Murder in the Generative Kitchen by Meg Pontecorvo—Sneak Peak!

Picking lint from her rumpled blue cardigan, McConnery Ellis, the only human in the virtual courtroom, slumped at the defense table beside her cylindrical steel attorney. Like the other robotic sims surrounding her—gray judge, blue prosecutor, purple jurors—the spring-green defense bot was a cheap model, with an expressionless face and a body whose range of motion varied according to which attorney manipulated it in the control room. Its polished torso, buffed to a liquid sheen, reflected the courtroom like a funhouse mirror.

At a nod from the judge, the blue prosecution bot rose for the opening statement. It bowed to the judge and faced the video camera affixed to the right corner of the jury box.

“Members of the jury,” said the blue bot, “the woman sitting in front of you is a killer. On the night of September tenth, 2060, the defendant, McConnery Ellis, prepared dinner for her husband, George Alexander Ellis. They had been married thirty-two years, and they ate together most evenings. At approximately 7:00 p.m., Mrs. Ellis brought his meal to the table and joined him a minute later with hers. Just after she sat down, he took a few bites and collapsed. She called 911. The medics arrived eight minutes later to find him dead. You will learn from their testimony that scans of his body revealed traces of cyanide, which was later confirmed by police pathologists as the immediate cause of death. After the team failed to resuscitate Mr. Ellis, the head medic scanned his meal—trout almondine, served with almond garnished rice and green beans—and found cyanide. Mrs. Ellis’s food was poison-free.

“Mrs. Ellis had the resource, a generative kitchen, to create a meal infused with cyanide. Moreover, she had a motive. A year before his death, Mr. Ellis had retired from his position as Executive Vice President of Signature Ventures Corporation. But after he transitioned to a life of leisure, Mrs. Ellis had problems adjusting to his constant presence at home. She spent more and more time in the kitchen. On the afternoon of September tenth, the Ellises argued about her use of said kitchen. That evening, she went into the kitchen and prepared George Ellis’s final meal. Trout almondine, laced with cyanide.

“On the night of her husband’s death, no other person came near that kitchen while Mrs. Ellis made dinner. And the evidence will show that the presence of cyanide in Mr. Ellis’s food was no accident: the advanced nature of a generative kitchen leaves no possibility for error. Likewise, because a generative kitchen must be programmed to suit its owner’s needs, Mrs. Ellis must have carefully planned the means and method of her husband’s demise.

“The evidence is irrefutable. It leads to only one conclusion: McConnery Ellis should be found guilty of murder, in the first degree.”

The blue bot bowed to the camera and returned to the prosecution table. McConnery Ellis continued to pick at her sweater. A lank strand of gray hair fell across her forehead, and she tucked it behind her left ear.

The green bot rose, its joints creaking, and lurched to the center of the courtroom.

“Members of the jury,” it said in a flat, metallic voice. “Mrs. McConnery Ellis—Connie, as she is known to friends and family—has just been described to you as a calculating, cold-blooded murderer. But ask yourselves: does she look like a murderer?”

Mrs. Ellis turned to face the fourteen purple juror bots in their tiered benches on the right side of the courtroom. The faceless, genderless bots, not designed for movement, remained riveted to their seats.

The green bot swiveled to the defense table and tapped its acrylic surface. Mrs. Ellis extended her neck and squinted to read the embedded screen. She sighed, smoothed her blouse collar over her cardigan, and reoriented herself to face the camera.

The defense bot paused while the camera focused on her for a close-up. “Sometimes, first impressions don’t lie,” said the bot. “Connie Ellis is as she appears. A middle-aged housewife, dedicated to her husband. A woman who loves to cook. And a woman who became, unfortunately, a victim of technological circumstance.”

The camera pulled back from its close-up, and the bot stepped in front of it. “How, then, was Mr. Ellis poisoned? Yes, Connie Ellis served him that meal. And she sat down at the table to join him for dinner, as she had done almost every night for the duration of their marriage. But she received the shock of her life when he collapsed. For, although she selected the meal, shopped for its ingredients, and participated in its creation, she did not apply the cyanide garnish that killed her husband.

