by Terri Kouba
My father and I were at her side when Marla awoke in the room in the medical wing. She lay in the same bed that I did when I first arrived at Plato’s Cave. Her first words were “And what of Sarah?”
Her hoarse voice made me think there was more vitriol than there was. I gave her a sip of water.
“She stands before the tribunal as we speak,” my father informed her. “It’s been two days and she refuses to defend herself and won’t let anyone else defend her, so we expect the tribunal to make a determination before the day is out.”
“They can’t.” She started to sit up in bed but grabbed her stomach in pain.
“Don’t sit up,” my father told her, pushing her prone.
She grabbed my father’s hand tightly. “It is not our way. The tribunal has not yet walked in her shoes. They cannot make a determination.”
My father shrugged. “I don’t know much of your trial system but it seems an admission of guilt when she refuses to defend her own actions.”
Marla shook her head. “The actions themselves are indefensible. It’s the reason that the tribunal must hear.” She looked to me. “Go, quickly. Tell the tribunal I wish to speak for Sarah.”
My father laughed. “That’s absurd. You’re the victim here.” He placed a firm hand on her shoulder to prevent her from trying to sit up again. “Besides, you’re in no condition.”
She looked at me again, her eyes burning into mine. “Tell the tribunal I will speak for Sarah. If I cannot come to them, then they will come to me.” She pushed her chin forward. I looked quickly to my father, who softly nodded his head and I returned my gaze to Marla. I nodded and turned to seek out the tribunal. As I left I heard them arguing about Marla’s decision. I was pleased. Pleased that Marla had lived, pleased my father had someone he loved in his life, with whom he could argue about things.
The tribunal agreed to postpone the trial for a week until Marla was well enough to be wheeled into the courtroom. They spent a day arguing whether a victim could speak for the accused, but in the end they agreed that it was more important to uphold the law of learning than it was to argue the fine point of victim and victimizer.
Marla sat before the tribunal. The sash of the defendant adorned her left arm, the sash of the victim on her right.
The audience chambers were filled and people crammed into doorways to hear what Marla would say. They weren’t so concerned about Sarah, for her fate seemed clear – she would soon join the outcasts from Plato’s Cave - but to hear a victim speak on behalf of the criminal, now that was something they had never heard before.
“I come before you, venerable tribunal, in our court where to mete justice our laws say we must walk in the perpetrator’s shoes, to tell you that to convict this woman, Sarah, of this crime is to convict all of us, even me, of the same crime.”
The room erupted in shouts.
Robert pounded his gavel to quiet the room. “Proceed.”
Marla sat at the table in front of the tribunal. She spoke into the microphone which not only recorded the proceedings but also projected her voice to the corners of the room and to the hearing room in the caverns. She began with what had become the legal recitation that most lawyers of Plato’s Cave had used since the second year after the Slicer Wars began.
“Once we were many and our courts were concerned with the act of commission; proof of committing the act was enough to result in punishment. Then came the Slicers and we were few. Proving the commission of a criminal act became secondary to understanding why the act was performed.”
“When we were many, a man who stole a loaf of bread was a thief. When we became few, a man who stole a loaf of bread and ate it was selfish. A man who stole a loaf of bread and gave it to his hungry child was a father. Only a man who stole a loaf of bread and threw the bread away was a thief.”
“Intent became important and so we try today to understand the things that drove Sarah to commit the act. Today we will walk in Sarah’s shoes. I warn you, though. Her shoes will be as comfortable as your own.”
The crowd murmured their objections to each other as Marla took a sip of water.
“The facts of what happened are not disputed. Sarah stabbed me with a knife. Sarah herself does not deny this. She has, however, refused to explain her actions, for to do so would reveal to each of you what you know in your hearts but have hidden from your heads. Sarah stabbed me, with the intent to kill me, and now I will tell you why Sarah has done what each of you has secretly wanted to do.”
The crowed noise surged as Marla’s friends denied the accusation. A few people jumped to their feet, their hands waving in the air. Marla sat still, knowing that while their brains were denying her words, their hearts were reluctantly agreeing. My brain and heart were already in agreement and it made me blush. Robert banged the gavel again until the room quieted.
“We have called this sanctuary Plato’s Cave since Robert, my husband and I formed it over twenty years ago. Every month on the full moon we recite the allegory of Plato’s Cave. I come before you to tell you we have failed. We speak the words, we hear the words, but we no longer understand the words. I know that in her heart Sarah loves me like a sister. But Sarah, like most of you, loves her life here in Plato’s Cave more, and I have threatened to destroy Plato’s Cave.”
