Dorothy From Kansas, Part 8
Meet Georgia Monroe! I'm a little unsure about this one. For one thing, she has a much smaller introduction than Miguel or Xiaoli. For another, I'm not sure the trial format works. Finally, I'm worried that the character is not very likable. Anyway, feedback please!
NOTE : The reason there's no date at the beginning of the trial transcript is that this trial takes place at the end of my story, and I'll have to finish writing the story to know exactly what date that will be. For now it's blank. When the story is done, I'll go back and fill it in.
Court Transcript : Trial of Georgia Monroe
Property of Pickering Insurance
Date :
Location : Conference Room, SDV Michael, On Patrol Near Saturn
Commanding Officer Major Richard Vasquez acting as Judge-For-Hire.
Major Richard Vasquez and Defendant Georgia Monroe are present in the conference room. The prosecuting and defending AIs are present through virtual imaging.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Gentlemen, I know this isn’t really much of a courtroom, but it’s the best I could do on such short notice.
PROSECUTION : Nonsense, this will do fine, Major, assuming the defense has no objections.
DEFENSE : We do not. In addition, I would like to take this time to thank Major Vasquez for acing as judge-for-hire in this unique situation. However, I would like to state for the record that despite the fact that this trial is being presided over by an American military officer onboard an American military vessel, this is still a Duncanite court, and American law should have no part in these proceedings.
PROSECUTION : I, too, would like that noted for the record.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : I understand the term Judge-For-Hire. You needn't worry, my statist beliefs will not effect my judgment. All right, let’s being then. Prosecution, will you read the charges?
PROSECUTION : The protection company Mutual Assured Defense on behalf of it’s client Pickering Insurance hereby charges Georgia Monroe with the following : Mutiny, Hijacking, Six Counts of Attempted Murder-
DEFENSE : Objection! Major, the defense wishes the court to make a ruling as to whether attempted destruction of a bioroid or an AI constitutes murder.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : The court finds that both bioroids and AIs are sentient creatures and, therefore, attempts to destroy them do constitute murder.
DEFENSE : Major, even your own nation considers bioroids and AIs to be-
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : You were the one who just insisted that my nation’s laws had no place here, so I have the freedom to rule on my own opinion, and I say a bioroid or an AI is no different than a human being. Prosecution, you may continue.
PROSECUTION : Six Counts of Attempted Murder, and One Count of Aiding and Abetting a Xox.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Defense, how do you plead?
DEFENSE : The protection company Kinetic Logic on behalf of it’s client Georgia Monroe hereby pleads not guilty to all charges by reason of insanity.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Very well. Prosecution, call your first witness.
PROSECUTION : On behalf of Mutual Assured Defense, I call Georgia Monroe to the stand.
Georgia Monroe floats down the conference table, taking up a position next to Major Richard Vasquez.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Do you swear to tell nothing but the entire truth under penalty of perjury?
GEORGIA MONROE : I do.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : The prosecution may begin it’s questioning.
PROSECUTION : Ms. Monroe, where were you born?
GEORGIA MONROE : I was born on Plymouth Rock, an asteroid in the main belt.
PROSECUTION : And you lived there most of your life, did you not?
GEORGIA MONROE : I did.
PROSECUTION : Will you describe for the court the settlement of Plymouth Rock?
GEORGIA MONROE : It was typical Duncanite colony, albeit with a particular reverence for America’s founding fathers. It was founded in 2073, it has a population of a little over two hundred, and it’s main industry is producing nuclear pellets for spaceship fuel.
PROSECUTION : What about government?
Georgia Monroe groans audibly.
GEORGIA MONROE : As you well know, it has no government, just like all Duncanite settlements. We rely on corporations and the free market to provide us with everything that the statists back on Earth rely on their governments for.
PROSECUTION : Indeed, even this trial is being conducted by a mutual agreement between two defense corporations. No government is involved at all.
GEORGIA MONROE : We’re all aware of that, what’s your damned point?
PROSECUTION : Georgia Monroe, are you an anarchist?
GEORGIA MONROE : I am not a terrorist.
PROSECUTION : You haven’t answered my question.
GEORGIA MONROE : I prefer the term anarcho-capitalist.
PROSECUTION : But you don’t believe in government, do you?
GEORGIA MONROE : No, I don’t, but-
PROSECUTION : So if a terrorist was attempting to bring down Earth governments, you would be all for it, wouldn’t you? Mankind would be better off without government, isn’t that what you believe?
