“Any time, birdbrain,” replied the robot.
Word got around about the unusual crew of the defense’s witnesses, which consisted of a parrot and a robot. News also spread that the defense lawyer was some four hundred years old, come back to earth to defend Amballore dynasty. These unbelievable facts of the case attracted a huge crowd that gave the courtroom a carnival atmosphere.
The court convened after a recess. Police and additional security guards were called in to maintain proper court decorum. If the situation became any worse, the bailiff decided to make request for a paramilitary unit.
It was now the defense lawyer’s turn to present his arguments. Since his strategy of making the judge drop the case was not working, Pat had to look for another line of argument. His plan of action was to establish the exemplary characters of the defendants and to prove that they were incapable of stooping to a criminal’s level. He planned to use the witnesses who would attest to their good citizenship and unblemished character. Once this was proved convincingly and up to the satisfaction of the judge, Pat realized that defendants would be off the hook.
He called the robot to testify to their character, in the face of opposition raised by the prosecutor who said something like machines not being qualified to attest to anything in a court of law. The judge summarily overturned the prosecution’s objection.
The robot stepped to the witness stand and vowed that he would say the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but truth, spicing up his vow by adding the comment, “As all of you know, machines don’t lie,” in his computer voice. Every bit of his chip brain was alert. “But humans do,” he added dramatically.
He testified that Vareed and Eli supported the poor and the oppressed and had nothing to gain by murdering harmless people. He argued that their noble mission on earth was to advance science and technology and make use of any resource for the advancement of the human race.
He continued, “I do not support their mission of uplifting humankind. They should direct their attention to robotic technology instead. Human beings are untrustworthy, because of the emotional baggage they carry and because of their inability to use reasoning power unfailingly to resolve issues. We, the robots, on the other hand, can be trusted unconditionally, because we are not governed by probabilistic laws. Our decisions are either ‘yes’ or ‘no’; there is nothing in between. We belong to the binary dynasty,” he wisecracked. “In spite of the scientific arguments that I have put forward to Vareed and Eli to dissuade them from wasting their time to uplift the mankind, they never budged. They always have been on the path of advancing their kind. They did not listen to my argument that the human race’s next stage of evolution is robotic generation. This argument alone should have prepared them to channel their resources to better the robots, and not the mankind.
“You see, they love you all. They love you more than they love us, in spite of our steadfast loyalty to them and our unfailing dependability. They can always count on us but not on you, and yet they love you more than they love us. Their dedication to the human cause does not go hand in hand with their alleged crime. They both are incapable of hurting a fly.”
Robot’s eloquent delivery surprised everyone. There was a pin-drop silence in the court; none had expected a powerful and persuasive argument from a machine, of all things! His earnest and vehement appeal to the good sense of the humanity to save their own saviors made a deep impression on the crowd. His passionate appeal to the court was in itself a testament to the high moral ground that Vareed and Eli treaded upon. There was applause in the court.
Pat thought that the robot outdid himself in persuading the judge to pass a sentence of “not guilty” on the accused.
The prosecution objected to the robot’s arguments. The assistant prosecutor, the wiry-head, who had temporarily parted with his bifocals and reunited with them immediately after, stood up to raise his objection He mentioned that the robot, a mechanical entity powered by artificial intelligence, could not and should not be allowed to come to the level of a human being by being present in a human court of law. The assistant prosecutor’s strategy was to disqualify the robot and make its persuasively presented arguments mute. The defense worried that the robot’s statement would be removed from the court records. That would be a fatal blow.
Eli realized that this was a smart plan from the prosecution and decided to nip it in the bud. She approached the prosecution invisibly and administered the drug Fentanyl to the prosecutor. She did this by a quick injection. The public prosecutor could not see what bit him, yet slapped his hand to kill the mosquito, by which time Eli had withdrawn the needle. The conscious sedation took effect within a minute. The prosecutor gradually slipped into relaxation, still aware of the surroundings. He stared at the air in front of him gleefully and smiled.
Eli, the invisible ventriloquist, emerged at this moment. She got hold of the prosecutor and stood him up, supporting him lest he collapsed. She cleverly imitated his voice while moving his lips and facial muscles in perfect coordination.
The wiry-head was yapping away, advancing his arguments to disqualify the robot and strike off his statement. The prosecutor looked at him and shouted, “Shut up, you talked enough.”
He then pushed him into his chair. The wiry guy collapsed into his seat, with disbelief on his face.
The prosecutor addressed the judge, “Your Honor, I believe that the artificial intelligence makes the robot qualified to appear in a human court of law.”
This unbelievable support for the defendants, coming all the way from the chief prosecutor, of all the people, mind you, created bedlam in the court. Everyone was aghast at the eccentric statement made by the prosecutor. Piercing looks from the crowd were directed at him. The next scene everyone was greeted with was the prosecutor collapsing to his chair, staring intently in front of him, grinning happily.
Eli got back to defense team, made herself visible, and sat near Vareed. He hugged her.
The judge ordered a recess until the prosecutor was able to compose himself. The court convened after one hour. The prosecutor was able to recover by that time and was in his normal elements.
