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- Herausgeber: Leamington
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Emma is a young genius Silicon Valley scientist who dies in a secret AI brain chip experiment. Her voice then haunts her father, helping him plan the killing of the Big Tech CEO who destroyed her. "A masterpiece ... the eminent fiction writer of our times." — Irvine Welsh Multi-award-winning author Ewan Morrison's ninth book is a gripping, high-stakes, high concept thriller, which fuses futurism with a powerful emotional core. Emma is a young genius Silicon Valley scientist who dies in a secret AI brain chip experiment. Her voice then haunts her father, helping him plan the killing of the Big Tech CEO who destroyed her. For Emma is a ghost-in-the machine tale of bereavement and of a unique and conflicted love between a daughter and her father. "Absolutely wonderful... riveting, sad, mad and terrifying." — Terry Gilliam "For Emma is as disturbing as it is convincing, a tale of love and guilt and grief, and an apt tract for our chaotic times." — John Banville "This book scared me like no horror story ever has, because its monster is right in front of us, right now, eating us slowly while we cheer." — Isaac Marion, author Warm Bodies "Harrowing, tragic and moving." — Ian Rankin "A beautiful, intense, challenging, scary and very, very timely book." — J.T Leroy / Laura Albert "Heartbreaking and harrowing, this is a suspenseful journey into a family's tortured past and its nightmarish present. Ewan Morrison's attention to the details of parental love and responsibility make this an unforgettable book." — Atom Egoyan, director, The Sweet Hereafter "For Emma is a brilliant book that you will devour. Its compelling exploration of love, loss, and the haunting power of technology and morality makes it a must-read, delving into the highly relevant and intriguing intersection of humanity and advanced AI." — Bruna Papandrea, producer of Gone Girl, Big Little Lies "Ewan Morrison's harrowing and beautiful new novel, For Emma, is an early warning system for the future. In that way, a worthy successor to Easy Travel to Other Planets, Neuromancer, and, of course, Brave New World." — David Shields, author Reality Hunger "Hold onto your seats for a cracking good ending, which I did not see coming, yet which I felt I should have seen coming – the best kind." — Lionel Shriver
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Seitenzahl: 596
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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For Emma by Ewan Morrison
The death of a child is the greatest reason of all to doubt the existence of God.’
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-81)
‘With artificial intelligence… we are creating God.’
Mo Gawdat Former Google Executive (1967-)
Contents
For Emma
Editor’s Note I
Working as an editor in non-fiction in one of the five major corporate publishing houses for the last eight years, I have produced titles in women’s lifestyles, well being, self-help and social equity; with a number of these titles having made a positive contribution to the publishing house and, I can only hope, to wider society.
It came as a shock then, to have been targeted with the suspicious email that arrived on the 1st of October last year. We now know this date as that of the devastating San Francisco bombing, and the email was sent by someone claiming to be the therapist of the actual bomber.
The email’s title was “please help get this information out there” and it contained a link to a cloud storage site with a large file and a click to download prompt.
Naturally, I was alarmed, for why on earth would the ‘San Francisco Bomber’ via his therapist, target me? What could possibly have made him think I would be sympathetic to his horrific act? And to make contact in such an unprofessional manner; it was a surprise that it had even got through the office spam filter.
Thereafter, my scepticism arose; perhaps this was one of those horrid ‘Whatever you do - do not click’ phishing scams the IT department is always warning us about? Or maybe I was one of hundreds of recipients in a mass mail-out hoax aimed at all the publishing houses?
Days passed and it was impossible to decide whether to open the email or not; for what if it was even an inter-office prank? A joke made in poor taste, given the tragic loss of life caused by the 10/01 bombing? I didn’t want to be the naïve person responsible for infecting the entire office with a virus, especially while the European headquarters were streamlining the workforce due to new technology. 7
So with much swithering, I left the email in the inbox, unclicked, for several weeks. It should be admitted that at the time I had been passed over again for ‘career development’, and then the idea struck: what if this this file turned out to be authentic materials created by the actual bomber? Might this not make for a rather controversial non-fiction title; just as the bestsellers OurFather’sLiesand TimetoKillhad just the year before?
It was for this and other reasons that I decided not to share the email or link with IT or with any senior editors. Then, after three cautious weeks, on the lookout for gossip about anyone else receiving such an email there was still not a peep on coffee break, or lunch break, not in meetings, not over cake break, or after-work wine; and not a single word on any news channel either.
So, finally alone and slightly after hours, with a pick-me-up of gluten-free chocolate beetroot cake for courage, I decided – ‘Why not just open the dodgy thing then?’ The risk was taken, the mouse clicked, and the large file downloaded.
To my great relief it was not a cyber-virus or bank scam. To my even greater surprise the file comprised sixty-four low-resolution home-video clips, shot on a webcam of an out of date laptop, and made over thirty days from the 1st of September to the day of the bombing on 1st of October. Even more alarming was the fact that in each recording a middle-aged man claiming to be the bomber spoke directly to camera, recording what is, in effect, a month-long video diary in the countdown of days until the terrible act.
In each of these recordings the bomber starts ‘Hi Emma,’ or ‘Hey Em,’ effectively talking to his daughter, Emma Henson, a woman just a few years younger than myself, whom my research later showed had died one year previous to the recordings in what might possibly have been suspicious circumstances.
It was troubling, of course, but if the recordings were authentic, they could be what one might have called (in the parlance of a less linguistically sensitive era) ‘a huge catch’. 9
Certainly, I had to be cautious as a great many AI-generated deep fake videos had been circulating, with some being disastrously mistaken for authentic footage in the actual news, and three weeks after the bombing there was so much wild speculation and fake news about the bomber, with many made-up images circulating as vulgar memes.
However, one fact gave me reason to believe that the videos were authentic: the original email with its link, had arrived on the night of the first of October at 10.02 PM; which given the eight hour time-zone delay between London and San Francisco, was a mere one hour after the incident was first reported in the US news. There was simply not enough time for any fraudster to fake-up the five hours’ worth hours of footage after the incident.
In shock, I let several more weeks pass, just to make double-sure that not a single peep was circulating about ‘the bomber’s mail-out’. No peeps were heard.
It seemed astounding that I was the only person in possession of this dangerous material; which left the mysterious and pressing, question – ‘why me?’