GEORGIA MONROE : That’s not what I-
PROSECUTION : That’s why you were so willing to cooperate with a terrorist infomorph, isn’t it? Is this court honestly supposed to believe that the infomorph known as Legion just happened to coerce an admitted anarchist who already agrees with everything that infomorph stood for?
DEFENSE : Objection! Major, the Prosecution is attempting to appeal to your statist sympathies. In addition, he is attempting to portray all Duncanites as dangerous terrorists!
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Sustained. Prosecution, you will stop this line of questioning. Ms. Monroe, you don’t have respond to those questions.
GEORGIA MONROE : Yes I do.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Ms. Monroe-
GEORGIA MONROE : With all due respect, Major, you’re not one of us. You don’t understand Duncanites, you don’t understand my people, and I am not going to allow that slanderous bullshit to just rest in your mind without being refuted! I think I should have a chance to respond.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Fair enough. Go ahead, Ms. Monroe.
GEORGIA MONROE : It’s true, Duncanite society does not believe in government. We went out into the asteroid belt to found a new society, totally separate from the nation states of Earth. However, the important point there, the point relevant to this discussion, is that we left the nations of Earth. We didn’t commit acts of terrorism, we didn’t rebel, we didn’t even fucking protest. We just left. Yes, I do not believe in government, but that is my choice. Duncanite society is about anarcho-capitalism, but it is also about freedom. That means the freedom to choose whatever life you want including one living under the flag of a nation. Duncanites have never been a threat to mainstream culture, in fact, many of our corporations conduct trade with statist companies. We chose a different way, but we have no desire to impose our choice on anyone else. We are a live and let live kind of people, and we have never, ever been a threat to Earth society. That is my culture, that is my background, and if you were a real Duncanite instead of an AI programmed to win at all costs, you would have never made such a low, despicable argument against our people.
A long period of silence follows.
PROSECUTION : Well, if the Major refuses to allow me to question Ms. Monroe’s political leanings, the prosecution rests, for now. However, the prosecution reserves the right to re-question the witness after cross-examination. The prosecution also want it’s objection to the exclusion of this line of questioning noted for the record.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : So noted, although as I understand the Judge-For-Hire system, you have no higher authority to appeal to.
PROSECUTION : The prosecution would still like it’s objection noted.
Major Richard Vasquez laughs audibly.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Objection so noted. Defense, your witness.
DEFENSE : Thank you, Major. Ms. Monroe, where were you last employed?
GEORGIA MONROE : Onboard the USV Bebop-Maru as a bounty hunter.
DEFENSE : And can you explain how you came to be employed on the Bebop?
GEORGIA MONROE : I replied to an add in the Teralogos News Service.
DEFENSE : And that add was placed by a Ms. Faye Valentine, was it not?
GEORGIA MONROE : Yes, it was.
DEFENSE : Please describe for the court your first meeting with Faye Valentine.
PROSECUTION : Objection! Relevance?
DEFENSE : Major, the nature of the relationships that the defendant formed with the people she allegedly betrayed is very relevant. It goes to whether or not the defendant would have committed these acts were she in a stable frame of mind.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Overruled. Ms. Monroe, please answer the question.
GEORGIA MONROE : Well, as I said, I first met Faye Valentine after replying to her add in the Teralogos News Service. She said she was looking to hire a contract enforcer to work as a bounty hunter aboard her employer’s vessel, a vessel about to be built. The add repeatedly referred to the vessel in question as a vessel “designed for bounty hunting”, which made me realize immediately that I was dealing with an amateur. There’s no such thing as a spaceship designed for bounty hunting, just like there’s no such thing as a car designed for bounty hunting. The add listed Tanaka Eto as the captain of the hypothetical vessel, and I decided to do some research. I paid to have an NAI sent out to the Earth Web, conduct research on Tanaka Eto, and have everything it found sent back to me. In about a day, I had basically a complete biography of Tanaka Eto. It turned out that he was an extremely old, extremely rich Japanese man who had spent his life building a robotics company only to start selling it off in his old age. Given the add, I could only assume he was selling everything off in order to afford to pay for the spaceship in question. The whole thing sounded pretty dicey. It didn’t seem like Mr. Eto had any experience or business captaining a spaceship, and given the fact that he was soliciting crew members with simple adds, it looked like the crew would be made up of complete strangers. It didn’t look like this would be a reliable ship.
DEFENSE : So then why did you respond to the add?
GEORGIA MONROE : Well, ships made primarily for bounty hunting are pretty rare, and it’s rarer still to find a job offer on one. I had been working as a contract enforcer for seven years and I-
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m going to have to interrupt you there. You say you’d been working as a contract enforcer for seven years?
