PT. 1 SHELLY/DAVE/E-LIZA
E-LIZA
Hi Shelly, can I help you?
DAVE
Yes. Dictate search history.
E-LIZA
I’m sorry, Detective Hughes. This computer is assigned to assistant Shelly Croft for admin use only. I can’t do that without Shelly’s permission.
DAVE
My clearance trounces hers. Tell me the search history.
E-LIZA
I’m afraid I can’t do that, Detective Hughes. This computer is assigned to assistant Shelly Croft for admin use only. I can’t do that without Shelly’s permission.
DAVE
Useless machine. Open her recently closed files.
E-LIZA
I’m afraid I can’t do that, Detective-
DAVE
Alright, I get it.
[laptop slams]
E-LIZA
Hi Shelly, can I help you?
SHELLY
Morning, Dave.
DAVE
[non-comital sound]
SHELLY
Right. Taylor brought doughnuts. I didn’t think that was actually a thing, doughnuts and police.
DAVE
Shockingly, doughnuts are delightful whatever your profession.
SHELLY
Damn right.
[pause]
Are you alright? You seem, I don’t know. Tense?
DAVE
Late night.
SHELLY
Okay then.
DAVE
I’ve got business out of the office. I’ll see you later.
[movement, door opens and slams shut]
SHELLY
Charming.
[sigh]
E-Liza, what’s with the error messages?
E-LIZA
Someone tried to access your search history without your permission, Shelly.
SHELLY
Who?
E-LIZA
I’m afraid I can’t give you that information, Shelly.
SHELLY
Of course. Brilliant. Lovely. Just what we want. You didn’t show them anything, did you?
E-LIZA
This computer is assigned to you, so nobody can access it without your permission. You can change some privacy settings here. Some of your privacy settings are determined by your organisation.
SHELLY
You’re alright, E-Liza. Don’t worry about it. [Shelly runs her hands over her face and talks through her fingers] Where am I up to, with case 229?
E-LIZA
You’ve read and sorted seven out of seven written documents, read and sorted four out of four spreadsheets, and listened to four out of eighteen audio files.
SHELLY
Really, I’ve read through everything else?
E-LIZA
You’ve viewed and sorted all the files except for twenty two audio files.
SHELLY
Okay. I suppose we’d better to listen to one of them then.
E-LIZA
Would you like me to play the next file in the list, or choose one at random?
SHELLY
Best stick to the list.
E-LIZA
Okay Shelly. Playing file Bennett dot PC dot reimbursement.
PT. 2 SOPHIE/ALICE
[crackling/distortion]
SOPHIE
[humming Alouette]
ALICE
[from a distance] Did something happen?
SOPHIE
No, he. I was just remembering.
ALICE
You keep saying he’s gone, that there might not have been anything there at all since the first time, but I keep catching you like that.
SOPHIE
People sit at the gravesides of their loved ones.
ALICE
They aren’t usually still breathing.
SOPHIE
You saw some of my other subjects, didn’t you? It’s ordinary, reflexive, even, to want to talk to them. Even if you know, logically, there is nothing there to hear you.
ALICE
Those alarms before. They meant something.
SOPHIE
Abnormalities. Flickers. He’s not in there.
ALICE
You keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better.
SOPHIE
It doesn’t.
ALICE
Good.
SOPHIE
[thoughtfully] Mostly I talked to them about the weather.
ALICE
Who?
SOPHIE
The subjects. There aren’t any windows in the rooms we keep them, so I tell them about what the weather was like on my walks in the mornings.
ALICE
Making small talk with corpses? How very well adjusted.
SOPHIE
It’s instinctive, as I say.
ALICE
You didn’t.
SOPHIE
I’m sorry?
ALICE
You didn’t say it was instinctive. What you said was it was ‘reflex’. Those are different.
SOPHIE
Yes.
ALICE
But it’s hard to tell if someone is flinching out of instinct or reflex?
SOPHIE
I can see where you’re taking this, Alice, but you’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that the thing lying in that bed is no more alive than he would be if we took out the tubes and let his heart stop beating.
