Perfect Flaw

by Robin Blankenship

  “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!”

  “Ah,” Rusch sighed, softly.

  “What?” Black barked out.

  “I see now,” Rusch nodded. “It makes more sense, but I don’t understand why you waited so long.”

  “Waited?”

  “To kill them,” Rusch pointed out, simply. “They betrayed you so you killed them.”

  “They didn’t just betray me!” Black bit off through gritted teeth. “They took everything from me … you say that I dropped off the radar, all those years ago. That is what they did to me! When they realised what I had discovered, what I had invented, they saw the potential quicker than I did!”

  “… and?”

  “And by the time that I realised what they were doing,” Black sighed, “it was too late! They had taken my work and made it their own. They had spread rumours and lies to discredit me. They ruined me, they took everything that should have been mine and made it their own. They laughed at me!”

  “And so you killed them,” Rusch repeated. “You were angry and you took your revenge; you killed them – but why wait so long? Why wait so many years?”

  “Oh no,” Black laughed, suddenly. “You don’t understand. I killed them, yes, but not because I was angry – at least not just with them. I tried to get my life back, you see, I tried to convince people that they had taken everything from me but while they were being lauded and given the Noble Peace prize I was being laughed at and ridiculed … even now a moron like Deaver here knows their name but hasn’t got a clue who I am!”

  “… why is that so funny?”

  “Because this was never about killing Diane and Kline,” Black a
dmitted, the colours on the image of his face showing the truth of his words. “This was about ensuring that my name is known - that it is never forgotten. You see there is something about the way that the Scanner reads the electro-magnetic energy of the human being that was overlooked by Diane and Kline, something that I have spent the last few years working on …”

  “… what?”

  “It is simple, really,” Black admitted, calmly. “The Scanner is nothing more than a glorified receiver and if something can receive information it can also transmit it – broadcast it, if you will.”

  “You can’t …”

  “Actually,” Black grinned, the scar on his temple pulsing, “I can. You see I implanted a chip, with an override code and a manufactured super-emotion, inside me that is capable of corrupting the system from the inside out. All I needed was access to the Scanner network itself … and what better way to ensure that I had all the time that I needed than by putting myself under its scrutiny and ensuring that the network was focused on me for the time that it needed to upload the virus and ensure that it couldn’t be stopped; and keeping you talking gave me that time.”

  “… no,” Rusch breathed, flicking his hands across the sluggish and non-responsive screen.

  “Killing Diane and Kline, while satisfying, was never an end goal; it was simply a means to an end,” Black stated. “For all these years the crime rate has fallen because technology read their emotions and kept them in check; now I am going to use that same technology - MY TECHNOLOGY –to send one, pure emotion across the infonet that connects every living, breathing person. To every receiver, every Scanner, every cell, every uplink … everything! I am going to make them feel what I feel every minute of every hour of every day; anger!”

  “It will be chaos; anarchy!”

  “I know ... you’ve become the peace-keepers of a sterile World, with my stolen technology but now – a thousand years after they last used the term – I’m going to remind the World what the word ‘Troubles’ really means.”

  “Are you mad?” Rusch whispered, watching in horror as the readouts on the screen in front of him showed a burst of activity as millions of connections were made Worldwide.

  Black didn’t answer; he didn’t need to. Before the infonet fell, and the Scanner went black for the final time, it showed his smiling face framed in the glowing blue of truth.

  MICHAEL’S GATE

  BY LESLIE J. ANDERSON

  The hospital was stunningly white. The tile was white. The walls were painted white. Even the stretchers and equipment was made from white, enameled aluminum. On my first day the head nurse, Julia, explained that Michael’s Gate Hospital went to a lot of trouble to keep it this way, spotless and light, so that it always seemed clean and hopeful. She gestured around her as she gave me the tour and beamed at the whiteness. She was so proud to be there, and so was I.

  I loved Julia. She had thin, pink lips that always smiled and large, almond colored eyes. She was always moving, sweeping in, then out of the office, hovering around patients like a humming bird, then zipping into the hallway, dancing around Doctor Clemens like he was the curtain of her stage. Sometimes though, when she slowed a moment in her dance, you could see how tired she was. She was older than me, maybe 30 or 35, but there were creases at the corner of her eyes and on her forehead that a young woman shouldn’t have yet, and she had a persistent cough that she tried and failed to hide. I wasn’t surprised. She had lived a hard life and she worked hard to stay in her new one, where everything was clean and full of hope.

  Like me she was not a doctor, not even a nurse, she was one of the first Medical Assistants to receive her certification. We were trained and stationed by the Rising Angels Association, a group that recruited from the worst neighborhoods to find kind and intelligent women to care for a rapidly ageing population, mostly the people who could afford a place like Michael’s Gate. They came here to buy a little more health, a few more years, and a safe place to pass away. We were gophers. We carried, we tucked, we handed, we smiled and assured. We never looked at charts or knew full names.

