ORAL ARGUMENT OF MR J. R. M. SNEEK ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONERS:     “Mr Chief Justice, may it please the court, I have the great honour of representing the fine city of Gothametropolis York in their suit against Mr Al B. Harper.

    We hold that Mr Harper is a dangerous and irresponsible scientist, whose illegal experimentation has endangered the lives and damaged the property of the citizens of GMY. In particular we cite his creation of a robot killing machine incorporating illegal offworld technology withheld from government custody through misuse of Mr Harper’s status as a so-called superhero, and the recyling of human body parts in contravention of numerous ethical and legal statutes.

    We will bring evidence to demonstrate that this killing machine, named by Harper as Yuki Shiro after the deceased individual from whom he acquired his body parts, ran amok in Gothametropolis, causing property damage, trespassing on state property, and assaulting a number of police and security personnel before attempting the abduction of Mayor Velma Klein.

    The court will doubtless hear from defence that this device is in fact a living person, a human with a major prosthetic. Court will also note that there is no precedent for recognising such an extreme biological to robotic conversion, that there is no evidence for continuity of personality once Ms Shiro’s brain was illegally removed from her corpse, and that Mr Harper has failed to offer details of his process for verification by the wider scientific community to test his bizarre assertions.

    Your honours, the city and people of Gothametropolis are tired of so-called superheroes behaving as if they are above the law. They are tired of special pleading by individuals and groups who expect different standards of behaviour and ethics to apply to them alone. They are tired of the fear of vigilante rule. And they are tired of being threatened in their homes by the creations of mad scientists who hide behind membership of elitist paramilitary groups to shield them from the consequences of their illicit experiments.

    The city and state of Gothametropolis York therefore brings claim against Mr Harper for compensation for damages caused by his creation, and for punitive and legal costs. We will be seeking a settlement of three hundred and ninety million dollars. We further seek the confiscation and destruction of the killer robot in question. Additional criminal charges are being laid against Mr Harper for his illegal medical operations, for withholding advanced technology from government custody, and for recklessly endangering human life.

    We believe that our suit is a moral crusade. A line must be drawn against those who would be above the law, those who think themselves better than the common man, those who threaten the common good. Men like Al B. Harper.”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “I, Al B. Harper, swear to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me God.”

MS L. L. WALTZ, FOR THE DEFENCE:    “Dr Harper – I note counsel for the prosecution has conveniently ignored your eleven doctorates, including an advanced medical degree from Harvard – Dr Harper, would you please explain to the court the circumstances under which you constructed a new body for Ms Yuki Shiro?”

DR A.B. HARPER:    “Of course, Ms Waltz. Yuki is a private detective. She helps the little guy. She takes the dangerous cases. One of them was too dangerous, and she was, well basically blown up. By the time she got to Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital she’d already stopped breathing.”

CHIEF JUSTICE DANIELS:    “Excuse me Dr Harper, but did I understand you to say that Ms Shiro had died?”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “Not quite, your honour. She’d stopped breathing and her cardiac functions had ceased. That wasn’t surprising given that she’d lost an arm and the lower part of her body and had ninety percent body burns. But there have been documented cases of brain revival over fifteen minutes after lifesign termination. I was able to devise a way of oxygenating her brain, keeping the blood pumping there while I came up with an alternative to her dying.”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “Describe the alternative please, Dr Harper.”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “Well Ms Waltz, I’d been working on an android body. Just as a hobby, for relaxation. Yuki had been kind enough to model for the frame some time earlier, so it was easy to adapt the robot shell to match her actual specifications. I just needed to redesign the brain pan then come up with an interface system that allowed an organic brain to control a computer that operated the mechanics.”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “Did you have such an interface system available to you?”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “It so happened I did. I was still sorting through salvage and junk from the Technopolis War for the Lair Legion…”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “This would be the invasion from Technopolis that you were an instrumental factor in defeating, Dr Harper? The time you shielded Gothametropolis York from transnuclear death?”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “Yeah, that one. So I found a bio-technical interface harness and managed to adapt it. It’s a fairly simple mechanism, but we don’t have the tools to manufacture them here on Earth so far. That’s why I can’t make robot bodies for all the profoundly disabled people out there. Not yet. So I just assembled all the bits, popped in Yuki’s brain, and hey presto, she’s back in business.”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “So Yuki is the same person she was before her accident in all except her physical condition?”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “Sure. Despite Velma Klein trying to kill her.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Objection!”

