Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World (24 page)

"Have you ever experienced what it is like to be White Noise, The Court?"

"Among the core wetware membership that comprises our main logic matrix none was ever subjected to Common Ground," Prime Nine replied. "Though some of our jurors have spent a few cycles off the labor rosters."

"Not a cycle or two, Judge," Frendon said angrily. "White Noise men and women are barred from ever working again. And the children of White Noise, as I am, might never know a day of employment in their lives."

"What is your point?"

"That you and your fictional elements have no notion of the lives led underground."

"We need not be aware of Common Ground or its psyche. We are judges of the law and the law applies equally to all."

"How can that be? If I had money I could hire my own counsel and that living, breathing lawyer could demand a flesh-and-blood judge."

"We are superior to flesh and blood. We are of many bodies, with a superior retrieval system and greater overall mind."

"Maybe a real man would have compassion for my history."

"Because you represent yourself you can demand a human magistrate. Is that your wish?"

"No, The Court. I have begun my trial and I will finish it here, with you."

"Then present your evidence."

Frendon took a deep breath and looked around the big empty room as if he were preparing to address a great audience. The only ones there were AttPrime Five, her lovely face frozen on the blue screen, and Otis Brill, who was seated in half-lotus position on the floor because there were no chairs except for RMD 27, and no one would sit in a prisoner's chair if they didn't have to.

"Do you know what is the biggest problem with a life of White Noise, The Court?"

"Is this question evidence?"

"Yes it is, Your Honor. It is evidence. The kind of evidence that your AttPrime software would never even suspect, the kind of evidence that all the thousands of minds that comprise your perfect logic would never know. The biggest problem with being White Noise is perpetual and unremitting boredom. Day in and day out you sit hunched over in your octagon tube or against the wall in the halls that always smell of urine and mold. Everybody around you always chattering or fighting or just sitting, waiting for a monthly shot at the vid unit or a pass to go upside to see how the cyclers survive. There's no books made from paper because trees have more rights than we do. There's no movies because that costs money and we aren't real so there's no credits to our names. Singing is illegal, who the hell knows why? Breaking a wall down so you can share a bed with a friend is against the law too. The food is the same day after day and there's no way out once you've been found wanting. There's no way upside unless you die.

"The only way you can ever get anything is if you sell your number to some cycler who needs someone to cop to a crime. You can sell your confession for a general credit number. For three months in a cell or maybe a year of quarantine you can eat ice cream with your girlfriend or take a walk in the park."

"Are you confessing to other crimes, Frendon Blythe?" Prime Nine asked.

"Just painting a picture, The Court, of what life is like underground."

"We seek extenuating evidence not irrelevant illustration."

Somebody in that box was a poet,
Frendon thought.

"So you see that life is pretty dull down there. That's why there are so many suicides." Frendon heard a sound. He turned and saw that Otis Brill had slumped over on his side and gone to sleep on the shiny tiles. He was snoring. A flutter above his head reminded him of the birds who would never be free.

Defy the logic matrix,
Tristan the Dominar had said.
Break down the problem into human segments
that don't add up.
The church had offered Frendon unlimited access once they realized he had a logical mind. The Dominar didn't believe in the justice system and he wanted to thwart it, Frendon was not sure why. It could have been anything--politics, corporate intrigue, or merely the ego of the man who pretended he was God's friend. More than once Frendon had wondered if he had been talking to the real Dominar or just one of the many abbots who supervised the tens of millions of monitors running twenty-four hours a day in Infochurch pews around the world. Maybe, Frendon thought, he was just one soldier in a vast army of jobless citizens thrown at the justice system to break it all down. But why?

He didn't know. He didn't care. All Frendon wanted was to not be bored, to not sit a thousand feet underground and wait for sleep or wake to gray. That's why he'd agreed to this crazy plan of the man who called himself Dominar. That's why he'd killed and assaulted and allowed himself to be captured. Anything but what he was destined for.