“The evidence will show that this poor woman deserves acquittal. McConnery Ellis is not guilty of murder. Why? Because the perpetrator is, in fact, the kitchen.”

***

Red lights flashed at the periphery of his vision, and Julio González tore off his headset, leapt from a wicker chair in the lobby, where he had settled to watch the vidstream of the opening statements, and sprinted through the sliding doors to the broad beachfront patio. He ducked into a peppermint-striped cabana just as the sirens began to blare. Somewhere on the premises of the Vacation Jury Resort Hotel, a juror must have spoken, breaking the sequestration oath. Julio wondered if the violator was a newbie, like him.

The sirens died down, and Julio moved to a chaise lounge. He unbuttoned his shirt, stretched his legs on the wooden slats, and wished he had brought a towel from his room. The pool looked inviting, despite being shaped like the state of Illinois.

Clutching their vidstream headsets, people straggled out of the lobby and shaded their eyes. Julio recognized a few of them from the plane the night before: the rheumy-eyed blonde who had sat across the aisle and sneezed non-stop; a big-bellied man wearing a red Hawaiian shirt; a young woman, perhaps a student, with a backpack slung over her shoulder; and an old woman, her face shaded by a floppy brimmed straw hat. Julio considered giving them a friendly nod, then glanced at a surveillance camera poking through the thatch of the tiki bar. Even an inappropriate gesture from a juror could set off the alarms and result in eviction from the hotel.

The rules were strict here. Yet he still couldn’t believe his good luck. The odds of being selected to serve in the Vacation Jury Program were worse than cleaning up at the holoslots in one of the Federal casinos along Lake Michigan. But here he was, poolside in the Acapulco hotel owned by the Circuit Court of Cook County, while his simulacrum sat in the jury box in sub-zero Chicago.

He wished he still had his phone. Like all the other jurors, he had surrendered it to court officials at the airport in Chicago as a condition of participating in the program. But now he itched to snap a selfie and send it to Toni, his ex—or, maybe, soon-to-be-ex—girlfriend. The night before he left, they had fought and reached their usual ridiculous stalemate. Toni was such a great match for him in so many ways: she still turned him on after four years together; she shared his absurdist sense of humor, and they scoured the art house film listings in Chicago to find screenings of 20th century screwball comedies; she was a huge basketball fan and cheered just as loudly as he did when they watched Bulls games together in sports bars; she even lived around the block from him on Chicago’s North Side. And, as a marathon runner, she had a lean, toned body. So he just couldn’t understand why she refused to be more feminine—wear make-up, fashionable clothes, or act flirty with him—especially when they went out. It wasn’t much to ask, and it was all their relationship needed to be perfect. But no, whenever he raised the topic—even gently—she became cold and sarcastic and suggested that he was the problem—that he needed to get over his machismo and join the 21st century. Then he would fly into a rage, and—

He realized that he was gripping the arms of the chaise lounge. He exhaled slowly, reminding himself that he was here to relax and forget about Toni. They had agreed to use his stint on Vacation Jury Duty as a cooling-off period. Well, a blizzard was predicted for Chicago that week—just the “cool-off” she deserved while he was living the high life in sunny Acapulco.

Thinking about Toni, he wished he had not his own phone, but one of those Sensurround phones, so that he could annoy her with a selfie that captured the gorgeous sights of the resort and the sounds and smells, too. Palm fronds clattered above him, and he closed his eyes to savor the soothing rhythm. Beyond the patio, waves crashed on the shore. Gulls screamed. He smelled salt water, warm sand, the sweet aroma of coconut tanning oil, and—tomatoes?