CHIEF JUSTICE DANIELS:    “Sustained. Ms Waltz, control your witness.”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “Consider him controlled, your honours. You’ll have to pardon him if he sometimes accidentally speaks the truth about what happened that night that Mayor Klein deserted her city in the face of an oncoming invasion and tried to fly away in her helicopter. So, moving on…”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Dr Harper, have you ever done contract work for the US Government?”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “Well sure. Lots of times. But I can’t talk about it because it’s defence-industry related. And of course I’ve worked for the Lair Legion, first as a consultant and then as an Associate Member, and they have government authorisation…”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “So there’s really no proof of your so-called government service at all. No record of you at all for a period of over a year when you just vanished. How would you define your standing in the academic scientific community?”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “I publish things. I lecture. People come.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “You were specifically excluded from last year’s WeirdSciCon, were you not, Dr Harper?”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “They let me in after I pulled the conference hall back from the dimensional vortex and helped defeat Ultizon.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Your peers regard you with distaste, suspicion, and distrust, do they not? I have written testimony and can call witnesses who describe you as criminally dangerous, pathologically irresponsible, and a clear and present danger to society. I have statements from your own college room-mate, the respected ZOXXON consultant Professor Brock Lydekker…”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “Objection, your honours. Professor Lydekker is involved in litigation with my client right now over patent ownership of the technology used in Yuki’s body. He is clearly a hostile witness. If the court requires it I can bring testimony to Dr Harper’s genius from Dr Day-Vincent, Professor Wrichards…”

CHIEF JUSTICE DANIELS:    “So noted, Ms Waltz. Continue please, Mr Sneek.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Dr Harper, have you had sex with your robot girl?”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “I beg your pardon?”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Intercourse, Dr Harper. Do you use your creation to gratify your carnal desires?”

DR A. B. HARPER:    “That’s none of your business.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Court will note that Dr Harper refuses to answer under oath about whether he is fornicating with a sex machine. Did you create this killer robot, implant it with the stolen brain of a dead woman, in order to satiate your lusts?”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “Mayor Klein, we’ve all been fascinated by your version of the events of the night the city of Gothametropolis York was threatened by giant monsters from the radioactive Wasteland. But somehow your account seems to have neglected the concerted attempt by the robot criminal cadre the Machine Shop and by dozens of other mercenaries to kill Ms Shiro in the streets of her home city. Were those attacks allowed to take place because you had given permission for them, or were you and your police force merely incompetent?”

MAYOR V. J. KLEIN:    “Ms Waltz, I have yet to see any evidence not fabricated by your Lair Legion that any such attacks took place at all.”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “Perhaps your grasp of evidence is as shaky as your grasp of the truth. When Ms Shiro had to seek you out to preserve her life, I understand your first instinct was to abandon the people you represent and flee for the West Coast?”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Objection. My client is not the defendant here!”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “Your honours, I’m seeking to establish that Mayor Klein had every reason to fear meeting Yuki Shiro because she knew she’d given permission for Ms Shiro to be hunted down in the streets, despite the danger to other residents. When she was confronted, she guiltily ran away.”

MAYOR V. J. KLEIN:    “Al B. Harper’s killer robot ploughed through my security. Of course I evacuated.”

MS L. L. WALTZ:    “Yet remarkably when she caught up with you on your chopper she didn’t kill you. Which one of you showed the finer human characteristics, would you say, Mayor Klein?”

MS HALLIE:    “I’m Hallie. I’m a heuristic artificial life learning intelligence entity, a computer sentience. I was created in part from the brain-patterns of a murdered computer scientist, but unlike Yuki who retains her personality because she is the same person she was before her accident, I am a new being. I am also one of the foremost experts on artificial intelligence on the planet, as witnessed by my long list of journal publications, patents, and articles.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Your honours, publication of an article does not prove sentience. Nor is this machine code a citizen of the United States. We might as well allow a cash register to come in and give evidence.”

MS HALLIE:    “Your honours will be well aware that there are a growing number of robotic lifeforms in this country, and that they continue to campaign for legal recognition of their rights as sentient beings. They cannot prove their sentience any more or less than organic thinking beings can, but they have been accorded a measure or respect by the law in several states because they meet exactly the same criteria for sentience as homo sapiens. I think, I feel, and I know my subject.”

CHIEF JUSTICE DANIELS:    “Court will confer to discuss the validity of this… entity as an expert witness for the defence.”

CHIEF JUSTICE DANIELS:    “The court is not willing to recognise the entity Hallie without further evidence, but we will permit the entity Yuki Shiro to take the witness stand.”

MS Y SHIRO: “Well thanks a bunch. I’m really touched. No, honestly. I’m basking in the warmth of your generosity.”

CHIEF JUSTICE DANIELS:    “Ms Shiro, you will conduct yourself befitting a court of law or you will be bound over.”

MS Y SHIRO:    “You can only do that if I’m human. So fine me. Case closed.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Your honours will note and the record will show that the entity Yuki Shiro has problems with authority, has an abrasive and aggressive attitude presumably derived from the damaged functions of her necrotic vestigial brain, and demonstrates even here that she is a clear and present danger to society.”

MS Y SHIRO:    “I’m only a danger to the scum who need it. Like your boss Vera Klein, and her sleazy boss Harry Flask, the Lynchpin.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “I move to have those unwarranted remarks struck from the record.”

MR A. J. ARMBRUSTER, FOR THE WITNESS:    “Objection, your honour. Defence is willing to bring evidence that Harry Flask is indeed very sleazy.”

