The Best American Mystery Stories 2020

Brian Cox The Surrogate Initiative

from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

Cassandra Howard walked around the small band of protesters gathered across the street from the courthouse. The handwritten signs they raised read JURIES ARE HUMAN! and MY PEER IS NOT A DROID!

The Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in downtown Detroit was a rectangular cement monolith, its brutal bulk squatting over nearly an entire city block on St. Antoine Street. Every time she visited the Third Judicial Circuit Court, Cassandra was reminded of an enormous mausoleum built to endure centuries.

She climbed the steps and entered the courthouse. She swiped her hand under the yellow UR? reader that registered the I-AM chip implanted at the base of her right thumb before passing through the softly humming maze of body scanners. Security drones hovered in the lobby, running facial identification checks on the crowd as Cassandra crossed to the elevators.

The chief judge’s chambers were on the sixth floor.

As the elevator doors whisked shut, Cassandra recognized a colleague crossing the lobby. Forrest Latham walked with his hands in his pockets and his head tilted to the side as if he were considering an entertaining thought. His stride was slow and leisurely. He carried the air of a bemused man who had nowhere to be anytime soon and for whom everything came easy. Cassandra found his charm and confidence to be as annoying as it was attractive. In graduate school at Carnegie Mellon, he once asked her to dinner, but she had lied out of nervousness and told him she didn’t date white men. He hadn’t approached her again, but she’d felt self-conscious around him ever since. She knew he had been recruited to work on the Surrogate program — ​there were, after all, only so many AI psychologists — ​but what was he doing in Detroit?

Cassandra closed her eyes briefly as she realized Forrest was likely the consultant for the prosecution.

“Terrific,” she muttered.

Then she inhaled deeply and exhaled. It would be fine. She hadn’t had time for a relationship in school and she certainly didn’t have time for one now. She would put it out of her mind. Focus, she thought. She had more important concerns. The newly formed Federal Association of Court Management wanted to start implementing the Jury Surrogate system nationally within eighteen months, but everything hinged on this and the other pilot programs in St. Louis, San Diego, Charlotte, Boston, and Seattle succeeding.

Judge Cameron O’Connor was outside his chambers with Jessica Blick, one of the assistant prosecuting attorneys assigned to the initiative. Blick was a short white woman with closely clipped red hair gelled to sharp peaks so that at the right angle it looked as if small flames flickered atop her head. The distinctive hairstyle along with her explosive temper tagged her with the nickname “Firecracker,” though no one used the name in her presence.

“Ms. Howard,” welcomed O’Connor, whose deep, resonant voice reflected his ego but belied his stature; he resembled a cherub in black robes. Broken capillaries marked his full nose and flushed cheeks.

“Judge O’Connor,” said Cassandra, shaking hands. “Ms. Blick.”

“We’re just waiting for—”

“I thought that was you,” called a voice from down the hall. Cassandra turned. Forrest came toward them, dressed in khakis and a blue suit coat, carrying a coffee in one hand and a leather laptop satchel in the other. He grinned widely. His blond hair was strewn across his forehead and his beard needed a trim. “How are you?” he asked as he leaned in to kiss Cassandra on the cheek. She smelled chicory coffee and cinnamon on his breath.

“I’m good,” she said. “How’re you?”

“Great,” said Forrest, still smiling. “It’s good to see you again.”

“I’m surprised,” said Cassandra. “I thought you’d be working out of D.C.”

“Nah, headquarters is boring,” said Forrest. “I wanted to be in the field. This is great that we’ll be working together.”

“Not exactly working together, Mr. Latham,” interjected Judge O’Connor. “Ms. Howard is advising the defense. You’re advising the prosecution.” He introduced Blick and then said, “Mr. Cervantez is waiting for us in my chambers. Shall we?”

Forrest bowed and waved the women ahead of him with a grin. He directed a wink at Cassandra.

The walnut-paneled walls of the chief judge’s chambers were decorated with pictures of him posing with politicians and celebrities dating back twenty years. One shelf held awards from dozens of organizations, both local and national; another shelf held editions of the two books he had written, on the Sixth Amendment and juries (he was inclined to present guests with autographed copies). A third shelf held biographies of Winston Churchill (whom O’Connor was fond of quoting) and framed pictures of his family.

A slender man with thinning dark hair, a silvering goatee, and black-framed glasses turned from the bookshelf as O’Connor and the others entered. Cassandra noticed his ears were disproportionately long and his brown suit was ill-fitted, perhaps a size too large. She put him in his late fifties.

“Mr. Cervantez, this is Cassandra Howard from Real Thought Analytics,” said O’Connor. “She’ll be your jury consultant for the trial.”

“I’m looking forward to working with you,” said Cassandra as she crossed the room to shake Cervantez’s hand.

“So you’re to blame for this miscarriage of justice,” he said, his hands remaining in his pockets.

“In small part,” said Cassandra with a slight smile. “In very small part.” She had become practiced in absorbing outrage and blowback over the Surrogate technology. People were resistant to change, and she had learned to put off any attempts at reasonable persuasion until emotional temperatures cooled. Cervantez was clearly still hot.

“Never mind him, Ms. Howard,” said O’Connor. “He’ll come around. Lawrence, behave yourself.”

“But Judge, this is preposterous.” Cervantez brushed past Cassandra. “A robot jury? How have we come to this?”

“They’re not robots,” said Forrest.

“Artificial intelligence then, whatever,” said Cervantez.

“We call it replicate consciousness, actually,” said Cassandra gently. “There’s a marked difference.”

“Artificial intelligence implies independent sentience,” said Forrest. “The Surrogate program employs technology designed to replicate a specific consciousness.” He grinned broadly.

Cervantez stared at Forrest a moment before turning back to O’Connor. “I have real problems with this whole idea, Judge.”

“I know you do,” said O’Connor, taking a seat behind his desk. “And you’re not alone by a long shot, but the ABA and even the ACLU have both agreed to take a wait-and-see approach with the pilot program. So that’s what we’re here for. To show it can work.”

“I understand this is the first live case?” asked Blick.

“Yes,” said O’Connor. “Other actual cases will begin soon in the other pilot courts, but we are the first, and you should know I intend to stay first. I won’t tolerate any delays. Jury selection starts day after tomorrow.”

