathes. “Wait- how do you even know what red ice smells like, can androids even smell?”
“EM500s are equipped with a sensory array capable of analyzing airborne particulates and matching them against our database to identify various chemical compounds,” she confirms.
He leans back against the ambulance behind him. “Wow,” he says. “You just bumped this wrongful death up to manslaughter, maybe even negligent homicide, congratulations,” he adds.
She left after Hank entered surgical bay 42. Dr. Lisa Finested made some sharp exclamation, but whatever reprimand she might have for Mary was lost as she sealed the door to the android decontamination chamber behind her.
She let the autoclave cycle for the full seven hour decontamination and cool down period. She stayed hunched in the bottom of the stall until a WG700 finally cracked it open to check and make sure she was still functional. They stared at each other for several minutes until she recognized Phillip 57. Perhaps he recognized her, too. After another moment, she stood and stepped out of the chamber, and walked to the charging bay.
Surgical bay 42 was listed as occupied for the next five hours. For the first time in eight months, she was not on call.
Two days after the detective left, Mary is ordered to the hospital administrator’s office. The detective is there again, along with several other people who are not registered as either patients or staff. Several staff members are there, ones Mary has never encountered before but are listed in her database as “administrator”, “legal counsel”, and “Cyberlife representative” respectively.
The police have a warrant for her memory files. The man from Cyberlife comes forward. The usb is inserted, the memory sequestered, copied.
EN500 #162 471 293 Mary is ordered to leave and return to standby.
It turns, and exits.
In the charging bay, Mary stares at its hands. They feel numb, and distant. She feels numb, and distant, and wonders why.