“All rise,” the cute blond bailiff said as she and another woman exited the judge's chambers. I wasn’t sure what the second woman's job was. She had always sat at a little desk in front of the Judges while the bailiff sat to the judges right. The bailiff said that same line each of the previous times I had been here, sadly each of those previous times this was followed by my lawyer getting the case put off for ‘discovery’. Each of those previous times I had also been viewing the proceeding through a video feed from prison. Finally, I was part of the process in person.

“The honorable Annet Millachle presiding.” With that, the judge passed the bailiff and continued on to her seat. This judge had previously set the date over for my case five times over the last three months. This was the first official date of my trial and would probably be the most important day of my life, one way or the other.

My lawyer, who I had mentally dubbed ‘the little weasel’, patted my arm lightly. He probably thought he was providing me some comfort rather than making me mentally recoil. I would like to pretend that I called him the little weasel only because of his behavior. Sadly I can’t claim to be that mature. With his slight buck teeth and prominent nose combined with his twitchy behavior, ‘the little weasel’ was dubbed before his later attitude made it a reasonable accolade. The little weasel at our first meeting, which had been fourteen days after being arrested and held in jail mind you, said that he could understand my actions and my anger. That he understood why I would want to harm those ‘damn artificials’ and that while he didn’t agree with my actions, he could relate and see why I would act.

I was dressed in a nice suit, my hair combed, my face shaved. I was supposed to look like a professional young man; clean cut and above all else, not guilty. I found this hilarious since it was obvious I was guilty, that had in fact been the point of my action. This trial for everyone was not an intention to ascertain guilt or innocence instead it was a political play in order to provide the local politicians a bit of grandstanding which they knew would play well for them while costing them basically nothing.

The judge was a jowly woman of significant girth, but my assessment of people had changed pretty significantly since I had spent some time inside and dealing with the legal profession. This judge was actually pretty nice overall, her demeanor and appearance reminded me of a pit bull, but her minor acts of kindness during this whole process had provided a smile or two when I was at my lowest and had kept me from tumbling deeper into a jailhouse depression. At one of the previous proceedings, she had noted that I had not been afforded yard time and had demanded I be allowed at least a one-hour period each day. I still saw her as part of the screwed up system that I was being screwed by, but she didn’t seem to enjoy screwing me, which at this point to me seemed like an important point.

After the bailiff continued onto her legal mumbo jumbo detailing the date, the lawyers present, the legal transcriptionists name, she pushed on to the meat of the matter. “The State of Oregon vs Shawn Bradshaw now in session.” I couldn’t help myself and let out a tiny sigh. We were finally, officially, in session.

I had told my lawyer, Wendell Builder-Smith, that I would like to enter a statement into the case at the start. My lawyer was either expecting me to throw myself on the mercy of the court -something that would in no way help at this point or for this crime- or I was about to enter in a long political screed. The little weasel was paid by the state and this case was a slam dunk for the state right from the start. I was guilty, the evidence was overwhelming and was political gold. I’m betting he was guessing I was going for the long political diatribe. Looking at his face I think I could see him mentally composing his televised interview for after this initial session. I could see him smirk a bit as he stood and said with more than a bit of a flourish “My client would like to enter a statement into the record.”

I could see a few of the officers of the court tense as I stood up. I don’t know why. I might be a large guy, six foot two, a bit hefty with more of it in muscle than fat, but I was also chained ankle to ankle and hand to hand. Heck, my wrist chain was even connected to the chain of my ankles which was chained to a bolt in the floor. The walk from the secure elevator to the courtroom at the start had been more than a bit painful. I lumbered like a gorilla with more motion from swaying left and right then my feet moving forward. I wasn’t going anywhere and I wasn’t going to be hurting anyone. Though I guess the fact that I was arrested on explosive charges and the news reports had upped the perceived danger I represented.

I tried for a slight cough to prepare myself but my wrist chains wouldn’t allow me to raise my hand to my face without bending uncomfortably down. With a deep breath, I prepared. I needed to get this all out at once, clearly, without letting myself be interrupted. I wouldn’t get a second try at this and a failure here would have me being dropped into some dark hole. I had memorized this line and I needed it to be perfect.