“Day after tomorrow?” Cervantez threw his hands in the air. “Judge, that is way too soon. How can you expect us to be ready for voir dire in a day and a half ?”

“Relax, Larry,” said Blick. “You’ve had two months to prepare your case. And you know as well as I do this isn’t the one to go to the wall for.”

Cassandra sensed the assistant prosecutor was keen on the prospect of being at the forefront of a technological — ​and legal — ​revolution, which meant Forrest was likely to encounter far less contention from her than it appeared Cassandra was going to get from Cervantez.

“So my client gets to be the victim of us working out the bugs,” said Cervantez. “Terrific. How is that remotely fair?”

“Your client signed off on it, Mr. Cervantez,” said O’Connor. “She’s waived her right to procedural due process. Everything was explained to her.”

“She’s a khem addict, Your Honor. She’ll sign anything for a fix. I have to say for the record that this is an outrage. I’ve been a public defense attorney for over twenty years and I’ve never seen anything this grievous.”

“Mr. Cervantez, you can spare me the rhetoric. We’re not in the courtroom yet.”

“But Judge, how is this even constitutional?”

“Ah,” said O’Connor. “That is yet to be determined. But there’s certainly a legitimate path to constitutionality. The court recognized legal constructs as having the same rights as persons in Citizens United, and Greene v. Osbourne found sufficient digital data could be used to construct a personal value system and ascertain intent. The concept of a surrogate jury is just building on the evolving definition of person in a technological age. Welcome to the future, Mr. Cervantez. Kicking and screaming as you may choose.”

The Full Belly was two blocks from the Hall of Justice down Clinton Street. The judge had strongly encouraged Cassandra and Cervantez to have lunch together. Unmanned electric cars traveled the streets at uniform speeds and distance. Drones flew between the buildings as though through canyons, delivering packages, auditing pedestrian traffic, and carrying air boards advertising insurance or pharmaceuticals.

“You know where this all started?” asked Cervantez as he and Cassandra stopped at the corner of Clinton and Beaubien to wait for the LED-lit walkway across the street to turn from red to green.

Cassandra spread her hands in question.

“When they replaced umps behind the plate with those pitch monitors,” said Cervantez with disgust.

“They work,” said Cassandra. “No one argues balls and strikes anymore.”

“Exactly,” said Cervantez. “Took away all nuance. We keep wanting everything to be black and white, but everything isn’t black and white. Like the strike zone, there are edges. Humans understand edges are not clear-cut.”

“Which is why people make mistakes,” said Cassandra.

“Yep, they do,” said Cervantez. “But isn’t that what they say? To err is human. What if that ability is humanity’s defining asset? We’ve spent thousands of years trying to eradicate human error. What if when we finally stamp it out for good, poof! No more humanity.”

“That’s probably a ways off,” said Cassandra.

The walkway lit up green and they started to cross.

“Might be closer than you think,” said Cervantez.

The restaurant was crowded with other court employees. At the order counter, Cassandra swiped her hand over the UR? reader and the vegetarian options were displayed on the menu screen in the countertop.

“Hello, Cassandra,” said the menu. “What would you like for lunch?”

She ordered the grilled tempeh sandwich with avocado, roasted red peppers, and sprouts on ciabatta bread.

“Good choice, Cassandra,” said the menu. “Enjoy.”

Beside her, Cervantez ordered the BLT platter.

“This sandwich has 1,094 milligrams of sodium, Lawrence, which will exceed your personal recommended daily allowance,” said the menu. “Perhaps you would like to omit the bacon or make another choice?”

“It’s not a BLT without bacon,” said Cervantez. “And no, I do not want to make another choice.” He turned to Cassandra. “I hate it when it tries to tell me what to eat.”

“It’s just giving good advice,” said Cassandra. “Too much sodium’s not healthy for you.”

“So I’ve been told,” said Cervantez. “But it’s my call.”

“Your health insurance company may think otherwise,” said Cassandra.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Cervantez. “I know. So my insurance rate just ticked up. But a BLT is worth it.”

They found a table along a back wall. Cervantez bit into his sandwich. “Mmm,” he said. “Good bacon.” He wiped at his goatee with a napkin. “All right. I guess we’re doing this. So, jury consultant, tell me how the hell this works.”

“You have an aunt?” began Cassandra.

“I have many.”

“Well, pick one.”

“My tía Mayra. Salt of the earth.”

“Okay, picture your tía Mayra. Imagine all you know about her. Her likes, her dislikes. Her tendencies and quirks. Her experiences, her worldview. Technology now allows us to render all of those traits and qualities digitally.” Cassandra concentrated on keeping her voice clinical, despite her enthusiasm for the revolutionary work. “Over the past decade, building on personality tests such as the Enneagram model or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which we now recognize as primitive but at the time was highly influential, personality psychologists have developed a comprehensive — ​I’ll call it a questionnaire — ​that assembles an individual’s personality with such accuracy that we can extrapolate decisions and judgments the person would make in real-life situations.”

“Uh-huh,” said Cervantez. “My tía Mayra in a computer.”

“Essentially, yes,” said Cassandra, having forgotten her food. “Personality neuroscience has mapped the six major personality traits to regions of the brain. That’s the foundation. Through a simple MRI we can identify the building blocks of an individual’s personality.”

Over the next half hour, Cassandra explained how through using intensive Likert-scale surveys, personality mapping, and inclusive mining of personal data from e-life platforms, Real Thought Analytics had developed the Surrogate program.

“As an early application of the technology, jury duty is particularly apt,” she said. “Think of it. Almost everyone hates jury duty. No one has the time. Juries are costly, cumbersome, inefficient, and unreliable. The Surrogate system fixes all of that. We can employ a person’s surrogate easily and without hassle. What’s more — ​and this is critical — ​we’re able to modify individual surrogates to compensate for biases and prejudices. Surrogates finally allow for an impartial jury in a way never possible before.”

“By impartial you mean emotionless,” said Cervantez, folding his napkin.

“Objective,” clarified Cassandra.

“So much for a jury of your peers.” Cervantez stood up.

