Jenny was on trial.
This was primetime entertainment: the might of the Australian legal system colliding head-on with rock opera.
The music stopped, but the crowd’s frenzied noise immediately filled the void. The chief justice stepped forward and signaled for quiet, and eighty-odd thousand people obeyed her order without question. Her face was bitter and scowling, and she seemed to thrive on the power she wielded. The way she sucked energy from the vast audience struck Jenny as being almost vampiric.
She turned and stared straight at Jenny. In the stadium, the chief justice’s face filled the massive screen to the left, Jenny’s the right. The judge’s voice boomed out from the speakers.
“Jennifer Allsopp, you are hereby charged with assisting an organization to engage in armed hostilities against the people of Earth.” She paused, and the faces on the video screens were replaced with a montage of what had happened in London: Thirnas’s arrival and the resulting chaos and destruction, the battle with Oldrus on Westminster Bridge, the Bleed taking hold of the city and the Thames running red. Jenny felt helpless. She felt cheated. Betrayed. The darkest and most important moments of recent human history had been re-edited into a reality TV highlights reel to paint her in the worst possible light. It was a bloody outrage. “How do you plead?” the judge asked. “Guilty or not guilty?”
Jenny couldn’t help herself. She had nothing left to lose.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
There was an audible gasp from the assembled masses, a collective intake of breath that she could actually feel because there were so many thousands of them.
“Guilty, or not guilty?” the judge asked again.
“Do you really think it’s that simple?” Jenny said, her voice amplified across the stadium. “Do you really think all of this is my fault? And even if it was—which it isn’t—do you think that vilifying me and hanging me out to dry is going to make the slightest bit of difference? You shouldn’t be hating me because of what happened, because I didn’t cause it. You should be asking me for help, because of all the people left alive on this planet, I’m pretty much your last, best hope. Without me, we’re all dead.”
The reaction of the crowd was Vaudevillian; a melodramatic wave of boos and hisses filled the air. Jenny was past caring.
“GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY?” the judge bellowed.
“NOT GUILTY!” Jenny bellowed back, and her unexpected resilience temporarily quietened the masses. “Right now, the Bleed is killing people at an unbelievable rate. I think I can stop it. I have access to the power and technology to be able to do something about it, but I can’t because you’ve got me stuck here in a fucking box! Is this the way you want the human race to end? Are you really prepared to throw everyone’s lives away just to make a point? It’s this kind of stupid, selfish attitude that let the Bleed take control in the first place. It just about sums up everything that’s wrong with us. Fuck it, maybe we’re not even worth saving.”
The chief justice theatrically walked across the stage towards Jenny, then stopped about a meter short. The stadium fell silent in anticipation of what she might be about to say next.
“Your arrogance will be the undoing of you, and your arrogance could so easily have been the undoing of all of us, were it not for our great protector. How dare you stand here in front of the brave people of the last great surviving nation of Earth, and presume that your actions might still have relevance? You dare to appear in sight of the one true God and continue to protest your innocence, despite having been seen cavorting with false gods in London?” She pointed to the sky and continued to shout, her fury now unrestrained. “He knows the truth, and He will pass His final judgement today!”
“Oh, give me a break,” Jenny sighed. Thankfully her dismissive words were drowned out by a chorus of adulation and praise that would have taken the roof off the stadium, had it had one. Was this a trial or a sacrificial mass? Truth be told, there didn’t seem much difference anymore.
The chief justice continued. “Yea, though today we are all poised to walk through the valley in the shadow of death, we do so without fear or regret, save in the knowledge that you, Lord, will protect and guide us all. Though the road ahead may be long and arduous, we have faith that you will be waiting for us all at that journey’s end.”
It began to dawn on Jenny that this was an extension of the behavior she’d seen on street corners in Surfers Paradise. These people weren’t interested in saving the world, just saving themselves. They were waiting for the Rapture, for the day all true believers would be snatched away from Earth into the air for a mystical reunion with God in Heaven.
She didn’t know if her mic was still on. Whatever, she resisted the temptation to tell the crowd she thought the idea was a crock of shit. From what she’d seen of the gods so far, they were out for themselves. The chief justice wasn’t finished yet.
“Lord, we are here today to demonstrate our love and belief in you.”
Prompted by helpful signs on the video screens, the vast crowd belted out a powerful “Amen!”.
“The evidence which has been laid in front of us today, and before the millions of people watching across our great country, is incontrovertible. It has shown that you, the accused, Jennifer Allsopp, late of London, England, did collude with forces not of this Earth to cause death and destruction on a hitherto unimaginable scale. Your guilt is clear to all of us who have survived the nightmare to this point. You are responsible for the deaths of billions upon billions of people, and the numbers continue to climb