GEORGIA MONROE : That’s right.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : But you can’t be much older than twenty two.
GEORGIA MONROE : I’m twenty, Major. I was nineteen at the time.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : You started working in law enforcement at the age of twelve?
GEORGIA MONROE : Is there no possibility we can get a judge more familiar with our culture?
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : This was the ship that apprehended you, and I was the only person onboard that both protection companies would agree to as a judge. As you know, it was either have the trial now, with me, or wait for four or five months in our brig until we come into a Duncanite port. Would you rather wait?
Georgia Monroe sighs loudly.
GEORGIA MONROE : No, of course not. Lets do this now.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Good. Now explain to me how you came to start your career at the age of twelve.
GEORGIA MONROE : Most Duncanites have decided that adolescence is a meme our society cannot afford. On Earth, you allow your children to have a period in their teens where they are nothing but unproductive leaches living off their parents money, going to schools that are little more than day care centers, and spending all their time obsessing about fashion trends, pointless philosophical questions, and sex. Duncanites have decided that adolescence is a luxury. Through deep learning techniques and psychological conditioning, our children are ready to start their adult lives at the beginning of their teens. I started my apprenticeship as a contract enforcer at the age of twelve, my apprenticeship lasted four years, and at the age of sixteen, I was ready to work solo. You understand?
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Yes, I understand, although in the future, you may try to explain your society without insulting mine so much.
GEORGIA MONROE : I’m sorry, Major, but they do exist in contrast to one another.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : In any case, you may continue.
GEORGIA MONROE : As I was saying, ships meant primarily for bounty hunting are quite rare, and it’s rarer still to find a job on one. I had been working for seven years, and I’d never received an offer to work on such a ship. All of my career, I had been booking passage on other ships. Duncanite colonies tend to have populations in the hundreds, thousands for the really big ones, so many of them don’t see all that much traffic. For a contract enforcer, or a bounty hunter, booking passage on someone else’s ship is time consuming, inefficient, and thoroughly exhausting. So, I didn’t think I should turn my nose up at this, even if it did seem like a ship of fools.
DEFENSE : So that was when you replied to the add?
GEORGIA MONROE : Yes. I sent out my resume and told Ms. Valentine that I was currently in pursuit of a criminal. I was onboard the USV Hemmingway, but I would be at the asteroid settlement of Kafka in three days, which was where I expected to apprehend my target. I told her she should meet me there.
DEFENSE : And did she?
GEORGIA MONROE : Yes. I arrived at Kafka on March 16th, 2100. She contacted me the moment I got onboard the station, asking when we could conduct our interview. I told her that I still hadn’t apprehended my fugitive and she would have to wait. I understood her impatience, though. Kafka didn’t rent out cybershells and we Duncanites don’t maintain much of a web on our stations, so there really wasn’t that much for an infomorph to do except travel around the station as a virtual image. Anyway, I found my mark getting drunk in Kafka’s one and only bar, bragging about how he managed to ditch me back on Ceres. I nicked him with really no trouble and brought him back to the Hemmingway which had agreed to transport him back to Ceres where the crime occurred. I had planned to go with them, but the Hemmingway was gonna stay in port for a few days, so I had time for my interview. I rented a room on Ceres and told Ms. Valentine I was ready to meet.
DEFENSE : What were your first impressions of Ms. Valentine?
GEORGIA MONROE : I didn’t like her.
DEFENSE : Are you sure-
GEORGIA MONROE : I know you told me not to say that, but it’s the truth. I didn’t like her. I had been told my whole life about how Earth people were soft and weak, about how depending on your government for everything robbed you of all your self reliance. I have to be honest, I saw all of that in Faye Valentine. Faye Valentine was an Earth child through and through. She had this wide-eyed childlike way of looking at everything that I found thoroughly annoying. Even when we were in my hotel room, her v-image kept looking around gapejawed, flabbergasted by the zero-G layout. Her first questions to me didn’t even have anything to do bounty hunting! She started asking if all Duncanite settlements were zero-G like Kafka, she asked me if we were all Tennins, she asked about my foot manipulators, and I just kept answering, hoping at some point we would get to the actual interview portion of the interview. “Yes, we all live in zero-G, no, we’re not all Tennins, only most of us, yes, my feet can really grab like hands...” she went on and on and on and I just kept answering. We just floated there, her apparently having the time of her life, me thoroughly annoyed. I later learned that she was from the year 2019 and had only been living in my society for a few months, which shed some light on her behavior. Still, it was an irritating interview.