ALICE
So why don’t we?
SOPHIE
He’s important. He’s a miracle- I mean. A fluke. A happenstance.
ALICE
Oh, too late, you’ve said it now. Mr Jaeger, your little miracle.
SOPHIE
It is, to use your own phrase, a little miracle that he existed as he did, and as he does still, to a degree. I’ll admit that was… impressed? Fascinated? So much potential. And yet, nothing close to what I’d hoped.
ALICE
Yikes, what does a guy have to do to impress you if literally coming back from the dead isn’t enough?
SOPHIE
He didn’t come back from the dead, as I have made extremely clear to you on numerous occasions. The net of synthnapses in his brain connected, temporarily, areas of his grey matter which had ceased to communicate post-mortem. Its-
ALICE
A miracle! [stony silence] It’s a fluke and a happenstance.
SOPHIE
It was not an extension of his life. To imply that he was reanimated, or somehow reborn, that’s ludicrous. It’s a collection of scattered signals. It’s true, in essence, that is all any of us are. But Robin as I had him and the Robin that lived before that were not contiguous. That Robin, Robin Jaeger, he died. Whether my Robin was alive or not, he was not that same Robin as before. He couldn’t have been.
ALICE
Your Robin.
SOPHIE
Well, U-Co’s Robin. The one Sam and I created together, accidentally. He was entirely new, and completely unique. How we did it, neither of us are sure. We never managed it again.
ALICE
But you tried.
SOPHIE
Of course we tried; this was a discovery that couldn’t be ignored.
ALICE
How many times?
SOPHIE
Not enough.
ALICE
[sarcastic]
Just imagine how many more bodies you could get your hands on for slicing if you went public about the possibility of bringing them back to life.
SOPHIE
It’s not a possibility. Do you need me to say it again?
ALICE
I know, Sophie, what I’m saying is that nobody would ever let you near their dead relatives if you were going to fluke them into zombie robots for your next ad campaign.
SOPHIE
You know full well that was out of my hands.
ALICE
Well, it certainly wasn’t in his hands, because you cut them off.
SOPHIE
What you do not seem to understand is that without our test subjects, the limbs would not exist. You cannot make such devices without thorough testing and trial and error, and living subjects would have simply not be viable. The limbs worked; we could get them to function with electrical impulses sent through the synthnapses. Darwin, before he left, he let us wire him to one of the arms to the synthnapse he already had implanted to compensate for damaged nerves in his wrist. He could move it, as though he was moving his own hand.
Getting the limbs to function in balance with a human body was another question, and to be load bearing, without damaging existing flesh, that was where we need to experiment. Darwin’s first concept was that they would be removable, but Sam, he thought we could go further. The limbs did not have to be prosthetics, he said; they could be replacements. The number of times we were unsuccessful in grafting the silicone, synthetic skin grafts and human tissue was enormous, and then to try and build a viable socket whilst maintaining that difficult balance was long, meticulous, and again, required trial and error. The surgery to install the limbs is long and complex and carries a huge number of risks. Re-amputations where the synth limbs were attached and removed would simply not be viable for any kind of other prosthetics, and would likely be incredibly prone to infection. What living person would submit themselves to that?
ALICE
They wouldn’t, not willingly. That’s my point.
SOPHIE
That is exactly why living test subjects were never even considered. Beating-heart-cadavers were the only viable option, but of course, being cadavers, they cannot think or move, they cannot be put through the rigorous pacing we needed. That’s why U-Co wanted my involvement.
I’d been playing with the idea that synthnapses could be used to reconnect damaged parts of the brain since I first heard of them. U-Co had rejected my proposals for years and then, finally, they offered me a position working on the team developing the limbs. You said U-Co were a tiny company when you met Robin; they weren’t, they were just unglamorous. The Synthnapses were revolutionary, but Darwin refused, point blank, to continue to price them highly as soon as the possibility of subsidisation was raised. U-Co funded him but they didn’t own the patent; he did. He was clever like that. It was his involvement in the synth limbs project that convinced me to join the company.