“No,” said Cassandra. “This is exactly a jury of your peers. Don’t you see? Just with all the hate, suspicion, and prejudices stripped out.”

“But also all empathy, compassion, and mercy, right?” asked Cervantez. “Hate to tell you, Ms. Howard, but my ability to access those emotions in jurors is often the only shot I have at an effective defense.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “Because, unfortunately, a good number of my clients are guilty.” He pulled back, his voice returning to regular volume. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” Cassandra grabbed her purse.

“To see the human being your surrogate jury is going to judge.”

The County Detention Facility, a cement box the color of sand perched on squat posts, was a short walk back up Clinton, across from the Hall of Justice. A tunnel under the street connected the two buildings, making it easier to transport inmates to and from trial. Drone perches hung from every side of the building like hornets’ nests. Cervantez ushered Cassandra through the security checkpoints. Her short heels clopped on the industrial gray tiles of the beige-painted hallway as a guard led them to the attorney meeting room. The air smelled of an unpleasant combination of urine, body odor, disinfectant, floor wax, and mold.

“Here you go,” said the guard, unlocking a cell door. “You’ll all fit if you squeeze in.”

The tiny space was featureless except for a brown metal table and two chipped metal chairs bolted to the cement-block wall. Ammie Moore sat on one of the chairs, spastically kicking her crossed leg and knocking the silver tracking bracelet around her wrist against the tabletop. Cassandra thought the young white girl looked small and thin in the yellow jumpsuit. She was probably in her mid-twenties. Her unwashed blond hair hung in strands and her skin was blotchy with a red rash. She blinked erratically and her lips twitched, evidence, along with the rash, of regular khem use.

“Hey, Ammie,” said Cervantez, taking the other chair. “How you doing? This is Cassandra Howard. She’s going to be helping with the case.”

“You got a little something?” asked Ammie, ignoring Cassandra. Her voice was pleading.

Cervantez shook his head. “You know I don’t, Ammie. You’ve been getting your script, though, right?”

Ammie snorted. “Yeah. I been getting it. But it’s only enough to keep me from throwing myself out a goddamn window. Can’t you get them to up it? Even a little?”

“I’ll talk to the doctor when I leave.” Cervantez reached into his briefcase and withdrew an e-folder carrying links to the case files. “Do you remember digistamping an agreement to take part in a pilot jury program, Ammie?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” said Ammie. “It sounded cool.”

“Well, I wish you hadn’t done that. Because now I have to defend you in front of a jury I have no experience with. And we already had plenty stacked against us. I want to encourage you one more time to consider a plea deal.”

“But I didn’t kill that guy.” Ammie’s soft voice rose. “I ain’t saying I did it when I didn’t. I’ve done plenty of other stuff, but not this.”

“I know,” said Cervantez, “but with the evidence the state has, I’m not certain I can convince a jury — ​any jury — ​that you’re innocent. You’re looking at life without parole. You know that, right?”

Cassandra had read the case file, and Cervantez was not exaggerating the strength of evidence against Ammie. The girl faced a felony murder charge for stabbing a man to death in his car while parked in a weedy lot behind a boarded-up muffler and tire shop on the west side. It was a burned-out area with few security cameras and where police drones rarely flew, so dealers and prostitutes favored it. Investigators found her blood on the passenger seat, her left shoe outside the vehicle, and she admitted the man had picked her up on a corner she worked.

Ammie stared into her lap, picking at her palm.

“You’ve got to give me something to work with, Ammie,” said Cervantez. “You told the police he started slapping you and that you were able to get away and run off. But if you tell me that you weren’t able to get away, then I can argue self-defense. You see?”

Ammie considered Cervantez. She darted her eyes over Cassandra.

Cassandra saw haunted fear in the young girl’s face. She knew from the case file that Ammie had run away from an abusive, alcoholic father at sixteen and had been on the streets ever since. It could not have been an easy life, and the look in her eyes made it clear it had been a life lacking warmth, love, value, or security, all of which Cassandra had known. The girl had been routed for rough days and a bad end.

“You a lawyer?” Ammie asked.

“No,” said Cassandra. “I’m a psychologist.”

“I thought of being a psychologist back when I was little,” said Ammie. She smiled briefly at the memory. “Didn’t quite work out, though. You think you can help me?”

“We’d like to,” said Cassandra. “But you need to tell Mr. Cervantez what really happened. You don’t have to be scared.”

Ammie chewed her lip and rubbed her arms. She looked down. “What if it was C-Jack who done it?”

“Who’s C-Jack?” asked Cervantez.

“My boyfriend. He looks out for me.”

“You mean your pimp,” said Cervantez. “Okay, I’m listening.”

Ammie hesitated and then let the story out in a rush. “The guy goes off like I said, slapping me and yelling that he was going to kill me, and suddenly the door jerked open and C-Jack was pulling me out and the next thing I know he’s in the car stabbing the guy and so I just took off. I didn’t look back either. Not once.”

“Ammie,” said Cervantez, his voice registering bewilderment, “why didn’t you tell this to the police?”

“I was scared C-Jack’d kill me if I told.”

The girl’s tone of trauma and timidity gripped Cassandra. “No one’s going to hurt you,” she said, surprised by the vehemence in her voice.

Cervantez scrambled for his note recorder. “This is good,” he said. “This is a proper defense.”

Cassandra exited the detention center a half hour later. Cervantez had other clients to see. They’d agreed to meet the next day for her to show him the complete Surrogate system. The setting sun reflected in orange rays from the windows of the surrounding buildings as she walked to the corner to hail an autocab home.

“Hey, Cassie,” a voice called from behind her. She turned to see Forrest jogging to catch up with her. “I forgot how fast a walker you are.”

“One of the benefits of being tall,” said Cassandra.

“How’d it go today?”

“Better than I expected.”

He searched her face to gauge the level of truth behind her words, a habit she found unsettling and annoying.

“Great,” he said. “I want to hear all about it. Let’s get a drink.”

“I can’t,” said Cassandra. “I need to get home. My dad’s waiting.”

“One drink,” said Forrest. He blasted her with his strongest smile. “Please?”

Cassandra laughed. “You think that smile can get you anywhere, don’t you?”