DEFENSE : Let’s move on to the point where you actually discussed the ship with her.
GEORGIA MONROE : All right. Eventually, she started telling me about the yet to be built USV Bebop-Maru. She told me that the ship would be devoted just to bounty hunting, it wouldn’t even hall cargo. That kind of shocked me. The closest I had ever seen to that a ship that bounty hunted primarily but still hauled cargo on occasion to make ends meet. I told her that I didn’t think a ship could turn a profit just bounty hunting, and she just kind of laughed at me. She told me that our future captain had enough money stashed away to keep the ship running for a while, and that he wasn’t in this to make a profit. She then anticipated my question before I asked it and started telling me why Tanaka had built this ship. She started telling me about how Tanaka had spent his whole life building a corporation and it had never made him happy. She told me about his desire to be a hero. Apparently, Tanaka felt like his life up until this point had been basically meaningless, and he wanted to change that.
Georgia Monroe laughs loudly.
GEORGIA MONROE : The old man had decided that in his last few years of life, he was going to strike out into space and become some kind of hero, like he was Al-Azar out of The Golden Jihad or something. It was nuts, but believe it or not, it actually struck a chord with me. It made me think of my home colony, Plymouth Rock. My parents were originally Americans, and they were patriots, through and through. In a way, they still are. When I was a kid, they used to tell me stories about the founding fathers like they were Gods. My parents believed more than anything in the spirit of America, but as their lives went on, they watched their country become more and more intrusive, more and more socialist, more and more about big government, like the European Union. They didn’t like the way their nation was going. They didn’t like the idea of paying taxes to a nation that they felt had betrayed it’s core beliefs. They certainly didn’t feel like raising children in that nation. Now, most people, when faced with this situation, would simply find like minded people to complain about it to and vote libertarian every four years, but what did my parents do? They found a few dozen other wealthy libertarian Americans, pooled their money together, and decided to get themselves an asteroid and join the new Duncanite society forming in the Belt. They did something totally impractical and reckless because of their ideals. Tanaka Eto was doing kind of the same thing. He was abandoning his Earth life and striking out into the deep blackness of space in order to find his dream. It moved me. It still does, especially now after what happened.
Georgia Monroe stops talking and takes a deep breath. Her eyes well up with tears. She wipes them away.
DEFENSE : Do you need a moment?
GEORGIA MONROE : No. No, I’m fine. Anyway, it was nuts, but it moved me. Besides, even though I didn’t think the ship would be very profitable, I had always felt held back by the fact that I had to book passage on other ships. I figured that if we had a ship that was doing nothing but bounty hunting, we should be able to catch far more fugitives than I would be able to on my own, even if we did end up with a crew that had no idea what they were doing. So, I made her a deal. I would work on the Bebop, but I didn’t want to be paid a salary. Instead, I wanted twenty percent off of every bounty we brought in. In addition, Faye told me that I was the only experienced bounty hunter they would be hiring, so I wanted some assurance that Tanaka would defer to me when it came to matters of actually tracking a criminal down. I told Faye that I wanted to reserve the right to quit at any point if I didn’t feel the ship was being run well. I figured that would mean that Tanaka would have to listen to what I had to say. Oh yea, I did ask for one more thing.
DEFENSE : What was that?
Georgia Monroe looks down and blushes.
GEORGIA MONROE : I... uh... I asked that when this was all over and done with, I wanted Tanaka Eto to pay for an all expense paid tour of America for me, including the flight from and to Earth Orbit and the physical therapy I would need to be able to walk in Earth gravity. I know it sounds silly, but my parents had always been talking about the homeland, and I just wanted to see it once. I’m probably not getting that trip now, am I?
Georgia Monroe laughs quietly.
GEORGIA MONROE : Faye forwarded all of my requests to the old man back on Earth, and in a few hours, we had his reply. I told Faye that I had a lot of red tape to deal with regarding my prisoner, and I would appreciate it if she would leave me alone until we got an answer. I didn’t, I just wanted Faye to leave me alone. Anyway, when we got our answer, Tanaka had agreed to all of my conditions, to my surprise. He said that if I could get to Ceres, he could book me a flight from Ceres to Mars Orbit, and then a flight from Mars Orbit to Earth Orbit. The whole thing would take about two months. Thankfully, the Hemmingway was already headed to Ceres, so I told Faye I would agree join her crew and that I would see her in person in about two months. She said, “Welcome aboard, Georgia!” to me in this happy, obnoxious voice that sounded like a cartoon squirrel. I told her thank you, and she left to transmit herself back to Earth. I hopped onboard the Hemmingway and hoped that I would eventually get used to her.
