50 in 50

"I am well aware of the fact. That is why I have followed you. I am also now aware of your opinion of yourself. It is a wrong one. You are not unique, or gifted, or even interesting. Any man can kill when presented with the correct motivation. After all, you are animals. In time of war good young men drop bombs on people they do not know, by pressing switches, and this murder does not bother them in the slightest. Men kill to protect their families and are commended for it. You, a professional hunter of animals, killed another animal, who happened to be a man, when presented with enough payment. There is nothing noble, brave or even interesting in that. That man is dead and killing you will not bring him to life. May I leave now?"

"No! If you do not want me — why spend those years following me? Not just for a few remnants of fact."

The machine stood straight, high, glowing with a mechanical dignity of its own, which perhaps reflected that of its builders.

"Yes. Facts. You are nothing, and the men who hired you are nothing. But why they did it and how they were able to do it is everything. One man, ten men, even a million are as nothing to the Greater Despot who numbers the planets in his realm in the hundreds of thousands. The Greater Despot deals only in societies. Now an examination will be made of your society and particularly of the society of the men who hired you. What led them to believe that violence can solve anything? What were the surroundings where killing was condoned or ignored — or accepted — that shaped their lives so that they exported this idea?

"It is the society that kills, not the individual.

"You are nothing," Follower added — could it have been with a touch of malice? — as it stepped into the screen and vanished.

I See You

The judge was impressive in his black robes, and omniscient in the chromium perfection of his skull. His voice rolled like the crack of doom, rich and penetrating.

"Carl Tritt, this court finds you guilty as charged. On 2182423 you did willfully and maliciously steal the payroll of the Marcrix Corporation, a sum totaling 318,000 cr., and did attempt to keep these same credits as your own. The sentence is twenty years.”

The black gavel fell with the precision of a pile driver and the sound bounced back and forth inside Carl's head. Twenty years. He clamped bloodless fingers on the steel bar of justice and looked up into the judge's electronic eyes. There was perhaps a glint of compassion, but no mercy there. The sentence had been passed and recorded in the Central Memory. There was no appeal.

A panel snapped open in the front of the judge's bench and exhibit A slid out on a soundless piston. 318,000 cr., still in their original pay envelopes. The judge pointed as Carl slowly picked it up.

"Here is the money you stole — see that it is returned to the proper people."

Carl shuffled out of the courtroom, the package clutched weakly to his chest, sunk in a sodden despair. The street outside was washed with a golden sunlight that he could not see, for his depression shadowed it with the deepest gloom.

His throat was sore and his eyes burned. If he had not been an adult male citizen, age twenty-five, he might have cried. But twenty-five-year-old adult males do not cry. Instead he swallowed heavily a few times.

A twenty-year sentence — it couldn't be believed. Why me? Of all the people in the world why did he have to receive a sentence severe as that? His well-trained conscience instantly shot back the answer. Because you stole money. He shied away from that unpleasant thought and stumbled on.

Unshed tears swam in his eyes and trickled back into his nose and down his throat. Forgetting in his misery where he was, he choked a bit. Then spat heavily.

Even as the saliva hit the spotless sidewalk, a waste can twenty feet away stirred into life. It rotated on hidden wheels and soundlessly rolled towards him. In shocked horror Carl pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. Too late to stop what was already done.

A flexible arm licked out and quickly swabbed the sidewalk clean. Then the can squatted like a mechanical Buddha while a speaker rasped to life in its metal insides. A tinny metallic voice addressed Carl.

"Carl Tritt_; you have violated Local Ordinance number bd-14-668 by expectorating on a public sidewalk. The sentence is two days. Your total sentence is now twenty years and two days."

Two other pedestrians had stopped behind Carl, listening with gaping mouths as sentence was passed. Carl could almost hear their thought. A sentenced man. Think of that! Over twenty years sentence! They bugged their eyes at him in a mixture of fascination and distaste.

Carl rushed away, the package clutched to his chest and his face flushed red with shame. The sentenced men on video had always seemed so funny. How they fell down and acted bewildered when a door wouldn't open for them.

It didn't seem so funny now.