  We were trained in basic medical knowledge, given two starched uniforms, and sent to live in dorms at places like Michael’s Gate and Saint Francis and Our Lady of the City. We worked for our room and board and a few dollars more, which was always sent home to our families. No one even asked if I wanted to send my extra money to my family. There was simply a forwarding address on the sheet. Of course I filled it out.

  And yes, we were proud to be Medical Assistants. When I was recruited I was 19, one of the few girls to graduate from high school. Most had children already. Most of the boys who graduated with me were fathers, headed off to the army or navy. There weren’t a lot of ways to move up in the world, so when Sister Sarah knocked on my door and asked my mother if I would be interested in the Rising Angels, she said yes. Of course she said yes. She would be proud to have her daughter wear a white uniform and walk down white hallways.

  It was the month of May when things started to change. I woke up to the sound of the bell and a light rain against the window. The dorms where we lived were not white. They were pale blue and green, soft colors that reminded me of a child’s nursery from the magazines. Julia told me they once had bunk beds, but some of the ladies had trouble getting in and out of them. Now there were white army beds along both walls. Julia slept next to me, and sometimes we would talk before we slept, or when we got ready in the morning.

  Every morning I pulled the wires from the port in my chest and the heart monitor made a little frantic beep, before realizing I was only getting up and hadn’t died, and going into sleep mode. The ports were an easy way for the hospital to pipe in our daily vitamins. Because most of us had grown up without proper nutrition they tried to make up for it at night. During the orientation, when the port was put in, Doctor Clemens explained that it was a necessity. They had given each Assistant a handful of pills, but it made them sick to their stomachs, so they did this instead. I was fine with it, though it was itchy.

  I changed into my uniform and ate breakfast sitting on my bed. We walked in a line to the hospital, which was right next door. The two shared a wall. In the front door we pressed our hands to a scanner that flashed our names. We had our own entrance, just for us, our little white-uniformed parade. I went to check on my first patients, a distant, polite old heiress named Rose, and an army veteran named Stevens

  “I feel so much better today.” Mrs. Rose said as I cleaned away her oatmeal. I smiled, but didn’t say anything. It was best not to talk while the doctor was in the room.

  “Miss. Take away the other tray. Now, Mr. Stevens, is that arm improving?” Doctor Clemens said. He was a small man whose clothing was made to fit a younger, fitter body. He had small, wet eyes and short, mustard hair. His impatient authority filled the room like a gas.

  “You bet doctor!” Mr. Stevens said.

  Then something happened that had never happened before. The red alarm light above the bed sprang to brilliant life. A buzzing noise filled the room. The patients looked at me, confused, but I didn’t know what to tell them. There were never any emergencies here. The intercom, usually silent, crackled to life.

  “Doctor Clemens, please come to Ms. Marie’s room immediately.”

  The doctor pushed his clipboard into my hands and almost ran from the room. It made sense. Ms. Marie had paid for half the hospital, or so the rumors said. She was important, and any emergency involving her would be worth running for, and breaking protocol. I looked at the clipboard in my hands. We weren’t supposed to see the clipboards. We weren’t even supposed to handle them. I knew I should have just put it down or given it to Julia or something, but I was curious. I read some medical textbooks when I was a student, maybe I could make out something from the doctor’s notes. I slipped out of the room and went to the bathroom. It was empty, thank goodness. I ducked in a stall and leafed through the packet, my heart
beating in my chest. I could read it! There was the heart rate, blood pressure, blood work.

  It was all normal, perfectly normal. I looked at the next sheet. Mrs. Jeffers. All the same. Slightly elevated cholesterol. Slightly. But that was all. A few of them reported complaints upon arriving that, on the current sheets, had disappeared. They were all healthy. Why were they in a hospital? I would ask Julia. I was sure Julia would know.

  I realized I left both trays in the room. The cooks expected them in the kitchen so they could clean them for lunch. I dropped the clipboard on Doctor Clemens’ desk and rushed into the room to grab the trays. Mr. Stevens looked up from his book and offered a worried smile.

  “Jane,” he said softly, “how are you?”

  “A little tired, actually.” I admitted, trying to cover my guilt. What I had done was very against the rules. “I guess I get worn out keeping up with you!” He laughed. I picked up his tray and scurried out.

  I almost ran into Julia, coming out of Ms. Marie’s room. Miss Marie had two rooms actually, all to herself. She was Julia’s assignment and took up most of her time. She looked exhausted, and I knew she would always put Ms. Marie’s health before her own.

  “Well good morning, Miss Julia.” I said, carefully, aware that whatever she left in Miss. Marie’s room must have been an emergency.

  “Good morning, Miss Jane!” She answered, but it deteriorated into a cough.

  “Please ask the doctor about that.” I frowned at her. “Is Miss Marie all right?”

  “I don’t know.” Julia said. “Everything the Doctor says is gibberish to me. They want me to grab a defibrillator, though, just in case.” She coughed again.

  “I need to talk to you.” I said and dropped my voice to a whisper. I had to get it over with. “I saw the patients charts and they’re not right.”

  “Shhh!” She hissed at me. “You’re not supposed to do that!”

  “I know! I’m sorry.”