The sentence

The Justice closed the heavy door of his chambers, the purple robe suddenly weighing twice as much as usual. The heavy oak door closed now, and the unbreakable windows muffled the clamour outside. Beyond the door, in the domed foyer, the voices of the various staff and public observers. Outside the windows, the incessable chant of the protesters. He could no longer hear what they were saying from his chambers, but their voices still  sounded loud and clear in his head:  “Logic is life!” “Bring reason back!” “Save the Critical!”

“The Critical”... The Media suggested at one point that the young healer on trial today had ties with the underground movement of the Critical Thinkers and, in a heartbeat, everybody started calling her “the Critical”. 

He dragged himself through the room and sat at the desk looking at the brewing sky. 75% of rain his mind hummed… then fell into the familiar routine of flipping through the prime numbers series… Through the gray stream of numbers in his mind emerged the face of the healer, the way he first saw her. 

She was probably in her early thirties but she looked younger. Her face was smooth and relatively serene, despite the ordeal of the trial and the aggressive media coverage. Her features were proportional and not without grace, however, her appearance would not raise anyone’s EmBit Lust or mere platonic Admiration levels past a 6 or a maximum 7. Her well-being and favourable societal impact package would have included an array of physical appearance enhancements available. She appeared to have chosen not to use any of them.   

She sat in the defendant’s box, with her hands resting on her lap. The EmBit was faintly glowing green against the gray suit she had chosen to wear that day. The screen connected to her EmBit, was on standby, ready to display her emotional readings for the jurors to evaluate. 

Elsa Bommer was the healer who was on trial, facing a maximum emotional correction sentence, for making a logic-justified choice. Despite her professional vows to uphold the moral values of our society guided by empathy and emotional resonance,  she had chosen to save a mother over her infant. Against an EmBit reading of 9 out of 10 for justified emergency response and ultimately, against the law, she focused all her skill on saving the mother, because she had a real chance of survival, rather than the compromised infant.  Her decision was prompted by her critical thinking, as a course of action based on the methods of the Forbidden Ways. 

Over a  hundred years ago,  after the boom of AI technology in the 22nd century, all nations have come into accord and relinquished all emergency response for global threat-level events to AWCs. The human brain alone was deemed no match for the modelling and decision speed and power of an AWC.  But when millions of lives were lost due to automated emergency response, the event marked the end of the Artificial Wisdom Collectives era. After the Soulless Crisis, all involvement of AI and AW in decisions regarding humans and society was outlawed. Furthermore, the use of logic was banned from governing society. While still playing a key role in pure and applied science, logic was pushed out of any social decision-making process and moral system. Finding support in the pioneering works of Antonio Damasio, dating as far back as the 1960s,  Emotion-based decisions were theorized as being the only ones guaranteed to preserve the primordial human essence of modern society. As a natural result, the emotional well-being of its members became the ultimate goal and reward. Any transgression infringing on it would be considered illegal, from a misdemeanour to a crime. Emotions, both positive and negative, were divided into categories and their intensity was measured and monitored constantly and factored in in almost every social aspect of the society. Personal devices called EmBit would monitor and record various levels of emotions. Relationship matching, job interviews, and education, all factored in the positive emotional responses. On the other hand,  causing a negative emotion in another human would be considered a serious offence and a level seven and over of a primal emotion such as fear, would be a major crime, punishable by years of emotional correction. Physical harm and loss of life, albeit extremely rare, led to sentences of life-long exposure to correctional-level Grief. 

The Forbidden Ways were believed now to be studied in secret by members and sympathizers of an underground movement called The Critical Thinkers. The Criticals argued that logic should be employed to ensure an optimal decision-making process. 

So, a Critical on trial? Or so they thought. No doubt why the High Counsellor made it very clear that he expected him to give a maximum sentence. What better occasion to send a clear message that the system was still strong, after all this time since the justice reform? In his 30-year career, no case was so prominent and no crime so blatantly against the very core of institutionalized emotional decision-making. He knew very well what was expected of him. By the Counsellor, by his fellow citizens…hell, by the entire world. His EmBIt should be pulsing high orange by now at the anticipated Pride he felt at the thought of fulfilling everybody’s hope and expectation, by protecting his legacy of spotless service. 

He looked at the device on his left wrist: a milky white hidden by the ample sleeve of his rather pompous justice robe. As usual, he could not feel anything!

He almost laughed out loud at the irony. The sentencing of a high crime for the use of logic rests in the hands of an emotionally-impaired justice. 

He discovered at a young age that he was different from the others. He seemed to see numbers and notice patterns in everything he saw and everything he learned. While other kids enjoyed the arts and the emotional training and modulation sessions that every student had to attend, he would secretly find them boring and pointless. 

This is how his secret fascination with the forbidden ways (logic, reasoning, decision algorithms) started. 

The door opened after a quick knock. 

“They are ready for you Sir” - The court clerk announced. 

“Thank you Eli. I’ll be right behind you”

The courtroom was full. As expected for such a high-profile case but it was unusually quiet. On the defendant's side, Elsa looked calm and strangely enough,  the screen showed only moderate-level anticipation.

Just looking at the face of the spokesperson of the Collective he knew that the verdict was guilty. He didn't expect anything else. So it was up to him now to decide the sentence. 

Throughout his entire career, he managed to keep secret his emotional impairment, always using logic to get it right. Trying to emulate what the right decision would have been if a highly empathic justice would have been in his place. 

This time it seemed that the picture was blurry … On one hand, logic would tell him that, for the sake of his career, his legacy and even his personal safety,  giving everybody what they expected, sentencing the heretic healer to the heaviest correctional program the system would allow was the clear way to go. On the other hand, he could not help to see how, in order to be,  for once,  true to his real self, it would have to publicly contradict the fundamentals on which the society rested its idea of justice, and side with the Critical… 

A lenient sentence would expose him. Will blow up the cover that he spent so many years perfecting. Why did it seem like the better choice? But was it even the solution? Even if he believed she made the right decision, his decision was not going to give her justice. The Collective had spoken: she was guilty of a high moral crime. Giving her mercy instead…was it going to be enough?

Then he understood what he needed to do. 

“I am ready now to deliver my decision,”  he said. 

“The collective has spoken and the verdict is clear. Whether this young healer standing here today in front of you facing the rest of her days in Grief or having a real chance at emotional healing is up to me. It is up to me because you trust me to be worthy and qualified to perform my duty guided by and, to my abilities, upholding the decision-making and moral principles of our post-Artificial Intelligence and Wisdom era. 

The decision that I am ready to deliver to you today is that I am not qualified or inclined to sentence someone for using logic in life-altering decisions. For all the years I have delivered sentences based on logic and reasoning only, the rest of my life does not amount to enough Grief correctional time. I don’t even know why it mattered to pretend for so long. Maybe I was actually waiting all this time to get caught. Someone to actually realize that I never had any functional-level emotion to guide me. Never happened. This should have led to the conclusion that the right decision would be to stand today in front of you, and like a true Critical, to tell you that you are wrong, and all life-altering decisions should only be guided by logic. The truth is that if we want to preserve our humanity, emotions and logic shouldn't be mutually exclusive. As humans, to stay true to our nature we need both to make difficult, important decisions. Just because we went too far a hundred years ago we can’t overcorrect and forget that there is a reason why we have both a left brain and a right brain. We should let logic and critical thinking guide us in our choices and recognize the fact that our emotions remind us of what it’s meaningful to us as humans” 

He stopped and slowly stepped down from his bench. He took out the purple robe and left the courtroom. Everybody sat in perplexed silence. 

He stepped outside. It was raining.