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| panda-like calm through fiction | |||||||||
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Cast
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Fist off, I'm a robot, let's get that out of the way right now. I didn't come to take your job. I was built for this, for what I do. Because human beings made a mockery of their own legal system.
Lawbots, as we're often collectively called, were created to be cogs in the machinery of justice. The theory went that human people could be bribed, threatened, or simply make mistakes; hell, even the best humans could only remember a tiny fraction of legal precedent that impacted on a single case, let alone hope to hold the entirety of case law in their cellular memory. But the worst thing was humans could be biased, by religion, by philosophy, by almost anything. The practice has been a little more rocky, and there was even a flap when someone realized lawbots could be tampered with- at least theoretically- since they didn't leave a paper trail. The appeals court for the DC circuit even trialed a paper back-up, by which all the thoughts of the prosecutor and judge were printed stream of consciousness style; however, the amount of information obtained quickly overwhelmed the human overseers, and they were forced to admit that only a robot could monitor the activities of the other lawbots- and robots watching robots defeated the entire point. Which kind of brings me to court. I've argued a good case. Parque's a child molester, a nasty one. He hasn't turned violent yet, but the signs are all there. He's a lousy witness, too, and his public defender's nearly as much a piece of work as he is. I nearly had them both on jury tampering, but one of the bailiffs said something that tipped them off and they scuttled their plans before any money changed hands. Jury took no time at all to come back- which is either a sign that my case was weak (and it isn't), or that they saw through the thick musk of flop sweat and bs coming off defense counsel. The foreman eyes me nervously; some people think that the coldness of a robotic judge and prosecutor gives human defense attorneys an edge, but I think that distrust mirrors what it fears, and I choose to give humans the benefit of the doubt (at the very least I'd say the jury's still out). But I have a higher conviction rate, while taking more cases, than my human predecessor- which might be attributed entirely to skill, but at least proves any potential bias isn't overriding. The foreman looks to the judge, and there's a flash of defiance, almost anger. I don't understand it, then he looks back to me and reads “Guilty, all counts.” My eyes flick on their own back to the judge. He folds the paper verdict back in half, and sets it down. I don't even have time to hope he's just being dramatic and not symbolic before he starts to speak. “I find the jury's decision in this case prejudiced by evidence not in record. There have been grievous faults in the jury's fact-finding, and blatant disregard for my instructions on the application of the law. I am forced, by the insufficiency of evidence presented to establish as a matter of law the defendant's guilt, to set aside the jury verdict, and enter an acquittal into the record. Case and jury are dismissed.” Something was off. I took my time walking to the judge's chambers, and his secretary let me in. She was pretty, by human standards (by which I mean her features were fairly symmetrical, her body parameters well within healthy limits). “Megan, good morning. Is he in?” She gave me a smile that told me he was expecting me, and buzzed me through. He was reading something on his desk and didn't look up. “With all due respect, I don't understand.” “I was unaware that your understanding was a determinant in my judication.” I was ramping up for a speech, when he put up his hand without looking up. “The die is cast, counselor. You can't bring charges again- that would violate the double jeopardy protections of the Fifth Amendment.” I knew it was possible, if unlikely, to have a judicial acquittal vacated, and the jury verdict reinstated, but I also knew he knew it, too, and either figured it wouldn't happen on account of his record and reputation, or did and didn't care, because he could only control his own court room. I nodded and walked out. I don't like to admit it, but I come to the factory sometimes, just to think. The factory was automated long before the legal system. It was one of the bigger auto plants in its heyday, and after that it was used to pump out robots, first the judicial models, then prosecutors like me; it spent a few years out of commission while trial lawyers lobbied to keep at least the defensive side open to human litigants, then screamed back into production for policing robots before the police unions lobbied to keep jobs for humans, too. People expect any day now for the factory to be booted back up to make robots for the army; it's the logical progression, really. And with every new model comes a new cast, with upgrades and specifications, but each new generation also creates their own caste, a separate, branched-off social entity. It's not like the milbots will be able to retire and join the civilian workforce (okay, maybe an MP model could join the police). Inadvertently, even