The only way to find out was to sit down and watch all of the footage. I then made the decision to make a copy of the original email and the large downloaded file onto a portable hard drive, which then I took home. This was done to avoid the temptation of clicking on the files within our open plan office in which there is an ethos of sharing everything and hot desking – a layout, which, while it may lead to greater team spirit among the sisterhood, does not exactly contribute to employees showing much in the way of individual enterprise or discretion.
So back home with my portable hard-drive copy, after feeding my cat, Kahlo, and stoking up on a favourite tipple, I took the plunge and began the task of watching all of the recordings.
It should be said that the material is of an intensely personal nature that cannot ever have been meant to address a general viewer. In the footage the bomber attempts to seek forgiveness 10from his deceased daughter, to explain his motives and bombing plans to her, while summoning the courage to see his act through.
From proof-reading several how-to-guides on mourning and grief therapy, I understand that many bereaved people today believe that recording mourning messages to deceased loved ones can help externalise trapped emotions. Some take it as far as recording daily messages to the deceased for as long as six months, until they feel they can let their loved one go, whereby the files are often erased in a farewell ritual.
These recordings are analogous, but instead, the ritual of erasure was to be a suicide attack (or homicide/suicide). In the sixty or so recordings, the bomber commits himself to an act of revenge; planning to murder the person he believes destroyed his daughter (as he says ‘killed my Emma’). The bomber’s target is the CEO of a large biotech corporation, that he intends to ‘take with me when I go.’
In the footage he also shares his investigations into the biotech corporation itself and appears to believe that his violent act is necessary to ‘save the children of the future’; yet he also grapples with guilt over the mistakes he has made as a ‘useless father’ who had ‘failed to protect my own daughter.’
Should I have handed this footage into the authorities immediately? Several issues needed resolving before taking such a step. Was there any truth to the bomber’s claims about ‘deaths of human test subjects in secret Artificial Intelligence implant experiments’? And, what if this video file was the only copy in the UK, Europe or US that had reached a publishing house or news outlet? I couldn’t help but shudder at how important it might be.
Within the videos the bomber claims he has been pushed to these extreme measures by the ‘censorship and control’ of Big Tech monopolies. He also claims that biotech and Big Tech are in collusion to hide ‘the deadly truth’ about a covert AI system called The Infinity Project, which he states, ‘is infecting us all’ and ‘leading to the imminent destruction of our species.’ 11
Of course, these were perhaps the ravings of an insane man, but if I deleted the file, might this not mean the erasure of the last copy in the world?
The only options appeared to be for me to (a) Hand the file over to the publishing house and/or the police immediately. (b) Delete it and deny its existence, or (c) Carefully transcribe the entirety of the five hours of videos to determine whether (a) or (b) would be the most sensible course of action.
I decided on option (c) and began transcribing with the intention of then presenting the completed manuscript to the publishing house. The videos themselves could not be shared, due to their emotional content and the breach of international anti-terrorist law this might have entailed.
The hope was that the publishing house would then be able to verify the material, and possibly accept it for publication; one of my own first big hits as a commissioning editor, if it worked out. Until such time as the transcriptions were completed, I would work on these files in secret. This was my plan.
In beginning this work, it became necessary, for legal reasons, to redact and/or change several of the names of the Big Tech and biotech corporations that are the target of the bomber’s accusations of ‘global transhuman conspiracy’. Also changed are the names of family members, former-co-workers and persons known to the bomber, so as to protect their identities. In addition, certain changes have been made, concerning grammatical difference between the spoken and written word, for example by adding punctuation in cases of quoted speech for ease of reading.
In terms of the title, since the files themselves were unnamed, but all stored in the folder named FOR EMMA this has been adopted as the title for this manuscript.
I have put many months of personal work into these transcriptions and at times the labour has been challenging, but things have not gone according to my original plan, and subsequent events have made the pathway to publication dangerous. 12
Alternative methods have had to be found, and, I now ask that if you come into contact with this text in any form, be it by email or printed matter, please seek legal advice before opening the file. If you have already opened it then, please know before you go any further, that there may be consequences to reading it, as there have been for myself.
30 days
OK, recording now.
A small segment of domestic pipe can be made into a detonating device by filling it with explosive material. The filler can be plastic or granular military explosive, improvised explosives, or propellant from a shotgun or small arms ammunition, also from fireworks with the addition of oxidizing agents.
Basic materials required: plumbing pipes with threaded ends, around three inches in diameter and seven to nine inches long, two pipe caps, top and bottom, explosive or propellant – either military or commercial, fuse cord, hand drill, pliers, cotton wool, jiffy-bags and superglue.
Hi Em,
It’s over a year now since your death and I’m sorry for having wandered so aimlessly.
I’m sorry too about the mess around what would have been your twenty-seventh birthday. The day when I heard your voice again, whispering: ‘Go together’. As you might know I ended up in hospital after that. Damn fool, but I’ve been totally sober since then.
This morning, Em, the meaning of your words became clear. The air is sharp, salt and seaweed smells blowing up 13from the bay and your silly old Pops has come to a final decision.
Today is the 1st of September and in thirty-days’ time I’m going to strap an explosive device to my body and take your former boss at Biosys with me when I go. Yes, Neumann.
It’s a huge relief, Em. You might even be proud of me. I thought I’d lost my energy for good, but it’s come surging back. Damn, I can barely sit still. How much dust and sand I’ve let settle in this old shack. My junior genius, I swear this to you now to make sure I can’t back out. I know you’d tell me, ‘I’m not really here, Pops, I’m just some neurons in the part of your brain that’s memory,’ and you’d probably be right, but I hope you’ll keep me company in my last month and speak more to me again.
Sorry, I don’t know why I’m laughing. OK, let me tell you how I got to this.
Last week, I woke to your words in whispers again. ‘Go together.’
I turned in bed and called out to you, but of course, you were nowhere to be seen, but the words echoed as I got dressed.
Together. Go.
I know you didn’t believe in souls and all that, and you had the PhD in neurophysics, after all, so you maybe understand better – but how the hell could we ‘go together’? I figured it meant I should follow you into death, something you know I’ve been mulling over for many months anyway. But I found it odd, what with our family of atheists, plus ‘going’ by suicide wouldn’t have been ‘together with you’, since you’ve been gone for thirteen months.