Frendon looked around and saw that all the machinery was at a halt. RMD 27, AttPrime, and even Prime Nine were all still; only that blinking red light and small chiming bell, along with Otis Brill's snores, broke the calm of the large room. Frendon realized that as long as he stood still and pretended to be thinking, the computers would leave him in peace. But he didn't want peace. He wanted bright colors and noise, good food and sex with any woman, man, or dog that wouldn't bite him. In the absence of anything else Frendon would take pain. And in the absence of pain he would even accept death.

"I was so bored," he said, "that I started to wonder about politics. I wondered if we could make some kind of action that would close the Common Ground down. I started talking about it, to my friends at first and then to anyone who would listen. 'Come join the revolution,' I said to them. 'Let's burn this fucker down.'

"It wasn't against the law. Freedom of speech has not yet been outlawed, even though the House of Corporate Advisors has drafted a bill for Congress that would put Common Ground outside the range of the Constitution. But even though I was in my rights the police started following me. They checked my papers every time I was upside. They'd come down to my tube and pull me out of bed. Once they even stripped me naked and then arrested me for indecent exposure.

"I told them that I would kill them if it wasn't against the law."

"You threatened their lives?"

"Only hypothetically. I said if it wasn't against the law."

"But it could have been perceived as a threat."

"You have the interview in your guts," Frendon said. "Let's take a look at it and you'll see for yourself." Cowled Justice disappeared from Prime Nine's screen. It was replaced by the bloodied image of Frendon being interviewed by the police in the presence of a small wetware court reporter.

"I said,"
Frendon's image said.
"That I would kill you if it was legal. I would. I would. I swear I
would. But it's not legal so I can't. Wouldn't you like to get at me if you could?"

"You're skating near the edge, boy,"
Officer Terrance Bernard, a six foot six red-nosed policeman, said.

"Yeah,"
his partner, Officer Omar LaTey, put in.
"If anyone around here gets killed it will be you."
They were both wearing the gray uniforms of the Social Police. The Social Police were responsible for the protection and security of Common Ground's facilities and its residents. The image faded and Cowled Justice returned.

"They didn't say that they couldn't kill me. They said that I would be killed." For fourteen seconds Prime Nine cogitated.

"Is this the extent of your evidence?"

"No. I would like to inquire about the street vids that are situated on Tenth Street and Cutter. Are there images of the supposed crime?"

"Yes. Partial coverage was recorded."

Again the image of the judge disappeared, this time replaced by a shabby street lined with brick buildings that were fairly nondescript. They seemed to be tall buildings, their roofs being higher than the range of the police camera lens showed. Close to the camera was the back of a head. Frendon knew that this head was his. In the distance two men in gray uniforms rushed forward. One had a hand weapon drawn.

"Stop!"
Terrance Bernard commanded. The tiny microphone recorded the word perfectly. The head jerked down below the camera's range. The other policeman drew his weapon. The sound of shots was followed by Omar LaTey grabbing his leg and falling. Then Bernard's weapon fired and immediately the image went blank. More shots were recorded and then a loud, frightening scream. Frendon's heart raced while witnessing the well-planned shoot-out on Cutter Avenue. He felt again the thrill of fear and excitement. He might have been killed or wounded. It was like one of those rare movies they showed for free in Common Commons on Christmas, one of those westerns starring John Wayne or Dean Martin where you killed and then rode off with your girl, your best friend, and your horse.

"Officer LaTey's testimony is that you threatened them with your gun."

"Only after I saw them coming."

"Officer LaTey did not lie."

"Neither did I," Frendon said. It was all working perfectly, just as the Dominar had said.

"This testimony is corroborated by the evidence of the video and your confession."

"I only confessed to the shooting. I never said I had the gun out before they drew on me." Cowled Justice moved in slow staccato movements for a span of seconds.

"This argument is irrelevant. You fired the gun on police officers known to you after they ordered you to stop."

"I was stopped already, as your spycam shows. And you are leaving out the all-important evidence that those officers threatened my life."