Forrest shrugged. “It has so far. I’m told it’s the dimples.”

“I believe it,” said Cassandra. “I, however, am immune to their appeal.”

“And I believe that,” said Forrest. “It’s probably why I find you so inscrutable.”

“Inscrutable? I’m hardly inscrutable.”

“Oh, but you are,” said Forrest, searching her face again. “Cassandra Howard. One big mystery. Unfathomable. Elusive and remote.”

“Are you done?”

“For now,” said Forrest. “Hey, has Powell called you yet?”

“No,” said Cassandra. “I’m sending him my status report tonight. Why?”

“No reason. I just know he’s wound up for this to go smoothly.”

“Powell is always wound up,” said Cassandra, who had once described the project head of the Surrogate system at Real Thought Analytics as the Dr. Frankenstein of the artificial intelligence industry.

“I know,” said Forrest. “He’s just worried we’re going to screw something up.”

“I’m not going to screw anything up,” said Cassandra. She waved for an autocab. “Are you?”

“That is not my plan,” said Forrest, and he grinned.

The streetlights were on when Cassandra arrived home. The house where she grew up was a brick American Foursquare near Holbrook and Woodward, walking distance from the Little Rock Baptist Church, where as a child she had worshipped on Sunday mornings with her father. She climbed the cement steps to the pillared front porch that spanned the front of the house where when she was little she had dressed dolls and built cities of connecting plastic blocks on cool autumn evenings while her father rocked on the porch swing, grading papers. She raised her hand to where the doorbell used to be so that the home security eye could scan her I-AM chip.

“Welcome home, Cassandra,” intoned the system as it unlocked the door.

Inside, she thanked the hospice nurse for staying late and went to check on her sleeping father. The monitors beside the hospital bed flickered green and red in the shadowed room. She checked the cat’s bowl before making a dinner of acorn squash, tofu, and sautéed collard greens. She checked e-mails and reviewed project updates while she ate. It was quiet enough for her to hear the subtle creaks and groans the boards of the house made as they struggled with age. After she cleaned up, she returned upstairs to her father’s room.

Jarius Howard had been diagnosed with advanced colon cancer in April. Doctors told him he would likely be dead before the year was out. He had two months to go to beat their prognosis, but his energy and determination to show them up had dropped off sharply in recent weeks and he had grown less interested in living simply to prove fools wrong.

“Did you feed Baedeker?” he asked Cassandra when she came in.

“Yes, Daddy, I fed Baedeker. Your beloved cat is not losing any weight.”

“Unlike me, you mean.” He chuckled and coughed.

“Stop that,” said Cassandra. She sat beside the bed and took her Apple iGlass from her bag and rested it in her lap. She took her father’s emaciated wrist and scanned his I-AM bracelet to check his vitals.

“Everything looks pretty good,” she said.

“Must be why I feel so energetic,” he said with a weak smile.

Her father had been a professor of philosophy at Wayne State University for thirty years and had raised Cassandra alone after her mother died, when she was ten. He had often taken her to the university to sit in on his lectures when he couldn’t find someone to watch her, and she had sat in the back of the class listening to his strong, confident voice while she drew picture after picture of her mother.

Cassandra put on a pair of wireless connec-specs and blinked twice to open her father’s identity folder on the iGlass.

“More questions?” asked her father.

“Only a few.”

“What are you going to do with all this information you’ve been gathering, anyway?”

“It’s just for work,” she said.

“Mmm-hm. You work too much.”

“I enjoy it.”

“You should enjoy some life, too,” said Jarius.

“I do, Daddy,” said Cassandra. She tapped the iGlass and adjusted the spectacles. “You ready?”

“Fire away.”

“I would never break the law, no matter how minor. Strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree?”

“Oooh,” said Jarius. “A question about gray areas. I like the tricky ones.”

“The key breakthrough was when the developers were able to quantify reasonable doubt,” explained Cassandra. She and Cervantez were alone in a conference room on the twelfth floor of the Hall of Justice. They had blocked out the entire afternoon for Cassandra to walk the criminal defense attorney through the Surrogate system.

“So no more ‘shadow of a doubt,’ eh?” said Cervantez. He was scanning the digibinder Cassandra gave him on the system.

“Well, not exactly,” admitted Cassandra, “but close. Using an interlaced algorithm, the system is able to attribute value to physical evidence, testimony, and other facts, and then weigh it as any human juror would do. If the calculation exceeds the equivalent of reasonable doubt—”

“Guilty,” said Cervantez, rapping the table.

“Yes.”

“What if they’re wrong?”

“They haven’t been yet.”

Developers had presented Surrogate juries with tens of thousands of case studies from the past decade and the system had demonstrated a verdict variance with the human juries of 3.1 percent.

“What is that? A verdict variance?” asked Cervantez.

“It means that for every one thousand trials, the Surrogate system reached a different verdict from the human jury in thirty cases,” explained Cassandra. “In each of those cases, our independent investigative department, working with the Department of Justice, determined that the Surrogate jury had likely reached the correct verdict. The human juries were wrong.”

Cervantez pushed back his chair and walked to the window. He looked out over the city. “I don’t understand how we’ve come to this. Machines judging people.”

“They’re not machines,” said Cassandra. “They are replicate human consciousnesses.”

“They are machines,” said Cervantez, turning away from the window, his voice rising. “What do they know about guilt? Innocence? Human compassion? Not a damn thing. They’re just electrical impulses!”

“So are humans,” said Cassandra.

“Like hell they are,” said Cervantez, turning back to the window. “I don’t believe that.”

“Believe this then, counselor,” said Cassandra evenly. “It’s estimated that more than twelve thousand people are wrongfully convicted each year. With refinement, the Surrogate system has the potential to reduce that number to zero in time. Isn’t that something you can work for? How many of your clients who were innocent are sitting in a prison cell right now? It may not be many, but it’s too many, and I know you believe that.”

Cervantez looked to the ceiling as if searching for a message scrawled on the white paint above him and sighed. “Fine,” he said, walking back to the table and picking up the digibinder. “What else do I need to know?”

“Let me show you the HD holograms,” said Cassandra. Cervantez rolled his eyes.