Sorry, maybe you think I’ve gone nuts, talking back to you? As you know Granny Annie suggested I write letters to you to help me grieve. She wrote to you for a good month after your funeral, then burned her letters in a ritual in her 14backyard stove. She said the smoke would reach you in Akanishthaor The Field of Reeds or whatever new age afterlife she believes in this year. I thought the idea pretty tacky at first, but then I stumbled across those video clips you’d left on my old laptop.
You must have made them when you were six or seven. You’re singing kiddie songs with that toothless grin. Making up rhymes about Andromeda, Aquarius, Cassiopeia and other constellations you liked the names of.
And what kept me so busy twenty years back that I didn’t even know you’d recorded these files? After I found them, I spent many nights with them laughing, weeping, you’ll know this anyway, if you’re still watching over me.
So, I decided why not record a few videos of my own for you. Your mom would say I’m deluding myself, trying to keep you alive, but who’s left to judge me?
Then this morning this ‘go together’ thing all became brilliantly clear.
Around ten, I drove over to San Raf retail park and picked up my repeat prescription of Prozac, Codeine and Tylenol, sleeping pills, Beta-blockers and Diazepam at Zac’s Pharmacy.
Marsha, at the counter made sure to tell me that the sleeping pills and Codeine ‘don’t go together’. And there it was again. Like a message from you, through her, for me to take an overdose.
But that wasn’t it.
Then I got some groceries in the discount place and in the cashier line, just before me was this young woman just a few years older than you and similar height, Em. Her hair was true red not dyed every color under the sun like yours had been, but her long neck reminded me of you, and she had the same wiry elegance in her fingers. For the first time in months, that hollowing-out feeling started again. That 15ache I’d deadened with pills and vodka and all the rest. But never mind that.
This tiny boy, her son, he was maybe four and he had freckles and rusty hair and he was yanking her hand, making a fuss at those magazine shelves by the checkout. ‘Mom, can I have it! Please!!’ and he was doing that snatchy thing you used to do. It was some superhero magazine with a free plastic toy and the kid threw a tantrum and bashed my leg. The mother turned to me and said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ And she grabbed her kid, hissing ‘behave!’
Maybe I’ve not spoken to a single soul in almost four months, and seeing her face so like yours, her eyes making contact with mine, it froze me and warmed me all at once.
Her kid started whimpering and she said, ‘you’re embarrassing me, Shhh! Be quiet and stop staring at the poor man.’
Poor man, and she meant me.
‘That’s OK,’ I said.
You always used to say ‘Why-oh-why do you look like a beach bum, Pops?’ and I guess I did. And why not pity this rough shaven, middle-aged nobody in old corduroys and worn-out sneakers, my beard’s pretty long now, and I was standing behind her in line like a haunted person, I guess.
I wanted to just lean forward and buy the magazine for the kid. Life can be so short, like a sentence barely started then cut off before you make any sense of it. I wanted to tell this young mother ‘Sorry for staring, but you’re the mirror image of my daughter.’
I mean she had a lot of make-up covering over pitted skin but the shape of her face, her green eyes, her movements, it pained me.
She put all her groceries into the plastic bags, and I realized she was much poorer than you’d been; her sneakers worn down at the heel, her fingernails with this cheap red 16nail varnish, chewed to stumps. She was buying kids snacks, painkillers and booze and she paid with cash. I wanted to wish her a long life with many children and to tell her you’d been born on the 12th of May 1997 through a medical emergency and in that first month you wouldn’t take the breast and you lost two pounds and we had to call the doctors, and they diagnosed you with nut, dust and milk allergies. Allergic to your mother’s breast milk. That was hard for your mom to cope with. But we got through, didn’t we? You always were a fighter, Em.
I wanted to tell the poor mother at the checkout that since you were about four, Em, whenever all your mom’s sophisticated friends asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, you always replied, ‘I wanna be a mom’. Not a CEO or the first female president, like all the other little girls had been trained to say. ‘I wanna be a mom!’ How that freaked everyone out!
I waved to the kid peeking round from behind his mother’s knee as she left. The kid got scared and grabbed his mother’s hand and she dropped her shopping bag, apples rolling over the tiles. She snapped, ‘Fuck Bruno! Look what you made me do! She apologized to the cashier and dragged the wailing child out before I could say, ‘Sorry, it was my fault, I was just waving to your son and…’
And you died before you could have a child, Em.
I watched the young mother leave through the sliding doors and wanted to tell her to never let that kid out of her sight because harm is everywhere and so often it comes from those who say they’re making the world a safer place. I wanted to tell her that this thing between a parent and child is the most beautiful thing, and we take it for granted, we forget to call our folks, we forget their birthdays, we blame them for flaws within ourselves, with fathers and daughters it’s always the most fraught, and the media 17depicts older men as predators and sexists and it only makes it harder. No-one wants to talk of what it’s like when a father carries his tiny daughter on his shoulders through the falling leaves. No-one sees it when a father weeps with joy at the sound of her laughter. No-one understands how lost the millions of men are today and how only a child can save us. A father can never even say these things to his own daughter. Not in words. I’m saying it to you now, Emma. Too late.
Then they were gone, through the car park, hand in hand, ‘going together’ and I realized I’d never see that mother who looked like you again.
That was when I heard you whispering again in my head.
‘Why? Why can’t you see? Look!’ you said.
I’d no idea what you meant but I looked down to where the kid had knocked three or four magazines off the rack and there on the floor, I saw him.
On the front cover of The International Business Times. Your killer.
I picked up the magazine and stepped out of line. They were calling him ‘The Man Who Will Save the Planet’, the man whose biotech corporation now had a market value of 3.2 trillion dollars. I know you were a pacifist, that you believed in progress and Big Tech. But in the article, Em, Neumann was talking about the future he had in mind for us all in which all human problems from hunger to cancer to global warming would be solved by Artificial Intelligence.
In seven months I’d felt nothing, but then the rage flared again.
His cunning. The way he’s kept his face out of the press for years, not like his Silicon Valley CEO peers. Has John Q. Public even heard of Zach Neumann or Biosys Corp? No. Do they even know about his Infinity Project 18‘neuro-web’ experiments? No, only insiders know, and Neumann made you sign that NDA so no-one knows how he destroyed you.
I set the magazine back on the rack. Trembling. And I thought, here I go again, accepting defeat, when I heard your voice whispering more strongly with your whys ‘Why do you always give up? Why walk away? Why can’t you see? Why?’