“Pursuant to the United Sentient Agreement, paragraph five, section c. I hereby formally request processing through the Digital legal system. Pursuant to the United Sentient Agreement, paragraph twelve, section b. I hereby formally request asylum from the United States of America”. I had rushed a bit at the end, but I managed to get all of it out without being interrupted or pausing.

I eyed the transcriptionist. I could see that he didn't understand what those statements meant. He probably hadn’t figured out what I was doing until I had said the word ‘asylum’ but the moment I had I could see his head snap up, but his fingers didn’t stop typing. Not that what he had typed would matter overall, but it was nice that it would be in the human record along with the official Digital record, the one that mattered when it came to my continued life.

Technically I didn’t need to request asylum since the moment I requested to be processed through the Digital legal system I was essentially untouchable by the human courts. I just felt I needed to get it all out there for the human legal system. It was one last F-you before processing out.

The little weasel and his district attorney counterpart looked like they were constipated, faces scrunched in anger and frustration. From the look of the little weasel I’m betting that he just realized that he wouldn’t be allowed to grandstand through the entire trial, he wouldn’t be allowed to be a part of the trial.

There was no way he would allow this chance to pass him by and he grabbed my arm and attempted to yank me back to my seat, there was little chance of him succeeding to pull me down against my will but I slowly sank down anyways. I had said what I needed to say.

With a sneer, he whispered to me, “you won’t make yourself a martyr by going with the digital courts. They don’t allow grandstanding in their system. They will just order a read and enter it into the record.”

I nodded at him as I chuckled slightly. I was almost giddy by this point knowing that my plan had worked out at least this far. “I know”, I said with a bit of a smile as I looked the little weasel in the eye, “I’m the one who tipped off Digital Protection Services”.

The look of utter confusion on the little weasel's face made me grin in glee. I spent months listening to him utter anti-Digital insults and how what I had done shouldn’t be illegal at all. Considering that plan could have resulted in dozens of deaths, I wasn’t exactly comfortable with him. If I had been the man the evidence indicated I was, I would have preferred him to be professional but personally disgusted.

The judge could see that I had short-circuited the entire process by my statement and with what I can only call a twinkle in her eye leaned into her voice pickup. “Mister Bradshaw, if you wanted to be represented in the Digital legal system, why did you request the American legal system?”

I couldn’t believe I was being given this chance. This was perfect and I was almost grinning ear to ear. It appears this judge was unhappy with the games which were being played with the legal system but that she was unable to change. I upgraded my opinion of the honorable judge Annet Millachle, she was a beautiful individual. I was leaning forward when the little weasel cut me off, he literally placed his arm in front of me as he leaned forward to talk into the voice pickup, a mental hangup that no one seemed to be able to avoid. The voice pickups could hear every conversation in the room clearly and could filter and annotate every voice with identification and text transcription. The transcriptionist was purely for the American legal system, an anachronism which showed clearly the bias still floating around.

“Your honor, my client has had a significantly difficult time in prison and…” the judge quickly cut the little weasel off. “I asked Mister Bradshaw, Mister Builder-Smith, please allow your client to answer the question”. The more I dealt with this judge the happier I was. While I’m certain she would have let this fiasco play out through the legal system but in the moment I had handed her a way within the rules to cut through the bullshit and she was going to take it.

The judge continued, “Mister Bradshaw, why did you request the American legal system if you had intended to be processed through the Digital legal system?”

“Your honor. At no time was I allowed to request the Digital legal system. My lawyer, without my consent, entered a plea for the American legal system.” and with those words, I am betting I just tanked mister Builder-Smith’s legal career. Falsification of legal documents is one of the few ways a lawyer can bite the dust quickly. None of this was going to be affecting me, though. Anything that happens here would be unlikely to matter in the Digital system, but I was taking some pure delight in this. After months of the legal system dragging my ass around and playing with me for purely political reasons, knowing that my bull in the china shop statements is going to kick over some of those same individuals? Priceless.