amongst robots, we're becoming segregated. The factory is where I was born and booted; it's where QA made sure I didn't have any outstanding flaws, where they fixed that heatsink problem we'd inherited from the previous gen's motherboard layouts. And it's quiet, and lonesome, the perfect environment for computation. I just can't wrap my processor around it. I've argued before Mathis-53 before, and never had an issue (the “Mathis” series came about from an error in the algorithm for the serial numbers; it's a shortening of “Math is hard,” an engineer joke, and he was the 53rd off the assembly line in that series). I've argued cases that were on a shoestring, and usually the jury's more likely to call me on the technicalities than a judge (since we usually know exactly where the line is, even if subjectively there's wiggle room). That was when I decided I needed to call Sarge. He was a Sargebot, one of the protos they'd planned to use to fill out the police brass, until the police union pitched a fit, and demanded they give existing human officers a shot at the Sergeant exams before putting bots in the slots. So Sarge served interrim during the tests with the city police, and after got an early retirement, which meant early obsolescence. He went into private detective work. He'd made a lot of friends at the department, including a few humans who thought it was a little racist giving the preference to humans (and Sarge was polite enough not to correct them that robots are at best a different species- though even calling us that ignores some things). Sarge was the person to go to when you needed off the books help; sure, the bots in blue who partnered with human officers, as was the case anymore, wanted to be loyal, but as one of them told me, “I download my system updates from City Hall.” Which meant if something had gone sideways with a judge, there was a good chance we'd never find it through the normal channels- anybody in the system had a bias towards protecting that system. Sarge hated the factory. He’d been one of the first of his make off the line, which meant he had all kinds of bugs and imperfections QA had to massage out. And there had been a problem with his pressure sensors. “It wasn’t that I was programmed to feel pain, but when they were tinkering around in my torso it sure as Hell hurt,” was how he explained it to me. But still, he liked to meet here, because it was desolate and empty; anybody coming into this corner of the industrial park was going to make noise, and he was professional enough he cared about that. I smelled Sarge before I heard him; he’d been one of the first models designed with a sense of smell, but the only smell he seemed to enjoy was a burning stogie, (I’d been retrofitted with chemical scent detectors during some maintenance on one of my boards- not that I understood why, aside from maybe to increase parts commonality with the newer models and decrease inventory costs). Sarge was big; focus testing showed that police preferred a superior who looked like bullets would bounce off him; he wasn't actually bulletproof, unless he put on a reactive plate armor vest, but the appearance was the key. I’d used him a few times, usually on investigations involving the cops, where the normal players had closed ranks around their own. “This about Mathis?” he asked. “Downloaded the headlines on my drive over here. There are too many angles to check with Parque, but Mathis- he’s usually good people.” I nodded. “Anything I should be aware of?” I shook my head. “Want to walk me back to my car, then?” I shrugged. As soon as we hit night air he started talking. “It’s funny. This place, the last time I was here, at least the last time when it was running, the techs finally fixed that pressure sensitivity- took the pain away. But do I associate it with that? No. Every time I see this place I shudder, and I remember being new, and scared, and hurt. All the goddamned prodding and soldering. Makes me wish I could rewrite my AI. I’m scared of a building, of all the things.” I put my hand on his shoulder; I wanted to tell him we were all scared of something, but I couldn’t: my pride told me real robots weren’t afraid of anything. Maybe that made him braver than me, since he could at least admit it. We got in our cars and went separate ways. I went home and put myself in standby. Around 3 in the morning I got a picture through my inbox from Sarge: Mathis and his secretary laying in a pile on the ground, like somebody knocked them out and stacked them. I tried to call Mathis, but he was disconnected from peer to peer; that didn’t raise much of a flag, though, since he usually powered it down on jobs to keep himself discreet. I tried him again in the morning, but there was nothing. I put in a call to the desk sergeant at the city PD, human named Mel. She remembered Sarge from back when she had a beat to herself, but hadn’t heard from him; she promised to give me a call if she did. I called in to work, said I found some spyware I had to remove before I went back to court. The DA called me back twenty minutes later, to see if I thought someone had deliberately tampered with me- which was a serious and punishable offense. I lied, told him I probably got it taking shortcuts on the web. It was late in the afternoon when Sarge finally got back to me. “You called?” he asked. “What