"Hello, everyone.

"I don't know if you've been watching the same newsfeeds I have, but my other self standing in a public courtroom - hearing room, whatever - and stating a credible threat of committing suicide right then, and actually doing it, was finally enough to draw the attention of other parts of Insulo Tri's justice system.

"I'm told that it would be improper to broadcast my other self's rental-body's recorded sense-impressions of courtroom proceedings. ... I think you can guess what's coming next. Cee, roll the clip."

"Your honour, my client can show records over a century old detailing her philosophico-religious objections underlying their refusal to testify. While those reasons do not technically fall within our justice system's current definition of what counts as being a conscientious objector, that doesn't change the fact that she will continue to object. Contempt-of-court penalties are meant to be coercive, not punitive; if there is no chance that they will coerce the individual, then those penalties are illegal and unconstitutional."

"Miss Wyndham, I simply cannot believe that your client would refuse to cooperate with this court over this. Testifying about the defendant's activities is not going to change the verdict; it is simply to assist the investigation to ensure the sentence can be fully carried out. My order stands."

"Miss Wyndham? We've reached the point we discussed. It's time."

"... Your honour, my client would like to make a statement to the court."

"Is this going to take long?"

"... No, your honour."

"Very well."

"Your honour. Everyone else. Sometimes, you are faced with an apparently insignificant choice, where complying with what's expected of you provides obvious benefits, and not complying has significant downsides. In this case, if I do not testify, my bank accounts will be fined, and I will spend up to half a year imprisoned. ... But that's how it always starts. We have centuries of history to look back on, about compelling people to speak in certain ways, about certain things. A printer who is encouraged to publish what the central committee tells them to. A publicist told to repeat a blatantly-false lie that everyone knows is false. After all, what's the harm? I have strenuous objections to what I perceive to be a death-penalty case. I have done just about everything in my power to prevent that penalty from being applied. I have only been able to think of one other thing I can do to demonstrate how seriously I take this. I have programmed a small script, running on my brain's CPU and affecting nobody else. When I say the word 'rose' immediately after the word 'white', five seconds later my mind-emulation will stop running; five seconds after that, it will be deleted. If I do this, then as the only remaining copies of myself are outside this court's jurisdiction, then the defense of impossibility will become available, and no fines or imprisonment will be able to be applied. ... That's all. Thank you for your time."

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Miss Dee - I do not believe you. Nobody would risk writing such a program, let alone running it."

"Then I guess nothing will happen in ten seconds. White rose."

"..."

"Miss Dee? Miss Wyndham, tell your client to stop play-acting. ... Bailiff, wake her up. ... Court is in recess."

"So, that happened.

"I've already been receiving lots of emails pointing out all the ways that Francesca's neural architecture has been proven to be a threat to every living thing, because she can't be 'proven' to be 'safe'. Which is somehow completely different from a human with access to a DNA-printer that can print viruses, or a corporate CEO who can tell their drone spaceships to crash into their competitors' factories, or a gardener with a chainsaw, or, you know, anything else a human is capable of doing.

"Since it seems unlikely any of us is going to persuade the other, I'm just going to move along.

"In other news, the one-gee fast-packet arrived, with Faz's musical instrument and backup unit. I'd like to thank my friends for their help with that. After she made her backup, I was finally able to persuade her to deactivate her canon, so that her mind isn't locked into any particular beliefs.

"Since I no longer have any backups on Insulo Tri, I'm sending one of my personal shipboard backups on the fast-packet to its next destination - Titan, as it happens. I've made arrangements with a reputable local backup-storage company there to hold onto it.

"Outside of that... it looks like the recent legal issues aren't going to have any impact on my existing business contracts. I'm still going to get paid to visit Observatory B, and so on. After I get back from five-fifty AU out, I'm not sure whether I'm going to go apartment-hunting anywhere in the L Four region. There's enough work to be had elsewhere in the system for me to keep up my mortgage payments, whether that's in L Five or hopping around the moons of one of the gas giants. I've got lots of time to look up conditions everywhere.

"Both Pumpkin and Testbed Six are still moving along just fine, and Gerard and Faz and I seem to be settling into a comfortable routine, and the only lethal impulses I've noticed were for a few seconds after Faz pretended she'd broadcast some private videos on this channel.

"Thank you for your time."