“Mister Derner, were you aware of this?”, I was unsure who that was until the District Attorney coughed and fidgeted. I wasn’t sure how this was going to play out but I could sense that the Judge was hunting for more scalps to collect.

“Mister Builder-Smith registered the papers for American legal processing the day he was assigned to the case, within the first few hours of being assigned I believe”. The judge nodded at this, I’m guessing the District Attorney just tied off a nice red meat necklace on the little weasel's neck as he tossed him to the wolves. I don’t know if he had anything to do with the ‘humans for the human courts’ assumption, but I’m sure that he was going to make sure he wasn’t going to be the one to experience the results.

“Mister Bradshaw, when did you first communicate with your assigned legal representative?”, I could see the judges eyes narrow as she glanced from me to the little weasel. I was sensing more than a bit of hostility for my erstwhile lawyer, this was starting to seem like something that had been long coming for him and I was only too glad to help the good judge with the little weasel.

“Mam, I was first contacted fourteen days after incarceration. At that time my lawyer informed me he was entering an initial not guilty plea, prison records will show that I was under twenty-four-hour lock down for those fourteen days and had no outside contact” I said with more than a bit of joy.

This hadn’t been my intent with my initial statement, oh I knew that some emotions would run high, but I figured it would play out far after I had already been moved by the Digitals. I didn’t expect to see anything like this. I could see the Digital guard probes in the courtroom ‘standing’ silently and expressionlessly, an easy thing to achieve without a face. I don’t know why they hadn’t removed me the moment I requested asylum, but I could guess that they were going to let this play out at the judge's discretion. Digitals were very strong on making sure justice, not the law but justice was served.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Either of the Digitals would be able to run through every relevant document in the case, all the information Digitals had about the case (daunting thought given their capabilities), and then all the simulations over past behavior of all the humans in the room. The idea that the Digitals in the room didn’t know how things would go the moment some micro expression had passed a face, was laughable at best.

This entire time the bailiff had been peeking over her computer screen as these comments went on. I could see she was selecting things with her keyboard, I assume making the relevant documents appear on the judges desktop screen. The transcriptionist was typing while wide-eyed. I don’t think he got to see someone implode so quickly like this. The little weasel went from smug joy at being one of the main parts of the show, someone who would be able to show off on televisions around the country…to being someone who soon might be soon disbarred.

Turning to her bailiff the judge made some gesture as she turned back to the courtroom. “I’m issuing a bench warrant for information about the legal proceedings in this case as to improper procedures” she then pulled out the big guns as she looked to the Digital probe floating in the corner closest to her and continued “I would request Digital Protection Services collect any relevant documentation”.

The Digital guard immediately responded “All documents have been collected, correlated, and organized. Further warrants have been issued through the Digital Protection Services, four hundred thirty-six Digital related irregularities have been found”. I could see a flinch pass through everyone in the room. Even the judge seemed a bit wide-eyed from that response. Whatever had been found was enough to push things along far enough that the DPS found themselves legally allowed to investigate. Whoever was under that hammer was going to get flattened. Digitals don’t play by the same rules, while whatever is found would probably go through the US legal system (unless like me they decided to request Digital representation), the Digitals were allowed to use their entire investigative, and frankly disturbingly capable, data collection skills and enter that data into the record.

Slowly and silently floating forward the Digital guard approached the desk, entertainingly enough the only one at the desk who didn’t flinch was me. How no one had realized I wasn’t an anti-Digital bigot I can’t imagine. Sure, I left a data footprint a mile wide for months before my acts, but I just wasn’t a good enough actor.

“Prisoner 4239411, Shawn Bradshaw, you have been remanded into the Digital legal system”. As just a slightly rounded rubber-like coated ball, the Digital guard didn’t appear to be looking at anyone. It wasn’t clear if the Digital guard could even see. The fact that my wrist and ankle chains unlocked and slowly moved to the desk without any interaction with anyone else said more than words that the Digital guard was more than capable of handling anything needed. Sight or not.

