The adjudicative system today was a lot different than it was when Hokusai
was growing up. Instead of a single jury, deliberations were done with two
separate arbitration panels, of five people. On each panel, three were
regular people who served as arbiters, while two were educated arbitrators.
There was still a judge—though, the position was now called adjudicator, to
align with an a-word motif—but it was their responsibility to manage and
mediate the court, rather than make summary judgments, punish the
half-guilty, be corrupt, and stand above the law. The court system on Varkas
Reflex was quite new, and while societies on the other colony planets
generally stuck with the systems created on Earth after millennia of
development, the Varkans decided to throw most of that out the window.
Theirs was not an unfair process, but it wasn’t formal either, and it wasn’t
orderly, nor predictable.
The good news was that Loa and Pribadium were both deemed innocent for the
potential crime of erasing the episodic memories of the dimensional gravity
scientists. The bad news was that Hokusai was not. She was sitting in the
courtroom now, which was usually used for zero-g darts. One of the eight
alleged victims was responsible for coming up with new forms of
gravitational recreation, so this was her spot. Of course, she didn’t
remember doing any of that, which was why they were all here now.
Gangsta Dazzlemist was playing the part of adjudicator, Katica Petrić was
acting as advocate for the defense, and the investigator from before was the
adhering attorney. Two people were chosen at random to approximate the role
of arbiters. One was a permanent resident, while the other just happened to
be in the middle of a decade-long vacation. Neither of them exhibited any
signs of caring whether they were there or not. The only truly qualified
person here was a bona fide arbitrator from Bungula. He had reportedly moved
here to make sure proceedings such as this didn’t end up in kangaroo court.
Anywhere else in the stellar neighborhood, most of these would be considered
conflicts of interest, or at least inappropriate selections, but people here
didn’t see it that way. If they were impacted by whatever had happened, then
they were believed to have the right to decide the consequences and
conclusion.
A slapdash Gangsta was sucking his teeth repeatedly, out of boredom, as if
waiting for someone else to start, except that this was his duty. He
apparently knew this, and finally perked up. “All right. Let’s get goin’.
Adherent Blower, what’s your accusation?”
“It’s Boehler. Risto Boehler,” the investigator responded.
“Is that your accusation?” Gangsta joked.
“Hokusai Gimura stands accused of maliciously erasing the memories of seven
innocent scientists.”
“Okay,” Gangsta said. “Hokusai? Are ya guilty?”
“I am not. I did know it would erase all of their memories, but I was told
that it would not hurt, and I did it with no malice.”
“‘Kay, cool. Go ahead and ask your questions, bro.”
“Thank you. Madam Gimura, when did you first arrive on Varkas Reflex?”
“Twenty-two thirty-nine,” she answered.
“So, you were part of the original colony fleet?”
“No,” she said truthfully. “I arrived in my own vessel.”
“This vessel was much smaller than standard technological development in the
2230s would allow, correct?”
“I’m ahead of my time.”
“And how exactly are you ahead of your time? Where were you educated?”
“Earth. I was just born smart.”
“When were you born?”
“June 27, 1985.”
“So that would make you three hundred and two years old. You’re a
tricenterian.”
Hokusai bobbed her head side to side. The reality was that she was much
younger than that, because of all the time travel she had experienced, but
she couldn’t say any of that. Fortunately, perjury didn’t seem to be a thing
here, so okay. “Well, it’s more complicated than that, because of
relativity.” That wasn’t quite a lie anyway.
“Sure,” Risto began. “I’m just gathering some information. Let’s get to the
real questions. You’re the one who invented what scientists refer to as
dimensional gravity?”
“Yes.”
“How does it work?”
“You would need at least three postgraduate degrees to have any hope of
understanding it.”
“I have equivalent-seven.” He didn’t say this to brag. Equivalent-seven
wasn’t even all that much in this day and age. With no need to use one’s
education to make money, and literally all the time in the universe,
casually gaining profound amounts of knowledge over the course of several
decades was commonplace. “But assume I don’t. Explain like I’m five. How
does it work, at its most basic level?”
Hokusai squirmed in her seat, and looked to her wife for help, but Loa could
only frown at her. “Gravity is a force, enacted upon an object to a certain
calculable degree, according to mass, density, and proximity. My technology
generates a field of negative mass, extracted from another dimension. It
doesn’t lower the gravity under your feet; it’s more like it gets between
you and the gravitational object, so that the object can’t pull on you
anymore. This energy can be manipulated to adjust your weight.”
“Wow, that’s some smart five-year-old,” Risto remarked.
Hokusai tried to dumb it down further. “Water makes you buoyant, so you can
float on it. It doesn’t negate gravity, but it can make you feel weightless,
because the water is trying to push you up at the same time. Think of my
tech as just a lake of water that isn’t wet, and is made up of particles
other than dihydrogen monoxide.”
“What particles is it made of?”
“Are you still five years old in this question?”
“Fair enough, I’ll move on. Who did you work with to create this technology?
Who else was on your team?”
At this, the professional arbitrator, Jericho Hagen shifted in his seat, as
if perturbed by the question.
“No one.” Another truth, but it was hard to believe.
“You did all by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impressive.”
“I had decades upon decades to work on it.” That wasn’t totally true,
though. Hokusai had indeed been inventing things since the 20th century, but
dimensional gravity was a more recent endeavor.”
