Judge Dredd

Chief Justice, with all due respect, this city is in chaos! Grand oratory—even yours—can’t help us now. Maintaining the social order calls for tighter reins. My curfew proposal should be implemented immediately!

[Chief Justice Fargo turns to Griffin.]

JUDGE FARGO

Treat men like animals and they will act like them, sir.

JUDGE GRIFFIN

Perhaps you’d prefer we strip the Judges of their current powers and return to the antiquated system of trial and jury? No, I am certain you do not. But I tell you this, Judge: Incarceration has not worked as a deterrent. It did not work in the past and it does not work now. We can lock them up by the thousands and there will still be enough of them out there to destroy us all. There is only one answer: We must expand execution to include lesser crimes!

[Judge Fargo cannot see the faces of his fellow Judges, but he knows them all too well. He knows that there is enough truth in Griffin’s words to sway them.]

JUDGE FARGO

This body is not the first assembly to think that more laws and fewer choices will bring peace and order. That delusion has been tried and has failed before. I was hardly in my teens when I put on this badge. When the time comes for me to take it off… let me do it knowing that it stood for freedom… and not for repression.

[Chief Justice Fargo takes his seat. The room is silent. It is clear that his words have hit home, that the awe and respect that elevated him to his position have once more turned the tide in his favor. No one is more aware of this than Judge Griffin himself.]

JUDGE GRIFFIN

Once more, sir, you have served as a moral compass for us all. I… I wish to withdraw my proposal. I hope my action is one for the good.

JUDGE FARGO

Thank you, my friend. Your strength and wisdom are always an asset to this table. Now… let us all work together to continue the task we have sworn to perform, to protect and serve the citizens of Mega-City…

[The Judges file out of the room. The lights in the Chamber dim.]

CURTAIN

TEN

It was the first winter storm of the season and the worst in twenty-three years. It began as a silent snowfall, a thickening curtain of white that masked the dark peaks, the grim and barren plains. For half a day, this small section of Cursed Earth looked like an ancient Christmas card. Then, the blizzard struck in full force, bringing howling winds and numbing cold.

The guard towers of Aspen Prison rose like skeletal fingers behind the white veil. A chill wind moaned through the razor wire atop the granite walls. And, though there were thousands of men behind these dark battlements, not a single light was visible through the storm. Anyone who has ever been to this tomb of the living knows it is a place of darkness, not a place of light. If the Cursed Earth is Hell, then Aspen Prison is the stairway that leads to the underworld below…

They made their way down the narrow maze of granite stairs, their shadows bent and warped, dark and misshapen on the cold stone walls. The public was familiar with Aspen Prison from the countless videos, grim and deliberate reminders of the fate of those who broke the Law. This was a part of that prison they had never seen, and never would—unless they became one of the two hundred nine incarcerated here, the elite, the monsters, the terrors, the men who had committed such unspeakable crimes they were sentenced to live instead of die. The Judges had decreed that every effort would be made to keep these men alive, that they could never deserve the merciful release of execution.

Warden-Judge William Otis Miller followed the two guards down the wet and treacherous stairs. He did not glance to the left or to the right, at the cells descending on either side. This is what they were called, but they were not cells at all. Each was a three-foot circle in stone laced with flat strips of tightly-woven steel bars. They looked for all the world like the overflow gates of city sewers. The small rooms behind these bars were seven feet square. Every other day, a jet of frigid water sluiced the prisoners’ waste away. Every morning at four, waterpaks and food-pods were automatically dropped in each cell. The water contained a drug that would prevent a man from killing himself, or escaping into any degree of madness that would let him forget about his punishment or his crime. The drugs didn’t make a man feel any better, they just made him do his forever-after time.

The stairs continued to wind into the bowels of the earth. Warden-Judge Miller was numb to the bone. He sighed with relief when the stairs came to an end at a massive steel door. The door was nine inches thick and incredibly old. The small computer lock inset in its center was relatively new.

Miller nodded to the guards. They took a step to either side of the door. Miller laid his right palm on the center plate of the lock. A winking red light turned green. The door slid open without a sound, and Miller stepped inside.

A dim light glowed from a slot in the ceiling. A pair of Autoguns wheezed from the wall.

“Identi-fy yourself,” a metalic voice said.

“Miller. Warden-Judge.”

“Voice sam-ple recognized. Pro-ceed, Warden-Judge Miller.”

The walls of the small room were steel instead of stone. The blind muzzles of the Autoguns swung toward a circular platform against the far wall of the room. A pale blue light, a cobalt haze, surrounded the platform from the ceiling to the floor. A figure stood and moved about beyond the haze.

“Well, Warden… back for another chat, are we?”

The voice behind the barrier of light was cold as glacier ice.

“A very short chat,” Miller said. “I have a good deal to do.”

“Of course you do. You’re a very important man, Miller.”

“Warden Miller,” Miller corrected. “Warden-Judge Miller. Don’t forget that again.”

“Of course. No disrespect intended, sir.”

The voice behind the blue veil was different now. Considerate. Warm and soft-spoken. Obsequious almost to the point where Miller could call it insolence.

“I know it must be a strain, sir. Yours is a thankless job, feeding and caring for all these parasites who have sucked the living blood from Society.” The man laughed lightly. “I don’t speak of myself, of course. I’m a ghost. I don’t exist.”

The man stepped to the edge of the platform. The air around him sizzled as he approached the blue light. He was tall, well-built. Flesh pale as raw milk, flesh that had long forgotten the warmth of the sun, stretched over classically-handsome features.

The man looked at Miller, and Miller instantly looked away. He felt the heat rise to his face. He could never look directly into the man’s eyes. His eyes were too bright, too intense. The color of mercury floating on polished blue steel.

“We are both prisoners here, Warden-Judge Miller. You behind a desk. Me behind… this. The good Judge Fargo’s reward for our… services.”

“You killed innocent people. You went far beyond service!”