By Frampton Jones

This may be one of the most complicated deaths I’ve seen. Not because the death itself was complicated – it was a fairly normal case of food poisoning after Sophie Hawksworth ate last week’s ‘special’ at The Crow. Three other people are still trying to recover. What makes this complicated is the question of who, exactly has died, and what, exactly should happen next.

Inventor Lilly May came forward to explain. She said: “The person we think of as Sophie Hawksworth was actually an intelligence living in her mechanical arm and controlling a body that had otherwise been dead for years.”

Doc Willoughby disagreed, telling me, “It is ridiculous to suggest that the arm was the person. What next? Will you decide that my hat is really me? Anyway, no one has ever kept a dead body alive for that long, it makes no sense.”

Lilly May said “I believe the original circumstances of transplant were highly unusual and would be hard to replicate. But the fact remains that this arm represents a sentient being and we should not bury it. This is why I have taken the arm, and will keep it safely until such times as a suitable host can be found – organic or metallic.”

There will be a funeral on Thursday next, for the organic remains of the person we have been calling Sophie Hawksworth. Whether this name is a fair representation of who we are committing to the Earth, I am unsure. Reverend Davies tells me that in the circumstances, he is considering using the burial for an unknown personage format. He tells me that he is uneasy about this whole ‘haunted machines business’ as he calls it, but would prefer not to risk burying a body with the wrong name as that could have “sinister consequences”.