BINARY JUSTICE

Richard Bireley

To paraphrase Thoreau: Beware of any enterprise that requires you to buy new skirts.

The water on the freeway canal didn’t show a ripple. I eased my skimmer down the ramp and watched the flashes from the fish darling for the bottom. The new skirts of the aircar made it ride a good twelve centimeters higher, and it was smooth, really smooth. I sort of had to grin when I shoved the vanes to full forward and cut in the afterfan. When I hit the speed channel, I was already up to an even hundred kilos. Those fish were in for a bad time later—on a day like this, everybody with a cool skimmer that could lift off the water would be pulling revs. But right then it was quiet. I had to laugh when an old clunker with leaky skirts lost power and plunked down right in front of me. I gave him a blast with the afterfan, just to watch him bob, then scurried in to work. I breezed into the parking marina with plenty of time to spare and strolled into the shop. By the time I got to my bench, I didn’t feel so good.

Somehow a transfer day always does that to me. I don’t owe too much. The usual. Rent to the city for my pad at the collective. A meal tab for two intervals. Payments on the skimmer. Except that I had gotten a bit carried away with those new skirts. My credit was down to the edge of my C5 credit limit. It really wasn’t fair. The more you made, the more you could owe. I had heard the C12 limit was a thousand credits. And here I was stuck at a miserable hundred and fifty. So I shot my balance, and then some. And today Trim Skimmers, Inc., was due for another transfer. I hoped Karl would bail me out. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I dropped into my seat at the bench and picked up the first visiphone. The tag read “Broken View Switch.” Well, that computed. No one would believe how many came in like that. The view switch “somehow” jams on. Then when the user answers the call straight from the shower, they are terribly surprised and flustered when somebody sees them. I remember one time … Well, anyway, I was fixing the switch when Karl arrived. He worked at the bench next to me.

“Unity, Len.”

“Unity, Karl. Hey, Karl, how about transferring a hundred credits until tomorrow?”

“Sorry, Len. I’m into my limit now. What’s the trouble this time?”

Then I really didn’t feel so good. I gave him the whole story, complete with dulcimers and moogs. He nodded.

“Bad break.”

That didn’t help much. I had a date tonight, too. Free-fall games. Then he got my attention.

“Look, you can take care of the credit problem real easy.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll break into the Center with a magnet and wipe them out.”

“Naw. That doesn’t work, anyway. But I can show you how to get a start on the next interval.”

“Watch your program, fella. You know that new credits are entered for everybody at the start of an interval. No sooner.”

Karl laughed and sat down on my bench. “Yeah, I know. What time is your payment due?”

“No later than nineteen hundred hours.”

“And what time does the credit center shut down for the day?”

“At seventeen hundred.”

“Correct. Are you getting the program?”

“No.” I could see that Karl had something interesting going, so I shoved back my chair.

“Retrieve, man. Retrieve,” he said. “What says you got no credits? A little strip of plastic on your ID card. Just a few little magnetic spots. Now! What is that interesting piece of machinery next to us? A coder for the key strips in the phones. A coder for little magnetic spots.”

I put the visiphone down with a thump.

“Run complete, Karl. Just add enough to keep the smiling dealer smiling. By the time my transfers hit Central tomorrow, my credits for the next interval are already in. That’s the first run of the day. Then I go to an update booth, get my new balance recorded, and everything is square. Could work.”

“Does work. Do it myself sometimes. Here, I’ll show you.”

Well, it probably would have worked, too, except that I went out at noon for a quick hairstyling. I wanted something short for free-fall. I was cruising into town when this water beetle pulled me over. They hate that name, but what else can you call those little pill-shaped black-and-whites with side jets that look like legs? So the monitor herded me into a control slip and looked me up and down.

“Unity, citizen. Ridin’ kind of high, aren’t you, son?”

I sort of thought I knew what he was getting at.

“Uh, what do you mean, Monitor?”

“Looks to me like you’re a bit over the legal maximum on skirt length,” he said.

“I don’t think so. I always heard if you didn’t go any higher than the long side of a credit report form, you were okay.”

“Sorry, son. Eight centimeters. No more. Anything over that and things begin to get unstable. I’m going to have to punch this up.” He pulled the report box from his belt.

I knew what was coming, and thought of gunning out of there, but that’s why they have control slips. His bug blocked the way.

“Citizen’s ID,” he said, holding out his hand.

There was no choice. I gave it to him.

He scanned my number and added it to his list. Then he checked his sheet of violation codes and entered a number on the keyboard. My card went into a slot at the end. A second later, his readout glowed. He scanned it briefly.

“No previous violations,” he said. “They’ll probably take it easy on you.” As he spoke, he punched another button and checked again. “You got off easy. Only thirty credits.” His voice became formal.

