And they always handed down guilty verdicts.
They executed a financier for his role in bankrolling million-ton carbon projects. They executed a shipping magnate for pouring megatons of pollution into the world’s oceans. They executed a sultan for building a desert city of ten million people where no city had any right to be. They executed a media baron and three of his heirs for a half-century smear campaign against environmentalists. They executed oil executive after oil executive after oil executive.
The surprising thing however wasn’t the savagery, but the tedium. The first execution was horrific but by the tenth, the twentieth, Addison began dissociating. As the days stretched on, time got fuzzy around the edges. He would wake, interpret, clean and repeat, until events felt as if they were happening behind a thick smothering veil. He even stopped dreaming, which at first seemed a blessing (no more pursuing tides) but ultimately served to make his waking moments more dreamlike. Even the thudding in the walls faded, receding with Addison’s sense of self.
For truth was, he was not himself.
He wasn’t Addison Moore, not really. He may have that man’s memories, an approximation of his body, but he was just a copy, a counterfeit. And this was good. It absolved him of responsibility: for how could he be responsible for his actions if he wasn’t truly himself? It excused both his complicity and his need to feel empathy for the defendants. In the end, their suffering wasn’t real because they weren’t.
They were just clones.
Still, the executions were grim. Some returnees cried, some begged, many shouted, as if they could scream their way to exoneration. But at the moment of death everyone became the same. Alone, terrified, feebly human, the defendants were reduced to mere equals, whatever privilege they may have once enjoyed boiling away in a gust of superheated viscera.
Occasionally, rarely, people became violent. During the trial of a Chinese urban planner, a man whose nine-city megalopolis emitted more carbon than any conurbation in history, Four’s pistol malfunctioned. Seizing his moment, the defendant – wide-eyed and snarling – made it halfway up the judge’s bench before the drone intervened. It was a startling moment, exhilarating, and Addison started fantasising the man going for him instead. He could picture it clearly: knuckles meeting skin, bone splintering, blood spattering. It was vivid, violent and it shocked Addison how much he wanted it. Because if it did, at least then he’d know he could still feel something.
At least then he’d know he was truly alive.
Not long after this incident, the levellers came to visit Addison in person. It was evening, the day’s trials were complete and the grey-white light in the institute was dimming. He was preparing for another dreamless night in his cellsuite, when the door slid open to reveal Judge One flanked by the drone.
“What did I do wrong?” Addison blurted.
The levellers had taught him to assume guilt before innocence, and One being here himself was a bad sign.
“Have I done something?” he repeated.
“We are expanding your duties,” the judge announced. “We are spending too long dealing with outbursts and tangential episodes. The escapade with Mr. Xi cost us precious time as well as overtaxing our drone. We need to be more efficient.”
“But I’m just doing what you told me!”
“And now you will do more.”
“Of course,” Addison mumbled. “Sorry.”
“You will begin tomorrow,” One continued. “When the apex light begins to shine, report to the vision room. You are to adopt a more pastoral role, welcoming returnees, acclimatising them, making them perform better in court.”
“Perform better?”
“Precisely.”
“You mean be better lambs to the slaughter?”
It was a dangerous thing to say. Insubordinate, reckless, but it gave Addison a dark stab of satisfaction. Maybe this would all end right here.
“See to it, Mr. Moore,” One snapped, nostrils flaring. “Fail us and you know the cost.”
As he turned to leave, the drone shot forwards. It was a feint, pure intimidation tactics, but Addison yelped and leapt back. He tripped over himself, falling painfully onto the floor. The judge looked down at him from the doorway, his face a mixture of pity and disgust. The drone lingered a moment, just long enough to make its point, then it hovered away. As the door sealed Addison let out a choked sigh. One way or another, he realised, this place was going to be the death of him.
* * *
Addison’s first patient was Caroline Hathersley.
She was not adjusting well.
“I don’t understand!” the returnee wailed, writhing on the floor below the vision chair. “What could I have done! What could I possibly have done?”
Addison didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t had much time to prepare for her arrival, but faced with this bawling, naked, oil-stained woman, he wished he’d put more thought into it.
“It’s going to be okay,” he soothed, draping her in the metallic sheet. “It’ll all be okay.”
“It told me I was to be tried,” Caroline replied, wide-eyed. “Like in actual court.”
“The chair did?”
“Those images. That voice.”
“Don’t mind that just now.”
“But, court!”
At a loss for what to say, Addison picked up a tablet the levellers had issued him and scanned Caroline’s bio for something that might help.
The device was linked to the institute’s archives and displayed historical records on the returnees. Most notable were the two ages: levelling and true death. Five had explained this was because many samples had been taken long
