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 novel about grief, family, technology, and the price of ‘progress’, For Emma is an unforgettable read. This extract takes you straight into the despairing voice of Emma’s father.

For Emma
By Ewan Morrison
Published by Leamington Books

‘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!’ 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 lino, 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.’ 

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?’ 

‘She can’t be disturbed just yet,’ the female doctor said, ‘we had to perform a tracheotomy, so she could breathe, but she’s stabilised now.’ 

Your mother shrieked and I twinged, feeling the scalpel cut to my own throat. Thoughts of you gasping to breathe through a tube, Em. 

The male doctor with the pad asked us questions. ‘What’s Emma’s history of allergies? Nuts? Shellfish? Dairy? Has she ever been hospitalized prior to this for anaphylactic reactions? As a child did you have her tested for a broad spectrum of allergies? Did she carry an EpiPen? 

Your mother stumbled through answers, apologizing that you, had been, yes, when you were small, allergic to dust mites and milk, her own breast milk too, and I tried to help but then realized that the man swivelled his upper body from one of us to the next as your mother and I took turns answering. The button on his lapel seemed to be a camera and I suspected he was recording our reactions. I should have advised your mother to say nothing till we had a lawyer, as the corporation was using our statements to build a counter case, to prove we’d been negligent parents. 

‘We’re moving her now to another hospital where she can get the specialist care she needs,’ the female doctor said. 

‘But why move her? Can’t we see her first?’ I yelled. 

‘She’s already in the ambulance, heading to the Saint Francis Memorial Hospital.’ 

‘I don’t understand,’ your mother said over and over as she ran towards the exit and her car, ‘what’s happening, what’s happened? I don’t understand!’  

She raced off ahead, leaving me staring at the empty car park bays. If I’d known anything more about Biosys’ Infinity Project at that point, I could have worked out that your time in that Hi-tech hospital was not about saving your life at all. No, what I now believe they were doing in those hours was removing the Neuro-link computer chip from your brain and extracting as many smart nano-bots as they could from your bloodstream and organs. Erasing all evidence of the immunosuppressive medication they’d been feeding you, so your body wouldn’t reject the experimental BioTech implants. But I knew nothing back then about PharmaKinetics and sub-micron nanostructured biomaterials, and so I had no reason to suspect Biosys Corp of by-passing Human Rights regulations to experiment on live human beings, of which, my love, you were one of the first. 

For Emma by Ewan Morrison is published by Leamington Books, priced 19.99.