Death in Triplicate

There are many species in the galaxy that defy logic. This is something of an expectation at this point and is hardly worth mentioning in any decent introduction. There are far fewer species that embody logic, most of which are relegated to dimensions consisting entirely of numerical theory. These species are so fine and rigid and inherently correct that they have no business being included in discussions of reality.

There is a third type of species that falls somehow in between these two extremes, a species that embraces the sanctity of logic in a devastatingly illogical manner. In point of fact, there is one species that lands in this category and does so with such finality and aplomb that all other species in the known galaxy have gladly categorized themselves on one side or the other so as not to step on their toes. They are the Peipurwerccs of Triplicon VI, and they are bureaucrats. They are also six-foot tall, sleek, black-carapaced beetloids, a facet of the species’ existence which does not receive nearly as much aversion.

Hearing all of this, one may be forgiven for thinking that the Peipurwerccs are a stuffy lot of pencil-pushers who get too bogged down in the intricacies of forms and have developed something of a galactic reputation for it. That would be the logical conclusion, after all. But to put it in terms a layperson could understand, there is this example: a traditional logic-defying bureaucrat might pass along a thrice-signed form to its final destination after two days and with a dozen or so carbon copies sent along to other logic-defying places. Even the lowest-level clerk on Triplicon VI would identify this as gross misconduct and file a resolution to begin an investigation into the behavior of the progenitor of the form before filing another form to begin the process of heading the committee to reinitiate the original form. The mild fuzziness of mind associated with even reading about the Peipurwercc process has been termed by various alternative medicine practitioners as an “establishment high” and is often prescribed for those suffering from early-onset idealism.

The bureaucratic nature of their society penetrates every facet of the culture including, perhaps unsurprisingly, the judicial system. Whereas more traditional methods of law enforcement rely heavily on concepts of law and breaking, the Peipurwercc system is far more considerate of whether or not an action had the requisite paperwork filed to perform that action. Criminal trials are therefore more reminiscent of library reading rooms than anything, and the process of finding and examining every form that was or was not filed, not to mention the agonizing appeals procedure, means that a defendant might well find themselves in court for decades before they even catch a whiff of their thirty dollar traffic fine.

The upshot of this is that crime rates on Triplicon are among the lowest in the galaxy.

This thought did not buoy Maximillian Quinsdon’s spirits as he stood chained to a large marble plinth in front of several thousand agitated Peipurwerccs. Nor was he any more elated as the Head Judge Prosecutor of the 9th Examinatory Committee began to list his crime and subsequent punishment.

“Maximillian Quinsdon,” the suited, bespectacled insect began. “The following has been unequivocally established. On January 3rd, 4590 GE, you did fail to provide sufficient documentation related to your operation of a cart used for the dissemination of sugary treats commensurate with one standard dessert portion. A citation to this effect has been produced and publicly notarized.”

“Selling ice cream?” Max mumbled under his breath and grinned up at the bug.

“Indeed, a thorough examination of all forms filed under your name with the Edible Consumptions Bureau, the Nutrition and Public-Health Bureau, the Motorized Vending Division of the Department for the Authentication of Liability, and even something as simple as the Currency Board have all been found to be lacking no less than one and no more than seven signatures. Though it sickens me to say it, and I am loath to let our guests hear it, not one of your forms had been publicly notarized.”

An audible gasp ran through the assembled forms followed by heated murmur. Notarization was so ubiquitous on Triplicon VI that it was often assumed to be an autonomous action. If you did something, it got notarized. The need for notaries was so great, even, that any first-class foreigner arriving on the planet was given the opportunity upon landing to complete a brief two-day seminar on the workings of notarization. Any who completed this were granted their own rubber stamp for the duration of their stay. Not getting something notarized was a grotesque faux-pas, but to miss that many forms was the bureaucratic equivalent of defecating in your own lungs.

Max did his best to keep the smile from appearing too obvious on his face.

“You have not attempted any appeals, and so this trial has come to a quick end, two years and ninety-seven days after its beginning. The punishment for a crime of this magnitude is death. You shall be vaporized by a plasma cannon created specifically for the purpose, the proper working of which has been documented by each committee involved in its creation and operation. You may have five minutes with which to speak your last words.”

Max turned his face to look out across the arena. The enormous plasma cannon loomed some fifty feet away, the paperwork for which was laid out on a nearby table and was being gone over by two lawyers. Beyond that, the thousands of insect faces rubbed their mandibles together eagerly.

