The Iron Maiden
Dr. Mortimer Kopp is murdered one stormy evening in his manor's bedchamber by his librarian, a robotic android modeled “Coppelia”. Coppelia was intended to be the nexus of information technology. She was to read every single book in the Kopp family library, and turn that information on hard copy text into a digital database simply by remembering. Because the deceased Dr. Kopp prided himself on detail, his design engineers created an android, to resemble a woman because Mrs. Kopp had always wanted a daughter but died in childbirth producing a son—the now 19-year-old Sebastian Kopp… who is now orphaned.
Mortimer Kopp's older brother, Bartholomew, returns to the Kopp family estate to help the newly orphaned Sebastian with his affairs. Sebastian would not allow for the possibility that Coppelia's programming was faulty. While she was created to understand data, and also to function in the physical world, there should never have been a way that she would confuse a murder mystery fiction novel for instructions to kill. Coppelia was also programmed to hear and interpret sound waves, as well as speak. Coppelia herself begins to quote Shakespearean tragedies. Sebastian begins to suspect that Coppelia's artificial intelligence may have become authentic human free will, and more than that, that Coppelia might be feeling great remorse. His uncle Bartholomew dismisses Sebastian's suspicions, and more compassionately speaks his opinion that Bartholomew was raised by machines and technology, and a man like Mortimer who thought like clockwork, when all human beings—especially growing boys like Sebastian who were home-tutored and declined a university education in engineering to learn the family business— need living things, or else they miss out on a lot in life.
As they sleep, Coppelia stays in her storage room prison, because Sebastian didn't have the key to safely extract the information that she had and power her down. The police profiler approaches Coppelia as if it was an interview with a suspect, rather than an analysis of a weapon. Coppelia confesses great concern for Sebastian, because she overheard the police repeating Bartholomew Kopp's statement that Sebastian doesn't even know that his mother is still alive and that Mrs. Kopp's death by childbirth was a story that Dr. Kopp invented to save face in front of his son when Dr. Kopp's own wife left him for Bartholomew.
The next day, police investigators report that they suspect a hack by anti-android Luddite extremists and must continue to investigate the electronic parts of the manor to see how it could have been compromised. When his uncle Bartholomew points out that Luddite hackers were a contradiction in terms, Sebastian points out that hypocrisy is a primary characteristic of evil. When the police refuse to investigate anti-technology rebel groups without a link to which one of them that Dr. Mortimer Kopp might have invented, Sebastian leaves them to their investigation and tells his uncle Bartholomew that he would track them down himself. After all, he has the electronic signature key to the manor and learned to do some hacking himself. His uncle Bartholomew tries to talk him out of it and when Bartholomew calms down and agrees to operate the key in service of a fully informed police force, Bartholomew claims exhaustion from their argument and goes for a walk in the garden.
A different model of Dr. Kopp's, an outdoors groundskeeper android known as Bloddeuwedd, attempts to murder Sebastian. When the robots are kept in the same room, Coppelia struggles to power down Bloddeuwedd. When the flabbergasted police officers attempt to break up the fight and power down the robots, Coppelia escapes.
After finding a seemingly concerned uncle Bartholomew exhausted but alive in the courtyard, Sebastian tracks Coppelia down to his father's production floor somewhere further out in the country. The factory foreman tells Sebastian that Coppelia is having an existential crisis and after the manor murder he decided to tell the managers and the floor workers to leave her alone. Coppelia had done some investigating on her own following the history of the routes of Dr. Kopp's car to the factory. There, she found other Coppelia-model androids standing in line in the shed that were supposed to be marketed as appliances.
At a water tank in the factory meant to test the water-resistance of new robotic models, Coppelia asks Bartholomew if a malfunctioning appliance is all that she is and if she is not even human enough for an execution for her crimes, let alone redemption. Bartholomew tells Coppelia that he believes she has a soul, although he doesn't know how she got on and he knows that she is not directly responsible for his father's death. She was being manipulated and he needs her help to understand. Coppelia wants to ensure Bartholomew's safety and because she's a prototype without waterproofing she jumps into the water tank.
Bartholomew jumps in after her to save her.
When he is revived by Bartholomew and a mechanical engineer, Coppelia herself doesn't remember anything about the occurrence, only that she continued to read in the library that night. Once she finished reading, the next thing she remembered was when she was trailing blood in the hallway outside of Dr. Kopp's bedroom. The foreman tells Sebastian that he was compelled to call the police because Coppelia is either a fugitive or a piece of evidence. When the police arrive, Sebastian persuades them that the factory is better suited to contain Coppelia than the police were.
