NOTE:

This is sample portion ONLY. To request this manuscript, click here.

_______________________________________________________________________

Perfect Justice

by

Jason R. Peters

One

Aiden struggled against the urge to speak out as they fastened his restraints. He ached to tell them how so very wrong they were, but it would have been futile. His protests would be ignored. What could he say that every other prisoner hadn’t already said a hundred times?

The System was perfect. The System didn’t make mistakes.

Today, the System was wrong.

Inevitably, they would discover their error, but this was little consolation. By then it would be too late. Still, Aiden had to try one more time. He couldn’t simply give up and let them win.

“I’m innocent,” he said flatly.

Nobody cared. In the background, someone even chuckled. Jackass, Aiden thought. But that was all the acknowledgment he got; no one else even glanced at him.

Aiden wondered what his lawyer was doing right now. Sipping sherry in a luxury condo? Providing legal advice to a gang leader who would walk as a result?

The most worthless people on earth are the ones who bill for hundreds of dollars an hour, he thought, savoring the irony.

Aiden’s handlers plugged him into the latest hardware, the victim’s record already queued.

Full of nervous energy, Aiden’s mind began to play word games: Victim’s vision! Vicious viction! Vive la vision! Recognizing this might border hysteria, Aiden forced himself to breathe calmly. Beneath his apprehension lay an undercurrent of curiosity. Whatever horrors awaited, this would be his first experience with Replay, also available for commercial and entertainment use.

Under other circumstances, it might be downright adventurous.

“Is he ready?” someone asked.

“Who cares? Do it,” one technician replied.

“Sweet dreams,” the first added cruelly.

Someone across the room typed a command. Aiden’s world vanished like an extinguished light.

Two

There was no sense of viewing, as one would have with a holoplay or VR. One moment, Aiden was himself, strapped to a chair in the Justice Lab. The next moment, he was someone else entirely:

A woman named Ellen.

Am I going crazy? Aiden thought in a panic. Something was-

The thought slid from him as quickly as dry ice skittering across a table.

For a fraction of a second, Ellen’s clothes felt alien to Aiden. He wouldn’t have even known what they were called, except that now he was Ellen, and Ellen knew.

Black open-toed platforms with stacked heels. A cream-colored A-line skirt which matched her three-quarter-sleeves blazer. A black square-neck top with a modest neckline to offset the outfit.

The biggest shock to Aiden was how uncomfortable he (she) was. He felt the exquisite foot ache of a workday spent in heels, the too-sharp wires of Ellen’s brassiere digging into her torso.

For an instant only, Aiden clung to his own identity, registering the differences between his mind and Ellen’s. Then his own thoughts disappeared like water into a drain, and Aidan was no more. Only Ellen remained.

Three

Ellen was afraid. Somewhere, deep within her, fear seemed irrational, unjustified. She tried to grasp that inner confidence, but it was gone as soon as it was noticed, and only fear remained.

The street was familiar, but it looked different in the dark. Menacing. Harmless shadows danced in the corners, magnified by imagination into looming monsters.

Winter hovered stubbornly in the April air, like an unwelcome guest childishly threatening not to leave. Ellen shivered, wishing she’d brought a heavier coat. Her heels clicked coldly against the concrete, their rhythm providing a heartless soundtrack for her journey.

She wondered why she’d decided to come this way alone. There were no open shops this way. The apartment windows above were barred and impenetrable. A thousand unseen eyes might have hidden behind them, watching. It was a surreal feeling.

Something was wrong.

Four

“Something’s wrong,” said a technician.

“What?” Dr. Stevenson snapped with deliberate impatience.

“I think you should look at this sir.” The technician hovered uncertainly by a monitor. His name badge identified him as Marcus.

“What’s the problem, Mark?”

Marcus pointed to the display. “This pattern here.”

Stevenson sighed. “I know how to read the pattern. Save me the trouble and tell me what you see.”

Marcus hesitated, suddenly unsure. “Doctor, this wave-pattern doesn’t read like a perpetrator.”

Dr. Stevenson frowned, grabbing the monitor and swiveling it to face him. The kid was wrong; this pattern was familiar.

“This pattern is correct,” he asserted. “You just haven’t seen this version before because you’re new.”

Marcus looked unconvinced, but he was unwilling to press the issue. Stevenson mentally shrugged and returned to the administration terminal.

Five

Ellen wasn’t alone after all.

The realization brought no comfort. She was being followed.

About thirty feet back, a large man stalked lazily after her. There was a reckless arrogance about him, that of a cat toying with its prey. How long had he been back there? Ellen couldn’t remember when she’d first become aware of him. He had stepped gradually into her consciousness with the same deadly arrogance as he now followed her.

Stop it, she told herself firmly. You’re imagining things. You’re scaring yourself over nothing. Not every man is a thug. She took shuddering breaths which failed to calm her. Perhaps not every man was a thug; but a man alone following a woman in a dark alley?

Miserably, Ellen wondered again why she had chosen this route home. But when she expected the memory of her course of action, none came. She was startled to discover that she couldn’t even remember where she was coming from. Dinner? A show? A meeting? A date?

Nothing came to mind; no images or sounds, no locales, people, or words. Not even a vague echo of her earlier emotions could be discerned.

That’s impossible, she thought. She’d had to come from somewhere, hadn’t she? Drawing upon all her mental faculties, she tried to force herself to remember.

I…came…from…

Six

Ellen was afraid. Somewhere deep within her-

What?! Part of her thought, bewildered. This already happened!

Something was very wrong.