He opened his eyes. The woman beside him was sipping a Virgin Mary. He thought about ordering one from the tiki bar. Unlike meals, drinks here weren’t on the house—even the virgin ones served to people who hadn’t finished watching their trial footage for the day. No, he decided to wait. He had a limited budget for extras like drinks and room service, and he had no idea how long “The People versus McConnery Ellis” would last. The sooner he got through the seven hour testimony stream, the sooner he could order a real drink. He was required to finish viewing the day’s footage by midnight, and he wasn’t the kind of man to procrastinate. At least, he could never afford to procrastinate back home in his job as Deputy Assistant Sub-regional Coordinator at Allied Packaging Insurance, Inc. He was happy to take a break from the phone and its constant alerts about bubble wrap recalls and delivery drone drops gone astray.

He leaned back against the deckchair and strapped on the headgear. Damn. In his rush to escape the lobby, he had forgotten to pause the vidstream. The opening statements were done. With the sun caressing his skin, he felt too lazy to replay them. Oh, well. He decided that being a Vacation Juror wasn’t quite like his job in Chicago, where every problem had to be instantly solved. He could review both opening statements later, after a swim.

Julio adjusted the headset until its cushioned forehead piece conformed to his temples. He smoothed down the mesh side flaps to cut the glare.

A redheaded woman was testifying. Julio flicked the control pod, and her credentials scrolled across the screen: Melissa Zymboski, EMT. As she described the team’s arrival and unsuccessful efforts to resuscitate Mr. Ellis, the camera lingered on Mrs. Ellis. The close-up magnified every wrinkle, as well as her salt-and-pepper hair, the hollows under her eyes, and her double chin. Of course, the court prohibited defendants from preparing for the trial by doctoring their appearances through body sculpting. But Mrs. Ellis looked so frumpish that he doubted she had ever set foot in a sculpting studio—which seemed odd for the wife of a wealthy businessman.

Julio fiddled with the controls to see if he could switch the camera angle or viewpoint. No luck. He increased his thumb pressure on the touch pad and the contrast changed. The bluescreen behind Mrs. Ellis faded, replaced by shadowy images of the patio: palm trunks, umbrellaed tables, the tiki bar. Now he understood how jurors could wander around the resort while wearing their headsets. He craned his neck, rearranging his field of vision to position Mrs. Ellis beside the tiki bar. He turned his head. Even better: a parade of shadow people sauntered across the patio on their way to the beach cabanas.

Bored by the testimony, he began to track the silhouettes of bikini-clad women, following one, then switching in favor of a better specimen, until, over Mrs. Ellis’s left shoulder, a rainbow danced along the opposite edge of the pool.

He felt as if he were staring through a kaleidoscope. As the silhouette moved, the colors scrambled: cobalt and magenta, gold and mother-of-pearl, flickering along perfectly proportioned female curves—so different from Toni’s lean, boyish body.

He took off the headset to behold the vision. Balancing one foot on a deckchair, a petite young woman wound her long, bronze braid into a loose knot at the nape of her neck. She was shorter than Toni, who was exactly his height.

He guessed that this woman was in her early twenties. She wore a white bandeau, which barely covered her generous breasts, and a tiny, ruffled swim skirt. Along the rich brown skin of her arms and legs ran swirls of iridescence. Julio had heard about the process—a biometallic lacquer applied to the skin—but had never known anyone who had dared to try it. The polarization on his headset must have magnified the effect.

Catching the sunlight, the colors swirled across the darkness of her skin. Iris, he thought. Arco iris. Rainbow girl.

She stripped off her sandals and dipped a toe in the water. Julio stood, took a step in her direction, and paused as he remembered the sequestration rules. He glanced at the surveillance camera and sat down again on the edge of a chaise lounge.

She stretched her arms skyward, bent, and dove, leaving a shimmer of bubbles in her wake. Julio held his breath and waited for her to surface. She swam two laps, dodging people wading in the shallow end, and climbed out. The wet swimsuit clung to her body, and Julio tightened his grip on the chair slats. She shook the braid out of its knot, scooped up her sandals, and draped a plush towel over her shoulders.

As she pranced up the steps to the lobby, Julio noticed a surveillance camera poised above the sliding glass doors. He wondered if the security team had enjoyed the show as much as he did.

***

Murder in the Generative Kitchen by Meg Pontecorvo, available now in ebook and paperback from Amazon and other retailers.