Perfect Flaw (8 page)

“Someone else did,” Ross said in his defence. “That man was sentenced.”

“But you failed to take up your responsibilities. For a Level D worker that is unacceptable. You have become a liability. The City Council prefers not to take any chances. Too much is at stake. Now, follow us in silence.”

Ross followed the Security Forces without one further word. The City Prison awaited him. He had reached the end of the line, and it was entirely his fault. Why hadn’t he realised that? Why had he mentioned his failure to act to his new Squad Leader? He knew the man was a hard-liner who would take up his responsibility. As he should have done. After all, there was a lot at stake.

As they reached the City prison, he thought: No cracks in the concrete are overlooked, each sign of wear or tear is spotted, reported and repaired. That’s official City Council doctrine, Ross. You of all people should know that.

SYSTEM ERROR

BY JAY FAULKNER

“Betrayal isn’t something easily overcome, but...”

“Betrayal,” Advocate Deaver Banning interrupted, his hand hovering motionless over the lightly rippling information screen. The images displayed on his side of the holographic projection showed the man in front of him from different angles, each image framed in various hues and colours. Lines traced his biometrics, alongside the images, as everything that could possibly be diagnosed about the man, was.

Banning stared intently at the terabytes of information, streaming constantly across the infonet to his fingertips, before flicking his gaze up to the man across from him. “Is that why you did it?” he asked, trying hard not to stare at the angry looking scar that throbbed, in staccato rhythm with the man’s displayed heartbeat, on his temple.

Doctor Morgan Black leant back as far as the electro-statically charged Chair that held him in place would allow, and eyed the jittery man sitting across from him. “It?” he asked, a small smile belying the innocence of the question.

“… erm … is that why you killed them?”

“Come, come, Advocate Banning,” Black tutted. “You really have to phrase your questions more stringently, you know, if you want to get a definitive response within the accepted percentile for judgement.”

“I know that …”

“You don’t, obviously!” Black interjected. “If you did then you would frame each question in such a way that it ensured that my answers could be interpreted correctly by the Scanner and thus the validity of my statements proved, or disproved, accordingly.”

“… but …”

“It is all well and good having me in the Chair, Deaver, but unless you ask the right questions there is no way for the Scanner to pick up the nearly infinite amount of electromagnetic responses that my mind and body will put out. You will simply be wasting both of our time!”

“You got somewhere else to be, Mister Black?”

The baritone voice, softly spoken yet full of strength, brought both Black and Banning up short. Banning looked past Black’s shoulder and he leapt to his feet with a short, sharp salute. Black, held as he was in the grip of the Chair, simply smiled.

“That is Doctor Black, please,” he quipped. “I didn’t work hard, all those years, to be called simply ‘Mister’.”

“I see, Doctor Black,” the speaker replied, as he moved into view and sat down in the chair that Banning had vacated. The younger man
stepped back to stand impassively behind him. “Well, I am Jacob Rusch …”

“Chief Magistrate of the World Judiciary, I know,” Black interrupted. “I am honoured; who would have expected to get the head of the Judiciary himself dealing with something like this? I have to say, though, that I do hope that you are a little better at this than young Deaver here – no offence, of course.”

“Well, Mister …”

“Doctor.”

“… Doctor Black.” The Chief Magistrate corrected himself with a dismissive wave. “The reason that you have garnered my attention is no doubt the same reason that you have Advocate Banning here so flustered.”

“Really?”

“Of course,” Rusch admitted, steepling his hands in front of him as his gaze flickered across the information displayed on the screen. “You are a celebrity, after all; the first person to commit murder in seventeen years!”

“Has it really been that long?”

“Yes, Doctor Black, it has,” Rusch nodded as his hands danced across the moving images. Banning, from his position behind the older man, stood in awe at the skill being displayed as images and information wove together in a lattice of light and data. “The twenty-ninth of April, in the year two thousand and forty-eight.”

“Mercedes De Souza,” Black stated. “A failed actress who made her real fame by being caught in that Senator’s bed, before his wife took a kitchen knife to her face. Horrible business, really, but from a personal point of view I have to admit that her death was a sort of silver lining, for me.”

“What!?” Banning blurted out in shock, and then blushed as he glanced at the Chief Magistrate. “Oh, sorry sir.”