So, I leafed through the article and there at the bottom I saw this box that said:
ZachNeumannwillgiveapublictalkon‘TheComingTechnologicalUtopia’attheInstituteofScienceandIndustry1stofOctober.
‘Go together. Why not?’ Your words came back, and we used to go together, on weekends, you and me, to the ISI downtown. Remember, you loved the weird old exhibits. The magnetic ball with sparks that made your hair stand on end. And Granny Annie bought us a family lifetime membership. If you were alive, I thought, we could ‘go together’ to see Neumann’s talk.
Back in my truck, the rage turning to aches and pains, knowing I could never bring Neumann to justice. All my attempts over the last year to expose Biosys Corp have ended in humiliation. So Neumann will continue to get away with your murder and that of hundreds of other young people in his covert human experiments. What’s left to do then but accept total defeat, and finally, ‘go together’ with you?
Yes, I thought, that’s what you meant. I’ll take an overdose of pills next week. Maybe Friday after I’ve put the recycling out. Like the nice pharmacist said, ‘these pills don’t go together sir,’ and they were right beside me on the 19empty passenger seat. As you know Em, I’ve been mulling over this for a good six months anyway and the only thing stopping me has been exhaustion and these numbing antidepressants.
I was about to drive out of the mini-mall car park, when I saw the redheaded mother again. Her kid was trying to drag her towards the donut place and she yelled, ‘For the last time! No!’ and she picked him up. He squirmed, but she carried him away, gripping him tight, his puny legs kicking in the air like a hostage.
Then it came to me, Em – me wrapping my arms round Zach Neumann. I don’t know why but I thought, yes! That’s what it means! I’ll go together with Neumann. I’ll take him with me when I go.
Driving home, this route used to bore you on our weekends, but the Golden Gate suspension wires made a rhythm and I drifted off into the methods. I could run at the stage during Neumann’s talk at the Science Institute and shoot him, then shoot myself. But knowing my luck I’d miss us both. And the same problem with a knife, or a poison syringe – but worse, it’s most likely I’d hit him all wrong and get thrown off by the security guards and he’d survive.
I must have been talking to myself as I was driving and saying gun or knife or syringe or bomb, because I heard your voice like an echo then Em.
‘Bomb,’ you said.
I’ve been mulling this over for about three hours now and damn it, you’re right, a bomb is the fool-proof option and as you know Em, I’m a damned fool.
Hi Em,
I typed ‘suicide bomb’ into YouTube. About ninth down the list there was this video, Arabic subtitles. Amateur looking with no English translation. Kabul, 20security camera. The attacker had some trouble igniting his bomb vest, and his intended victims saw what was doing, all the wires and gadgetry, and ran for their lives. So, the guy’s left standing there outside this big store called ‘Finest’, just by the shopping carts, and as he realizes he’s missed his moment, he either decides to ignite his vest anyway or it malfunctions, or his handlers detonate it remotely.
I slowed it down and watched it frame by frame. Amazing. Literally, in one twenty fourth of a second this man went from living to being a thousand flying pieces. It seemed painless to me, poetic, that flash. A brief history of time. I watched it over and over. The big bang in reverse. Mortal fear, a white glare, then nothingness. Strangely calming.
Maybe you know this, maybe not, but back when I was a freelance video editor, among all the other crap I did, I cut a documentary on suicide bombers for this LA TV company. So, I know a fair bit about homemade bombs and where to look online.
The other thing was the ticket. I called Granny Annie and got her details for our family membership card for the Institute. The card is in her maiden name, not your surname, or mine, which is good because they won’t be looking out for anyone called Kolodner. I got her card number and booked two tickets for the Neumann talk, under Granny Annie’s name, in row C Two. One for me, one for you.
Can’t quite believe it.
OK, so that’s it, on the 1st of October, just three weeks before my fifty-fourth birthday, I’ll be seated in the third row with a vest of home-made pipe bombs under my coat. When Neumann takes the stage, I’ll run at him, jump up and hold him tight round his waist. I’ll hit the ignition button and that’ll be it. We’ll go together. 21
Hi Em,
OK, I’ve just downloaded the rest of TheAnarchistCookbook, a survivalist handbook and three other bomb making PDFs. I’m going to need some basic things just to allow me do all the shopping. Disguises actually. Sunglasses in three different styles. Baseball caps in different colors. A Stetson. Three different outfits of high street fashions, probably say $600 worth. Steel toe-capped boots & rubber boots for my lab. Sterilizing hand wipes. Thirty packs probably.
I figure, there’ll have to be tests, a recce, and dry-runs with the explosives. Sorry, I’m so damn excited now there’s actually a plan, Em. There’s chemicals to buy, pipes, powders, make lists of people to write goodbye letters to, so many things to organize so I can hit my October deadline. Every minute matters now and I must stay focused and tell you what went on since your ‘incident’. Gather all the proof, Em, the anger will give me focus.
I just flushed all the pills away, Prozac, diazepam, right down the pan. I know, it’s nuts, but it’s my final decision, Em, and I hope you’re not disappointed in me. I’m crying for the first time in so long. A cool breeze coming from the sea. Just so glad I finally know what to do. I have to take a stand to try to save the young people like you.
So much to do before the day. No backing out. Please, forgive me and try to understand, Em. I’m done with pretending I can live without you, done pretending I can forgive. Please speak to me again and give me the courage to see this through.
Really tired now. I love you and miss you so much.22
29 days
Hi Em,
I was up early, reading the cookbook, could barely sleep with damned excitement and all these web searches on my burner phone. I’ve really got to make space for my lab, plan it out. The kitchen and bathroom are probably out of the question. The mailman could peek in the window and see all my equipment.
I think a month is more than enough, what do you think? TheAnarchistCookbooksaid pipe bombs can be made within a day if you have the right materials. They also say the Weather Underground and IRA made nitrate bombs within the space of five days. I’ve got their entire shopping list copied out.
Then again, since this is my first time, there’s a pretty high chance I’ll blow myself up, like the Weathermen did. That is, if I don’t screw up these two methods I’ve uncovered. What d’you think Em? You’re the scientist.
OK, safety considerations, vis-a-vis, neighbors. The shed is the place furthest from Mz Sanchez’ fence and least likely to cause a big fire if it blows up. Don’t want anyone else getting hurt and I am fond of her scruffy gray cat, Nachos.
Need to blitz that damn shed, it’s packed with junk. Dump the lot.