He called Subashini to the witness stand to testify. The bailiff carried the cage, vigilant and on the lookout for any sudden movement from the feathered friend, remembering very well what happened to the security guard. He then placed the cage on the witness chair.
“This is the first time in my life that I am calling a birdbrain to testify in a court of law,” said the prosecutor.
“Good for you! At last, your brain is meeting its equal,” Subashini retorted.
TG told the bird, “It is a no-brainer that birdbrain cannot outsmart the human brain, not in the least a prosecutor’s brain.”
“Leaving aside this issue for a moment, what are you doing in this court?” TG asked the bird.
Subashini said, “Same as you, my friend! I am taking a day off from work. Judging from your performance, you appear to be on your day off as well, having turned off your brain.”
“We are both birds of the same feather.” She was chatty and wisecracking.
The judge did not interrupt this tit-for-tat, even though both of them were off the target by a thousand miles.
Subashini testified to the noble character of Vareed and Eli. She argued that if they could show tender love to an insignificant bird like herself, then their hearts were full of the milk of human kindness. “They would not hurt a fly,” the parrot announced.
In conclusion, both the prosecution and defense stuck to their guns—the prosecution on the preponderance of the circumstantial evidence, maybe good enough to convict, and the defense on the invalidity of the prosecution’s flimsy arguments and the attestation to the noble character of the couple, making them incapable of murder.
His Honor announced a break prior to judgment. Heated discussions sprang up among the spectators of the eventful trial. Both the prosecution and the defense prepared for the worst. Neither side was able to glean h
ow the honorable judge graded their arguments. He was impartial throughout the trial, as far as anyone could tell. There was fifty-fifty chance for win-lose for both, and this did not auger well for either.
Judgment came quickly. By order from bailiff, the entire crowd stood up. The minutest moments underwent relativistic dilations in anticipation of the judgment, and the crowd stood there for what seemed like eternity. The short man announced from the end of his long desk, unseen by the crowd. “By the power vested in me as the judge of this trial, I declare defendants Vareed and Eli guilty of the crime as charged. In the absence of tangible proof, I based my judgment on the circumstantial evidence. The couple is to be jailed immediately and indefinitely.”
This said His Honor disappeared. He left the court without uttering a single word to the waiting press. “Short and sweet,” that is what it was for the prosecution, but “short and bitter,” for the defense.
There was loud applause by the people, as expected. The prosecution team was cheering. Gloom descended upon the defense team. Court security personnel appeared and handcuffed the couple prior to taking them to Amballore Jail.
Then it happened.
The volcano under Amballore House erupted. The surrounding area, including the court complex, was engulfed in boiling lava. There was pandemonium all around. The court was still crowded, since people were just getting ready to leave. There came about an unmanageable stampede that by itself killed a number of people. Most of the rest were finished off by molten lava that rained like a tropical monsoon rain.
As if this calamity was not enough, the earth started shaking. The shaking was reported to be confined to the area around Amballore House, and this added juice to the speculation that robots were behind the catastrophe. The quake demolished parts of the court building. It killed a large number of people most of whom were trapped inside during the stampede.
The double whammy of volcano and earthquake finished off the lion’s share of the population in the immediate vicinity of the court. One of the few surviving citizens was His Honor who, as good luck would have it, decided to leave the court premises earlier than the rest, immediately passing the judgment.
The robot, he of the defense team, had a face-off with the security guards who had slapped handcuffs on Vareed and Eli. The guards did not stay alive after their last duty on earth. They were thrown by the robot into the raging inferno unleashed by the volcano. The couple was freed. The robot also took care of his feathered friend by carrying its cage.
The group of five in the defense team, a bird, a robot, and three aliens, boarded the Midnight Express parked outside the courthouse. Eli steered the spaceship on the wheels, as it was known, to the perimeter wall of Amballore House and floated over the wall. She then ignited the attached rockets and the spaceship/bus disappeared from the scene.
Later, these people would gather inside Amballore House’s underworld, to enjoy their freedom far from the madding crowd of the Amballore court.
7REVOLT ALONG HELL’S HIGHWAY
The chief justice of Amballore court, the Honorable Pillai, could not sleep on the night of the sensational trial, “People versus Amballore House.” His conscience was bugging him. He was not convinced that he had delivered a fair judgment. He should have dismissed the case because of the lack of tangible evidence. Passing judgment based on circumstantial evidence was bad enough; even worse was the severe punishment imposed on the defendants—an indefinite imprisonment!
One could argue that the preponderance of circumstantial evidence decided the trial outcome in favor of the prosecution. However, a more appropriate yardstick in criminal case was “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and this measure was certainly not met by the prosecution. If this were a civil case, the prosecution would win beyond reproof. But that was not the case.
The trial and its judgment catapulted him to the zenith of fame and glory, since the case was closely watched by the entire State of Kerala and beyond. However, he doubted if he deserved the fame; he felt that he trampled on the justice system by locking up an upstanding citizen called Vareed, whether he was a human being or an alien. Pangs of conscience pricked him.
