The Death of Lady Liberty: A Short Story

Have you ever seen that ancient movie, where that guy screams, "you can't handle the truth!"? I have. I've never actually believed that the truth couldn't be handled. I've always been an idealist, wanting freedom, equality and, most of all, justice for all. After all, that's what encouraged me to become a lawyer.

Law today is a lot better than law was in 2010 - it’s a whole lot easier to resolve disputes. Back then, at least according to B2T5, the professor emeritus of my law school, people would place their hands on a book and agree to not lie in their testimony of what happened. How stupid was that? Can you imagine just having fate in some completely unverified witness to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? I cannot. It seems absurd and it seems wrong. Furthermore, it strikes me as very inefficient.

When I was 18, I gradated at the top of my class from law school. I was immature, and confused – living in a whirlwind of ideals, and preconceived notions about the apparent functions and uses of adulthood. Ever since I was 13, I had wanted to be lawyer. Mostly because that was the time in which the BrainScan-It was being developed. Each night, while watching the news, they would talk about how this was the next big thing in law, how the rates of crime would decrease dramatically, how all reasonable doubt would be eliminated from court cases. It seemed like the perfect option.

The news was already being broadcasted via hologram to each citizen’s living room, take-out was as easy as pushing a few buttons on your building’s vending machine, and learning a new skill was as easy as attending a “hologram hall” -just like an ancient lecture hall, except in the comfort of your home with the prof appearing in front of you- for a few months.

They had determined that the youth learn best from TV. From the mistakes of the past generations, we were being bettered as a society. In the past, adults couldn’t even vaguely recall the structure of a plant cell that they learned in school, but that they could remember the slogan of every commercial. Some education reform groups argued that that was as a result of the different relaxation level of the pupil in their home and at an outside-facility. Others argued that it was simply because TV, no matter the place, was more engaging. So they reached a consensus: Holograms for students in the comforts of their own homes. And they were right! Within a few years, children were learning more, faster, and it wasn’t long before the education board deemed general school durations to be shortened. By the time you were 13, you had enough knowledge to know exactly what you want to specialize in and do it. By the time you were 18, you could graduate with a law degree and begin practice.

So in 2102, I was a graduate of law. Finally, I could begin to work and reap the miraculous benefits of the BrainScan-It. I was going to put the worst of the worst into jail. I was going to perform my civic duty and achieve my life’s purpose of bringing wretched humans to justice. Moreover, I was never going to reach a moral dilemma because I would always know that the right thing had been done. And, for the most part, things had been going exactly as I had thought they would.

My father and his mom raised me, I never knew my mother. My father had told me, when I was 25, that she had been deemed killed when I was a year old. They had never caught the guy. In fact, they had never even found a body. I had hoped, with my entire soul that I could one day bring the person responsible for my mom’s murder to justice. Actually, I had wanted to kill that person myself for depriving me of a mother, for limiting me in my personal growth. But I couldn’t do that because I never knew who that horrid person was.

It was a cloudy day when my mother’s body was found. A serene sort of day when everything feels at ease, but not that good kind of calm – the kind of calm that serves as a memo to the storm ahead. The sky was the perfect shade of gray, a slightly lighter color than concrete, which would imply that it was going to become sunny in the near future. Nonetheless, at the time it was calming and I had gone out with Quinn, my best friend of a long time. (My future wife would go on to describe Quinn as “pretty” for his girlish features and perfect, tan skin. I started to see it myself as I got older and the stigma of judging guys’ physical appearance started to wear off – he was like a work of art: flawlessly beautiful.) Anyways, my house was being renovated, actually demolished, so I had no choice to stay in, but then again, I wouldn’t have wanted to stay in on a day like that. I had earned enough money in my 10 years of law that I could afford something more lavish, and as any guy in that age, I wanted to show-off.

Quinn and I were sorts of hipsters. Unlike our peers, we preferred to travel to the “Space Bagel”, a bagel store on the other side of town. Our other friends would just order from the building vending machine; they were too lazy to make the 7-minute transport to Space Bagel, but Quinn and I were not. There was something nostalgic about going there, and we found the seven minutes and thirty-six seconds of travel to be nice downtime for chatting about girls we slept with recently, assholes who were giving us hard-times, why they hadn’t managed to find a way to alter the weather yet and so on. That day was especially funny; in fact, it was like a sort of foreshadowing to the events, which would manifest themselves in the next few hours.

Quinn started rambling, in his usual demeanor, about all the real chicks I could score in my new crib. It was customary to him to blurt out a kooky laugh in the midst of a sentence. He was one of those people who laughed at everything: his own jokes, even if no one else did, other peoples’ jokes and even hard facts sometimes. I remember that, even in elementary, we would call Quinn “Quirky Quinn”, for his enthrallment with the past. Something drew him to the ways of life 150 years ago. He never wanted to take the efficient path. When he was younger and we were playing, Quinn always wanted to play with the yellow school bus instead of the spaceships. I never understood him, neither did anyone else; he was peculiar in that sense, and it’s probably under his influence that I started to see the seven minutes and thirty-six seconds of chatting, not as a waste, but as a reward.