DEFENSE : Tell me about when you met the rest of the crew.
NOTE : The reason there's no date at the beginning of the trial transcript is that this trial takes place at the end of my story, and I'll have to finish writing the story to know exactly what date that will be. For now it's blank. When the story is done, I'll go back and fill it in.
Court Transcript : Trial of Georgia Monroe
Property of Pickering Insurance
Date :
Location : Conference Room, SDV Michael, On Patrol Near Saturn
Commanding Officer Major Richard Vasquez acting as Judge-For-Hire.
Major Richard Vasquez and Defendant Georgia Monroe are present in the conference room. The prosecuting and defending AIs are present through virtual imaging.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Gentlemen, I know this isn’t really much of a courtroom, but it’s the best I could do on such short notice.
PROSECUTION : Nonsense, this will do fine, Major, assuming the defense has no objections.
DEFENSE : We do not. In addition, I would like to take this time to thank Major Vasquez for acing as judge-for-hire in this unique situation. However, I would like to state for the record that despite the fact that this trial is being presided over by an American military officer onboard an American military vessel, this is still a Duncanite court, and American law should have no part in these proceedings.
PROSECUTION : I, too, would like that noted for the record.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : I understand the term Judge-For-Hire. You needn't worry, my statist beliefs will not effect my judgment. All right, let’s being then. Prosecution, will you read the charges?
PROSECUTION : The protection company Mutual Assured Defense on behalf of it’s client Pickering Insurance hereby charges Georgia Monroe with the following : Mutiny, Hijacking, Six Counts of Attempted Murder-
DEFENSE : Objection! Major, the defense wishes the court to make a ruling as to whether attempted destruction of a bioroid or an AI constitutes murder.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : The court finds that both bioroids and AIs are sentient creatures and, therefore, attempts to destroy them do constitute murder.
DEFENSE : Major, even your own nation considers bioroids and AIs to be-
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : You were the one who just insisted that my nation’s laws had no place here, so I have the freedom to rule on my own opinion, and I say a bioroid or an AI is no different than a human being. Prosecution, you may continue.
PROSECUTION : Six Counts of Attempted Murder, and One Count of Aiding and Abetting a Xox.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Defense, how do you plead?
DEFENSE : The protection company Kinetic Logic on behalf of it’s client Georgia Monroe hereby pleads not guilty to all charges by reason of insanity.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Very well. Prosecution, call your first witness.
PROSECUTION : On behalf of Mutual Assured Defense, I call Georgia Monroe to the stand.
Georgia Monroe floats down the conference table, taking up a position next to Major Richard Vasquez.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Do you swear to tell nothing but the entire truth under penalty of perjury?
GEORGIA MONROE : I do.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : The prosecution may begin it’s questioning.
PROSECUTION : Ms. Monroe, where were you born?
GEORGIA MONROE : I was born on Plymouth Rock, an asteroid in the main belt.
PROSECUTION : And you lived there most of your life, did you not?
GEORGIA MONROE : I did.
PROSECUTION : Will you describe for the court the settlement of Plymouth Rock?
GEORGIA MONROE : It was typical Duncanite colony, albeit with a particular reverence for America’s founding fathers. It was founded in 2073, it has a population of a little over two hundred, and it’s main industry is producing nuclear pellets for spaceship fuel.
PROSECUTION : What about government?
Georgia Monroe groans audibly.
GEORGIA MONROE : As you well know, it has no government, just like all Duncanite settlements. We rely on corporations and the free market to provide us with everything that the statists back on Earth rely on their governments for.
PROSECUTION : Indeed, even this trial is being conducted by a mutual agreement between two defense corporations. No government is involved at all.
GEORGIA MONROE : We’re all aware of that, what’s your damned point?
PROSECUTION : Georgia Monroe, are you an anarchist?
GEORGIA MONROE : I am not a terrorist.
PROSECUTION : You haven’t answered my question.
GEORGIA MONROE : I prefer the term anarcho-capitalist.
PROSECUTION : But you don’t believe in government, do you?
GEORGIA MONROE : No, I don’t, but-
PROSECUTION : So if a terrorist was attempting to bring down Earth governments, you would be all for it, wouldn’t you? Mankind would be better off without government, isn’t that what you believe?
GEORGIA MONROE : That’s not what I-
PROSECUTION : That’s why you were so willing to cooperate with a terrorist infomorph, isn’t it? Is this court honestly supposed to believe that the infomorph known as Legion just happened to coerce an admitted anarchist who already agrees with everything that infomorph stood for?