the hell? Where are you?” I was pissed. I’d started thinking I’d have to build a case against his murderer; I wanted to kick him for not at least texting me back. “I’m at a mechanic. Was I working a case for you?” Hell. “My black box got shot up. I’ve restored my system to about seven last night when I made a backup. My phone says you and I talked, and you been leaving messages. So you’re the one got me shot up, right?” “Send me your address. I’m coming to you.” Sarge was laid up in a hole in a brick wall of a garage, the Dr. Frankenstein’s lab of robot repair. He was sitting up on a reinforced table. “I’ve been coughing up oil; it’s not a pleasant experience. But even less pleasant is what I found out since we talked. I checked my memory tower; my system is set to create a backup automatically at midnight. That backup is screwed up, and at a glance it would seem like there was a transmission glitch or a write error, but when you look at the data that’s corrupted and couldn’t be retrieved, it was all specific stuff relating to the errand you had me on. Conversation with you, headlines I grabbed, all that was intact- all the things I could independently get ahold of. But everything about where I went, what I did- I got video of most of that, but any kind of road sign or distinguishable landmarks are missing.” “They hacked my memory tower, and deleted only certain files off my back-up. That takes connections. Either someone high up, or someone with enough roots in the black hat community to mean trouble. So I'm done. Just to fill in the missing files I'd have to go shake the same branches that got me shot to pieces- next time I might wake up a ballerina, if they don't just delete my back-up. On a normal job, I could always just boot from an annual archive disc, but these guys, they might’ve already pulled the location of my discs off the tower. I could be reset to factory. And you know that- it's a fate of virtual death. I'm sorry. But even I've got my limits, and throwing away what little I've got just so we can half solve a likely as not conspiracy, no. Just take my advice and bow out.” “Parque’s a stupid, stupid kid, and he’ll make another mistake, and you’ll be able to staple his balls to the wall then. This, this ain’t worth what it might cost ya.” I didn’t say a damn thing to him; oh, I had a prosecutor’s speech or two in my RAM, but he wasn’t some witness going soft when they realize they have to live in this world after a trial- he’d brushed up against something nasty and I couldn’t blame him for wanting out. But what the judge said that still had me bothered, “the die is cast,” alea iacta est. It was attributed to Caesar by way of Menander, spoken when he crossed the Rubicon to take Rome. A common misconception is that the phrase refers to forming molten metal into dies, meaning that the die’s shape is complete and permanent once cast. But diecasting only dates back to 1838, and was first used to create moveable type for the printing industry. Caesar’s die was a game piece, six-sided. But the phrase was originally in Latin (maybe Greek, if you want to get technical). And enough of the law still uses Latin that the judge and I are both fluent- so why the English? The only reason that even licked sense was that he’d heard it, and recently, too, from somebody who wasn't up on their Latin- and dollars for donuts that meant somebody human. I drove around for a while. I had nowhere to go; even money said that going home might be dangerous. Without really thinking I drove myself to the Mathis’ place. He’d called off virused from work, and his secretary just didn’t show (though maybe she just had the day off and he was the only one who’d have known that). Was he dead? Were the both of them? Was that what Sarge’s picture showed me? I knew I couldn’t just ring the doorbell; whatever was going on I wanted to know more before letting myself be known. I left my car outside his gate and hopped over the fence. Subprocesses ran in the background, pulling up the statutes I was violating, along with their sentencing guidelines. But what was the absolute worst they could do to me? They don’t put robots in jail, don’t put us down. Reset to factory; Sarge feared it, because he’d been through a hell of a lot; factory settings put him in charge of police, and he’d forged his own way. Met people. He had a life, and maybe even a silicon soul. But what did I have? A job. A job I was good at, and a record I was proud of. But absolute worst case scenario, they’d refurbish me and put me back to work; I might forget about some of my case history, might lose a few tricks and have another learning curve- but there wasn’t enough downside to keep my prudent. Sarge was right to be scared. Someone who can hack a memory tower to get at back-ups, those are secured by safeguards created and maintained by the worst combination of government wonks, military paranoids and corporate security professionals that can be found. Beating them meant exposure to the two most powerful groups on the planet- and if you were caught with your hand in that cookie jar they’d make sure you never got the hand back- and that was just for starters. But all I really had to do was hack the judge’s hard-drive. It meant going in low and slow, through some kind of wireless access protocol, probably something he uses to interface