The avatars were purely aesthetic, she explained as she clicked a controller. Twelve light forms slowly solidified across the table from Cervantez: seven women and five men. In short order, with the exception of an errant shimmer of light, the images appeared corporeal. Each hologram was an accurate representation of the Surrogate juror, created from a multitude of photographs collected from e-life platforms.

“The thought is that eventually holograms will be unnecessary,” said Cassandra, “but we discovered attorneys in the beta stages were more comfortable arguing before avatars. Go on, give it a try.”

Cervantez stared at her, his lips pursed cynically. Then he rubbed a hand over his head, inhaled deeply, and exhaled. He shot a look at the twelve avatars and stood up slowly.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he began. “You now know that Ammie Moore did not kill Russell Lipke — ​a violent, perverse man who was soliciting sex from vulnerable young women on street corners. After hearing all the evidence and testimony in this case, you now know she didn’t do it. How do you know? Simple.” Cervantez stopped pacing and turned to look directly at the avatars. “She told you she didn’t. She told you under oath in vivid detail how Russell Lipke started attacking her in the car and how she desperately struggled to get away, accounting for his skin cells found under her fingernails. She told you how he struck her across the mouth, breaking her lip and accounting for her blood found on the car seat. She described how the car door suddenly flew open and Charles Jackson, her ‘boyfriend,’ pulled her from the car and then in a rage proceeded to stab Russell Lipke to death. She told you through sobs and tears how she ran off, scared out of her mind, and never looked back. That’s the truth. That’s what happened.”

Cervantez paused and shook his head at the tale’s tragedy before continuing.

“Now I know the prosecution says, ‘Then why didn’t she tell the police that’s what happened when they first questioned her?’ But what did Ammie say when I asked her that question? You remember. She was afraid Charles Jackson would kill her. And do you know why you can believe she feared for her life? Because here is a woman who has been physically and emotionally abused since she was a child. We know her father beat her until she was old enough to run away. And we know Charles Jackson beat her to keep her on that corner so he could get his payday. Ladies and gentlemen, here is a woman who has suffered at the hands of every man in her life. The very men who were supposed to take care of her and protect her. And how did she respond to all these men who raised their fists against her? Did she stab them to death? No. Shoot them? No. She ran. Just like she did this time. She ran.” Cervantez leaned over the table and looked pointedly at each avatar. “And that is why I know you will find her not guilty. Because you know she didn’t do it.”

In the silence that followed, Cassandra clapped slowly and softly. “That’s a pretty good closing argument,” she said.

Cervantez snorted. “It would be. If your surrogate jury gave a damn.”

It was late before Cassandra deemed Cervantez sufficiently prepared for jury selection the next morning and let him leave for home. His righteous indignation had not eased with his understanding of the system, but he had committed to learning how it worked, she had to give him that. She was gathering her equipment together when Judge O’Connor entered the conference room. It was the first time she’d seen him out of his judicial robes.

“How are things going, Ms. Howard?” he asked.

“Very well,” said Cassandra. “I think we’re ready for tomorrow.”

“Glad to hear it.” O’Connor picked up the hologram control and examined it. “And Mr. Cervantez? He’s cooperating?”

“Absolutely,” said Cassandra.

“Good, good,” said O’Connor. “Maybe I shouldn’t share this, but he was not my first choice. Strikes me as a bit of a pessimist. Reminds me of something Churchill once said: ‘A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.’ Are you an optimist or a pessimist, Ms. Howard?”

“I’m a realist, Judge,” said Cassandra, stepping around his play of soft intimidation and taking the hologram control from his hand. She placed it in her case.

“Be sure to let me know if you run into any problems,” said O’Connor. “I don’t want any misunderstandings or antics to delay this trial.”

“Of course not,” said Cassandra. “We don’t want one of the other pilot programs to move ahead of us, now do we?”

O’Connor considered her, smiling tightly, and she chastised herself for having possibly stepped over a line. Finally he said, “No, we don’t. Do you know the first man to sign the Declaration of Independence, Ms. Howard?”

“That would be John Hancock.”

“Yes, it would be. But I wager you don’t know the second. Second never draws the same recognition as first does. First is history; second is merely trivia. I intend this case to be history. Everyone should be clear on that.”

Cassandra snapped her case closed. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, Judge,” she said.

“Good.” O’Connor held the door for her. “It was Josiah Bartlett, by the way.”

“I’m sorry?” said Cassandra.

“Josiah Bartlett was the second man to sign the Declaration of Independence.”

“Is that right?” Cassandra passed through the doorway into the hall. “You learn something new every day.”

Forrest pulsed Cassandra on her way home, again inviting her to get a drink. She pulsed back, again declining. At home, after feeding Baedeker and checking on her sleeping father, she spent time on her yoga, trying to clear her mind and focus on her center. Since middle school, when she reached her full height of five eleven, Cassandra had felt alien in her body, awkward and encumbered. She took up yoga in college as a way for her mind and body to relate. But tonight she was unable to fully close her mind down. Ammie’s face stubbornly snapped into her consciousness and her timid voice repeated in Cassandra’s ear.

When her father woke, she tried to get him to eat, but he complained that swallowing was painful. Instead they spent the evening with Cassandra asking him more questions. Jarius seemed to appreciate the short “strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree” answers. It was all he had energy for. In the quiet of the darkening room, it was just Cassandra’s even-toned voice and her father’s shallow breathing. Occasionally she had to ask him to repeat his answer and lean in to hear it. After a time she came to the end of the identity query.

“No more questions, Chickpea?” asked Jarius. He sounded wryly disappointed.

“No more questions,” said Cassandra. “We’re done. Why don’t you get some rest?”

Jarius closed his eyes. He whispered something Cassandra couldn’t understand.

“What’s that, Daddy?” she asked.

But he was asleep, the cat curled beside him.

The HD hologram of a red-haired woman with oversized glasses rotated slowly in front of Judge O’Connor’s bench.

“Ms. Renee Elder, fifty-two, works as a floral designer. Divorced with two children. Grew up in Grand Rapids, moved to Detroit to attend Wayne State University to study art education but didn’t finish. On tab two you can see the various organizations she associates with, any volunteer activity, religious affiliations, and so on. And on tab three are her stances on a range of issues, from the death penalty to climate contamination.” O’Connor looked up from reading the identity brief and addressed the attorneys. “Any objections?”

