At long last the tests were over. The Judgment Machine was ready.
The discovery of the Justice Particle had changed everything. The country’s top theological scientists had worked night and day to turn theory into reality. Twenty years to construct, and then five in controlled trials, and now they stood on the brink of transforming the world.
Standing forty feet high, and fifty across, it loomed in black onyx, surface slick to the touch and cold as ice. They built a fortress to house it, placing armed guards at the perimeter.
Deep inside, the Justice Machine throbbed in its artificially darkened chamber. An occasional blinking light or mechanical tongue-click the only clue to its presence.
The initial trials had been a great success. Its impeccable programming, combined with the Particle’s omniscience, made it the perfect judge. Free from bias and sentiment it reached into souls and delivered judgment. This was not an artificial intelligence, or being, it was simply access to objective fact without recourse to emotion or pity or rage.
The Machine did not simply know the law of the land. It knew the reality of our hearts. It saw the unseen, its word incontrovertible, unappealable evidence.
The day had come and The Machine was to create what the papers dubbed Full Spectrum Justice. They hooked it up to a thousand printers while teams of workers in yellow t-shirts loaded them with ink and paper. Then, to sound of great applause and the clatter of camera shutters, Lord Justice Measles flipped the switch.
It did not hum, it did not splutter into life. It glowered. It processed. It digested our transgressions.
When they returned in the morning the printers had been working all night. Judgment after judgment. The Machine peered into the dark cells of our minds, weighed the secrets of our lives. Stacks of immaculate warrants lay waiting to be picked up by the newly formed squads of Paladins. Their hands the hand of infallible justice.
The media went berserk. That first day three hundred murderers were rounded up. Cold cases stretching back decades, where no physical evidence or witness remained to tell the tale. The Justice Particle saw all.
Some were torn from their families screaming indignant outrage. A few hung their heads and sighed in relief that, at last, the burden of their guilt could be lifted. And then there were those who heard the knock on the door with cold nausea in their throats. They gulped down poison, or throttled themselves with makeshift garrotes. Choking on the horror of their truth.
Who could deny the righteousness of this day? Pathetic specimens, cringing in darkness, who sought to thwart the public’s vengeance. Who would defend them? This historic cleansing moment was unprecedented in human history.
Over the coming week the machine vomited out the names and addresses of a million drink drivers. One offence or a hundred, last week or three decades ago, the crime was the crime. Forgotten the offence? It made no matter. Arguing that no harm was done fell on deaf ears, in fact there were no ears at all. The Justice Machine saw all, and it knew where you were to be found.
At first a trickle of people handed themselves in at police stations but soon it was a flood. Law breakers queued down the street, hoping to mitigate their sentence before the Paladins arrived.
The printers kept churning out names. Those who’d ever taken recreational drugs, every instance heaped upon next. Anyone who’d been in a fight, stolen a tenner or made a little money on the side. Every transgression was assessed. The only limit, the capacity of the printers to reel off names and the Paladins to find their quarry.
As the weeks rolled by Lord Justice Ronald Measles was aghast. He was whiter than white, in every sense. Personally, he had never broken a single law, not once, but he was not blind. Everywhere shops closed down, hospitals failed, schools emptied of teachers. There was no person alive who did not know someone subject to this summary justice. No family was untouched, no work place unaffected.
Each judgment was correct. Each one undoubtedly a criminal act under the statute books. But as millions were herded into hastily-built detention camps the economy ground to a halt. The riots began. All aspects of human endeavour began to sputter and fail under the weight of society’s sins.
Glasgow declared itself a Free City. Goons blockaded every entrance to the city to keep justice out. The Machine ordered tanks to surround and crush those who would deny retribution. But the army was collapsing under the weight of arrests. Its blockade amounted to barely anything at all.
Measles could see this was the path to annihilation. The end of everything. The incarcerated began to starve as supply lines faltered. Citizens began refusing to comply. With anything. This was not what they had asked for. Was it?
Gathering together a small group of former Justices, Measles outlined the plan. Unplug the Machine. The harvest must end if any of them were to survive.
And so, in the dead of night, Measles and his band set off to end this reign of righteous tyranny. They whispered to each other that they would be heroes. They congratulated themselves on their courage.
But. When they arrived they found themselves surrounded by hard eyes and uniforms. Paladins.
“Your honour,” the head thug said, not unkindly, “please, come with us.”
“On what charge, sir?” Measles raged, the fire of decades of privilege in his stare.
“Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice my Lord. Please. Let’s not make a fuss.” He held out his hand to the judge, as if to lead him away like a child.
Measles cried out in despair. “You don’t have to do this! You can aid us! This must end!”
The squad leader shrugged. “Can I? The first team refused and now they rot in a cell. I have to feed my family, what’s left of them. You,” he regarded them all with a sneer, “the high and mighty of this Earth, should never have turned on The Machine if you had no desire to feel its icy hand on your skin.”