During our Space Bagel rendezvous I got a call. The phone spoke to me to inform me that it was 7RY21Q, the manager of the demolition crew working on my house. I answered

“3BX67T?”

“Yes, speaking?”

“I’d rather not discuss this matter on the phone, but something alarming has come up with regards to the demolition and we would appreciate your presence.”

“Alright, I’ll be there in 10 minutes”

And he hung up.

Quinn inquired what had happened. I shrugged and laughed it off by saying “incompetence”. Quinn greeted the response in his usual way – by cachinnating. We had been taught from an early age that fear was the enemy of progress and therefore I didn’t fear the fact that something so mysterious had come up that my presence was necessary.

We packed up our stuff and made it onto the transport.

On the transport back, Quinn got a message from a girl, requesting some sort of comfort after breaking up with her boyfriend. It was too good an offer to pass up on for him, so, with a wink; he quickly diverted transports and headed over like a knight in shining armor to help this damsel in distress. I travelled, gazing out at the seemingly endless sky.

When I got to the site of my future home, I discovered the entire crew standing idly.

“What’s the problem?” I inquired.

“We can’t demolish this part of the wall.” He obediently responded.

“Why? Something to do with pipes, or…?”

“Actually, there seems to be some sort of steel encasement in the wall. We didn’t want to demolish until we checked to see that this wasn’t something important to you”

“I inherited the place from my dad when he retired and moved, but I don’t know anything about this.”

“Ok, so would you like us to continue the demolition process?”

“I guess, but try and keep the box together, I want to see what it is.”

“As you wish, sir.”

A few whacks later, nothing remained of the house I had once known except a steel box. After a relentless attack by crowbar by a Middle-Eastern looking man, the box opened.

Inside was a perfectly preserved, mummified corpse. I didn’t see the body behind the wrapped bandages, nor would I have wanted to, but common sense told me that it was perfectly preserved because of the lack of exposure to the elements. Whoever had killed the person had obviously put a lot of effort into keeping them beautiful. After some inspection by the police and the Coroner’s office it was found to be my mother’s body. My mother’s body in my father’s house. In my state of terror, I immediately assumed that suspicion would fall to me first, and that, that was scary, but naturally it didn’t. Looking back, I think that that is what I regret the most: the fact that my first reaction to my mother’s corpse was not one of sadness or grief, but one of selfish fear.

After a few weeks, the dust had settled. My mom was discarded, as all dead bodies were, to outer space. The prime suspect, my own father, was in custody, along with his assumed accomplice, his mom. I was the prosecutor in charge.

Despite the fact that my superior was an android, he had had enough humanity to ask me if I had wanted to take on the case, if I felt fit to do so, if my human emotions could be pushed aside in favor of unraveling the truth. My first instinct was no. How could I ever use a cool head to bring my father to justice for the murder of anyone, let alone my mother? But that was the fear inside of me talking, and fear is the enemy of progress. I was in no position to block progress; I had no right to do so. I was a prosecutor. I signed up knowing I’d have to deal with gruesome situations. I signed up with the intention of doing what was right. I was a servant of the state, and nothing was to come between that. My parents were my parents, but more importantly they were citizens, citizens like you, like me, like Quinn, like the waitress in the Space Bagel and like everyone else. They were not above the law, and I was not to let them be. Equality is prosperity, and giving my parents’ case special privilege was not treating them as equals. 

Naturally, Quinn was strongly opposed to me taking on the case. He spoke about emotions, and with utter disregard for the ideals of our nation. He said that treating people as equals was important, of course, but that these were my parents, not just some strangers. He claimed, with complete confidence, that this case would be the end of me. That the sheer horror I’d go through would change our relationship, my career and me. He begged me pass up on the case and let someone else handle it.

“No one would blame you.” He announced.

“But I would blame myself. I can’t stick my head in the sand. They’re my parents!” I refuted him.

And it was with that statement that I agreed to take on the case of my parents.

I went to Quinn’s house, my makeshift workspace until construction of my property was completed. Despite Quinn’s opposition to my decision, he did let me use his house to work, but our relationship was becoming increasingly strained and tense. I set up my case file. All signs pointed to my dad. I knew how this would turn out. No amount of hope would change that.

