According to the tablet, Addison’s new ward was Caroline Florence Hathersley, levelling age 21, true death 87, formerly of Cheshire, Britain. There was even a picture, but it was heavily posed, more suited to social media than a tribunal. Addison couldn’t find an occupation, which was strange as all the other returnees had been high-flyers. Most defendants had been CEOs, politicians, financiers and the like, but Caroline’s field was resolutely blank.
“I don’t understand!” the woman repeated, echoing the same line all returnees did. “Why me?”
She’s just a clone, Addison reminded himself.
“It’s okay,” he said, helping her to her feet. “Let’s get you to your room. There’ll be clothes there, food too. You can rest up. Everything will be clear tomorrow.”
Her eyes were huge, dark pools. Had he been that way inclined, Addison would have found her quite beautiful, but as she pressed against him, shivering under the blanket, he felt a sudden repulsion. Death clung to the woman like a wraith.
Just a clone.
“Will it be bad?” Caroline murmured. “Tomorrow?”
“Not at all,” he lied, guiding her towards the door. “It’ll be very… efficient.”
“Good,” she replied distantly. “That’s good.”
Caroline’s cellsuite was identical to Addison’s, save for a few folded items of clothing the levellers had laid out (they seemed to have some way of fabricating items from the returnee’s time). He guided her to the bed where she collapsed immediately, embracing oblivion. Standing a moment, looking down at this poor doomed girl, he wondered what she could possibly have done in just twenty-one years to justify such a fate. But then, on the heels of that thought came another: just a clone.
He tucked the covers tighter around her and sealed the door behind him.
Caroline’s trial was held the next day, and within five minutes Addison was worried.
She was not being very compliant.
“Say that again!” the returnee cried from the witness stand. “A tally? What the hell is that?”
Overnight, a transformation had taken place. Yesterday, Caroline had been ghostly and frail, but this morning she was resplendent. Her hair was sleek and shiny, her make-up immaculate (how had the levellers sourced make-up?), and she was dressed in the same outfit from her profile, a garish riot of colour in the otherwise dreary courtroom. At first, Addison wondered why they had permitted this – she looked more like a Hollywood starlet than a criminal – but then he realised it was all part of the show. They were giving her just enough rope to hang herself.
“Your carbon tally, Miss. Hathersley,” Two smiled, irrepressible as ever. “The sum total of carbon you generated in your life, measured in carbon dioxide equivalents or ‘CO2e.’”
“Never heard of it.”
“Every action has a carbon value associated with it,” he explained, speaking as if to a child. “A vehicular journey will produce several kilograms for example, an aircraft trip many tons. In your era, citizens were ascribed a number, a running tally updated as they progressed through life. Your final tally was amongst the highest we’ve seen.”
“No idea what you mean.”
“We have it on file. Would you like to see?”
“Not really.”
“It’s quite simple,” Two continued. “The bigger a person’s carbon footprint, the bigger their tally. The CEO of an oil company will have a huge one, an algae farmer less so.”
“But I was just a model!” Caroline protested.
“What is ‘model?’” Two frowned, looking to Addison.
But Caroline was still speaking.
“I was an influencer,” she explained, eyes darting around the court. “As in, people followed me and other people gave me stuff because of it.”
“Please elaborate.”
“It was small things at first. Gifts, clothes, jewellery. But then they started flying me places. Lots of places. Ads and promos and whatnot. But it was all normal. There were loads of us. Everyone did it.”
Two seemed energised by the response.
“So by your own admission, your role was to influence others to do as you did?”
“There was a bit more to it.”
“But this was the primary objective?”
“I mean, I guess...”
“And this didn’t trouble you? Exerting influence over people’s behaviour?”
“Why would it? I didn’t make anyone do anything!”
Two leant forward, sensing blood.
“Miss. Hathersley, let me put it plainly. In your lifetime you accrued a carbon tally in excess of five hundred times the global average, mostly accrued through egregious international travel and the associated manufacturing costs of the products you promoted. But worse than that, you actively promoted such a lifestyle to others. You influenced other people to live the same unsustainable lifestyle as yourself.”
“So?”
“How many people followed your example? How many did you influence who went on to influence others? On and on, a chain of people propagating an unsustainable, unconscionable lifestyle? Add their tally to yours and you are perhaps one of the greatest emitters in history.”
Addison had to marvel. The circular logic of their argument was insidious. It reminded him of Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China, where guilt was simply about allegiance. You could live an entirely lawful life, but if you weren’t on the right side of some arbitrary line come crunch time, that was that. Law didn’t matter, only zeal. Transgress, even after the fact, and the chain of events would be swift: you’d get a firing squad, your family a bill for the bullet, and your executors would insist this had been the rule from the start. And now, poor Caroline didn’t even realise she was in the crosshairs.
“You admit then your lifestyle was overconsumptive?” Two pressed, going for the kill.
“No more than others,” she replied.
“Admit it! You were edacious, voracious, a glutton!”
“Posting online?” she cried. “Going on trips? Getting gifts? That’s just how people lived!”
“Not everyone, Miss. Hathersley. Many, yes, too many, but not everyone. Instead, you chose a lifestyle that directly and indirectly generated millions of tons of carbon, hastening global collapse.”
“But it was just normal!” she pleaded. “Why are you