“None, Your Honor,” said Cervantez.

At the next table, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Jessica Blick leaned over to consult with Forrest.

“Your Honor,” she said, “this juror would be acceptable if we modulated her emotional quotient as related to her oldest daughter’s problems with drug addiction. The daughter’s been in and out of rehab for several years.”

“Mr. Cervantez?” asked O’Connor.

“I don’t see what the daughter’s experimenting with drugs has to do with Ms. Elder’s suitability for this jury,” said Cervantez. “In fact—”

“Mr. Cervantez,” cautioned O’Connor.

The defense attorney sighed and looked at Cassandra, who was drilling down on the identity construct and calculating bias percentages. She whispered to Cervantez her recommendation and the attorney nodded.

“Your Honor, we would accept a modulation of thirty-five points to fall within the impartial range,” he said.

“That wasn’t so hard now, was it, Mr. Cervantez?” said O’Connor. “Does that sound acceptable to you, Ms. Blick?”

Forrest nodded and Blick said, “Yes, Your Honor.”

“Good, that’s what I like to see. Everyone working together,” said O’Connor. “Then if there are no more objections we have juror number three.” The hologram of the red-haired woman dissolved to be replaced by an older white man with a lean, shaved face and perfectly styled silver hair.

“Mr. Ian McMasters,” said O’Connor.

Two hours later a jury had been selected, and O’Connor scheduled the trial to begin the following morning.

Cervantez leaned over and whispered to Cassandra, “I think somebody is anxious to start writing his next book.”

Remote-controlled vid-drones whirred and hovered in the back of the courtroom like hummingbirds, streaming the trial live to subscription criminal justice channels.

Blick’s first witness was Detective Darrell Foster, a square-jawed man with a closely trimmed Afro. The bailiff clipped a response sensor to the detective’s right index finger and affixed a visceral patch below his left temple. A subcontractor had developed the advanced polygraph technology for Real Thought Analytics to interface with the Surrogates, who could judge the truthfulness of a witness’s account through the extensive physiological feedback.

With Blick’s guidance, Foster described the murder scene and the steps of the investigation that had led to the arrest of Ammie Moore. Throughout his testimony, he shot uncertain sideways glances at the avatars projected in the jury box. Under cross, Cervantez established that police had not found the knife used to kill Russell Lipke or any bloody clothes they could identify as belonging to the defendant.

“And finally, Detective Foster, I’m curious why you failed to interview Ammie Moore’s boyfriend, Charles Jackson,” said Cervantez.

“You mean her pimp?” asked the detective.

“Yes, a violent man known on the street as C-Jack.”

Foster shrugged. “We couldn’t find him.”

“I see,” said Cervantez. “Did you look very hard, Detective Foster, or had you already decided a poor drug addict nobody would believe was good enough?”

“Objection,” said Blick.

“Withdrawn,” said Cervantez. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

When he returned to his seat, Cassandra leaned over to remind him the Surrogates would not be affected by inflammatory language.

“Old habits die hard,” said Cervantez with a grin.

Ammie was dressed in a blue pantsuit that came from a wardrobe Cervantez had picked up over the years from thrift shops and kept in a closet in his office. He’d also gotten the doctor to up her dose of khem so that she didn’t reveal telltale signs of withdrawal. With her hair brushed and wearing makeup, Ammie almost looked as if she could be an innocent college student. Cassandra told Cervantez the measures were unnecessary because the Surrogates would not assign any judgment based on a defendant’s appearance, but Cervantez insisted; it was more for Ammie’s dignity than the jury, he said.

The remaining witnesses included the medical examiner, who testified to the nature and angle of the more than a dozen stab wounds found on the victim, and an expert from the state crime lab, who established that trace evidence of blood and hair found on the passenger seat belonged to the defendant. It took time for the expert witnesses to become comfortable with the idea that they were freed from having to simplify technical descriptions into layman’s terms, because the Surrogates had access to scientific portals that provided comprehensive glossaries. Once the ME and lab tech got the hang of it, they almost delighted in spouting industry acronyms and jargon.

At one point Cervantez stood and said, “Your Honor, I understand the witness does not have to simplify her testimony for this jury, and that’s great, but if she could dumb it down for me, I’d appreciate it, because I have no idea what she just said.”

Blick rested her case near the end of the day and O’Connor adjourned court until morning. The media in the hallway was a roiling cluster of vid-porters, but Cassandra shook off shouted questions to make her way out of the Hall of Justice.

Jarius that night appeared weaker, more tired. He refused to eat again despite Cassandra’s urging.

“Tell me about the trial,” he said as Cassandra cleared the food tray. She sat by the bed and, as if reading him a story before sleep, told him all that had happened in court that day.

“Doesn’t sound too good for that girl of yours,” said Jarius at the end.

“No, it doesn’t,” said Cassandra.

“You think she did it?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” said Cassandra. “All that matters is what the jury thinks.”

“I know,” said Jarius, “but I want to know what you think.”

Cassandra considered before answering. “I think she’s innocent.”

Jarius took her hand. “None of us is innocent, Chickpea,” he said. “Not one of us.”

Later, after she finished shaving him, he asked her to play the violin. He had always thrilled to hear her play, even when she was just learning and the screech of the instrument filled the house as she practiced. Later he would often cajole her into joining him in a duet while he plinked on the piano. She had begrudgingly obliged as a teenager, but now she held the memory of those musical evenings with great fondness.

“What would you like to hear?” she asked, unpacking the instrument.

“Surprise me,” he said hoarsely.

She played “Autumn Leaves” and watched the smile on his gaunt face as he listened with eyes closed.

“Beautiful,” he said.

“You’ve advised Ms. Moore she does not have to testify, correct, Mr. Cervantez?” asked O’Connor from the bench the next morning.

“Yes, Your Honor,” said Cervantez. “She insists.”

“Very well,” said the judge. “Swear her in.”

Ammie, dressed in the same blue pantsuit as the day before, took the witness stand. As the bailiff hooked her up to the polygraph interface, Cassandra sent her a tight smile of encouragement.