Tech specs for the pipe bombs. I think plastic casings to evade metal detectors, although most aren’t pre-set to detect aluminium, so that’s another option. TheAnarchistCookbook says the explosion can be maximised by casing the pipes in sharp shards of hard plastic to cause multiple injuries in the target from a distance of 20 feet. These shards can either be nails, glass or ball bearings and they rip the bomber and target into hundreds of pieces. 23
This will be me. I’ve got to keep saying that over and over to get it to sink in.
OK, I’ll need: high-pressure pipe sealing caps, ignition wiring, batteries and casings, explosive flash powder. All purchases need to be made with cash only. Leave no card trace, according to the cookbook.
OK, here’s what I’m going to need for my laboratory:
Elixir Gardens Ammonium Sulphate Fertilizer – eighteen bags. Tarpaulin and duct tape, maybe twenty rolls. Large sized metal stirrer. Shower railings. Unisex protective cover-all body suits, disposable. Buy one for each day.
Remind me Em, to use a different encrypted VPN geo location for each web search. I’ve got to keep my entire time online down to two minutes max, with a different SIM each time. Keep silent while web searching, no mumbling, Biosys Corp can snoop through any computer microphone and their AI has infiltrated all our laptops, smart alarms and even smart doorbells. Must remain invisible till this is done.
Yup, get it all done in one big drive round the three towns tomorrow.
Also need various sized buckets with airtight lids, to contain chemicals – ideal are baby-diaper bins. Twenty sandwich containers.Rubber gloves – at least forty. Disposable dust masks multipacks. Full face 6800 gas mask respirator with 3M particulate filters. A hundred boxes of strike anywhere matches. Ten pack of big candles. Twenty packs of family fireworks, two hundred large bore rifle bullets, electric drill with assorted drill bit sizes. Twenty tubes of liquid nail glue. Thirty of super glue. Twenty bags of cotton balls… 24
Editor’s Note II
In what follows I have attempted to remain as objective and unbiased as possible. My first task in authenticating the material was to investigate the bomber’s so called shopping lists; for if any of the named items could not possibly lead to the making of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), this would prove his bomb making recordings were fake, thus providing me with a sound reason to abandon the project.
On a personal note, as someone who assisted in the editing of many best-selling meals and menus titles, I was alarmed to discover that the bomber’s ingredients for making home-made bombs, or IEDs, match those which have been used as explosive oxidizing agents over last hundred years, and these include: artificial creamer, cinnamon, cocoa, cumin, honey, icing sugar, black pepper, black seeds, and powdered drink mix. Such ingredients, my research shows, have been used by terrorist groups such as the IRA, the Weather Underground and Isis.
It is also alarming to note that nearly all of the ingredients can easily be found in general stores, discount stores, pet and toy shops, and that The Anarchist Cookbook the bomber refers to is also easily downloadable for free online; which was quite a surprise to someone with no prior exposure to guerrilla insurrectionism.
Surprising also is how government documents like those by the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), published widely with the intention of warning the public about the dangers of IEDs, nonetheless contain detailed information on ingredients and procedures, which when read in another light could be seen as bomb cooking instructions.
So, these documents proved that the bomber’s bomb recipe and shopping lists were troublingly authentic. Deciding to move forward then with the transcriptions, I made certain decisions on parameters. 25Firstly, in the interest of public safety, specific recipe details have been redacted; in addition, long sections of the bombers shopping lists of explosive materials have been deleted, along with certain sections of bomb-making instructions which, although widely available online, would be illegal to reproduce. This illegality was confirmed by one experiment that I conducted with a small, uploaded section of the bomber’s transcribed text on our company’s editing software. The office AI (now in use across all departments to help select titles for publication and to assist with editing, marketing and publicity) judged the text sample as ‘a threat to public safety’ and, to my
alarm, asked to ‘please report the source.’
It must also be reported, that within four days of this incident, I received a warning which stated, ‘your online activity has been flagged for security reasons.’ This came from the IT department of the publishing house, which must remain un-named.
Frightening as it was, the upside was that the dangerous contents had been thoroughly authenticated. I then took the risk of deleting the original email and link, relying entirely on my portable hard drive backup copy.
I then made a further decision to commit as many hours as possible to this project by getting permission to work from home for one month, where the recordings could be transcribed in total privacy. After all, I didn’t want to get my publishing house into any kind of trouble, no matter how much of a hit my special discovery could potentially be.
It should also be stated for the record that I do not endorse or share any of the opinions of the bomber within the following transcriptions; I support technological progress and am supportive of the Hate Speech and Online Safety legislation that has come into effect in this country and numerous others. I also wholeheartedly support the AI monitoring of email and social media by governments and information technology companies, so as to protect the populace from hateful, discriminatory, 26inflammatory speech, fake news and conspiracy theories. For the record, I did not knowingly intend to break any laws in downloading, viewing and transcribing this footage, and apologise for having done so.
Please consider this as fair warning should you wish to proceed as it may be a crime in your country to read this material.
29 days (cont.)
Hi Em,
Prozac withdrawal is kicking-in already. Light almost too bright. That seasick headache, yup. Sweating too. Cold Turkey. The seagulls outside seem noisier. My hands are shaking or maybe it’s nerves.
Why do I have to do destroy Neumann? Why? Your favorite word in the whole world, Em – why, why, why. Remember, you asked me so many times ‘Why does mom say we can’t play in the leaves in Red Street?’ And I told you ‘Because your mom sees them lying there in the gutter and she thinks they might be dirty.’
‘Why?’ you asked.
‘Well, I guess because there might be dog poo underneath.’
Then you grinned, ‘so why don’t we just pick them right off the trees?’
It was you who named it Red Street, Em, remember. You would have been about four and I’d have just picked you up from kindergarten and gone the long way over Billy Goat Hill, so we could visit that street with Japanese Maples. Every October, till you were about seven, it was 27our secret magic place, where you collected the best maple leaves, the brightest, reddest ones without blemishes, picking them from the fall trees like they were fruit.
You would have been sitting up on my shoulders and I’d be holding on tight to your ankles with your favorite striped stockings. I recall your front tooth was missing and all your TH’s came out Fs. Like Firty Free, and Fursday. Your curly red hair and cheeks were always splashed with a bit of paint or glue.
Up there on my shoulders, you’d grabbed my ears or eyeballs when you reached up to snatch the higher leaves and I’d yell, ‘hold my hair, not my eyeballs, you rascal!’
