Death travels fast, through screens: I hear about my mother before her body hits the ground. Her monitor convulses, which sends a signal to the hospital's cloud, which alerts the flat, which kicks me out of my bed, the digital display flashing before my face. Her marker is floating, orange-red, flashing through the walls. She's somewhere between the computer table and the wardrobe -- must be in the guest bathroom. She never liked using the one in her room. Already as I'm rolling through her hallway the ambulance is a little red-and-white icon of a cross beeping through the street map and as I reach her, the dummy assistant's wheels slip on the wet towel before the door. The door still opens for me, nevertheless. I see her body spread out on the tiles. The worst has come to be, yet the medical suite's UI hasn't quite agreed on how to display it, yet. Above her body, just above the implant site at the back of her neck, her orange-red marker still flashes. Meanwhile, her vital statistics have flown off to some asymptoptic unknown.

I'm not in the room, nor can I access it. I'm still in my bed, hands gripping my phone. The dummy assistant panics for me. I watch the four spiderlike limbs, with their uncannily gainly wheeled ends, maneuver the bulk of its body into the cramped bathroom. I turn her over, steading myself, its arms mirroring mine. Her face, slack-jawed, staring back. I paw the controls, willing her to prop herself up, but all I hear is the sliding of back wheels against wet tile. Her body slipping against the bathroom wall. Somehow I have the impression that I have to clean things up, as if the hospital's medics aren't already on their way. With some effort I hoist her onto the toilet seat. That's when I realise the wetness on the floor, staining the siliconed walls, is not water but blood, and that's when I drop my phone and finally scream.

The medics arrive -- two of them -- and the front door slides open to let them in. One of them has to move the dummy assistant out of the way to get to her. They are strong, and their wheels don't slip. "I'm sorry for your loss," one of them says. I nod, dumbly. I can't tell if it's a recording. I wonder if the hospital is far away, or if they'll let me telecommute in the ambulance, just so I can see her face one last time again.