‘Contemptus, contemptus!’ says the judge striking the operating table with a reflex hammer. ‘Commercial actio is prohibeo in the Ether Jar.’ An orderly I hadn’t noticed before on the other side of the amphitheatre responds by roughly kicking the tout out. Without turning his head, the judge then extends his arm back to beckon to the orderly still at my side, who wheels me in. There’s a hiss, and dozens of arms reach out to point a plastic scalpel at me. The reflex hammer rises again and the extended limbs return to their original positions. I am parked in front of the operating table, facing the cut-thirsty. The judge begins reading aloud.
‘For the benefit of the vulgaris, and their instruction in bonos mores, the court will present its findings as per the processus per inquisitionem into the counts of breaking and entering into EmPath Industries’ property, the misappropriation of materia medica and tampering therewith, joined with the charge of compelled self-defamation pursuant to the consumption of said contaminated materia by members of the Copywriters’ Association. It is important that we start ab initio with the verdict: The cogito of the court has found the sum of the ergos point indeplorably to the guilt of the accused in mens reas and actus reus.’
‘Guilty, however you slice it, so give us our cut…’ says a voice from the upper gallery. A giant foam hand with a pointing index finger printed with SUE-VENIRS waves briefly, but before the speaker can finish, the hammer has fallen and the boot reflexively struck.
Judge Mannix continues: ‘Procurator Brimlad will now furbish the evidence of culpa verbatim, whereupon the defence counsel will respondeat. Thereafter, all that remains is for the court to deliver sententiae severitatis.’
I fold, dog-eared at the sudden firecracker outbursts. Quiver-bangs of words, too loud, too many, come from all directions. I am uncountenanced. My features stare accusingly at me from the third row. She that’s not me. Un-me. Me. If I’m edited out of existence, will she go on without me and live the life of a brandit as if I never was? It’s either drop my gaze into my lap or lift it to the dome above. I choose to dome out.
In between the metal spokes that hold the glass, I can arrange the wheeling words. And when I’ve spun it all out, I am guilty. Oh well. I knew that. So here I am sitting at The Fork in the Medicine Tree, where barbery-surgery assumed bookish tones and reasoned what to do with our bodies.
That voice, the one speaking now, it smears iodine orange. I turn to see Dr Bromide.
‘It was established that the biometric reading of the right pinna gel impression recorded at the entrance to the Reactor Station programming hub produced a false positive on identity. Based on helix, lobule, tragus, fossa and other geometries, a search through our biometric databases was conducted and a match found,’ he says.
‘Let us bear in memoriam, this heinous act of crimen falsi, knowingly committed…’ says the procurator, before being interrupted by the witness.
‘Are you not interested in the patient match?’
‘Quaestio is the sole preservative of the court,’ reprimands the judge.
‘Veritably, veritably,’ says the flushed procurator.
‘Schizophasic cretins,’ says Bromide softly. He is seated just behind my right shoulder and my restraints Chinese-bangle my skin as I turn to see if anyone else heard. He holds my gaze and raises his fingers, which are curled together like the legs of a dead spider as he carefully licks each one. I don’t know what this message means, but seeing him use a form of mute point condenses like the horror and stench of a stranger’s breath at your neck in the night.
The procurator is trying to pick up on his wavering line of questioning. ‘And what would you say, doctor, is per definitionem the composition mentis of the defendant?’
I don’t care to hear about my state of mind, and neither does she that’s not me, who is sitting spinning in circles on the polished parquet floor. I slump and let the backrest of the wheelchair strike a blue to my head as I rush for the dome of sky. If I could sink my arms elbow-deep into that ether, how would it taste? Of absinthe and ease, louche clouds. This is what I’ll take back to the cell. I’ve managed not to think of it before. But now it clangs dinner slot, breakfast slot. Time slot. Under the thumb of the dust beneath the bed. Still humming electric even though the wiring is definitely loose.
‘Silentium! Silentium! The defendant is vox nihili. Any further disruptionem and sedation will be required. This is the Ether Jar.’
Luckily the humming stops. Looking around for the source, I find the proxymate in the audience again. She-me flicks a lighter, singeing the hair of the woman seated in front of her. The filament snake-dances in the flame before coiling up into a fiddlehead fern. How can I possibly see this from metres away? I am not her. I am not the one who sets heads ablaze, even if I had hoped to.
Petula Ormod is called to cross-examine Dr Bromide the next day. She stands and I notice that she has no shoes on, only stockinged feet. Blazing bunions, undimmed even by the haze of hose, apparently explain this. I’m afraid Petula Ormod is a woman always before a hump. The condition of her jacket remains unchanged. ‘Nolo contendere – there is nothing to contest,’ she begins. ‘Nevertheless, I argue that the doctor must conceit, credo quia absurdum est. The defendant’s innocentia is shelf-evident because it is absurd. Can you deny this, Doctor?’
Bromide makes a strange spitting noise and Petula pirouettes back to her seat.
Most mornings the wheelchair comes for me and I sit in the courtroom. I try to listen but the words circle like water-bloated food in a blocked sink. Sooner or later I etherise into the upper reaches of the dome. The light changes. There is the occasional passage of birds, a plane. Clouds accumulo and nimbus. Down below, the words swill round and round.
After breaking for lunch, the procurator calls a new witness.
There’s a sound like a body bag being moved. Mother appears wearing a red-trimmed, transparent pink raincoat over a knee-length black shift dress. Red manicured nails hold the edge of the hood over her head as if a sudden sousing gust might blow it back. Mother knows how to make an entrance. The bare skin of her arms simpers through the rose-coloured PVC. She sits in the witness chair behind my right shoulder. I refuse to turn and look at her.
The bailiff orderly swears her in: ‘Do you swear on the power of speech invested in the transdermal and pains of a second cerebral haemorrhage to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?’
‘I do.’
‘Madame,’ says the procurator, who hasn’t been nearly so gracious in addressing previous witnesses, ‘you are the defendant’s mater familias, correct?’
‘Yes,’ she whispers in her most tragic voice.
‘Perhaps you could provide a dictum about the lapsus linguae inflicted on you?’
‘Oh sir, I’m afraid you’re going for the absolute opaques and leaving it all to the imagination.’ I don’t need to look to know she’s producing a full ingénue’s blushfulness.