“The law states that you may post bail immediately, or you may appear in court at seventeen hundred hours on the day of the alleged violation. Objections may be registered at the time of transfer.”

Oh, wow! Seventeen hundred hours on a date night? No way. Besides, that traffic computer probably didn’t update more than once every twenty-four hours anyway.

The officer extended the box with my card still in the slot. I took a deep breath and thumbed the transfer button. The readout changed to an angry red.

* * * *

“All rise.”

I jumped to my feet nervously. The court calendar was crowded, so it was two very long hours before my case was called. My attorneys rose casually with me. One on each side. The older one winked at the prosecutor. Then a side door opened, and the judge in his symbolic white lab robes appeared. He stepped to the bench and sat down.

“Be seated.” The clerk advanced, rustling a stack of papers. “Court is now in session, Judge Frederick Dove presiding.”

The judge banged his gavel once, activating the large control panel mounted in the face of his bench. Some lights flashed, and the tape units started to twitch as the system was initialized.

The clerk faced the audience and intoned, “Now for computation, the People versus Leonard Verst.”

More lights flashed, and across the top of the bench appeared pictures of the faces of the six jurors. A green light flashed on at the prosecutor’s panel. The senior attorney, I think I heard someone call him Pike, began a series of pigtails in the corner of his printout.

“What happens now?” I whispered.

The number-two man flapped his hand in a hushing motion without looking at me. Nervously I ran my thumbnail along the lines in the molded-plastic tabletop. Deep grooves showed that a few other jokers hadn’t felt too good about filling this chair either.

There seemed to be a pause while everybody took a last-minute look at their printouts. I didn’t have a printout, so I leaned back and stared around. It was nice enough, for a courtlab, though the thick green carpet didn’t seem to go too well with the white tile walls. Each wall had a large mural set into the tile.

On the right side they had a statue of Justice, extending from floor to ceiling. That was fine with me, but she was wearing a blindfold. And her right hand was holding a sword. Not so good. The left hand was a little better. In it was a punched computer card. I could understand that part. A scroll across the top had a motto printed on it in Old English letters: “Equal Justice Under Electronic Law.” I got to thinking, when you’re really guilty, equal justice doesn’t seem all that good.

On the other wall there was a picture of a big building, shaped like a computer, with citizens going in the front door. They left on opposite sides, smiling on one side, heads bowed on the other. I scratched at the tabletop again, and wondered if a computer had ever missed a date because it was low on credits.

The prosecutor pushed back his chair and stood up, clearing his throat. Consulting a sheaf of printouts, he moved to the terminal in front of his table.

“Your Honor, members of the jury,” he began. “I intend to show that the defendant, Leonard Verst, is guilty of the crime of Alteration, as defined in Program Fifty-three, Subroutine Alter, of the State Master Penal File.” As he spoke, his fingers moved over the keyboard. The recorders began to whisper, and lights started a march across the big panel. The prosecutor continued in a matter-of-fact tone.

“I shall prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant did willfully, and with intent to defraud, alter the record on his Citizen’s Credit Card to indicate credits that did not exist.”

I started to jump up. “Wait a minute. That’s not right. I just …” A hand on my shoulder forced me down, hard. No one seemed to notice. More squiggles appeared on the sheet next to me. The prosecutor turned and smiled toward our table. I didn’t feel included.

“The attorney for the defense will present the position of his client.” He stabbed a button with his thumb, and the green light shifted to our terminal. The attorney for the defense doodled a last pigtail and eyed the results. Then he nodded and got to his feet. As he approached the panel, I glanced at the pictures of the jurors across the top of the judge’s bench. The one on the left seemed to be smiling, but that didn’t help much either. I wondered what he was thinking about when they made that picture.

I tried again. “Where are the jurors?” I whispered to the assistant. He gave me an irritated look and pawed through a stack of papers. Finding a small pamphlet, he checked a page and pushed it toward me. My lawyer was making his opening remarks, but it didn’t make much sense to me, so I glanced at the book. It was titled “Facts for the Defendant—A Citizen’s Guide.” The figure of Justice with her punched card appeared just below.

Most of the stuff I already knew. Like how all the laws and decisions are stored on computer tapes, and each court computer is updated daily. The jurors report each day and are put in little rooms, where they are wired into the computer. A plastic band goes around your head that holds the pickups for your brainwaves. Then they fasten a bunch of little sensors all over you that beam data to the master receiver. You lie on a couch like a big damp sponge and watch the proceedings on a full-sized visiwall. As the trial progresses, the computer monitors the jurors’ emotional responses and stores them. When the presentations are complete, the computer evaluates all the responses and weighs them, along with the points of law programmed by the attorneys, to arrive at an absolutely unbiased verdict.