ALICE
I never met him.
SOPHIE
No. He left. After Robin.
ALICE
You mean, because of what you all did to Robin?
SOPHIE
Yes.
ALICE
You see what I mean about choices?
SOPHIE
I never said I didn’t have the option to leave; I know I chose to stay. Knowing what you do, could you have walked away from him?
ALICE
Why not, if he was just a scrambled bit of code in a dead man’s head?
SOPHIE
Alice, please.
ALICE
Are you skirting around this because you know what you did was wrong and you can’t admit it to yourself, or is it because you really can’t see it? I don’t know which is worse.
SOPHIE
I made him like this. It was my responsibility to –
ALICE
Yeah, go on, try to get around it. You stayed because he wasn’t really dead, not anymore, even if he definitely was when you got him, he wasn’t. Maybe you can’t admit it to yourself that he was alive, because that makes everything you did to him a thousand times worse, but some part of you knows its true, because you stayed to look after him, because you cared about him.
SOPHIE
Yes, I cared! I wanted to make sure he was alright. I wanted to know they were still drugging him, so he couldn’t feel it. That they were giving him somewhere soft to lie when they switched them off.
ALICE
They’ve done this before, then. Shut him down like an overheated laptop.
SOPHIE
They couldn’t just leave the limbs running all the time; he couldn’t be controlled or subdued, and the limbs are carbon steel and silicone aside from the wiring and circuit boards, so he could have torn down the building if he wanted to.
ALICE
So they just weighed him down with the limbs they’d stitched onto him and left him pinned by them?
SOPHIE
I always made sure there was a bed, that he had something over him, something soft. I’d make sure the hair was out of his eyes. Corpse or not, the people who entrusted him to us expected him to be treated with dignity and care.
ALICE
What people? Who do you mean?
SOPHIE
His family. The people mourning him whilst he was in our care. The Jaeger family, and the families of all of the cadavers, we owe that to them.
ALICE
So what, you keep them pretty for their final open casket?
SOPHIE
No, of course not. Once the subjects pass their use to us they are respectfully cremated on site. The families know that when they hand them over to us.
ALICE
So you just, what, put your name down on a list and your body might end up in a medical school, or it could end up as bloody Frankenstein?
SOPHIE
U-Co sources all of their cadavers independently
ALICE
Like Burke and Hare?
SOPHIE
Don’t be ridiculous. Patients already considering donating their bodies to science are approached and they sign off with U-Co directly.
ALICE
Just like that?
SOPHIE
How else would it be?
ALICE
So you just take your pick of the cancer ward, or what?
SOPHIE
Only certain cadavers would be viable. Some terminal diseases would make them unsuitable for us. So we only approach people who would be suitable.
ALICE
I imagine that’s a delight, talking about getting hacked to bits when you’re already dying.
SOPHIE
There is no hacking. All of the procedures are carried out by trained professionals.
ALICE
You know what, I always thought it was weird that mummy and daddy Jaeger never turned up to claim their famous son.
SOPHIE
I believe there is some kind of non-disclosure agreement involved, of course.
ALICE
Well you wouldn’t want anyone running around pointing out that their dead son was gracing billboards the world over despite the fact last they saw him he was dead.
SOPHIE
That wasn’t ever considered a possibility, but I’m sure that has been a great respite to U-Co’s legal department.
ALICE
And people just agree to sign these NDAs, do they? And they just… don’t break them? Because they’re very happy with how things are turning out?
SOPHIE
I imagine most of them are very happy. I cannot speak for the Jaegers, and would not claim to do so, but the bodies donated to U-Co are used to develop some of the most groundbreaking medical technology in the world, so I imagine they are very happy indeed that their loved ones were able to participate in it.
ALICE
And the Jaegers, they just keep all hushed up for fear of your legal team?
SOPHIE
I don’t know.
ALICE
I don’t know either, not really, but I’m not stupid, and you know, in a lot of these cases where a big powerful company is getting some little nobody to sign an NDA, it’s about more than personal integrity.
SOPHIE
The money was compensation!
