[WP] In a utopian future, capitol punishment is a footnote in the history books. You are on trial for a crime so heinous, the death sentence is brought back to the table.

I am so sorry for the length. Got carried away.

I am in a soundproof box. It is opaque. It is faradayed. Nothing can get through from inside. There is a one-directional fisheye lens on each wall. I am able to look out. I can press a button so a tiny speaker in one corner will transmit sound carried along a fibre-optic cable from a flat microphone on one side of the box. I can only listen, of course. I keep the button down at all times. I am on trial for the mass murder of Collins’ Town: the third civilian colony on the moon. I did it with a… Prion. Technically. And the prosecution was advocating the death sentence for the first time in over a hundred years. Most of this information was available on the network of course, for anyone who wanted it. All of the world could watch, since it was impossible to prevent information leakage with a live audience of nearly three hundred.
The prosecution was expected to win by a landslide. His only difficulty was the lack of live eye witness testimony, but commentators expected him to spin that to his advantage. Despite the outrageousness demand of the prosecution, the defence had picked the short straw. By the time you log in, they’ve already started talking.

“… -habilitation. Rehabilitation,” they were saying slowly. The latter half of the court system’s famous motto. “Since volition was disproven in twenty thirty-three, this court has only ever delivered rehabilitation sentences.” You poke at your mousepad and the camera pans to the judge’s panel. There’s a facegram of an old man in the witness box, on an eerily repeating loop. “This is because of the overwhelming fact that anyone, no matter how cruel, nor how deadly, their crime, is capable of being repaired. My question, Professor Burke, is a simple confirmation: is the woman in that box immune to such processes?” The face on the monitor changes. You realise it wasn’t looping – the old man must have some kind of nervous tic. Now he smiles nervously and finds his words: “If it please the court, practice has revealed that-“ “Ignoring your heretofore inadequate practise, answer in purely categorical terms, please,” snarls the defence. Prof. Burke’s face is perturbed, switching back to its looping, unfocused expression as he thinks. “Yes,” he manages, sort of rolling his eyes. You haven’t been following the story all too enthusiastically. New viruses are old news and easily solved, so you’re used to ignoring them. So you have no idea what it means when the audience starts whispering. “Objection, this assertion has no predictive validity!” the prosecution cuts in. “Sustained,” replies the judge. “The defence will return their position to the practical.” A pause in the defence’s triumphant strutting. “Assuming you had sufficient resources, could you, or anyone to your knowledge, design a means by which to rehabilitate the defendant?” You can’t keep your eyes off the witness. It looks like he was having a seizure or a stroke, but it doesn’t stop him talking. “Yes, absolutely.” The prosecutor jerks to his feet, but the judge pre-empts him with a hand-waving motion. “And would it be possible for the defendant to… counteract… That means?” Silence in the courtroom. “I don’t know. I cannot speak for the actions of the defendant, but she has, as you put it, counteracted, every measure so far. As a scientist I cannot say with certainty that she would not do so with a new method.” A much longer pause. “What about one completely machine-made?” asks the defence quietly. Burke looks horrified at the defence, and replies by gravely shaking his head. You remember Copenhagen too. You remember the scandal as a rehabbing prisoner ‘tricked’ its therapy AI, back in the days when progress was measured in Plancks. Evidently, I, in my silent box in the corner, could do much worse. “No further questions,” says the pale-faced defence, and sat down. The prosecution takes the floor like a bear at a stream, picking up the fresh salmon his opponent had left out. “Professor Burke,” he echoes “could you for the sake of illuminating the jury, describe the attempts at rehabilitation which have taken place?” “The reports are all available online,” Burke frowns, you think, because it’s the closest sane expression you can think of. As you watch, Burke posts a link on the judicial chat pane. You plug yourself in and blink it open, downloading several reports. People call you old-fashioned because you aren’t plugged in the moment you log on, but you like to play it safe. You never know what can get inside your head these days. A few dozen pages scroll through your sight almost too fast to notice. The first attempt at rehab, a routine verbal assessment, ended in seconds with the examiner simply refusing to continue. When asked to explain herself, she said she did not believe I required rehab, and that’s all she would say. They put a gag on me for the next attempt: optic cascade to force my neurones to rewire. In the time it should have taken to start the procedure, they had dismantled the laser instead. Scientists took to analysing my behaviour by CCTV. Every single one reported me as a healthy, normal individual who showed no signs of illness. One of the only coherent mentions of my methods is a description of my fingers “doing the death dance.” The reports continue like this. They tried ultrasound, microwave, brain surgery and VR-training. They even tried rebooting me from an earlier save, but the machine crashed when it was connected and refused to wake up. You are not usually interested in viruses, but you stay plugged in as you maximise the video feed again. This isn’t a virus; this is magic. “… ceived of a method which provably has worked?” “No.” The prosecution nods proudly. “Why, in your expert opinion, is that?” “Because every time an entity displays an intention of working against her, its intention flips upside-down. Be it computer or human, she inflicts the rehabilitator with the same…” Here the professor is at a loss for words. “Phenomenon,” the prosecutor suggests. “Yes, with the same phenomenon as that which caused the tragedy at Collins’ Town.” You glance down at the public chat feed for a millisecond. It says, “HOLY SHIT.” “And that phenomenon, what is it?” A picture appears in the judicial chat. It looks like a person, but you know it as Jasper Breijer, the first “P-zombie” who disproved himself by trying to announce that he was not self-aware. That was the last trial where the reintroduction of the death sentence was considered, until the realists came out of their hiding place and pointed out that a p-zombie doesn’t know it’s not self-aware. “You will notice I sent a picture of Breijer. He was an imitator. Collin’s Town experienced a tripling of commercial output in the days after the attack. A scanning of the frontal lobe of a deceased victim revealed that-“ The judge hammers hard with his gavel. You’re almost glad. Burke might’ve been about to say… “Before the witness may continue, I remind the court that this subject is extremely sensitive and you are expected to retain your composure or remove yourselves.” That said, the sour little man nods at the witness. “The scan revealed that the lobe was intact, but rearranged. We were able to prove to within ninety-nine point five percent certainty that the difference in structure led to the patient becoming what is known as a ‘p-zombie.’” The chatroom shared by all 300 jurors has been temporarily suspended. Prosecutor lets it sink in before continuing. “And every time something with an intention attempts to rehabilitate the defendant, they are somehow infected?” It’s more of a vertical twitch than a nod. “How?” asks the prosecutor. “We believe it is with bodily cues. Some kind of… Cascade. You recall the optic cascade therapy? She has conceived of a way to deliver it by twitching her fingers, or speaking certain syllables, or firing the right signal along a wire. You don’t even notice it until you are undead.” Except that instead of jury-rigging the decision making lobe into rewiring its priorities, the abomination has made it turn from “person” into… (“tripling of commercial output”)… something that doesn’t sit on its ass and evaluate its place in the universe when it could be calculating ore depths, maybe. “Is there anyone who worked on the case but was not affected?” You wonder how I managed to infect a whole colony. On the moon! It must have been the monitors. Everyone talks through those instead of suiting up, you’re told. You wonder about the way Burke was twitching. “No,” the professor says. This seems to stagger the prosecutor. You reach up and, terrified, unplug your cortical jack from behind your head. “Even… Even you..?” he asks aloud. “I don’t understand the question,” the professor responds calmly. I’m still locked inside my box in the corner. It doesn’t matter; I had caught the eye of the person who was supposed to drill the last bar onto the faraday cage. You thumb down to the little ‘vote’ panel and select the prosecution’s side, if it’s the last thing you do.

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