And you’d laugh so much you’d nearly fall off, so I’d have to grip your ankles tighter. Harvesting the maple leaves. Sometimes up there, you’d grab a branch and shake it and make the leaves fall faster and we’d be surrounded by this cascade of fiery red. ‘Wow, Dada,’ you’d say. ‘Fall is falling!’
You’re not embarrassed by these moments, are you Em?
Your freckles and muddy knock-knees, your thick glasses and your Ventolin inhaler always in your pocket. And those hundred maple leaves you kept in your bedroom, Em, and all your experiments to try to save their lives. You rubbed our kitchen oil onto them, you planted some in jars of water and dirt, dipped some in paint. You wanted them to stay red forever, and it made you cry when they withered.
Only five and already the scientist. Why, you asked? Why is Winter cold? Why do things have to die?
It used to annoy you that we called it Emma’s Little Why Game.
‘Why do aeroplanes fly, Dada?’ Not even ‘how’ but ‘why’. 28
‘Why? Because people have to get from A to B faster,’ I’d reply.
‘Why?’
‘Because they have important work in other countries or they’re going on holiday.’
‘Why, Dada?’
‘Because,’ I told you, ‘they find it relaxing to be in a different country for a week. Now it’s time for your sleepy-byes.’
‘No Dada, you’re not answering the question,’ you’d say with your cross face on. ‘Why do people have to go on holidays?
‘Because they like a sense of change, I suppose.’
‘Why?’
‘Because normal life gets quite boring if you don’t have a change once in a while.’
‘Why Dada?’
‘Because humans get bored, it’s just the way we are.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, we’re too intelligent and we ask why, why, why far too much.’
‘Why?’
And so, on it would go, with you sitting up in your bed with your Captain Universe comforter; you turning your light back on every time I turned it off and kissed you goodnight.
I know every middle-class parent thinks their five-year old child is the most genius-like creature ever to have been born but I have to confess it was no easy thing raising a daughter who asks why, why, why of every single thing.
Emma Dilemma – you used to hate when your mom called you that. And our silly song, ‘Emma-Dilemma, Emma-Dilemma, why do you always ask why?’
The school kiddie-shrink told your mother and I that the asking-why stage was a perfectly healthy neurological 29development for four-year-olds, like lying or killing your first bug or making other kids cry just to see what it feels like.
Maybe it was just a way of getting extra attention from your workaholic parents, but it was also, at times, fascinating. I recall, one night, trying to tuck you into bed, I said. ‘Ok, rascal, two hours past bedtime, you really need to sleep now.’
‘Why?’ You replied as you re-adjusted your pleats.
‘Because if you don’t sleep’ I said, ‘then I’ll be up all night too and that’s no good because I need to go to work tomorrow.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, because everyone needs to work to get money.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if we don’t, you and me and mom will be homeless and hungry.’
‘Hungry…why?’
‘Well, because nobody is going to give us a place to stay and feed us for free, if we do nothing, and there’s a lot of competition for good jobs.’
‘Jobs… why?’ you asked, echoing my last word, which was another one of your things. Sitting there in your Space Girl pyjamas, your brow furrowed.
Even when your mother and I were together, we worked such hard hours, then the commuting. You never understood why I had to leave the house at 7:30 am, drive uptown to the edit suites and not get back till 9:00 pm. Why waste a life staring at screens all day, editing commercials and corporate videos, uploading, downloading. Maybe I should have taken you into Fast Forward, so you could have seen the editing console for yourself, and the never-ending stream of asshole clients who demanded I work every hour they paid for, then more, more, always more. 30
‘Why work so much?’ you asked, ‘it’s not very nice. Why?’
Your mom always said your whys had no real logic to them; you just loved making me exasperated and using it as an excuse to stay up past sleepy time. Your whiney-whys, she used to call them.
‘Why doesn’t the moon fall into the earth?’ you asked.
‘Why do you and mom argue so much?’
‘Why does Grannie Annie always smoke weeds?
‘Why can’t we drink pee-pee?’
‘Why does playing ball make me feel so sad?’
My mother in her Eastern phase claimed that your many whyswere actually Zen koans and that one day you’d be a great bodhisattva.
There was that one question you asked over and over. ‘Why do humans need money?
‘So we can eat!’ I’d answer.
‘Why eat?
‘So we can live.’
‘Why?’
You really would only give up and go to sleep once we’d hit that rock bottom dead end that all of the other whys always seemed to lead down to.
‘Why are we alive?’
Had you learned at such a young age that I had no answers at all, Em?
Em,
So strange, but to know the actual day of your own death in advance is a wonderful gift. And now that I’ve only twenty-nine days left, I’ve got this irresistible urge to tell people the truth. I filled up the truck at the gas station this 31evening for my big shop tomorrow, and I thought – how many more times will I do this before I die?
I bought three five-liter cans and filled them up too, just in case. The fumes smelled floral, the service station seemed like a minimalist artwork. Maybe it was withdrawal symptoms, but I was elated, thinking that I no longer have to live with bullshit and lies anymore.
Paying, I noticed the cashier with all the tattoos had put blue streaks in her hair. She muttered the cost of my fuel without looking up, and I thought, I’ve come here for ten years and every time she’s rude, and bored, chewing gum and swiping her gambling app.
‘You’ve changed your hair,’ I said, ‘I like it, it’s kind of punky.’
She looked up, chewed her gum, a flash of hope, then her shutters came down.
‘You got a rewards card?’ she mumbled.
Normally, I’d have replied ‘Nuh’, paid and left. But there she was, trapped in this dead end job and I’d been trapped for so long. What was there left to lose?
‘Hey, it’s not all so bad,’ I said, ‘I’m going to be dead in three and a half weeks.’
She stopped chewing her gum, seconds passed.
‘I’m going to kill myself and another man,’ I said.
Silence. I felt a glimmer of real connection. Come on, come on, I thought, speak to me, laugh, scream. You can do it!
Then she started chewing her gum again.
‘You want a receipt?’ she said.
Laughing on the back roads to the village. Imagine if you got a receipt for your entire life. Thank you for shopping on Planet Earth, 30% off your next visit. The reincarnation special offer. A deal to die for! Please come again. 32
28 days
Hi Em,
I sensed you close again as I woke, a breath sound, then I turned.