DEFENSE : Objection! Major, the Prosecution is attempting to appeal to your statist sympathies. In addition, he is attempting to portray all Duncanites as dangerous terrorists!
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Sustained. Prosecution, you will stop this line of questioning. Ms. Monroe, you don’t have respond to those questions.
GEORGIA MONROE : Yes I do.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Ms. Monroe-
GEORGIA MONROE : With all due respect, Major, you’re not one of us. You don’t understand Duncanites, you don’t understand my people, and I am not going to allow that slanderous bullshit to just rest in your mind without being refuted! I think I should have a chance to respond.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Fair enough. Go ahead, Ms. Monroe.
GEORGIA MONROE : It’s true, Duncanite society does not believe in government. We went out into the asteroid belt to found a new society, totally separate from the nation states of Earth. However, the important point there, the point relevant to this discussion, is that we left the nations of Earth. We didn’t commit acts of terrorism, we didn’t rebel, we didn’t even fucking protest. We just left. Yes, I do not believe in government, but that is my choice. Duncanite society is about anarcho-capitalism, but it is also about freedom. That means the freedom to choose whatever life you want including one living under the flag of a nation. Duncanites have never been a threat to mainstream culture, in fact, many of our corporations conduct trade with statist companies. We chose a different way, but we have no desire to impose our choice on anyone else. We are a live and let live kind of people, and we have never, ever been a threat to Earth society. That is my culture, that is my background, and if you were a real Duncanite instead of an AI programmed to win at all costs, you would have never made such a low, despicable argument against our people.
A long period of silence follows.
PROSECUTION : Well, if the Major refuses to allow me to question Ms. Monroe’s political leanings, the prosecution rests, for now. However, the prosecution reserves the right to re-question the witness after cross-examination. The prosecution also want it’s objection to the exclusion of this line of questioning noted for the record.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : So noted, although as I understand the Judge-For-Hire system, you have no higher authority to appeal to.
PROSECUTION : The prosecution would still like it’s objection noted.
Major Richard Vasquez laughs audibly.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Objection so noted. Defense, your witness.
DEFENSE : Thank you, Major. Ms. Monroe, where were you last employed?
GEORGIA MONROE : Onboard the USV Bebop-Maru as a bounty hunter.
DEFENSE : And can you explain how you came to be employed on the Bebop?
GEORGIA MONROE : I replied to an add in the Teralogos News Service.
DEFENSE : And that add was placed by a Ms. Faye Valentine, was it not?
GEORGIA MONROE : Yes, it was.
DEFENSE : Please describe for the court your first meeting with Faye Valentine.
PROSECUTION : Objection! Relevance?
DEFENSE : Major, the nature of the relationships that the defendant formed with the people she allegedly betrayed is very relevant. It goes to whether or not the defendant would have committed these acts were she in a stable frame of mind.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Overruled. Ms. Monroe, please answer the question.
GEORGIA MONROE : Well, as I said, I first met Faye Valentine after replying to her add in the Teralogos News Service. She said she was looking to hire a contract enforcer to work as a bounty hunter aboard her employer’s vessel, a vessel about to be built. The add repeatedly referred to the vessel in question as a vessel “designed for bounty hunting”, which made me realize immediately that I was dealing with an amateur. There’s no such thing as a spaceship designed for bounty hunting, just like there’s no such thing as a car designed for bounty hunting. The add listed Tanaka Eto as the captain of the hypothetical vessel, and I decided to do some research. I paid to have an NAI sent out to the Earth Web, conduct research on Tanaka Eto, and have everything it found sent back to me. In about a day, I had basically a complete biography of Tanaka Eto. It turned out that he was an extremely old, extremely rich Japanese man who had spent his life building a robotics company only to start selling it off in his old age. Given the add, I could only assume he was selling everything off in order to afford to pay for the spaceship in question. The whole thing sounded pretty dicey. It didn’t seem like Mr. Eto had any experience or business captaining a spaceship, and given the fact that he was soliciting crew members with simple adds, it looked like the crew would be made up of complete strangers. It didn’t look like this would be a reliable ship.
DEFENSE : So then why did you respond to the add?
GEORGIA MONROE : Well, ships made primarily for bounty hunting are pretty rare, and it’s rarer still to find a job offer on one. I had been working as a contract enforcer for seven years and I-
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m going to have to interrupt you there. You say you’d been working as a contract enforcer for seven years?
GEORGIA MONROE : That’s right.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : But you can’t be much older than twenty two.