The day had finally come. I went to the Earth holding facility where my dad was being held for the BrainScan-It to work it’s magic. I asked him to recount the events leading up to the murder of my mother, and without hesitation, in an almost obliged tone he responded:

“Ilya, you know that I love you. But I never loved your mother. She was never fit to be a mother. She was crazy: in love with the past, living in a constant state of fear, an obstacle in the path of progress. She loved you more than other children, and opposed equality as a by-product. But she had the perfect gene set-up. She was beautiful, and her I.Q. was exponentially high. Her hopeless romanticism allowed me to woo her, and you were born. For the first year of your life, we needed her to feed you, but after that Lucille and I could manage. I couldn’t let her have a say in how you were raised, to let her poison you with some ideals of the past.  She was crazy. Lucille was the epitome of a perfect mother; her raising you was a much safer idea. We were great parents – you’d attest to that, surely. Your mother is Lucille. Clare was simply your gene donor.”

The BrainScan-It beeped. At this point an inexplicable fear struck my heart. My mind flooded with memories and thoughts about our society. It was as if time stopped and everything disappeared. I could feel and hear my own heart beating; my head felt like it was submerged under water. My father’s conformity to the ideals of the state had justified murder in his mind; murder of a person, who now seemed strikingly similar to my best friend.

“But why kill her?”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen. I wanted to simply divorce her and take custody of you, but she refused. She felt a puzzling intimacy towards you and refused to give me custody. I asked mom what to do and she said we had no choice.”

The BrainScan-It let out another beep.

“Lucille told you to do this?”

“Please don’t call her Lucille, she’s ‘mom’ to you. Well, we were left with no choice, Clare was incredibly persistent.”

Another beep.

“I was her son, why wouldn’t she persist?”

“You see, her genes were great, except for this part. You seem to have the same sort of passé view. You were her son, but you were a citizen like everyone else. I know that she would not have persisted if you weren’t her son.”

A final little beep protruded from the BrainScan-It. It was the signal that the statement made by the subject was true. I looked at him; at his stoic eyes, his remorseless lips, and his sterile, brainwashed figure. My mind raced, my blood boiled and I frantically looked around the room, desperate to find something to kill him with. But there was nothing. The rooms were designed to keep the peace. And so I fantasized.

“You’ll have to forgive me someday, Ilya. You’ll see that what I did was good.”

I frapped the door for the guard to let me out and after a small intermission, where I spilled tears onto the ground; I made my way to Lucille’s holding cell.

“Ilya, darling, you do look charming today!” She proclaimed.

“Lucille, you encouraged John to kill my mother, didn’t you?”

“Darling, I know you’re upset but that’s no reason to not call me ‘mom’. And I did, only because she left us with no choice and we wanted what was best for you. That woman was no good for you, or your dad“

Again, I frapped on the door and was let out by the guard.

I realized that, in a way, she was the mastermind of it all. My father was weak and succumbed to all of her commands. I hated them both and did my utmost to make sure that their sentences were maximal. My lengthy career had given me a definite intimacy with judges, so they heeded my recommendations for sentences almost blindly. I came to the conclusion that the greatest punishment for them both was to separate them, so I requested that they be sent to different outer space prisoner colonies and my request was accepted. They wailed when being separated and I realized that the only person either of them could ever truly love was the other.

At their final goodbyes to me they were noticeably angry and refused to communicate with me, rather continued weeping at their separation. I went to my father and I said one thing to him:

“Don’t cry, she’s just another citizen – you wouldn’t cry if it wasn’t her.” And I left the room.

When I got to Quinn’s house, I decided that I should try and make amends, but I never really succeeded. As the days progressed, our affair drifted further and further apart. We went separate ways. This wasn't a messy and vile case of friends becoming foes – it was a drifting apart. Slow and steady, but sure. The type of scenario where, after the friendship, there are no hard feelings, no backstabbing, no gossip - just neutrality. In hindsight, Quinn was right: that case took away my morality and my humanity – it changed me. I was different.

Despite everything, I do not regret for one moment disregarding Quinn’s advice and taking on the case. I was brave, as I should’ve been. I saw the travesties that exist in the world and I am glad to have done so. I couldn’t have lived my life with my proverbial head in the proverbial sand.

After that case, I retired. I had enough money, I had a house (minus a mummy) and I had met a girl.

I never heard, nor did I try to hear, what happened to Lucille and John. I heard that Quinn had gotten married, had a few kids and encouraged them to study history. I did see him, only once after though, at a bar, while on vacation with his family. I invited them over to our place, but Quinn said that they couldn’t make it.

I felt like I had received my, not daily, not weekly, not yearly, but lifetime dose of evil, and as if I didn’t need any anymore, ever. When my girlfriend got pregnant with our first kid, we moved out to a tropical place; leaving everything behind. We started life anew. When our daughter was born, I felt as if my life was complete and as if everything was somehow going to work itself out – and it did. We lived completely carefree, and I still do, as a very happy, very proud grandpa of three.