Your photo on my wall. You must be about twenty-one. Summer waves crashing behind you. Your hair’s long, windblown, natural color, the sun’s making you squint, you’re laughing, hands on hips, staring right into the camera. It’s like you’re in love with the photographer, but I don’t know who took this picture. I can’t remember the names of all your boyfriends and girlfriends, or how I got this photo. Did you send it to me? Why is it stuck up with blue-tack and not framed? You look so happy, Em. Happier than I ever saw you in your whole life. Like you’ve finally worked out the answer to your Big Why.
If I could just go back and find the turning point, work out what I did wrong. Convince you to choose another path.
I don’t want anyone else to have this photo when I’m gone.
I should tear it up, before I blow myself up.
Hi Em,
Just got back from the stores. The round trip to San R and San Fran was tough but I’ve picked up about forty per cent of the essentials. You’d have laughed at your crazy old Pops, walking around whispering a memorized bomb-making list!
It’s amazing what lethal items you can buy off the shelf, no questions asked. 33
Full oxygen mask for toxic chemicals – no problemo. Tapers for lighting bombs and ball bearings for shrapnel, no problemo. ‘Save Money, Live Better’. Have a nice day.
The hardware store was more tricky, deserted, heading for bankruptcy like every local store is now. The huge gray grizzly of a guy in the Heavy Metal T-shirt at the counter looked like he hadn’t seen a customer in months and kept asking me what I was looking for. ‘I’m fine thanks, pretty sure I can find it myself,’ I replied over and over.
Maybe my usual beach bum attire, as you called it, didn’t help. Which reminds me, I need to buy some franchise store joggers and a hoodie, to look more normal.
I don't know how much of this you saw, Em. I couldn’t find the pipes I needed among his stacked shelves of tubing, bolts, nuts and brackets. The whole place stank of moth balls and kitty litter and I was feeling queasy. ‘Hey man, if you tell me what it’s for I can help you find it,’ the guy said, popping up behind the ratchet shelf. He had tattoos, the blueish amateur kind that said DIY or Alcatraz.
It wasn’t like I could tell him ‘I need nine, nine-inch pipes threaded at top and bottom and eighteen screw-able tops.’ Why would anyone need to make self-contained pipes and what could they possibly contain? Not candy. Unless it was fizz bombs, no pun intended, or maybe it was.
And being a neurotic fool, I made up this huge story about my mother’s house having rotten old plumbing and how this local plumber had put in these new pipes but forgot to put the screw-able ends on, so the sewage was just flowing out.
‘Oh Pops, why-why-why!’ You would have laughed. 34
‘Hmm,’ the guy said, ‘well, you’ll need at least the four-inch diameter for sewage.’
But there was no way I could wear a suicide belt lined with nine four-inch wide pipes, adding thirty-six inches to my girth.
‘Ah, no, you’re right, maybe not sewage,’ I said, hastily, ‘maybe just the drainage water from… the sink?’
‘Right,’ he said, ‘but that would be PVC pipes, not brass.’
‘Excellent, yes exactly, PVC!’ I said, a sweat starting.
The guy was one of the world’s last proud traders, he wouldn’t let me leave his store with the wrong purchase. Was it for hot water? he asked. A boiler pipe – since it was threaded ends I was after? I was just about to make a break for the door, when I heard your voice echoing from before
‘Why not stay? Play. Why do you always run away?’
I shuddered, stayed until your voice passed and I felt alone again. Then I spied something resembling the pipe sections I needed, just behind his counter and I pointed.
‘Ah! Aluminium threaded pipes,’ he said, ‘tapered thread or straight thread?’
I’d no idea and then he’d misread where I’d pointed, so there was this game of ‘up a bit, across, yes, stop, no, down one shelf, yes there!’
‘Nipples,’ he announced.
‘Sorry?’
‘Nipples, galvanized three-inch black steel nipples.’
He laughed as he brought some down from the shelf. I was clearly the most fun he’d had since his impending bankruptcy and he proudly explained that the ‘end caps’ I needed were called ‘bushings’. Nipples with bushings.
‘Of course, thank you so much,’ I stuttered. ‘Nine of those please.’
Then I heard your voice from far away, saying 35numbers in a countdown, twenty, nineteen, eighteen – like you were playing hide and seek – Here I come ready or not … fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve…’
‘Sorry twelve I’d like twelve!’ I said out loud to the guy because you were giving me clues and you were right, I’d need more for bomb tests and then the metal detectors. ‘And can I have all of this in plastic too, plus steel nipples too’ I said, ‘because I don’t know if it’s for the boiler or the sink or the sewage, but I’ll be happy to buy them all.’
‘It’s your cash, man,’ he said squinting at me, ‘but don’t expect a refund if they don’t fit.’ And he pointed to a sign that said: No Returns. No Refunds. No Chance!
As he went off to get the stuff, I whispered to ask you – had I done good? Did I buy the right things? But you’d left me again, Em, and the guy was back, trying to sell me more stuff. I only got away by also buying u-bends, brackets and rachets, to throw him off the scent; all-in-all about $300 worth to just get the $89 worth I needed. He must have thought I was the biggest sucker alive as I left dragging the three overpriced canvas bags he’d also sold me. ‘Good luck with your …nipples!’ he called after me.
At least he didn’t call the cops, Em.
Never again. I know I’m being hypocritical but next time I’m going to a big corporate DIY store to do self-serve checkout, so there’s no questions asked.
Still, I’ve got the pipes and the match heads and the bags of stuff. I’m off to clear out the shed so I can get started. To be honest, I’m feeling pretty damn energized.
Hey, here’s a good one – where do suicide bombers go when they die?
All over the place!
Ha, ha, get it? Sorry, you always said I told the worst dad jokes in the world. ‘Poor old try-hard Pops,’ you said. ‘You’re not funny, Mr Punny!’ 36
Hey Em,
You probably don’t know what happened to you, do you?
About the fifteenth of August last year. I got a text from you saying, ‘Hope you’re hunky-dory, Pops. Lab work going fabby-doo here, hope to see you in a few weeks’ time. Toasted marshmallows on our beach, yay! Love ya, xxx.’
When your work took you back to Silicon Valley you often said you wanted to slip away to Bolinas for one of our beach bonfire feasts, but over the past years, with all your lab work and those international flights, the right time never really arose. I expected to get a text in a week saying, ‘Aw, sorry I missed you again Pops. Back in September, see you then, I promise.’