“Remarkable memory,” Rusch ignored the young Advocate. “But then I suppose that, for someone involved in the development of the technol …”

“Involved in?” Black choked out. The display in front of Rusch changed dramatically as the colours around the images of Black’s face darkened into hues of red and purple and the biometric lines – heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity – all peaked closer together. “I wasn’t ‘involved in’ anything, Rusch; I single-handedly revolutionised the criminal justice sector and brought crime to near extinction! ”

“It says here …” Rusch started, glancing at the information running in front of him.

“I know what it says there …” Black interjected, sharply, biting of the words. At the tone in his voice Banning took a step forwards, putting himself between Black and Rusch as he pulled a cylindrical object from a holster at his side. Black’s laughter, and Rusch’s raised hand, brought the younger man to a halt and, with embarrassment evident on his face, he stared sheepishly at the high backed chair that kept Black statically held in stasis.

“Don’t worry, Advocate,” Black laughed again, watching as Banning placed the device back at his side. “I am pretty sure that you won’t have to use your Pacifier; I am no threat ‘tied up’ as I am. It would take a molecular bolt cutter to free me from the chair without the proper access codes and, even then, it would probably take more skin than I would care to part with!”

“How do you know this stuff?” Banning asked, his voice rising.

“As I was saying,” Black continued, non-plussed, “and despite what I know it says in the official records, I know ‘this stuff’ – I know about the Chair, the Scanner and the Pacifier – because I created them. In a way I created you as well because, if it weren’t for those devices, then there wouldn’t be a Ministry of Justice for you to be part of. ”

“C’mon!” Banning argued, reaching out and, with a single touch of his finger, allowed Black to see what was displayed. “Even a second grader knows who invented those things! We all learned about the people who brought a new age of peace and prosperity to the World and, believe me, your name wasn’t even a footnote!”

“Oh, I do believe you, my dear Deaver,” Black smiled, no humour reflected in his eyes. “Though, actually, you are wrong – a footnote is exactly where my name was.”

“I don’t understand …”

“Well then let me make it simple for you, boy,” Black bit of the words through clenched teeth. “Everything that you think that you know about this so called ‘Golden Age’ – everything that you think that you know about the brilliant and wonderful people who supposedly ushered it in – is a lie; I know because they stole it – they stole everything – from me!”

“Doctor Black,” Rusch interjected, running a hand across his tired eyes. “According to our records you were a lab assistant at Queen’s University’s IllumaDyne Futures, working with Diane Rodgers and Daniel Kline – the people actually credited with the creation and development of the technology that you claim to be your own – and then, two years after that, you dropped off the radar until tonight … until …”

“Until you found Diane Rodgers-Kline and Daniel Kline,” Black smoothly picked up from where Rusch’s voice had trailed off. “The blissfully, happily married couple – the double Noble Peace Prize winners – the ‘should have been sainted, walk on fucking water Messiahs’ - shot dead?”

“Yes, Doctor Black,” Rusch’s face blanched as the crime scene images of the bodies – vacant eyes staring as small entry wounds in their foreheads exploded into gaping gore at what remained of the read of their heads – flashed in front of him. “I find it quite a coincidence that you walk into this facility, murder weapon in hand, asking to speak to one of my Advocates, about a crime involving people that you obviously claim you had some involvement with …”

“You asked me,” Black suddenly interrupted, staring at Banning, “if I had done ‘it’ because of betrayal, Deaver, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Ask me again,” Black prompted, smiling, “ask the question properly.”

“What?”

“I said ask me the proper question!”

“… I don’t understand.”

“This technology was created so that there would be no need for the suspect of a crime to admit his guilt; the Chair would hold him in place, electro-magnetically bonding with his skin and reading every story that his body had to tell while the Scanner translated the electrical and chemical messages from his brain into visual information,” Black recounted in a bored tone, as if instructing a small child. “As long as the right question was asked there wouldn’t even be a need for words; the body and mind would speak for itself and my technology would confirm the truth of the matter!”

“You missed out an important part!” Doctor Black,” Rusch pointed out, staring at the man across from him. “The fact that the Chair has a secondary function – the fact that, once guilt of a crime is proven – the verdict is transmitted to the World Judiciary mainframe, and sentence is carried out immediately. The Chair rips those electro-magnetic bonds to shreds and disperses each, single, atom to vapour.”