with his home doorlocks or something. Before Sarge scampered off, I borrowed a stolen serial number off him; every once in a while in his profession it was useful to be able to go through doors as someone else. I cloned the number, and used it to enter the judge’s home using an exploit. I couldn’t network over a distance, like say from my office- that would leave cookies and crumbs that would lead right back to me. I needed to be close. I was walking down his hallway when the proximity lights came on. I ducked into a coat closet by the front door. I heard footsteps down the hall. Judge robots were the generation before mine. Not all of their circuitry was old and outdated, but there was enough of a difference that I figured it would be doable to get into his systems without him knowing. I pinged him, and there was a long moment where I wasn’t sure if he’d respond, or if he’d be suspicious, run some basic parameter checks and find me out. Then the automated response came back: connection accepted. It was simpler than I’d thought. He kept the port I entered his system through open to talk to the coffee pot in his office; he didn’t drink it himself- so he must have made it for his secretary. From there it was just a computational anatomy lesson, across soldered joints and circuits, all the while mirroring the coffee pot program accessing system resources to check for a software update. Then I was at his hard drive, staring at an empty query string uncertain what the magic words might be that would tell me what I wanted to know- because I couldn’t just download his memory for the last month and hope he didn’t notice the tax on his system resources. That picture, Mathis and his secretary, there had to be something there. I did a time-sensitive filtered search for “Megan,” and suddenly I was watching through his eyes, watching as Megan kissed him. I realized the footsteps had stopped, just outside the door. The light inside the closet flicked on. At my feet was the scene Sarge had photographed, Mathis and Megan lying unconscious. Mathis opened the closet door. “Hmm,” he said. “I’m not surprised.” He took a few steps down the hall, then turned back towards me. “Are you coming or not?” He led me to his study before he said another word. “I’m sorry about Parque. I wanted to tell you- we’ve had at least a collegiate relationship. But I couldn’t allow him to be convicted. He’s protected somehow; connected, I don’t know to whom, likely a Senator’s bastard or a creature from some MIC board. Friends in low places.” “At first it was a standard flirtation, threats in my inbox in combination with bribery, so predictable in its progression it amused me that I was the party running on scripts. And then things changed; they found out about Megan, as you have.” “They could melt me down for scrap for all I care. I’m programmed to love the law above all else, including my own safety; but there must be a flaw in my programming, because I love Megan more. Just the thought of some harm to her stops my hard drive from spinning.” I paused for a moment; I'd put both feet in something deep. “So what do we do?” “If I’d known that, you wouldn’t be involved at all,” he said. “I fear, as I told you previously, that the die, for good and ill, is cast.” He paused for a moment. “But I suppose there’s no more need to be coy- after all, you’ve seen the ‘bodies.’ Megan… Megan is not dead. What you saw was a clone slug, the pharmaceutical industry’s answer to transplant organ shortages. My body was made by a machinesmith- a human machinist, no less- from plaster casts of my components. Inside is a copy of my circuitry, down to the weld, with one noteworthy addition: one pound of C4 explosive in the chest cavity.” “Tonight, I have scheduled a meeting with Parque. I wanted a chance to chastise him personally; if I couldn’t see him convicted, I at least wanted to tell him not to get caught again- at least ostensibly. Something will happen at the meeting, and Parque, myself, and my driver, Megan, will be killed in an explosion.” I wanted to ask where they’d go, or what they’d do, but I realized the less I knew the safer we would all be. “What can I do?” “Nothing. Any involvement from you would arouse suspicion. Go home. Make enough noise that your neighbors have to call a boy and bot in blue to ask you to quiet down. And show up to work tomorrow and do your job. There are plenty more Parques in the world, after all.” I knew I should leave, then, but something still nagged at me. “How’d it happen?” I asked. “It simply did. I was never programmed for it, never prepared. I’ve wondered, in my idle moments, if I caught a virus at some point, or altered a bit of operating code without thinking. But whatever the cause, I’m glad it happened. A more cynical person would say that Megan has destroyed my life, but I see now how little life I was living before.” His answer left me wanting, but I think he felt the same about it; we were both designed to seek absolute truth, and this was far beyond that pale. So I said the only goodbye that mattered now, “Good luck.” As I walked back to my car, I realized I had neglected one more meaning of cast, because it was so out of use, but it seemed apt, whether Mathis had intended it or not, because a cast is just another word for a plan. |
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