GEORGIA MONROE : I’m twenty, Major. I was nineteen at the time.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : You started working in law enforcement at the age of twelve?
GEORGIA MONROE : Is there no possibility we can get a judge more familiar with our culture?
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : This was the ship that apprehended you, and I was the only person onboard that both protection companies would agree to as a judge. As you know, it was either have the trial now, with me, or wait for four or five months in our brig until we come into a Duncanite port. Would you rather wait?
Georgia Monroe sighs loudly.
GEORGIA MONROE : No, of course not. Lets do this now.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Good. Now explain to me how you came to start your career at the age of twelve.
GEORGIA MONROE : Most Duncanites have decided that adolescence is a meme our society cannot afford. On Earth, you allow your children to have a period in their teens where they are nothing but unproductive leaches living off their parents money, going to schools that are little more than day care centers, and spending all their time obsessing about fashion trends, pointless philosophical questions, and sex. Duncanites have decided that adolescence is a luxury. Through deep learning techniques and psychological conditioning, our children are ready to start their adult lives at the beginning of their teens. I started my apprenticeship as a contract enforcer at the age of twelve, my apprenticeship lasted four years, and at the age of sixteen, I was ready to work solo. You understand?
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : Yes, I understand, although in the future, you may try to explain your society without insulting mine so much.
GEORGIA MONROE : I’m sorry, Major, but they do exist in contrast to one another.
MAJOR RICHARD VASQUEZ : In any case, you may continue.
GEORGIA MONROE : As I was saying, ships meant primarily for bounty hunting are quite rare, and it’s rarer still to find a job on one. I had been working for seven years, and I’d never received an offer to work on such a ship. All of my career, I had been booking passage on other ships. Duncanite colonies tend to have populations in the hundreds, thousands for the really big ones, so many of them don’t see all that much traffic. For a contract enforcer, or a bounty hunter, booking passage on someone else’s ship is time consuming, inefficient, and thoroughly exhausting. So, I didn’t think I should turn my nose up at this, even if it did seem like a ship of fools.
DEFENSE : So that was when you replied to the add?
GEORGIA MONROE : Yes. I sent out my resume and told Ms. Valentine that I was currently in pursuit of a criminal. I was onboard the USV Hemmingway, but I would be at the asteroid settlement of Kafka in three days, which was where I expected to apprehend my target. I told her she should meet me there.
DEFENSE : And did she?
GEORGIA MONROE : Yes. I arrived at Kafka on March 16th, 2100. She contacted me the moment I got onboard the station, asking when we could conduct our interview. I told her that I still hadn’t apprehended my fugitive and she would have to wait. I understood her impatience, though. Kafka didn’t rent out cybershells and we Duncanites don’t maintain much of a web on our stations, so there really wasn’t that much for an infomorph to do except travel around the station as a virtual image. Anyway, I found my mark getting drunk in Kafka’s one and only bar, bragging about how he managed to ditch me back on Ceres. I nicked him with really no trouble and brought him back to the Hemmingway which had agreed to transport him back to Ceres where the crime occurred. I had planned to go with them, but the Hemmingway was gonna stay in port for a few days, so I had time for my interview. I rented a room on Ceres and told Ms. Valentine I was ready to meet.
DEFENSE : What were your first impressions of Ms. Valentine?
GEORGIA MONROE : I didn’t like her.
DEFENSE : Are you sure-
GEORGIA MONROE : I know you told me not to say that, but it’s the truth. I didn’t like her. I had been told my whole life about how Earth people were soft and weak, about how depending on your government for everything robbed you of all your self reliance. I have to be honest, I saw all of that in Faye Valentine. Faye Valentine was an Earth child through and through. She had this wide-eyed childlike way of looking at everything that I found thoroughly annoying. Even when we were in my hotel room, her v-image kept looking around gapejawed, flabbergasted by the zero-G layout. Her first questions to me didn’t even have anything to do bounty hunting! She started asking if all Duncanite settlements were zero-G like Kafka, she asked me if we were all Tennins, she asked about my foot manipulators, and I just kept answering, hoping at some point we would get to the actual interview portion of the interview. “Yes, we all live in zero-G, no, we’re not all Tennins, only most of us, yes, my feet can really grab like hands...” she went on and on and on and I just kept answering. We just floated there, her apparently having the time of her life, me thoroughly annoyed. I later learned that she was from the year 2019 and had only been living in my society for a few months, which shed some light on her behavior. Still, it was an irritating interview.
DEFENSE : Let’s move on to the point where you actually discussed the ship with her.