These were only the ones who had chosen to sit and watch the physical spectacle, of course. There were others, a smaller and more pure subsection of the society, who had closeted themselves elsewhere in the courthouse with copies of every form and piece of paperwork involved in the crime, trial, and execution. In a surprisingly open display of opacity, every record in existence was available for public viewing, from schematic diagrams to private records of ownership. While execution by plasma cannon might make a fine show, there was nothing better to a true Peipurwercc than experiencing it in triplicate.

In the arena crowd, however, Max was able to pick out a small crowd of smaller faces, hairier and without mandibles. They were not cheering, murmuring, or doing any of the other actions associated with people about to watch a horrible murder. They were simply standing, watching. Max gave them a wink.

“I would like to speak, Your Grand Honorable Magistrate,” he said, butchering the title and toeing the line of another criminal citation. “I would like to say goodbye to the world, to my people, to Triplicon VI, to the galaxy even! But before I say goodbye, I would like very much to know what time it is.”

“It is twenty-seven minutes before the new day,” the HJP chittered. “You have two more minutes to speak, and then you will be executed.”

“Oh, that I might see another day! That I might breathe the fresh scent of the suns once more. I only wanted to give ice cream to the children of Triplicon, was that too much to ask? So bold was I, so eager to please that I forsook what I now know to be sacred protocols! For that, goodbye? Goodbye to all that is good and all that is-”

“Your time is up,” said the HJP, and waved a leg at the lawyers by the cannon. “Proceed with the execution.” He turned his attention to a form on his own desk. “Plasma cannon execution began at precisely 11:25. Signed here, here, here…”

The cannon was readied, aimed…and not fired. The two lawyers prodded a large button on the side several times before rushing over to the desk of the HJP and conversing in hurried, hushed tones. After a minute, they scuttled back over to the cannon and began pushing it off the main stage.

“There has been an unforeseen problem with the plasma cannon. We shall of course follow up with each of the committees involved with its preparation but for now, we will proceed with the execution using the second method. Maximillian Quinsdon, you are to be executed. Your internal organs shall be pierced by a system of lasers created specifically for the purpose, the proper working of which has been documented by each committee involved in its creation and operation. You may have five minutes with which to speak your last words.”

Max shuffled in his binds and began again. “Blessed is this night that has seen fit to grant me yet another opportunity to say goodbye to this great, wide world! To you, it may be five minutes, but to me it is five eternities not promised.” He really started to get into it, and several of the assembled crowd rolled their compound eyes. “Woe, woe unto he who cannot understand the position of a man who sought only to sell ice cream. Who sought only the joy and the-”

“Alright, your time is up,” said the HJP, and motioned once more to the lawyers. They had only just finished pushing out a second machine, smaller than the first but equally elaborate in its setup and accompanied by its own table of paperwork. They gave everything a quick once-over before readying, aiming, and pressing a small button on the side of the apparatus.

Lights shot up the sides, coalesced into eight small pinpricks of light, and then…fizzled out with a series of multicolored sparks.

“This is absolutely incomprehensible!” cried the HJP as the lasers were wheeled off. “We shall certainly be conducting an investigation into this. In the meantime, we shall proceed with our third method of execution.”

In the stands, a small group of humans huddled amid the Peipurwerccs and watched the proceedings with increasing emotion. When the third executing tool, an impressive device that twisted the head off the victim, failed three times to grab Max’s head properly, one of the assembled humans let out several soft curses.

“God, it makes me wonder if he’s really going to pull it off,” she said after the volley of expletives. “Two years, and it all comes down to this.”

“Keep your voice down,” a large man next to her said, and gave a quick glance at the beetles on either side of them. None appeared to have taken their eyes off the main stage, where Max was now giving his fourth final words speech of the night. “Don’t want to blow it now by giving one of these things a heads-up.”

The woman snorted and fiddled with the hem of the hood pulled over her hair. “Easy for you to say, you might not even have yours on display. Do you know how much work it took to get to where I did in the Cog-Wheelers’ Guild? How many bugs I had to…fill out forms with…to get a shot at that thing up there? And if this had gone well, I’d have been on track for a real promotion! I know you don’t get paid more than you can drink away in a night over there in Ball Bearings and Sockets, but Cog-Wheeling pays very well.”

A third figure pushed its slimy way in between the two and spoke in a greasy whisper. “Did you forget how much is stashed away in that vault, Bella? The wealth of ten star systems, they say, just itching to be taken. All bearer bonds signed by the Peipurwerccs themselves, good anywhere in the galaxy even if they’re stolen.”