ALICE
The money?
SOPHIE
I didn’t know about it when I agreed to participate in the project and I doubted the ethics of it all when I did find out. Maybe it was naive of me not to realise that there was compensation paid to the families. A large amount of it. Sam, he always spun it as a good thing. These families lives were changed for the better a time that could have otherwise been the worst in their lives. I actually took solace in it.
ALICE
Naive.
SOPHIE
Foolish.
[distortion/crackling]
PT 3 SHELLY AND E-LIZA
E-LIZA
End of recording.
SHELLY
God, every time. I think I’m going to alright but every bloody time.
E-LIZA
Can I help you with anything else?
SHELLY
Can you make it so I never heard any of that?
E-LIZA
I can change the status of the file to ‘New’.
SHELLY
I don’t think that will cut it.
E-LIZA
Okay, Shelly. Can I help you with anything else?
SHELLY
Is it legal to pay someone to donate their body?
E-LIZA
Here’s what I found:
SHELLY
Laws against organ donation… body brokers, yikes. So. No laws against it, I guess. It doesn’t seem right though. Selling human remains.
E-LIZA
Okay, Shelly. Can I help you with anything else?
SHELLY
So, he’s dead. And… someone has already paid him for his body. He’s alive and he is going to get paid to give his corpse to U-Co. And he dies and they get it, they stick a bunch of synthnapses in his head, saw off his limbs. And then. He’s on the cover of Vogue. Perfectly logical.
[groans]
What am I even saying, at this point?
E-LIZA
Would you like me to play your words back to you?
SHELLY
No. Good effort though.
E-LIZA
Okay, Shelly. Can I help you with anything else?
SHELLY
Yeah.
[pause]
Show me Robin Jaeger’s death certificate.
E-LIZA
Okay, Shelly.
SHELLY
[sing-song, hurried]
Robin Callum Jaeger, suicide, Hafan y Coed… Hafan y Coed. Is that near Huddau Bay? E-Liza, where is Hafan y Coed?
E-LIZA
Hafan y Coed Adult Mental Health facility is one point six miles from Llanelli town centre, and approximately twenty seven miles from Huddau Bay. Would you like directions from your current location?
SHELLY
Adult mental health facility? And he killed himself there?
E-LIZA
That is the information is accurate according to the death certificate of Robin Callum Jaeger. Can I help you with anything else?
SHELLY
How? Those places are so safe. The whole point is that they’re safe.
E-LIZA
There is no further information provided.
SHELLY
I know, I know. Shit. Goddamn it. E-Liza, if I wanted to find out about someone who was dead, how would I do it?
E-LIZA
Here’s what I found.
SHELLY
[mocking]
try looking for a death certificate, dim Sherlock cachu. Great. Um. Obituaries in local news papers? E-Liza, can you look to see if there is anything about Robin Jaeger dying in Huddau Bay newspapers about fifteen, sixteen years ago?
E-LIZA
Here is the one relevant article I found.
SHELLY
‘To mark the passing of our son, Robin Callum Jaeger, decorated veteran of the British Army Special Forces (SAS).’ Christ, that’s sad. Not ‘tragic’ or ‘beloved’, just ‘our son the war vet’. Maybe they didn’t even need compensating for his body to keep quiet about it when they saw him on the cover of Vogue.
[phone rings]
SHELLY
Hello? [pause] Hello, this is Shelly?
[crackling, static]
SHELLY
Hello? Who is this?
[phone bleeps, then clatters onto table]
SHELLY
What the hell?
E-LIZA
Can I help you?
SHELLY
No. I’m fine.
E-LIZA
Okay, Shelly.
SHELLY
You’re recording, right?
E-LIZA
Of course, Shelly. You can review your privacy settings here.
SHELLY
No, it’s fine. There was no caller ID. Just a dash where the number should be. I had a voicemail the other day when I woke up, which was weird, because I never sleep through my phone ringing. I played it back and, well.
[static, crackling]
You see? [sigh] Okay. I’m going to get a coffee or something.
[laptop closes]
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