GEORGIA MONROE : All right. Eventually, she started telling me about the yet to be built USV Bebop-Maru. She told me that the ship would be devoted just to bounty hunting, it wouldn’t even hall cargo. That kind of shocked me. The closest I had ever seen to that a ship that bounty hunted primarily but still hauled cargo on occasion to make ends meet. I told her that I didn’t think a ship could turn a profit just bounty hunting, and she just kind of laughed at me. She told me that our future captain had enough money stashed away to keep the ship running for a while, and that he wasn’t in this to make a profit. She then anticipated my question before I asked it and started telling me why Tanaka had built this ship. She started telling me about how Tanaka had spent his whole life building a corporation and it had never made him happy. She told me about his desire to be a hero. Apparently, Tanaka felt like his life up until this point had been basically meaningless, and he wanted to change that.
Georgia Monroe laughs loudly.
GEORGIA MONROE : The old man had decided that in his last few years of life, he was going to strike out into space and become some kind of hero, like he was Al-Azar out of The Golden Jihad or something. It was nuts, but believe it or not, it actually struck a chord with me. It made me think of my home colony, Plymouth Rock. My parents were originally Americans, and they were patriots, through and through. In a way, they still are. When I was a kid, they used to tell me stories about the founding fathers like they were Gods. My parents believed more than anything in the spirit of America, but as their lives went on, they watched their country become more and more intrusive, more and more socialist, more and more about big government, like the European Union. They didn’t like the way their nation was going. They didn’t like the idea of paying taxes to a nation that they felt had betrayed it’s core beliefs. They certainly didn’t feel like raising children in that nation. Now, most people, when faced with this situation, would simply find like minded people to complain about it to and vote libertarian every four years, but what did my parents do? They found a few dozen other wealthy libertarian Americans, pooled their money together, and decided to get themselves an asteroid and join the new Duncanite society forming in the Belt. They did something totally impractical and reckless because of their ideals. Tanaka Eto was doing kind of the same thing. He was abandoning his Earth life and striking out into the deep blackness of space in order to find his dream. It moved me. It still does, especially now after what happened.
Georgia Monroe stops talking and takes a deep breath. Her eyes well up with tears. She wipes them away.
DEFENSE : Do you need a moment?
GEORGIA MONROE : No. No, I’m fine. Anyway, it was nuts, but it moved me. Besides, even though I didn’t think the ship would be very profitable, I had always felt held back by the fact that I had to book passage on other ships. I figured that if we had a ship that was doing nothing but bounty hunting, we should be able to catch far more fugitives than I would be able to on my own, even if we did end up with a crew that had no idea what they were doing. So, I made her a deal. I would work on the Bebop, but I didn’t want to be paid a salary. Instead, I wanted twenty percent off of every bounty we brought in. In addition, Faye told me that I was the only experienced bounty hunter they would be hiring, so I wanted some assurance that Tanaka would defer to me when it came to matters of actually tracking a criminal down. I told Faye that I wanted to reserve the right to quit at any point if I didn’t feel the ship was being run well. I figured that would mean that Tanaka would have to listen to what I had to say. Oh yea, I did ask for one more thing.
DEFENSE : What was that?
Georgia Monroe looks down and blushes.
GEORGIA MONROE : I... uh... I asked that when this was all over and done with, I wanted Tanaka Eto to pay for an all expense paid tour of America for me, including the flight from and to Earth Orbit and the physical therapy I would need to be able to walk in Earth gravity. I know it sounds silly, but my parents had always been talking about the homeland, and I just wanted to see it once. I’m probably not getting that trip now, am I?
Georgia Monroe laughs quietly.
GEORGIA MONROE : Faye forwarded all of my requests to the old man back on Earth, and in a few hours, we had his reply. I told Faye that I had a lot of red tape to deal with regarding my prisoner, and I would appreciate it if she would leave me alone until we got an answer. I didn’t, I just wanted Faye to leave me alone. Anyway, when we got our answer, Tanaka had agreed to all of my conditions, to my surprise. He said that if I could get to Ceres, he could book me a flight from Ceres to Mars Orbit, and then a flight from Mars Orbit to Earth Orbit. The whole thing would take about two months. Thankfully, the Hemmingway was already headed to Ceres, so I told Faye I would agree join her crew and that I would see her in person in about two months. She said, “Welcome aboard, Georgia!” to me in this happy, obnoxious voice that sounded like a cartoon squirrel. I told her thank you, and she left to transmit herself back to Earth. I hopped onboard the Hemmingway and hoped that I would eventually get used to her.
DEFENSE : Tell me about when you met the rest of the crew.