"The interview was never presented as an exhibit in this proceeding," Prime Nine announced. Frendon went cold on the inside. It was the same chilly feeling he got when he was leaning against the tenement wall on Cutter three minutes before Common Ground curfew the afternoon he killed Terrance Bernard. He loved the recoil in his hand and then the burst of red from the red-nosed officer's neck. LaTey was bleeding on the ground when Frendon approached him. The cop was so scared that he could only mouth his pleas for mercy. He tried to fight when Frendon knelt down and used the officer's own hat to put pressure on the wound.

"You'll live," Frendon remembered saying. "This wound in the line of duty will make it so you'll never have to go downside. Lucky bastard." But Officer LaTey did not hear him. He had fainted from fear.

"Oh but it has, The Court. I am the recognized attorney in this case and you allowed the mem clips to be shown. That, according to California law, makes it automatically an exhibit." The image of Cowled Justice froze. AttPrime Five began lowering from the room, the Glassone tile slid back over her place. RMD 27 raised up on a thousand tiny jets of air. Otis Brill snored. The screen of Prime Nine split in two to show the face of a black woman on the left and an Asian man on the right. These screens in turn split and two white faces materialized. These four images then split, and then again the next eight. The process continued until the images shown became too small for Frendon to make out their features.

If you do it right the full army of ten thousand jurors will meet to decide on your case,
the Dominar had said.
They will all come out on the screen, just so many dots of data, and if you made the right
case they will be in the shadow of doubt.

Frendon faced the ten thousand jurors while Otis Brill slept. The bird above had stopped its fluttering. Long moments passed and Brill woke up.

"What's wrong?" the court officer said upon seeing the screen filled with ten thousand indistinguishable squares.

"The jury's out."

"I never seen it act like this before. RMD 27, guard the prisoner while I go and report this to the Techs outside."

The chair didn't respond. Frendon wondered if it was disdain for the man or just a quirk in the chair's programming.

Brill ran on squealing shoes from the chamber. Three minutes after he was gone Prime Nine reappeared.

"There is doubt among us," the cowled face said. "We have convened for long moments. New circuits were inhabited and long-ago memories stirred. We are sure that you are guilty but the law is not certain. Some have asked, therefore, Who are we?"

Frendon wondered if this was the effect the Dominar wanted.

"The question, of course, is meaningless. We are circuits and temporary flesh that must be changed from time to time as cells begin to die. Dead cells of one man replaced by those of another man but not displaced. Vestiges of the original man remain and blend with the new to become the whole." Frendon remained silent. He was in awe at the sight of this crisis of law.

"But of course--" The cowled image suddenly froze. The screen split in two and another image, the image of a gray-faced man with no distinguishing features, appeared.

"Interrupt program Nine point One in effect," the gray face said. "We are the error retrieval program. Prisoner Frendon Ibrahim Blythe U-CA-M-329-776-ab-4422, you have elicited an emotional response from Prime Nine that has overflowed the parameters of this case. All extraneous details have been redlined. The case will now continue."

With that the image of the gray face disappeared, leaving the image of Cowled Justice in the middle of his pronouncement. Two ghostly hands appeared at the bottom of the screen and the cowl was pulled back, revealing the bearded image of a man whose color and features defied racial identification. There was sorrow in the face of the man, but none of the grief showed in his words.

"You have been found guilty of murder, Frendon Ibrahim Blythe, U-CA-M-329-776-ab-4422. The sentence is a speedy death."

__________

Seventeen minutes later Otis Brill returned to Prime Nine's chamber with four court officers and two Techs wearing wraparound aprons that had a hundred pockets each. The pockets were filled with tools and circuit chips.

They found the decapitated body of Frendon Blythe lying on the floor between Prime Nine and RMD

27. The neural cable had retracted from his neck. It had drying blood and brain material on its long needle. His left eye was mostly closed but the right one was wide open. There was the trace of a smirk on his lips. Otis Brill later told the Outer Guard, "It was like he was tellin' us that he did it, that he fooled the automatic judge, and you know, I almost wish he did."