On direct, Cervantez led Ammie through a clear account of how it was C-Jack who’d murdered Russell Lipke. The girl surprised Cassandra with her self-possession. She was controlled when she told how Lipke started slapping her, splitting her lip.

“That must have hurt,” said Cervantez.

Ammie shrugged. “It ain’t the first time I was hit by a man. I been hit harder.”

She only struggled with her composure when she recalled C-Jack attacking Lipke and hearing the man shout for help as she ran away.

“And you haven’t seen C-Jack since?”

“No,” said Ammie. “He’s probably took off to Florida. He has family down there.”

On cross, Blick appeared almost carnivorous in her eagerness to question Ammie. She asked Ammie to tell her story once more “to clarify a few details,” but despite aggressive attacks and sly feints, Blick failed to snare Ammie in a contradiction or to uncover a crack in the story that the prosecution could exploit. Ammie followed Cervantez’s instructions explicitly and offered no more details than necessary to answer Blick’s question.

Blick’s relentless interrogation came to a close two hours later, and Cassandra could tell from the pallor of frustration on the prosecutor’s face that the Firecracker was displeased with not having exposed holes in Ammie’s account.

Cassandra had prepared Cervantez for the speed with which the Surrogate jury would reach its verdict following closing arguments. Hours or days of deliberation were unnecessary. The program simply calculated the aggregate of the Surrogates’ reasonable doubt total to determine the jury’s decision.

Still, Cervantez grabbed Cassandra’s hand in a startled reaction when, within seconds of O’Connor transmitting the jury instructions explaining the rules of law to the Surrogates, the judge received a response. O’Connor too seemed nonplussed by the swiftness of the determination.

He recovered by shooting a grin directly at a vid-drone and cracking to viewers, “Gives new meaning to ‘rush to judgment,’ doesn’t it?” Then he cleared his throat and read from his bench screen, “In the case of the State of Michigan versus Ammie Moore, we the jury find Ammie Moore—” O’Connor paused for an appropriate dramatic beat before declaring, “Not guilty.”

Cervantez sat upright and muttered an expletive of surprise. A hand covering her mouth, Ammie appeared uncertain whether to believe what she’d heard and looked with hesitant hope to Cervantez for confirmation.

“Ms. Moore,” said O’Connor, “you have no further business with this court.”

Cervantez smiled at Ammie. “You’re a free woman,” he said.

Cassandra stayed with Cervantez as he walked Ammie through the process of her release. Deputies scanned the recorded verdict, removed her tracking bracelet, and returned her I-AM tokens. Cervantez told her she could keep the pantsuit. In a side hall, away from the gaggle of vid-porters hoping to score an interview, the defense attorney shook Ammie’s hand and wished her luck.

“I can just go?” asked Ammie.

“You can just go,” said Cervantez. “It’s over.”

From the wariness in Ammie’s eyes, Cassandra wasn’t sure the girl believed that anything was ever over.

“What are you going to do now?” asked Cassandra.

“I don’t know,” said Ammie. “But I can tell you no man’s ever going to hit me again.”

She turned and headed to the door to the street. With evident doubt, she passed an I-AM token over the security scanner and exhaled relief when the door unlocked with a quiet click. She eased the door open and peered outside. She looked back at Cervantez and Cassandra, mumbled a quick “Thanks,” and then slipped through the door, which snapped closed behind her.

“That,” said Cervantez, “is real gratitude.”

“She said thanks,” said Cassandra.

“Oh, no, I know,” said Cervantez. “It’s the heartfelt appreciation from clients that keeps me in this job.”

Cassandra laughed.

“I hear O’Connor has called a press conference,” said Cervantez, turning to head back toward the lobby. “I hope he enjoys the attention while he can.”

“What do you mean?” asked Cassandra.

“It’s juries we’re digitizing now,” said Cervantez, “but don’t kid yourself. It’ll be judges next. And probably defense attorneys not long after.”

Before Cassandra could voice a response, she was distracted by the sight of Blick and Forrest hurrying toward them. Blick walked with urgent short steps and Cassandra read concern on Forrest’s face when he didn’t smile at her as they neared.

“I just got a call that they found Charles Jackson,” said Blick.

“Really?” said Cervantez. “They get a confession out of him?”

“They’re good, but they’re not that good,” said Blick. “The man’s dead.”

“Dead? How?”

“Based on the knife they found still stuck in his ribs, they’re guessing he was stabbed to death,” said Blick. “They found him in a burned-out khem house over by the river. Looks like he may have been there a month or two.”

“Huh,” said Cervantez.

“Exactly,” said Blick. “Where’s Moore?”

Cervantez waved at the door. “Gone,” he said.

Blick was unfazed. “Better get ready for round two,” she told Cervantez as she turned away back down the hall. “It isn’t going to go as well for you.”

“Probably not,” muttered Cervantez.

Cassandra’s mind spun. She realized the implications of Blick’s news immediately and understood now the serious tenor in Forrest’s eyes.

“They believed her,” she said, a hint of wonder in her voice.

Forrest nodded. “We better hope the problem was with the polygraph interface and not our calculations, or Powell is going to fry a circuit.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Cervantez.

“Ammie lied,” said Cassandra.

“No,” said Cervantez. “I’m shocked.”

“You don’t understand,” said Forrest. “The Surrogates believed her. They’re supposed to be able to accurately assess degrees of veracity, but they thought she was telling the truth.”

“Maybe they aren’t actually soulless then,” said Cervantez. “Or she’s one hell of a liar.”

“This is no joke,” snapped Forrest. “This could undermine confidence in the entire program and mean the end of our careers.” He turned to Cassandra. “I’m going to test the polygraph equipment first if you’ll start looking at the data points—”

Cassandra received a pulse. It was the hospice nurse.

“I have to go,” she said.

The room seemed larger without the hospital bed. Otherwise nothing had been moved. Jarius’s books were still stacked on every available surface. A reproduction of Edmonia Lewis’s famous sculpture Forever Free remained on its shelf below a Horace Pippin print of an African American family saying grace before a meal. One entire wall was covered in framed black-and-white photographs Jarius had taken of the city’s neighborhoods over the decades. Despite being surrounded by her father’s belongings, Cassandra felt the room swollen with absence.