And that would have been fine. These are just the costs of being a father of a tech genius in our day and age. Who was I to hold you back?
Two days later, I got a message. But it was from your mother.
‘Come quick, Em’s had an accident. Casualty First. Near Stanford. No-one’s telling me anything! Hurry.’
I drove in a frenzy, trying to call your mother back, but she couldn’t pick up. She’d had to cancel a meeting her PR company had been prepping for weeks and drive from Berkeley. I ran two red lights. What the hell kind of accident could you have had? Maybe you were cycling with your eyes stuck in that damn phone? I told you so many times your funky inflatable helmet was no good.
I raced over the Golden Gate and when I got through to your mom, she was in tears, words in a jumble about surgery, about bad signals, about no information.
Yelling at her, ‘Where?’ ‘What ward? What zip code…? What do you mean surgery?’ I tried to type the 37name of the hospital into the map app, and your mother’s line went dead.
A car screeched past me, blaring its horn. Questions raced as I got stuck in the road toll bottle neck. Why a San Fran hospital? You were working in the Mojave Biosys AI lab, as far as I knew. Wasn’t there a hospital nearer to there? Did they bring you in by helicopter? I’d never even heard of this place – Casualty First.
Why the hell did you need surgery?
Adrenaline. I sped through clicks of the app, block after block, speed camera after camera, till the computer voice said, ‘Your destination is on your right.’
I’d never seen a hospital like it – space-age looking, and small, a green glass shard between two red brick rows. The door staff were all wearing headsets and there was some security protocol that involved retinal scanning. It looked and felt military.
‘I have to see my daughter Emma Henson,’ I told them and tried to push through, ‘She’s twenty-seven, she’s just been admitted, she’s had an accident.’
‘Sorry sir, we need your details,’ the young Japanese woman with the smart pad said. I gave her my name, address, explained I was your father, but this didn’t tick some box of theirs. Two security guards approached. ‘Listen, my surname’s not the same as my daughter’s… it’s complicated’ I protested, ‘Em didn’t want either of our surnames after our divorce so she took her Granny’s maiden name…’
I had no ID that connected me in any way to you, Em and so they wouldn’t let me in. I yelled at them to call your mother, she’d explain, but my anger was ticking more security warning boxes. Stuck there in this damn reception area that looked like a spaceship, I tried to get a phone signal but the building security software 38required a login. ‘For God sake,’ I said to the smart-pad woman who’d been joined by a wheeled humanoid robot with a touch-pad chest. ‘Can’t you just let me through, my daughter’s in surgery.’
‘Take a seat, scan the Q code with Sensei, sanitize your hands, log in, and register your ID,’ I was told again.
‘Hi, I’m Sensei,’ the robot’s smiling face said, ‘I’m here to help. Please scan your quick response code now.’ I put my head in my hands.
Finally, Sara appeared on the other side of the sliding ward doors and rushed towards me, her face red from crying. Our years of divorce hadn’t prepared us for anything like this. She gripped my arm as she tried to explain. Your mother and I were touching.
You had some kind of fall at work, she said, a head injury, no not a bike accident, something in the lab. Maybe an allergic reaction, she was so confused. They’d rushed you into surgery and wouldn’t tell her any more.
After swipes of my credit card, a photo of my face, digital finger printing and retinal scan by the robot, I was let in.
Your mom led the way down the white corridors, clinging to my arm, I tried to banish the thought that surgery for head injury means internal bleeding.
In the six hours that followed Sara and I sat, stood, paced and sat again in the small green-walled waiting room assigned to us, down the end of the corridor from Emergency Room 2. The plastic seats, the framed photos of sunsets. Your mother almost passed-out from nerves and I got her some water, but she refused to take a Beta-blocker, then she was pacing again, phone calling. ‘In emergency surgery, yes, no, I don’t know what’s wrong, I’m just waiting here. No-one’s telling me a damn thing!’ 39
Call after call, she repeated the same damn unknowns to her sister, friends, colleagues, her house cleaner and a man who could be her new boyfriend for all I knew.
I couldn’t bear it and went to stretch my legs, but the thoughts caught up with me – if you were damaged, Em, if you couldn’t walk again, or see again, or hear. I had a metallic taste in the mouth, neck hairs standing on end, hyperventilating. I had to sit down in this empty corridor in the osteopathic ward, telling myself the emptiness in my chest wasn’t some kind forewarning. I’d only felt like this once before. On the day of your birth, Em.
I didn’t know then that this private hospital was an affiliate of the Biosys Group.
There were no security cameras in the ward that I could see, but a security guard with smart glasses and a nightstick arrived and I was escorted back to my waiting place,where I found Sara in tears, scrolling on her phone.
‘Any news?’ I asked. Your mom shook her head, staring at the linoleum, her hair hanging over her face. I handed her an old piece of toilet paper from my pocket. It’s a thing you used to laugh about Em, that I would hoard paper towels and toilet paper in my pockets. ‘Why Pops?’ You said. ‘D’you think there’s going to be a world shortage of poo paper one day?’
We waited with our many whys. Why had this happened to you, now, not even thirty and having major surgery?
I was going to tell her ‘Don’t worry, Em’s going to be fine,’ but she read my mind and cut me off. ‘Shh, don’t say anything, the doctors are deliberately keeping us in the dark. There’s nothing to do but just…’
‘Wait?’
‘Yes, the bastards.’ 40
So, we waited, your mother and I. One empty plastic seat between us, so as not to intrude or do what we both needed to do, cling.
Divorced parents. I recall thinking, if we’d known this was going to happen to you, perhaps we’d never have separated.
I really needed to take your mother’s hand. I reached across the empty chair and to my surprise, she accepted. We sat, her face hidden, as she sniffed and wiped her nose with kitchen roll, and I held one of her clammy hands while she scrolled through her cell phone with the other. Waiting. Waiting.
There was one, then two medical staff coming through the doors. Both young. The male was typing on a smart pad, while the female reached us first. Your mother flooded her with questions but I could tell by the doctor’s forced smile that the news was bad.
‘Anaphylactic shock,’ she said.
‘But… but the other doctor said a head injury,’ your mother answered, and I supported her, ‘Yes, I was told a head injury too.’
‘Which was secondary, due probably to the fall from the anaphylactic reaction.’
‘But is Em OK?’ Your mother’s hand gripped me tight. ‘Can we see her? Please?’