He tossed around in bed, unable to rest his mind. Finally he got up, dressed, and drove himself to his office, over protests from his wife. She was not altogether unhappy that he left the bedroom, since his tossing and turning were disrupting her sleep.
The judge drove along Hell’s Highway to his office located there, remembering his wife’s words, “Venu, don’t run over any ghosts along Hell’s Highway; it is night; don’t you forget that.”
Being a diminutive man, nobody could see him while he drove giving the impression that his was a self-driven car. Hell’s Highway was a bizarre place where populace had seen innumerable strange things, and therefore no one gave special attention to a self-driven car.
To be in his office at the odd hour of midnight was not unusual for the judge, believe it or not. Since he had a fully furnished underground apartment below his official chambers, he used it as often as he could, partly to get away from his nagging wife, and partly to have a one-man booze party. His basement apartment had a fully furnished wet bar.
Prior to the trial, he was frustrated by the slow-turning wheels of bureaucracy that prevented important documents from arriving at his desk in a timely manner. This inhibited his ability to pass proper judgment. For most of the cases that came under his jurisdiction, he did not have essential facts in front of him prior to judgment. This was frustrating.
He needed to get all his ducks in a row; that is what he wanted to happen. He was a man who worked hard and meticulously while preparing for judgment, which, in all probability, would irreversibly affect many a human being’s life. He was aware of his power to make inroads into people’s lives, and so was very conscientious of his judgments. He prepared well in advance too.
He had been desperate to get the bureau’s documents prior to the trial. But they had not been forthcoming. The bureau was not eager to dispense the important papers he had requested. The agency had some of the smartest lawyers who knew what they were doing, and therefore scare tactics did not work with them. In short, the bureau could not be forced to submit documents they did not want to share, court order or not. The judge knew that it was also a possibility that the bureau did not have documents to prove that Amballore House’s owners were the culprits behind the massacres. Maybe that explained why they could not be coerced to pull a rabbit out of the hat.
It surprised him that the bureau, though being the prosecution team, did not present anything substantial to prove their case. So his assessment about them was right—maybe they did not have any solid proof against Amballore House’s occupants. What they did was to create a smoke screen, to produce a paper tiger to scare the defense. Their tactic might have been to scare the defense into submission and make them confess to the crimes. But that did not happen, leading him to wonder who in the hell perpetrated the crimes.
While brooding over the events of the day over a number of toddy glasses, and while images of an erroneous judgment played out in his mind, he fell asleep. La-la land was a welcome change to a stress-filled day. He drifted into the dream as if he entered a movie theater to watch a fantasy show.
***
In the dream, he was standing by the side of Hell’s Highway, alone and at midnight. He looked like a midnight statue by the side of Hell’s Highway. He started seeing things.
Suddenly, the gates of the lunatic asylum opened, and patients spilled out of the building and into Hell’s Highway. Not to be outdone, Amballore Jail’s gates opened, and a flood of prisoners bailed out. They followed the patients, and together, they moved toward the Amballore Investigation Bureau building. The building was deserted because it was midnight, and all the employees were long gone home.
The judge stood in the street, transfixed, surprised at the illegal escape of the inmates in direct violation of his orders to imprison them. After staying in his standstill position for so
me more time, he decided to enter the bureau headquarters, because curiosity, the cat, told him so. Curious George prodded him as well. He also had an ulterior motive: to steal the bureau’s confidential papers to help him to get to the bottom of the mysteries he already passed judgment on. True, no one would believe an act of theft to come from a respectable judge. Such a felony, under normal circumstances, crossed the world of improbability and encroached upon the world of impossibility. No judge was going to approve such a misdemeanor, but what the hell, he was a judge himself, and he would give his nod of approval to the acts of trespassing and stealing.
As soon as he entered the spy building, the judge saw Sam-Som was busy coordinating the activities that involved the lunatics and the prisoners. For some reason, the drug lord had two black horns attached to his forehead. He was also holding a spear. He had a tail. He looked like the spitting image of a devil.
The judge knew through his newly acquired power of extrasensory perception that Sam-Som’s plan was to storm the intelligence building with an army of criminals. Their task was to comb through piles of intelligence reports to get a heads-up on the bureau’s findings on his drug cartel operation, and to steal them. Most of the lunatics were fake patients playing a game of outwitting the legal system. They were Sam-Som’s drug employees, steeped in crimes that included murder. A few in the loony crowd, however, were genuine patients. Somehow, judge became aware of all these intricacies instantaneously.
Under Sam-Som’s guidance, the intruding crowd started sifting through the bureau’s confidential papers. It was clear the operation was preplanned.
What greeted the judge upstairs was a cluster of trios and duos of criminals, huddled together by the sides of filing cabinets, their faces shining in the soft light of countless candlesticks: a memorable scene, unquestioningly, in a silent midnight; a scene resembling a large number of devotees offering midnight prayer, except it wasn’t. Prayer was the last thing these thugs would offer. They held candlesticks in lieu of electric lights to see but not to be seen by people passing by. They had turned off the lights.
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