The funeral was well attended, and she had been gratified to see so many of her father’s colleagues and former students. She now sat in the quiet of the room, letting her thoughts whirl and settle. She had a conference call with Forrest and Powell scheduled in an hour to discuss Forrest’s report that the polygraph readings had been distorted by unanticipated high levels of khem in the witness’s system. Powell was furious with the oversight and was threatening to reassign Cassandra and Forrest if they couldn’t come up with a work-around.

Nothing had been heard or seen of Ammie Moore since she walked out of the courthouse, and Cassandra was able to admit she hoped the girl had gone somewhere far away where she could live low and stay safe. There had been a flare of defiance in the girl’s eyes at the end that led Cassandra to believe it was possible, though she knew Ammie’s khem addiction gave her only an outside chance.

The silence of the house gathered around Cassandra as the shadows of evening lengthened. Baedeker wandered the upstairs rooms, unsettled and mewing questioningly. If Cassandra had felt isolated and apart at times as a child after her mother’s death and later away from home as a Black student at Carnegie Mellon, she now experienced loneliness deeper even than she had dreaded since her father’s diagnosis.

She couldn’t abide it.

As Cassandra opened her iGlass to launch the Surrogate program, the home security system bell rang before announcing, “Forrest Latham is at the door.”

Cassandra exhaled her frustration at the interruption. Forrest had attended her father’s funeral, and she appreciated his concern and sympathy, but now his presence was just getting in the way.

“Doorman,” she said, calling up the security system’s audio. “Forrest, what is it?”

“I wanted to see you.” Forrest’s voice came from speakers wired into the room’s molding.

“Our meeting with Powell isn’t for another hour,” said Cassandra.

“I wanted to see you before the meeting.”

“I’m busy right now.”

“Cassandra, please. It’s important.”

Cassandra sighed and snapped shut the iGlass. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Even looking as if he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours, Cassandra couldn’t deny Forrest carried a rumpled attractiveness. His tired eyes took in the living room as he unbuttoned his coat.

“So this is where you grew up,” he said.

“This is it,” said Cassandra. “What do you want?”

“How are you doing?” He studied her face with an incisive concern that made her uncomfortable.

“I’m fine, Forrest,” she said. “What do you want? I have things to do.”

He gave a short, rueful grin. “Ever the inscrutable Cassandra,” he said. “Never letting anyone get too close.”

“Forrest, I don’t have time—”

“I know.” He held up a hand. “I’m sorry. Listen, I know what you’re doing, Cassandra, and you do not want to do it.”

“Really? And what am I doing?”

“Come on, Cassie. This is serious.”

“No, Forrest, what am I supposed to be doing? Tell me.” Cassandra crossed her arms, waiting, presenting challenge and defiance, but she knew she was exposed and her mind was whirling to find plausible cover.

“I know you’re running Surrogate off your home cluster, okay? I found the download time stamps when I was checking the analytics on the polygraph interface.”

Cassandra started to protest, but Forrest cut her off.

“Don’t,” he said. “You covered your tracks pretty well, but if I found them in the audit logs, it’s only a matter of time before Powell finds them. And he’s going to trace the hack back to either you or me... and it wasn’t me.”

Cassandra stared at Forrest. She’d known the audit logs were a risk, but she took the chance, thinking no one would have cause to look. She saw only one out now.

“No one would have to know if you helped me scrub the audit file,” she said.

Forrest shook his head. “I’d do a lot of things for you, Cassandra, but not that. You’re jeopardizing everything. Your entire career.”

“No one would know.”

“Someone would eventually. And I’m not risking my career for you.”

Cassandra turned away. “You should go then, Forrest.”

“Look, I know you hacked Surrogate around the time of your father’s diagnosis, and I understand why you did it, but your father wouldn’t want this. You know that.”

“You didn’t know my father.” She refused to cry, but she felt her throat constrict and it made her voice sound harsh. “You have no idea what he’d want.”

“No, you’re right. I didn’t. But I do know he wouldn’t want you to throw away everything you’ve worked so hard for. And you know it, too.”

“I want you to go.” She placed a hand on his shoulder to move him toward the door.

“Cassandra, please,” begged Forrest. “Wipe Surrogate from your home cluster. You still have time to not completely ruin your life.”

Cassandra’s face was closed off, her mouth set firmly as she reached to open the door.

“It won’t be him,” said Forrest in a desperate rush. “It’ll look like him and talk like him and think like him, but it won’t be your father. You can’t bring him back.”

Cassandra inhaled sharply.

“I can try,” she said.

“But at what cost?”

Cassandra closed her eyes and clenched her jaw to fight tears. “I would give anything to have him back,” she said.

“I know,” said Forrest softly. “But he wouldn’t want you to.”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

Forrest reached for her hand. “You don’t have to be,” he said.

Cassandra switched on the hologram projector in her father’s room and linked it to the lone identity profile on her personal drive. Forrest watched from the doorway, his brow wrinkled in concentration and concern.

“One time,” he’d agreed. “And then you wipe it.”

Cassandra launched Surrogate and slowly a healthy-looking Jarius resolved in the center of the room. He smiled at Cassandra.

“How’s my Chickpea?” he asked.

She dialed down the volume of his voice.

“I miss you, Daddy,” she said.

Jarius laughed. “Aw, Chickpea,” he said, “I’m right here.”

And it seemed to Cassandra that he was there. The tenor of his voice. The cordy muscles in his arms. The slope of his shoulders. The way his brown eyes gazed at her with such tenderness. How his mouth was shaped as if he were ready to smile at any time. He was there. He was. She wanted to hug him, press her face into his shoulder and smell laundry soap in his shirt. But she knew, deeper than her perception of reality, that Forrest was right. The surrogate before her was only a remarkable representation of her father. It could not love her as Jarius had. She felt comforted by the sound of his voice and foolish for her willingness to be deluded.

“I have to say goodbye,” she said.

Jarius nodded. “I know, Chickpea,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“I love you so much,” she said, and with the click of a key terminated the program before the surrogate could respond. Jarius blinked out.

“It’s okay to cry,” said Forrest gently from the doorway. “It’s only human.”