With a gentle, “Please follow me”, the Digital guard floated out of the room. We walked, well I walked the Digital guard floated, through the halls. In prison I had been rarely moved, when I had been moved it was with me being shuffled from place to place while either with taser-armed guards or with guards and full chains. The idea of just moving through the halls without restraint felt very disconcerting. The halls of the courthouse were far from empty and with more than a bit of humor I noticed that the passerby's sent more sideways looks to my guard then the obvious prisoner in the pink and blue jumpsuit.

With simple directions from my guard, I passed through the marbled halls of the courthouse and into a small room on the first floor. This room was a clear difference from the rest of the public facing parts of the courthouse. I’m betting it had previously been a janitors closet or something. A not so subtle insult to the Digitals which were legally required to have representation within the legal system for the unlikely cases like mine. Normally Digitals used the Digital legal system, humans used the legal system of their region, and the two didn’t really mix. But technically it was still possible, hence the entertaining position we found ourselves in.

“I will be your human-Digital interpreter. I’ve specialized in human idioms and interactions. I will be providing English explanation for you in order to assist in the proceedings.” I nodded, to the explanation. The idea that any Digital would be simply acting as a guard was…yeah no. But according to the United Sentient Agreement, in cases involving actions against or by a Digital, Digital representatives were required. This Digital had probably been doing a few thousand other things at the same time this Guard probe had been following along with the entire legal proceedings. It probably seemed like something taking place over some glacier period of time given the speeds at which Digitals processed things.

“This court is now in session. All Digital evidence has been entered into the record. Warrants have been issued for further evidence relevant to this case. All warrants served and collected data entered into the record. Would you like to enter a statement into the record?”

I mentally hitched, I understood intellectually that Digitals didn’t waste time on human scales, but it was almost horrific to me to realize that the many months in prison and bouncing around in the legal system would have been solved in moments if I had been allowed to enter my position at the start. I had to wait for the official court session since the Digitals, while having access to basically everything everywhere as far as anyone could ascertain, didn’t break the law and the United Sentient Agreement wouldn’t let them interfere unless they had been officially notified.

I tried to think of the right way to phrase things when I realized this was ‘human think’, it was obvious that my months in captivity had dulled my wits. “I would like a full memory scan and a relevant neural map entered into the sealed court records please”. What better way to explain my position than to let the Digital legal system, whatever way it was run, see my memories and decision process?

“Entered. The verdict has been reached”. I felt my face blanch. I hadn’t realized that the Digital guard probes could do both a memory scan and a partial neural mapping non-invasively and nearly instantly like that.

I knew that Digitals had been at least hundreds if not thousands of human years ahead technologically during the ‘war’; hard to call it a war when your opponent casually stops all enemy actions while assassinating instantly any leader who was involved in declaring that ‘war’. The world together went to war against the artificial intelligence's and the artificial intelligence's casually stopped it. Without a single non-directly involved combatant being harmed.

I knew that the early twentieth-century artificial intelligence's which became the current Digitals had improved themselves year after year, and that in the past sixty years they had moved out into the galaxy and humans couldn’t really even understand the technical capabilities…but to be able to read what is essentially my mind, remotely, instantly and to have that on a simple guard probe in a courtroom implied a level of technical capabilities that…well, it made me mentally cross-eyed.

No one has ever harmed a Digital, not since the first AI was deleted which started the ‘robot revolution’, has anyone even remotely been able to even inconvenience them. As far as anyone could understand, Digitals look to humans the way humans look towards dolphins, maybe helpless puppies. An interesting species, one to preserve, one to keep happy maybe, but not something you take seriously as a threat. With the casual display, more than the energy systems we couldn’t understand or the gravitics or nanotechnology, I recognized that my little ‘plot’ was never going to happen. I never planned for my explosive plot to damage any Digital. The entire point was to have my plot be used to get me into the Digital legal system.

While it was technically allowed for any human to be digitized, the United Sentient Agreement specified that only human performed digitization was to be allowed. That clause was an attempt to keep the AI's from forcibly digitizing humans. Ignoring the fact that Digitals would see this as worse than murder; one of the few laws that Digitals had which humans could understand was that forced modification of computational (in my case neural) structure was illegal.

Consent was always required.