MS Y SHIRO:    “Want me to describe the case we’re reconstructing against the Lynchpin of Crime and his buddies? It starts with the ascension of Mayor Klein back during the last election’s murderthon, and it ties in with what happened to the Dark Knight and Crying Clown, to the break-outs at the Safe, to the private army of ex-cons that Velma Klein calls her GMY police force, to the disappearance of key witnesses that could…”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Objection! Court must order this witness to answer question directed to her, not to make unfounded allegations on matters not pertinent to the malfeasance of Al B. Harper.”

CHIEF JUSTICE DANIELS:    “So ordered. Restrain yourself, Ms Shiro, or you will be restrained. Mr Armbruster, please advise your client to obey the rules of the court and explain the consequences of not doing so.”

MR A. J. ARMBRUSTER:    “Right away, sir. She’s deeply mortified at having to be told off like this by a big important judge. Honestly. She’s almost in tears.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Ms Shiro, you claim to be the same woman who died in an explosion two years ago. My fundamental question to you is: How do you know?”

MS Y SHIRO:    “Pardon me?”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “How do you know? How can you prove that you’re the same person that clinically died on the way to Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital? Why couldn’t you be a computer program linked to a decayed human brain, a piece of software designed to think that you’re Yuki Shiro? Prosecution will bring evidence to show that many sexbots have implanted personalities to enhance their owner’s enjoyment of them.”

MS Y SHIRO:    “How do you know that you weren’t stolen by aliens last night and replaced with a mind-wiped doppleganger? How can anybody, cyborg or not, prove they’re who they were yesterday?”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “It’s not for us to prove that, Ms Shiro. It’s your… lawyer’s assertion that you are not in fact Al B. Harper’s bed-toy killing machine but an actual human in a robot shell. This extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof. If verified it would mean that you were liable to criminal charges for your assault on Mayor Klein and Gothametropolis York, whereas we assert that you are in reality a mindless machine created by the mad science of an unethical fanatic.”

MR A. J. ARMBRUSTER:    “I guess I need to object to that, actually. My client Ms Shiro was acting on behalf of the Lair Legion that night. It says so in deposition number… well, you can get the number off Snookie later and just type it in to the court record, okay? But Sir Mumphrey Wilton covered it pretty good. Ms Shiro was legit.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “As legitimate as Hatman and Mr Epitome were when they brawled on the streets of Gothametropolis just last week and were arrested for it?”

MR A. J. ARMBRUSTER:    “Hey, if we can’t bring in all the stuff about the fat guy being Lynchpin of Crime and Vera Klein being so far up his backside she can kiss him with tongues then you can’t raise that stuff about the Hat-guy and the Flag-guy being framed.”

MR J. R. M. SNEEK:    “Let the court record show that Ms Shiro had no answer to the demand that she prove her sentience or continuity of personality from that of the living being whose name she has adopted, your honours. Now, about your relationship with your master, Al B. Harper…”

ARGUMENT OF MS L. L. WALTZ ON BEHALF OF THE DEFENDANT:    “The court is trying to treat this lawsuit as just another case. It isn’t. The world media outside shows that. The massive political pressures brought to bear on the judiciary shows that. The timing of the case, starting at the time of the SR 1066 vote, shows that. The references made to events far outside the purview of this case that many have felt are relevant to the motivations and mechanisms of the principals show that.

    Here we are, at the start of a lengthy and hopefully expensive piece of litigation designed to cripple one man, and through him to smear a group of heroes whose service to this planet has been manifest. It is intended to sway the minds of the public against metahumans, to justify the unconstitutional legislation now being illegally proposed to our elected representatives. It is meant to bedazzle us all, to draw our attention away from the growing threat of alien invasion from the villainous Parody Master and the even closer threat of the destruction of our liberties through oppressive, intrusive, obscene laws.

    Al B. Harper has done nothing to be ashamed of. Al B. saved a life the best he could, using his genius to assemble a solution that nobody else was able to. Al B. has risked his life again and again to save this world and its people from danger and destruction, and despite his treatment in this court today he undoubtedly will do so again.

    Yuki Shiro is a hero too. She has demonstrated all the virtues and fallibilities of a human being. And I know fallibilities, boys, as a good thirty percent of you here know! If she’s not human, none of us are. But if she’s caring and moral and she works for the greater good of society, does it even matter if she’s human or mutate or robot or alien? Shouldn’t we be asking a person’s worth, not the accident of their condition?

    Mr Chief Justice, your honours, I’m asking that you declare this case a mistrial. There’s no way it can be fairly heard in the present climate. There’s no case if Yuki is a person not a robot controlled by Al. There’s no value in the false claims made by Velma Klein and her secret backers about the things that Yuki did to defend herself anyhow.

    But your honours, whatever you decide, Al B. Harper and Yuki Shiro and the Lair Legion will still stand to defend humanity, because that is what is right. It’s what heroes do.”

This image is by Dancer. The one at the top of the page is by Vizh.

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