Journal [Entry 077] Audio Memory... The Truth is Out There

[extantlaw]

[Static; a quiet buzzing that blends into the sound of voices - excited yet hushed - none of them quite audible enough to make out words. Heels on a marble floor; the creak of a door; the faint sound of a distant hubbub and the rattle of a hundred camera shutters before everything is muted again.

Then there's a voice that's louder than the rest -

Comments

[interveningly]

I wonder if this memory is a 'a truth' - or just another means of tormenting us.

[extantlaw]

[His voice is clear of any inflection - not quite cold, but certainly cool.]

The truth is not always pleasant, or something we wish to hear.

[interveningly]

Many of us have heard unpleasant truths this week. That and the desire to find out the whole of our pasts is not mutually exclusive.

[extantlaw]

That is hardly a revelation.

[stonyfaced]

[Stoneface's voice is relatively quiet and musing.] Hah. Sounds like you've got good lawyers wherever you're from. First time I've heard your voice in a while, Justice.

[extantlaw]

I believe that Wright was a man of principle.

[His own voice is flat and somewhat weary, but there's a spark of sarcasm, still.]

If you presented me with more cases to examine, Mr Vimes, we might meet more often.

[stonyfaced]

I'm certain he was, [He says agreeably. He never struck Vimes as very smart per se, but principled enough. And he isn't one to quarrel over someone else's intelligence as he knows his own can be a bit...lacking. Better to be a dim, good man than a smart, wicked one.]

I'd probably present you with more of 'em if we had ones to study. Most of them tend to be pretty straightforward. When two blokes are brawling in the street, there's not many questions to be asked.

[extantlaw]

[Justice knows that tone, Mr Vimes. The "I'll just agree and save myself an argument" approach. And he knows it because it was one of Truth's tactics.

But he's not about to let this devolve into public argument about Truth's relative merits. Besides, it's not something that Justice can prove with evidence or testimony - that in every way, Truth was a better person than he was himself. Or that somowhow, he knows that it was his failure which had allowed Truth - then the other, the twin - to be removed from the Sphere. So he bites his tongue.]

Indeed. I suppose that I should be grateful for the relative lack of wrongdoing lately.

[wayofflowers]

An elegant speech, Edgeworth-san.

[extantlaw]

Thank you. But I don't believe I intended it as such.

If it is even real.

[wayofflowers]

An eloquent statement, then. And... you do not think what has been broadcast are true memories?

[extantlaw]

I have no way of proving whether the memories that we are given are true or false. Or whether those who leave are returned to their lives.

[A long pause, but really he's somewhat tired of trying to be positive, despite how much Truth had impressed on him that he should.]

Many people are content to believe it. I am not so easily satisfied.

[proudambassador]

Truth. So for you, there is only one? And yet, every story, it has many sides, no?

[extantlaw]

[He sounds tired, and a little irritable.]

No two people will use the same words to describe a sunset. And yet it is still a sunset.

[proudambassador]

A sunset, that is a simple thing, hm? Suns, they are not subjective. A fight, now that, it is subjective. Who said what, who did what, what happened next. That, you will have to figure the truths out for.

[extantlaw]

Even a fight has only one sequnce of events. That is the Truth.

The rest is interpretation - claim and counter claim. Those are the paradoxes that we must seek to erase.

[ghost_of_00]

Only one truth?

[extantlaw]

There is only ever one truth, though there maybe different aspects of it.

[ghost_of_00]

That seems too simple.

[extantlaw]

If it was simple, we would all know our names.