“I don’t understand.”
“There has been so much suffering, Addison, so much pain and torment. These trials are necessary, just, but I thought if I could do one good thing, spare one person the horrors of reality, then it would––”
Five stopped suddenly, clutching his side in pain. Instinctively Addison moved to help, but Five waved him away. He seemed embarrassed, ashamed by his condition, so Addison tried to change the subject.
“What’s up there?” he asked, eyes drawn to movement, the drone hovering in the upper levels.
“Our chambers,” Five grimaced, steadying himself. “The court and cellsuites are in the mid-levels, the archives and machinery in the lowers.”
Addison’s next question was interrupted by a sudden pounding in the walls.
“What is that?” he whispered. “I heard it before.”
“That,” Five replied, with a grim smile. “Is Three.”
The pounding faded, replaced by stillness. Addison suddenly felt very small.
“It’s a storm,” Five explained. “But no regular storm. Humanity unleashed terrible things in its final days, things that endure even now. Three is our guardian, manning the institute’s defences, our last line of defence. She cannot leave her post, even for a second, for it would spell doom.”
Addison shivered.
“This really is the end,” he breathed. “Of everything.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Then why are you doing this!” he cried, rounding on the leveller. “The trials? What is the point?”
“The point?”
“Why take revenge? The past is buried, let it be!”
Five looked back impassively.
“The past is never buried, you are a walking testament. We live with the consequences every day, with what your people failed to do and what those who came after did to each other because of it.”
“Then put them on trial! They did this, not us!”
“They reacted. You caused. There is no comparison.”
Addison threw his hands up in despair.
“It’s just so cruel!”
“What is cruel,” Five snapped, angry now. “Is entire generations living nice, comfortable lives at the expense of the next. What is cruel is billions dying because of thoughtless, long-dead fools. What is cruel is witnessing the end of all things and being absolutely, utterly powerless to stop it.”
“I––”
“No!” he shouted, eyes flashing. “Why did you deserve to live in peace while we die in horror? Why did you get to die oblivious to the consequences of your actions? No, if there cannot be life there will be justice.”
“This isn’t justice,” Addison whispered, echoing his words from the courtroom. “This is vengeance.”
Five shook his head in disgust. “What would you know of justice? You were spoilt, privileged children.”
“At least we didn’t blame the past for our present! We looked forward, not back.”
“Spoken like someone who has known only privilege.”
“We’d never blame people from the past like this.”
Five laughed. “The descendants of slavery might disagree.”
Addison’s voice caught in his throat. Grimacing, Five turned to limp off up the nearest ramp. He was moving painfully slowly now, almost on the verge of collapse. Addison wondered if this was the same of every leveller – a weakness, a condition, something to exploit – then immediately felt guilty. Of all the mysterious evils in this place, Five seemed a lesser one.
Which of course was a mystery in itself.
“Why are you helping me?” Addison called, speaking to Five’s receding back. “Why tell me all this?”
The leveller didn’t even stop.
“Guilt,” he replied.
“I thought I was the guilty one?”
“We are all guilty of something,” the leveller called, hobbling around a corner. “And a guilty conscience makes us do many a thing we regret.”
“Like the audition? Like bringing me back?”
But Five was gone, and once again Addison was alone.
– Chapter 3 –
Points of View
The second trial was even worse than the first.
Stood in the interpreter’s stand, Addison watched as the defendant – a chief operating officer of some oil company he’d never even heard of – openly wept. The man seemed shell-shocked, overwhelmed, and he sat for the duration of the trial with tears streaming down his face. He spoke only twice, to confirm his name and acknowledge the evidence against him, and Addison wondered if the vision chair had damaged him somehow, broken the man’s mind beyond repair.
In the end, it made little difference.
“Levellers!” the judge cried, hand in the air. “Justice!”
As the drone pounced, Addison closed his eyes and covered his ears. But he couldn’t do anything about the smell, which stole through the air, thick and invasive. When it was over, the muffled screams dying down, Addison felt sick. Stumbling into the aisle, he hurried for the double doors.
“Returnee!” Four barked, her pistol drawn. “Halt!”
Addison froze, waves of nausea sweeping over him.
“Where are you going?”
“I need to leave,” Addison gasped, chest heaving.
“Your duties are not complete, Mr. Moore,” the judge called from the podium. “You have one final task.”
“I didn’t––”
The judge held up a hand to silence him.
“Presently, Five will be moving the cadaver to the fluid processor in the lower levels, but after that the witness stand will need disinfecting.”
Addison stared in sheer disbelief.
Two smiled helpfully.
“Mop and bucket in the waiting room cupboard,” he beamed. “There’s a good chap.”
This time it was Addison’s turn to weep.
The next day the levellers resurrected, tried and executed three more people. The day after it was four. The third a brisk half-dozen.
Addison was present each and every time, silent other than when he was called upon to answer arcane questions about 20th and 21st century life – name this figure, explain that custom, clarify this policy. And afterwards, hyperventilating, he would step down to scrub bodily fluids and scorch marks off the floor until it was time to start all over again.
Addison understood now, grasped his place in things. From his perfunctory title of ‘court interpreter’ to the laughably analogue mop bucket, it was all spectacle. He was a patsy, a prop,