Robert was ready for the crowd’s murmurings this time and banged the gavel before they could begin in earnest.
“The Slicers killed most of us twenty years ago. Twenty years we’ve been living with the Slicers. Twenty years we’ve been trying to figure out how to make our lives better within the confines of the cave into which the Slicers have driven us.”
The room was silent while people remembered their personal flights here. Everyone had lost more than they had gained.
“I am to blame most of all. When my husband was alive and we were two scientists at Plato’s Cave, we argued all the time about whether we should spend our time creating things to make our lives within the Cave better, or spend our efforts on killing the Slicers. He wanted one, I argued for the other, but when we were two, we balanced each other, we ultimately did both. And then there was only one scientist in Plato’s Cave and to my shame I forgot the lessons my brilliant husband taught. My attention was no longer divided and I devoted all my attention to those things that I thought were most important; the caverns, the underground eco-systems, the shadows on the cave wall.”
She coughed and winced. “My heart was in the right place; I wanted to preserve not only mankind but animals, plants, insects, every species that was being killed off by the Slicers. In my hubris I acted as only God should act and tried to create a Garden of Eden. And because God has given me many gifts, I succeeded. I created a sanctuary so perfect, so pleasing, so peaceful that not one of you wants to leave. I have created Maya, the illusion. Sarah is on trial, but it is I who has committed the greatest sin of all by creating an illusion so perfect that you believe it is real. You stare at the shadows dancing against the cave wall and because the view on the wall is so much nicer, so much safer than the view outside the cave opening, I have made you turn your back on the cave opening. I have deluded you into believing that your lives can be lived out in the underground gardens. It is not Sarah who should be turned out of Plato’s Cave, but me. I am the one who did this to you.”
The audience jumped to their feet, shouting their objections, gesticulating wildly. Robert banged his gavel against the noise in vain. Marla took another sip of water. She raised her hand and the room dropped into silence.
“Even I fell under my own spell and became enthralled by the peacefulness of the gardens. I spent almost a full year underground tweaking the eco-systems. I spent two months improving the wind currents so the meadow grasses waved the way I remembered from my childhood. I worked on making clouds that held enough moisture to bind but not enough to rain, so dew could form every morning. I even convinced the council that we needed a new, larger eco-system.”
“The tribe from Ireland arr
ived and I spent more hours upside but it was bearable only because I knew what waited for me underground. I could leave Paradise only because I knew that soon I would return.”
“Then the marauders attacked.” She hesitated and cleared her throat. “They killed eleven of us and we killed thirty-five of them. We have so few humans left and forty-six people died that day and for what?”
She let us think about the question while she refilled her glass and took another drink.
“The marauders attacked us because they wanted what we had, but it wasn’t to take it away from us, it was because they longed for it too. We were happy and they wanted to be happy again too. We killed them using a device that I helped build and it was then that I realized that the Slicers had won. They hadn’t killed us, but the Slicers put us in a box, in a cave, and we had stopped struggling to get out. The Slicers have trapped us here and we have become willing occupants of our own prison cells. Worse than that though…” She cleared her throat again.
“Worse than that, I had turned my back on all other humans; let them live their lives and I’ll live mine, I reasoned, forgetting that mine was much, much better than theirs. I realized this and, in my shame, I was too embarrassed to reveal it to any of you.” Her face reddened.
“Instead I just started working in my lab on a way to kill the Slicers once and for all. And in doing so I neglected my duties to Plato’s Cave, my duty to you, my fellow cave members, which then turned me into a threat to your way of life. The grid became temperamental and started to fail, the tigers snuck into the emu’s ecosystem and killed four before you were able to restrain them.”
The audience mumbled quietly amongst themselves, some nodding their heads in agreement.
“Sarah did what she did to protect all of you from me. I am the person at the cave entrance, beckoning you to turn away from the wall, to come outside, to the real world. I understand why you don’t want to; I have painted the cave wall gloriously, your seats are warm and comfortable, the food tasty, the water fresh. And, most importantly, there are no Slicers on the cave wall. If you stare at the cave wall long enough, you can almost convince yourself that Slicers don’t exist at all.”
Marla motioned to my father and he unlocked the wheels of her chair.
“I know I did,” she said as he wheeled her out of the silent room.