“Oh, no, Rusch,” Black laughed. “I didn’t miss that part out at all. I am very aware of that fact but, still, the real fact of the matter is that unless you ask the right questions you won’t get the right answer and so judgement cannot be carried out; really, all we are doing here is wasting time!”

“Fine.” Rusch decided, suddenly. Leaning forwards he ran his fingers across the display, focusing the Scanner squarely on Black’s face, calibrating the sensors and ensuring that every detail was being picked up by the Chair before taking a deep, steadying, breath. “Doctor Black, did you kill Diane and Daniel Kline?”

“Ah – now that’s the question, isn’t it?” He smiled as the halo of colour around his face turned a light blue and the biometric readings all turned the same colour. “And, not that it’s needed, the answer is yes.”

“Doctor Morgan Black,” Rusch intoned, formally, his hand touching the screen and transferring the finding of the trial Worldwide. “In accordance with the McGuinness Act 0f 2023 I hereby find you guilty of the crime of …”

“Don’t you want to know why, though?” Black interrupted.

“I don’t need to know why …”

“But you want to, though, don’t you?”

Rusch’s hand paused, inches away from the movement that would enforce the summary judgment. He stared intently at the screen in front of him and, as he took in all the information, his eyes tightened.

“Mister Black,” he finally decided. “You have five minutes and then this is finished; I am not wasting any more time on you …”

“Five minutes is all I need,” Black smiled, his teeth flashing. “Whether you believe it or not – no matter what the records show – it was my ideas and discoveries that led to the creation of your Judiciary. Though I will admit that it was actually because of Diane Rodgers herself that I changed the World.”

“Oh come on …” Banning interrupted with a bark of laughter.

“Shush, Deaver,” Black said without taking his glance from Rusch. “Bear with me, child, there is not long now. You see the three of us were at College together, back when Queen’s was still an institution of learning rather than the center for worldwide, totalitarian, judiciary; we were – at one time – the best of friends. Diane, though, was more than that to me. I wanted to prove this to her and, with my scientist’s mind working with my idiotic, romantic heart I stumbled upon the way to actually show her my feelings.”

“What?” Banning asked, interested despite himself.

“Back when I was a child, my great-grandmother …”

“Is this actually going anywhere, Black?” Banning asked sharply. “Is there any point to all of this other than you just wasting our time?”

“Yes, Deaver.” Black stated, simply. “I am not just wasting your time and, if you would stop interrupting, I may just be able to finish what I started.”

“Go on, Doctor Black.” Rusch said, waving Banning back. “Your five minutes are running, though, and after that judgment will be carried out.”

“My grand-mother told me about this toy that she’d got in Smithfield Market ...”

“Smithfield, what’s that?” Banning asked.

“It’s long gone now, along with most everything that made this place unique rather than sterile,” Black continued, staring into space. “The ring though, that was just small piece of jewelry, made out of cheap metal and coloured glass but it had the ability to read the wearer’s mood; it changed colours as their emotions did.”

“Like the Scanner!” Banning couldn’t help but blurt out.

“No, not really,” Black chuckled. “You see it wasn’t doing anything other than reading temperature changes of the wearer’s body but that didn’t matter – people still believed in them.”
“Let me guess,” Banning laughed. “You gave Diane your grandmother’s ring and declared your undying love for her?”

“It was my great-grandmother,” Black said, icily. “And don’t be stupid; I already told you that the ring didn’t actually work. What I did was invent the early prototype of the Scanner and showed Diane how I felt.”

“What?”

“I took the basic precept of Kirlian photography and combined it with my own specialist research area of the body’s electromagnetic energy,” Black continued. “The first iteration of the Scanner filled half of my lab but, it worked – I hooked myself up to it and showed Diane how I felt about her. I showed her my love!”

“… and?” Rusch prompted.

“And she laughed!” Black shouted. “She laughed and told me that I was ‘sweet’. I had already come up with the basic concept of the Chair – and how it would bond, electro-magnetically, to any living being – as well as the Pacifier – which would allow the police, as you Advocates were known back then – first the RUC, then the PSNI, then finally Advocates - to cause a synaptic shockwave and incapacitate anyone, quickly and easily; it took another two years of my life to develop the Scanner – allowing every human being to be read as easily as a book – two years to lay my heart open for her, almost literally, and she chose Kline over me!”