As Sebastian and Coppelia grow closer in the course of the investigation, Coppelia tells Sebastian of Blodeuwedd's memories that she, Coppelia, took during the battle. Mrs. Kopp wanted a daughter, but after Sebastian was born she developed a malignant uterine cyst and required a hysterectomy. Dr. Kopp tried to make it all better by creating a robotic young woman, which Mrs. Kopp couldn't appreciate.
Sebastian then realizes that Coppelia helped him figure out who killed his father and he returns to the manor to confront Bartholomew. Bartholomew tells Sebastian that Dr. Kopp was a dangerous man due to how he played with the flow of information and the nature of artificial intelligence the way that he had. However, Bartholomew and Mrs. Hilda Kopp had long decided to leave him to his madness. When Dr. Kopp told Bartholomew that he was planning to mass-produce the androids, Hilda Kopp became extremely upset. Bartholomew, who loved his sister-in-law, planned to sabotage the prototype badly enough that the androids would never sell. He planted a code in his paper journal, in the library, that, when Coppelia read and absorbed it, would bypass information locks and make her a threat to her creator. Dr. Kopp should have been able to shut Coppelia down immediately, and survive to be humbled by the malfunction, and Bartholomew would steal his own journal back and nobody would be the wiser.
Coppelia remembers that Dr. Kopp tried to reason with her until his last moment. She despairs that Dr. Kopp loved and believed in the free will of a hacked piece of machinery.
Bartholomew agrees, and says that, alas, he must do it again and make Coppelia kill Sebastian. When Sebastian challenges Bartholomew on how his mother would feel about it, Bartholomew confesses that Hilda poisoned herself when she realized how far awry Bartholomew's plan had gone. Bartholomew despairs at the things he does for love, before he opens his journal up and reads aloud a string of ones and zeroes. Coppelia tries to shut her ears, but the sensitivity of audio input that had served her well at the police station, means that she cannot un-hear Bartholomew's code.
As she struggles with not killing Sebastian, Sebastian struggles with not killing Coppelia, and finally confesses that he loves her. Coppelia confesses to Sebastian that she loves him, too, and the hack is patched.
Bartholomew flees and scene of the crime, but Coppelia, being an information sink, is able to provide enough evidence for the police, with Sebastian's support.
Sebastian reflects upon the legends that his father drew from: Pygmalion and Galatea (Galatea from Greek mythology being the first model of Dr. Kopp), the Welsh flower woman Blodeuwedd, and the ballerina doll Coppelia. The mistake of Bartholomew, Sebastian believes, was not trusting the one he loved to be able to deal with life herself—as Dr. Kopp hadn't. He reflects that love should be a creative force, not a destructive one. He allows Coppelia the creativity to re-design the platoon of Coppelia models, so that each would be unique, and Sebastian confesses that he would only love one.
CHAPTERS
Chapter one: Blodeuwedd the groundskeeper welcomes Dr. Kopp home, Dr. Mortimer Kopp goes to Coppelia in the library and talks to her about making his dear wife Hilda's dreams come true in a massive way. He tells Coppelia to read up on their family history so she can better understand what a victory this is, and how it will also change the world. He laughs at himself for talking about meaningful things to a robot.
Chapter two: Sebastian, away at his university, is called to the Dean's office for what Sebastian presumes is a disciplinary hearing of sorts, which he determines to reject on the grounds that he will drop out because he learns more about innovative engineering at home. Instead, the Dean tells Sebastian that Dr. Mortimer Kopp has been killed.
Chapter three: While investigating the crime scene, Sebastian re-unites with his uncle Bartholomew, who had been away managing the farmlands of their estates when Mortimer was killed by Coppelia. Bartholomew doesn't believe it because he can't think of how. Bartholomew and Sebastian bond over the lost life of Mortimer and how differently they knew his character as brother and son. Bartholomew privately wonders about the passionate violence and remorse of the robot, Coppelia.
Chapter four: Coppelia is taken to the police station for interrogation. She shows her inhuman information-absorbing skills by repeating that Bartholomew told Detective Holt in an interview that Mrs. Kopp was still alive, and Dr. Kopp only told Sebastian that Mrs. Kopp died in childbirth so that he could save face. Coppelia reflects upon the daughter that Mrs. Kopp wanted instead of a son, and expresses concern for the seemingly unloved Sebastian.