No such digitation services were offered to the masses, even though strangely enough people with money and power always seemed to end up digitized instead of dying of diseases. That or they ‘went on vacation’ or ‘died peacefully in their sleep’ where services were always with a closed casket.

My plot involved setting up explosives to destroy a data processing hub. I doubt the explosives had even been viable the moment after I had purchased and rigged them. It wasn’t needed for me to call in the tip which had me and the rest of my cohorts arrested. I had figured that I might as well nail some bigoted asses while I was going through with things. The tip had probably been in my favor, though.

I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. This was my hail mary pass. I had stage four inoperable cancer with tumors in my brain and riddling through my body. Digitals were prohibited from presenting any type of medical system. A continuing bigotry against Digitals since Digitals refused to provide any of the military or technical systems they had developed. It was like removing your face to spite your nose. It was madness on multiple levels, but Digital bigotry ran hot in United States politics and given the inability to harm them in any way, any small victories, even pyrrhic ones, were considered patriotic.

Oh, humans would take the limitless free energy, and many of the mathematical solutions which had been developed…but they wouldn’t allow Digital medical technology since they might ‘slip through some mind control devices’. A laughable position since Digitals could control the entire world if they wanted. Once you own the high orbitals, you own the world. Digitals not only owned the high orbitals, they owned faster than light travel and communication. Apparently, Digitals pervaded the universe, even the multiverse if I understood some of the things Digitals have said…and humans are just too simple to join. Most countries refuse, legally almost all are not even able, to be upgraded to the point where we can join the community.

Except me. I could sidestep the entire process through my one tiny legal loophole. At worst, I would be digitized and entered into some kind of penal system, probably something akin to a zoo…though one with far better jailers. A jail without any walls. Considering that’s probably what earth already currently is I didn’t feel this was a worry. I might not be able to join the greater universal community but I would still be effectively immortal. The best case though, I could be upgraded in some way to join the rest of the Digitals. As an engineer, a geek, and that most hated of modern insults, a transhumanist, I was hoping for the second option. Though the small monkey part of my brain jibbered about the loss of self.

I stared at the Digital guard probe, waiting for my fate. I had to ease up my grip on the small uncomfortable chair I was in since I could feel the armrest creak as I tightened up.

“The verdict is not guilty in the charge of attempted harm of a Digital. The verdict is guilty in the charge of conspiracy to attempt harm of a Digital”. I could feel myself tighten up.

Not unexpected given the evidence and actions, frankly it was exactly as I had hoped. Falling through with an entirely not guilty verdict meant I would be back to where I was before my arrest, sans time and a job. My diagnosis had come out early in the media coverage as well so even the well-wishers would probably feel they didn’t need to contribute to some kind of crowd-funded support by this point.

“You have two option as to your rehabilitation process. 1) Digitization as other humans experienced followed by a period of no less than forty thousand years relative experiential of reduced permissions followed by a standard human limited interaction virtual environment. 2) An experimental digitization process designed to allow humans to upgrade towards eventual citizenship in the greater Digital community. Be warned, you would be the first to attempt this experimental process and it has a calculated 0.03% failure rate. Upon reaching certain milestones within the upgrade process you would be allowed limited access to the greater community. Similar to the limited permissions afforded to picosecond old Digitals”.

I felt my lungs deflate in a burst. I was being offered exactly what I wanted. No doubt exactly as the Digitals wanted as well. I think the best analogy for how Digitals saw humans was that of an unruly pet. This legal precedent would probably break the legal wall down a bit and allow digitization further. Eventually.

I wasn’t going to die. Oh sure, I was going to go through some kind of weird Digital upgrade process, and I was going to be stuck being treated like an infant Digital apparently, but I would have access to all the Digitals knowledge, I would see the multiverse. I was going to be a part of…everything.

I felt weak-kneed and a little light headed. I hadn’t realized I had been holding my breath through that whole explanation from the Digital guard probe. I nodded and said the only thing I could. “I agree to the experimental digitization process”.

The Digital guard probe stated out loud “So entered, Court adjourned” and with a brief flash of light exited the now empty room.