Bella cracked her neck and stared straight ahead as a fourth murderous device began smoking on the stage. “Two years is a lot of work, that’s all I’m saying. What if he can’t pull it off this time, huh? Then what?”

“Then we rescue him and move on to the next job,” the first man said, and crossed his arms in a typical display of finality.

Bella huffed and shrunk back into her cloak amid dark mutters of “not you has to answer to the Cog-Wheeler Directorate” and “won’t catch me notarizing your off-planet leave.”

“Shush, you two,” the greasy cloak snapped. “I think this might be it.”

Back on stage, the fifth device was being unceremoniously rocketed off the edge of the stage, having failed in spectacular fashion and fountained hydrochloric acid across several cubic feet of its own framework. The HJP was beginning to grow tired of things, despite the novelty of having to break out several redundancy protocols, and it was with something of an annoyed tone that he informed Max that he had five minutes to say his final goodbyes to the world as he knew it.

“I have only one thing to ask at this moment,” said Max with a roguish wink. “What time is it?”

The HJP heaved a deep sigh and checked the clock on his desk. “It is three minutes past the hour.”

“Oh. Well then, I suppose we’d better wrap things up here.”

“What do you…oh no. Oh no no no. Oh good File in Cabinet.” The HJP began sweating through his carapace, shimmery droplets glistening in the purple moonlight. “You can’t possibly have.”

“Can’t possibly have what, Your Honor?” Max asked innocently. “Can’t possibly have looked up the paperwork filed for my own case? Can’t possibly have discovered that the form indicating my death was already signed and processed and notarized and all the rest of it? Can’t possibly have known that as of, what, five minutes ago, I was considered for all intents and purposes to be a corpse?” He laughed raucously. “Just a spot of luck, I suppose!”

“You are indeed a corpse,” the HJP spat through gritted mandibles. “And are due all the rights and are subject to all protocols of new corpsehood. I don’t suppose you’ve filed-”

“A will? Of course! I imagine a clerk is running it up here as we speak, being midnight and all.”

Indeed, within seconds of this prophecy, a bespectacled bug appeared with a sealed envelope and delivered it into the HJP’s shaking hands. He slit it open and read the contents swiftly before turning thunderous eyes onto Max. “Interred in the royal vault? And notarized? Blasphemer!”

“There’s precedent! And I think you’ll find all the files in proper working order. My body is to be left as is in the royal vault, slowly mummifying amidst all those bearer bonds. Now, can we do something about these chains and get me in a hearse or something? I’m very eager to be buried.”

There was nothing for it. The documents were in proper order, and even if an injunction had been filed at that moment to stop the interment, it would be several more days before anything made it to a stage where action could be taken. It was a blasphemy and a public relations disaster, but what could they do? Stoop to his level?

A hover-hearse was summoned, and Max unceremoniously shoved into the back seat. He leaned his head out the window and waved a fond farewell to the arena crowd, all of whom had fallen silent in utter shock. “Goodbye, everyone! It was a fun little trial, I think. It’s a shame I had to end up a corpse after all, but I think my afterlife will be very enjoyable indeed. Maybe I’ll even send a little ice cream back for you all.” And with that, he rapped on the side of the hearse, tucked his head back inside, and was taken away to the royal vault.

The arena broke into angry, rapid chitters, and the crowd began heaving to its feet. All were eager to discuss the political, economic, and most importantly, logistical implications of what had just happened. The humans too gathered their belongings and began to make their way out of the arena and to a pre-planned meeting point near the royal palace.

Bella was the first to speak. “I can’t believe he actually did it. How does me make it go so right every time? Two years of work that could go wrong at a moment’s notice, and he makes it look like an easy prank.”

The greasy figure punched her hip playfully. “Ah shush. We’ll be rich enough to buy our own solar systems soon enough. Doesn’t do asking why we can.”

“Quite correct,” the big man said. “Quinsdon is a rapscallion and a rake, but he has a way of concocting plans that can’t be stopped simply because no one could possibly believe they would exist.”

“Fair, fair,” Bella said. “But still, of all the things to try and pass over on somebody? Being declared officially dead because of a clerical technicality and buried in precisely the spot you’ve been meaning to rob? The royal vault? The most securely guarded place on this entire planet?”

The big man laughed dryly and cast his gaze towards the horizon and the royal vault. “It was something to behold, to be sure. But, dear Bella, he has only gotten himself into the vault. You’d think getting him out would be even harder, especially now that they know what he’s about.”

“I was wondering about that, yeah.”

“Just wait, then. All your questions will be answered…during the exhumation.”

Bella’s jaw dropped open.