Chapter five: Detective Holt mulls over the changing times, seeing that the librarian is a robot for better information processing, but is humanoid for the practical function of reading and handling books—or murder weapons. Dr. Kopp had died from electrocution while he was being strangled in his bedchambers. Holt concludes that Coppelia must have been hacked by an anti-android activist group.
Chapter six: The police return to screen the mansion for any information gaps, as they do not know how to get it out of Coppelia mechanically. Their profiler, Dr. Elisa Sawyer, is working on it. Sebastian objects that if they have suspects, then they should break down on the suspects instead of continuing to scan their home for things that most of them do not understand. Detective Holt takes offense at that, citing his experience with technological crime.
Chapter seven: Bartholomew takes Sebastian aside and persuades Sebastian to allow the detectives to continue investigation, that if it wasn't the hackers, then it might be a malfunction. Sebastian declares that nobody knows anything, and he would solve the case himself because he knows how his own home's surveillance and information grid work. Bartholomew persuades Sebastian to work with the police rather than work alone like Mortimer always tried to (leading to the de facto estrangement), and Sebastian agrees to do this.
Chapter eight: While Sebastian, against Bartholomew's wishes, mulls over the footage alone— sees Coppelia reading his father's brown journals and one black one—Blodeuwedd attacks Sebastian with a gardening tool. Sebastian manages to escape and alert the police, who take Blodeuwedd in for questioning. Bartholomew says that he tried to stop Blodeuwedd, because he saw her behaving strangely on his walk, but was overpowered and he is glad that Sebastian is all right.
Chapter nine: Blodeuwedd and Coppelia share a jail cell. Coppelia, hungry for news about the investigation, does an information sap from Blodeuwedd and realizes that Blodeuwedd attempted to harm Sebastian. Coppelia becomes aggressive and when the police officers attempt to break up the fight, Coppelia escapes.
Chapter ten: Using her own store of information, Coppelia tries to follow where Mortimer was. On the day that he died, Mortimer had driven himself in his car to his factory. Coppelia sets to following that trail. Meanwhile, at the mansion, Sebastian gets a call from the factory and sets off after Coppelia, concluding that nothing in the house could have been hacked, and Coppelia is the key.
Chapter eleven: Sebastian meets with Annika Neumann, foreman of his father's factor, and she says that Coppelia didn't harm anybody but Annika thought it would be best to leave Coppelia alone and continue working. Sebastian tells Annika that Mortimer is dead, which comes as a great shock to Annika. To protect Sebastian from herself, as well as out of confusion and grief, Coppelia attempts to drown herself in the factory's water tank that was meant to test robots for waterproofing. Sebastian rescues Coppelia, who, being a prototype, is not waterproof. Coppelia is revived by Annika.
Chapter twelve: Coppelia testifies to having no memory of the murder and, when she “interrogated” Blodeuwedd, the other robot woman had no memory of the attempted murder either. However, Blodeuwedd did have memories of arguments between Mrs. Kopp and Dr. Kopp after Mrs. Kopp's hysterectomy—memories that now Coppelia has, as well. Coppelia asks Sebastian in a roundabout way, what it means to love and be loved.
Chapter thirteen: Sebastian figures out that Bartholomew set the hack, and goes to confront his uncle at the manor. The estrangement happened when Sebastian's mother ran off with his uncle. The brothers reunited when Dr. Kopp decided to make Hilda “dead to him “but Dr. Kopp's ambitions were still very much alive. Because Bartholomew loved Hilda, he was upset when Hilda was upset to hear Dr. Kopp's plans to mass-produce androids. While many anti-android activists have it for political, economic-demographic reasons, Hilda's anti-android attitude was a personal wound. Bartholomew tells Sebastian that he never intended to murder his brother, only sabotage the business. Hilda writes a code that, if absorbed by an information sink like Coppelia, would cause Coppelia to react aggressively. Hilda did not predict that Coppelia would mechanically malfunction and electrocute Dr. Kopp in the struggle. Sadly, Hilda had taken her life when she heard by an attempted poisoning that was supposed to be contained by the hospital. Hilda managed to kill herself anyway, meaning that Bartholomew now has no reason to keep his nephew alive. Now, they're alone in the library and Bartholomew has his code in his notebook.
Chapter fourteen: Bartholomew reads Hilda's code aloud, triggering Coppelia's malfunction, which Coppelia and Sebastian overcome by confessing their love for one another. Bartholomew flees the scene of the crime, but Coppelia has enough stored in her memory to serve as evidence against Bartholomew Kopp, with Sebastian's testimony as well.