Seven

A warning note flashed on Dr. Stevenson’s screen in angry red.

“What the hell?” he began, getting to his feet. He glanced at Marcus. Had the kid screwed up?

But Marcus was managing his station competently, if nervously. Dr. Stevenson looked over the rest of his staff, but they had all stopped to stare at him.

Resigning himself to the fact that he might have to clean up after someone else, Stevenson turned back to his monitors. Typing furiously, he brought up half a dozen different readouts and began comparing them.

Soon enough, he found the discrepancy, chuckling with relief. He told the software to cancel the warning. His staff was still staring at him in alarm.

“It’s okay,” he assured everyone loudly, making a calming gesture. “Most of you haven’t seen this before. It’s rare, but it’s normal. It’s a kind of self-induced regression. Only the most fearful subjects trigger it.”

“Self-induced regression?” a woman asked.

“The subject loops backward in the experience to avoid what’s coming up.”

“They can do that?” Marcus asked, surprised.

“It happens,” Stevenson shrugged. “It doesn’t help, though. With each loop, emotions are doubled in intensity. It only gets worse in the end.”

Eight

Plagued by déjà vu, Ellen retraced the route she was certain she’d already taken. Every sight, every sound became annoying in repetition. The empty windows above, the shadows in the alley, the staccato clicking of her heels on the street.

What the hell is going on? she wondered.

The sense of repetition was so strong, Ellen even began to expect things before they happened; this glance, that sound. In a moment, she would become aware of a man following her. She knew it first, and then it happened, just as she had known it would.

Her confusion and fear were relieved momentarily by the appearance of a third person. Up ahead, a second man leaned against the wall. Ellen’s spirits soared; she was not alone with her stalker after all.

No sooner had she thought this when the man turned to face her. His eyes slipped unmistakably to her breasts, a greedy grin splitting his face maliciously. He further dashed Ellen’s hope of protection when he waved to the man behind her.

Ellen stopped, unwilling to walk closer to the lewd weasel ahead. But the man behind crept closer.

She was trapped.

Nine

“Dr. Stevenson?” Marcus spoke up tentatively.

The doctor looked up from his station.

“Yeah?” he said, trying not to be irritated.

“How many times can a subject repeat a regression loop?”

“To be honest, I don’t really know. In theory, it could happen hundreds of times.”

The kid stared in horror. “Hundreds?” he asked.

“Possibly,” Dr. Stevenson shrugged. “The loop is caused when the mind begins to predict what’s ahead and rejects the situation; like waking from a nightmare. The subconscious knows the event isn’t really happening, and so it tries to provide the conscious mind with a means of escape. The problem is that there’s nowhere to go.” He pointed at the unconscious Aiden strapped to the Replay bench. “The subject can’t simply ‘wake up’ in the traditional sense, and the recording that’s being fed to him is restricted to just this one event. He’ll be forced to relieve it over and over, more vividly and painfully each time, until he has experienced the entire event.”

Marcus wasn’t satisfied. “But what specifically can cause rejection? I mean, why does it happen to some people and not others?”

“Only the most violent or horrific crimes will be rejected by the mind. When the subconscious recognizes the course of action leading to the crime itself, the subject becomes even more terrified than was possible for the original victim. This is because, having committed the crime, on a very deep level, he realizes exactly what he’s about to go through.”

“But the regression doesn’t help?”

“Not a bit,” Dr. Stevenson assured. “It makes it thousands of times worse. For one thing, the subject forces himself to relieve the earliest portions over and over. Secondly, the software is programmed to amplify emotions with repetition. And thirdly, anticipation of an event always heightens the experience to levels the event itself wouldn’t create.”

Someone else chimed in: “Like that vacation you’ve been waiting for forever.”

“Exactly right,” agreed Stevenson. “It applies to pain as much as to pleasure.”

“And there’s no way to avoid the crime entirely?” Marcus asked.

“None whatsoever. The worst crimes create the worst possible punishment.” He smiled at the beauty of it. “It’s a perfect system.”

Ten

“Hello, Kitten,” Weasel said, coming closer. His voice was surprisingly deep for his size. He tongue flicked out and swiped rapidly across his bottom lip in a truly disgusting fashion.

Ellen took a step back, preparing to run, and anxious not to lose her footing in heels. But Thug had caught up to her, and he shoved her roughly forward. She stumbled, regaining her balance.

“I’ll scream,” she warned them.

Weasel laughed at that, shaking with real mirth.

“We’re counting on it,” Thus said.

She would have to kick her heels off to run, Ellen realized. But not before she did some damage with them.

When Weasel stepped closer, she aimed a kick for his groin with all her might. She remembered hearing somewhere that a truly powerful strike should aim behind your target rather than directly at it. She imagined a point about twenty inches behind him when her foot flung out.

It didn’t do any good. He caught her ankle deftly in one hand and upended her onto her back. The rough concrete knocked the wind from her, and the shoe from her kicking foot fell off. Before she could scramble to crawl away or climb back to her feet, Thug firmly planted a foot in her belly, pinning her.

Weasel knelt before her and reached up her skirt, and she could feel him fumbling with her thighs as she pressed her legs firmly together. His hands were ice cold, and now she did scream; not as a calculated defense mechanism, as she had intended earlier, but instinctively out of rage and terror.

She clawed franticly at the leg trapping her, ripping at it with nails and trying to push it aside, but the more she struggled, the more firmly it dug into her, robbing her of breath. Her scream fell away, faint and useless as she gasped for air.

_______________________________________________________________________

NOTE:

This is sample portion ONLY. To request this manuscript, click here.