“Still,” he went on, “others have had about as much time as you, and they
never did it, so you must be something special.”
“I must be,” she said.
“When you came to our planet, you agreed to help us combat the high-gravity
problem by letting us use your dimensional gravity technology, yes?”
“I did.”
“Yet you didn’t allow us to reverse-engineer or reproduce it, right? You
handled every aspect of early construction, and didn’t let anyone else in?”
“That’s not the whole truth. I trusted my apprentice, Pribadium Delgado with
it.”
“Yes,” Risto understood. “You trusted Miss Delgado, up until the point she
disappeared. Then you disappeared as well, along with your wife.”
“I didn’t disappear.”
“Oh, no?”
“I always knew where I was.”
“Quite. But we didn’t, and still don’t. Care to share where you were during
that time?”
“I don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Care. I don’t care to share. That’s classified.”
“Well, that’s a good segue. Let’s talk about the neural implant chips, and
the classified data on them. Did you have anything to do with their
creation?”
Jericho shifted in his seat again.
“I didn’t,” she said. “I wasn’t here, and hadn’t heard of them until
yesterday.”
“Yet you had control over them.”
“Briefly.”
“Enough time to push a button, and erase everyone’s memories.”
“Enough time for that, indeed.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I was told the button would only purge the data on the chip, not affect the
rest of their respective brains.”
“But you knew it was a possibility?”
“Of course it was a possibility. There was a possibility that, when I
pressed the button, the whole building transmuted into gold. The chances
were absurdly low, but still not zero. Osiris gave it to me, knowing full
well I would use it, and probably sooner, rather than later. He knew the
risks, and I accepted his consideration without spending time considering
these risks myself.”
Jericho could clearly bite his tongue no longer. Arbitrators were not
usually meant to speak during the trial. Like the juries of ancient days,
they were expected to only listen until deliberations began. He couldn’t
suffer the ineptitude anymore, though. “You’re not asking her any real
questions!”
“I’m sorry?” Boehler asked.”
Jericho stood up. “This is supposed to be a trial. You’re supposed to find
out what she did, why she did it, and whether she’s a danger because of it.
The four of us are then supposed to figure out what to do with her. You
can’t just keep letting her off the hook. Where did she go after she
disappeared? Don’t let her not answer that. How confident was she that the
memory-erasing button was safe? Ask that question. Make her tell you
what this other dimension is where we’re getting our gravity. This isn’t the
21st century anymore. There’s no such thing as proprietary privilege. Ask
the damn questions!”
Adjudicator Dazzlemist pretended to bang a gavel, and released a sort of
barking sound with each one. “Mister Hagen, this is highly irregular!” He
said it with about as much seriousness as a clown at a comedy club.
“This is a joke! You don’t want justice for these people’s lives. Do you
even know what life is? It’s memory. I’m two hundred and sixteen years old.
I spent four of those in stasis on my way to Alpha Centauri, so I’m not
really two-sixteen, I’m closer to two-twelve.”
“You chose stasis for a six-year flight?” Gangsta questioned.
“That’s not my point!” Jericho contended. “I didn’t make any memories during
the trip. I was essentially dead. Because memories are all we have, the act
of erasing someone’s memories is tantamount to murder. So let’s do a real
trial, and figure it out.”
Gangsta’s face changed in such a way to make his name sound a bit
unrealistic. He finally lived up to his position as a world leader. “This
isn’t a real trial. This is more of a mediation. We’re trying to determine,
not the truth, but what we should do with that truth. We know that Madam
Gimura erased the victim’s memories, and we know she didn’t do it on
purpose, because we have testimony from Madam Nielsen, Miss Delgado, and Dr.
Petrić. All we need to do now is decide if she’s too dangerous to stay
on-world. I understand that you would prefer we make this all very formal
and regulated, but your response to the lack of organization was a chaotic
outburst of passion. I hope you can appreciate the irony in that.”
Jericho sighed. “I do.”
“Good. I have some questions of my own. “Dr. Petrić, you possess knowledge
of dimensional gravity, correct?”
“Indeed.”
“As do you, Miss Delgado?”
Pribadium didn’t know why she was being addressed, but had to answer, “yes.”
“This place thrives on safety. There aren’t a lot of laws that we care
about, but we care about that. I see no reason for you to fill out seven
billion forms to request an assignment on a ship collecting hydrogen from
this system’s mini-Neptune, Lycos Isledon. You wanna go, just go. The only
reason our species used to have closed borders, visas, and passports is
because people were greedy and dangerous back then. We got rid of that when
we got rid of most of the motives for crime. Still, crime does exist,
because people still have complicated motives. It would be equally difficult
to categorize Madam Gimura’s actions as harmless as it would be to
categorize them as malicious. I can’t have someone on my world who has
erased seven people’s memories, and it doesn’t much matter whether she did
it on purpose, or not. It throws off the equilibrium, and it has to be
stopped before it gets out of control. She can go live somewhere else, which
I know she’s capable of doing, because she’s three centuries old, and she’s
done it before. My judgment is permanent exile. Thank you. You’re all
dismissed.”
Hokusai wanted to be upset, but the reality was that her technology was
safe, and there was nothing particularly appealing about this planet, so she
didn’t need to stay. He was right, she could live anywhere. So she would go
without a fight.