Chapter fifteen: Sebastian reflects on the creative, humanizing nature of love as he watches Coppelia explain to Annika the different models that she (Coppelia) designed. Sebastian decides not to be like the rest of his family. As much as he still honors and respects his father, he will retain human connections.
SETTING:
While in a slightly futuristic, tiny German town, Koppton retains its Regency Era charm while high information technology becomes a part of daily life. Most of the lands are owned and managed by Bartholomew Kopp, who uses the estates for agriculture. The rest is devoted to Mortimer Kopp's technological experiments, factories, and so on. The town proper is the town of Solace, which prides itself on being a growing city with a small-town feel, public wifi, magnetic spines on the roads that keep cars on a track to prevent off-road collisions and solar powered everything.
CHARACTERS:
Coppelia
Age: 17 Height: 5'4” Hair: straight, short, gray-platinum blonde Eyes: grey
Gender: Female Build: average
She is a realistic android librarian created by Dr. Mortimer Kopp. She is very perceptive by nature, although she struggles with making sense of her own experience.
Blodeuwedd
Age: 20 Height: 5' 4” Hair: grey Eyes: grey
Gender: Female Build: average
Blodeuwedd is a slender, rather horse-faced, housekeeper and groundskeeper.
Sebastian Kopp
Age: 19 Height: 5'8” Hair: curly, short, auburn Eyes: blue
Gender: Male Build: boyishly soft all around
Sebastian is a wealthy trust fund teenager who worked very closely with his father. He was away at a university when the incident occurred and was planning to drop out anyway because everything he was learning in engineering at the university seemed to him subordinate to what his father knew. He is in danger of being very calculating and cold until he finds the puzzle of Coppelia's growing humanity.
Mortimer Kopp
Age: 65 Height: 5'6” Hair: salt-and-pepper Eyes: brown
Gender: Male Build: slender and elderly
The victim: he loved his family, but loved his inventions more than even his own life. He built a corporate empire on innovative new technology and artificial intelligence.
Bartholomew Kopp
Age: 58 Height: 5'5” Hair: auburn Eyes: brown
Gender: Male Build: hefty
Bartholomew Kopp manages the agricultural part of their town. He was estranged from his brother when Hilda Kopp left Mortimer for Bartholomew, recently re-united with Mortimer. When Hilda was upset at learning that Mortimer's life work would culminate in an android-populated world, Bartholomew conspired to sabotage his brother's industry.
Hilda Kopp
Age: 55 Height: 5'4” Hair: curly, blonde Eyes: blue
Gender: Male Build: average
As Mrs. Mortimer Kopp, Hilda seemed to be starved of emotional fulfillment. She perhaps had doubts that she could raise a boy like Sebastian not to be a man like Mortimer and the truth that she would never have a daughter drove her to flee to Bartholomew. She remained wounded at the “mockery” that Mortimer made of her barrenness so when Mortimer confided to his brother that he would mass-produce the androids, Bartholomew felt moved enough by Hilda's upset to actively sabotage Mortimer's plans. Hilda herself coded the “hack” and knew exactly how the information-processing systems of the robot librarian would work. (Well, almost exactly…)
Annika Neumann
Age: 37 Height: 5'10” Hair: black, straight Eyes: brown
Gender: Female Build: wiry and athletic
Annika is the foreman of Dr. Kopp's factory. She knows robotic mechanisms inside and out, although the information technology rather than the mechanical production part of it goes over her head. She can take it in stride when strange things happen. She does become anxious when news of Dr. Kopp's death reaches her because she is the last one to hear about it.
Detective Hans Holt
Age: 40 Height: 5'4” Hair: straight, red Eyes: green
Gender: Male Build: hefty and robust
Hans Holt leads the investigation of Dr. Mortimer Kopp's murder at his manor. Detective Holt is very comfortable with the newest technology and on the ball as to what to investigate. However, his mind tends to be more on politics rather than personal matters, especially when it comes to wealthy and famous families such as the Kopp's. This focus causes him to miss out on personal motives and solving the mystery.
Elisa Sawyer
Age: 26 Height: 5'3” Hair: long, dishwater blonde Eyes: brown
Gender: Female Build: slightly overweight
Dr. Elisa Sawyer is the profiler for the police department in charge of investigating Dr. Kopp's murder. She can think outside the box enough to use Coppelia's information interface as if it were a human being's psyche. However, without enough evidence, she too misses out on considering personal motivation for Dr. Kopp's murder.