My attorney cleared his throat and raised his voice. “It is clear that one essential element of this crime is not present. That element is intent. My client had credits legally due him which he expected would more than cover the amount drawn.”

Now that sounded better. More lights flashed, and the tapes mined jerkily. One clicked and began to race ahead. The judge’s eyes were closed.

The defense moved on. “I would like to introduce a statement from my client’s employer attesting to his reliability and work habits.” The green light went out, and a big red flashing job appeared on the main panel.

“What’s that? What happened?” I said.

“It’s an objection,” muttered the assistant.

The prosecutor stood up. “Objection, File OBJ327, your Honor.”

My side was not to be outdone. “File DEM828,” replied the defense.

There were lights all over the panel, and the tapes got busy for sure. A printer clattered briefly on the judge’s bench. He reached out and tore off a strip.

“Sustained,” he announced. Then he checked the timer on the far wall. “This hearing has now reached the twenty-minute first-period maximum. Court will recess for ten minutes.”

We all rose, and I went along with my defenders to a room next-door. They told me to sit while they analyzed the first session. I couldn’t follow much of it. There was nothing about me, or what I did. Just subroutines, jumps, and things like that. Now and then one of them would go to a small keyboard and punch up something. Then they would both mutter over the resulting printout. Finally one of them kicked back his chair and began to pace the room.

“I see how we might be able to pull this off.”

“How’s that?” I should have kept my mouth shut. They both glared at me, then bent back over the table.

“There used to be an operation in early FORTRAN called a DO loop. The idea was that a subroutine could be set up to repeat until some limit or result was reached. Like testing an equation by substituting all the numbers between one and one hundred for constants. You didn’t have to write one hundred instructions. Just use a DO loop with one hundred as the upper limit. The equation would be solved and one hundred solutions printed out. Nobody uses that anymore, but if we could slip one in after the instruction regarding intent, maybe we could give the idea many times the weight it would normally have. That might be enough to swing it.”

The other nodded. “Why not? There’s nothing else going for us.”

* * * *

Back in the courtlab, we all rose, and we all sat; then the prosecutor got up for his summary. Most of it was about programs, routines, and weighted averages. He did a good job. Minus the buzz words though, one thing came through very clear: I was guilty as hell. Then my team got the green light, and it was more of the same. I think I saw him enter the DO loop. There was one time when his hands were awfully busy, while he wasn’t saying much. The prosecutor was frowning about something.

Finally it was all over. The last entry was in. The green lights were gone, and a big yellow one on the main panel came on. The tapes were all going at once, and the indicators were a blur. After about a minute, a printer clattered briefly and was silent. The tape decks all switched to fast rewind. Everyone sat quiet for a moment, then the clerk stood up and headed for the printer, where he tore off a strip of paper. He handed it to the judge without even a peek. I held my breath. My attorney drew more doodles. The judge took the slip, then, with his eyes fixed firmly on the statue of Justice, he announced the verdict.

“The computed verdict finds the defendant innocent of all charges. The electron knows no favorites.”

I let out my breath in a rush and jumped to my feet. The prosecutor was up too, shouting.

“Your Honor, I appeal this verdict as provided for in the master file of court procedures.”

The heavy hand was on my shoulder again, and a voice told me to sit down.

The judge nodded. “Granted,” he said, and bang went the gavel. The clerk did something to his panel, and we had a yellow light again.

“Now what?” I wanted to know.

My attorney looked around. ” There has been an appeal. The appellate court will review your case.” I felt honored. He had actually spoken to me. Might as well keep him talking.

“Where are they? Are they here too?”

“No. They’re probably playing golf right about now.”

“But …” I nodded toward the yellow light.

“Oh, that. Their Honors have all been on record since they were appointed to the bench. They just stop by in the morning for an emotional index reading, and the appellate computer takes it from there. We’re linking up with it right now.”

As he spoke, one tape spun briskly, then stopped. Another wait. I munched a mangled thumbnail and watched the flashing lights. They stopped, and the printer clattered again. Once more the clerk tore off the paper and handed it to the bench. The judge looked, then nodded. This time, he looked straight at me.

“Decision reversed, by a vote of six to one. Counsel for the defense is commended for a job well done.” My team nodded and smiled. “The prisoner will rise.” This time I was hauled to my feet.

The judge began to punch some buttons on his own private console. Twice he shook his head and made some more entries. Finally he nodded.

“Leonard Verst, in accordance with the laws, programs, and procedures of this state, you have been found guilty of the crime of alteration. You are accordingly sentenced to a term of thirty days, these days to be served consecutively as a member of the jury of this court.”

As the gavel banged for the last time, a flicker of motion at the bench caught my eye. I glanced up at the jury. The left-hand face had been changed. I was staring into my own eyes, and I was not smiling.