King of All I Survey
Chapter 134: Do I Really Want the Power of Life and Death?

Chapter 134: Do I Really Want the Power of Life and Death?

I decided to surprise Dad and walk both my real body and the android of adult me back to the Status Room. It was slower than normal walking, and I had a little trouble going around corners, but I managed it. The two of me walked in side by side.

"Hey, Dad," adult me said.

"How’s it going?" I asked with my eight-year-old self.

He got a puzzled look on his face at the second voice. He had been reading some information on the display wall and didn’t see us walk in. His brow was furrowed when he turned to me/us. He looked from one to the other, blinked a couple of times, then back to the other. Both of me smiled. "I’m teaching myself how to be in two places at once," little me said.

"Pretty cool, huh?" My adult form continued.

"It is pretty cool," Dad agreed, "but kind of weird, too. How does it work?"

"Well, basically, I’m in my own head," I explained, "but I have like a video interface panel that I can see, showing me the view from the android’s eyes. I can move both bodies independently and use the senses from both at once. I can dial the inputs of one body up and turn down the intensity of the other, if I want to really focus on one location. I mean, Joe controls the link, of course, but the movement and control is all me. It’s totally like a VR unit except I can still see through my own eyes from the other viewpoint at the same time."

"Can I try that?" Dad asked.

"Unfortunately, your brain is a little less pliable than King Tim’s," Joe replied, "it would be substantially more difficult for you. I am learning how Tim’s brain reacts to the various redundant sensory inputs and movement controls, however, so perhaps with more observation, I can fashion a protocol that will work for you."

"You mean you have to figure out a way to teach an old dog new tricks?" Dad asked with a smile.

"Geez, Dad, he didn’t call you a dog... just too old," I quipped with a big grin.

"Hey, at least I’m younger than the combined age of your two bodies..." Dad said, trailing off in feigned confusion. "There’s a sentence that doesn’t get used much."

"Right. It’s kind of stretching the language a bit. Like I don’t know whether I’m an ’I’ or a ’we’ when I’m using both bodies at once. Maybe I are both here, or we is both here..." All three of us chuckled.

"Well, I’m working on northern Mexico at the moment. I kind of have to get back to it," Dad said. Basically, doing some clean-up work. We have about fifty uniformed paramilitaries working the region, after pulling out the bad guys. They are talking with the remaining local officials throughout the region to let them know that drug traffickers and other organized criminals have been sent for job training and anger management classes. If they can prove they are fully rehabilitated, they’ll be released, but actively monitored to prevent recidivism. By the way, we confiscated an awful lot of Earth currency from the various cartels and gangs, I’m thinking we should establish some kind of restitution fund for people who were victims or the families who may have lost a loved one to violence."

"Yeah, great idea. We should have thought of that a while ago. I guess we should get a bunch of drug rehab centers set-up, too. Pretty much all over the western hemisphere for now. Joe, make sure you’re stopping any new supply lines. Shipments of drugs from Asia or Europe or wherever. We don’t want to replace the old traffickers with new ones."

"Yes, every inbound shipment is being scanned. Contraband is being identified to customs enforcement. If the local customs authorities don’t take action, the same information is supplied to local law enforcement and two steps up the chain of command in which ever customs agency, along with the names of the initial agents who refused to act."

"Excellent," I replied.

"Tim, there’s another action, I’d like to take," Dad said slowly. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. "There are a lot of very bad, very damaged people running around in the world doing very bad things to other people."

I nodded, "I know. I was thinking we’d work country by country as we gained political traction. I mean, in Guatemala and Colombia we should definitely be taking on violent crimes of all kinds whether they are cartel or gang related or not."

"Yes, I’ve started on that. Mexico, too. I’d like to start tackling the very worst of the worst wherever they might be, though. Specifically, I’m thinking about serial killers. Joe can comb through news releases and crime reports, to find active investigations that fit the pattern of serial killers, then we can use our surveillance and hacking tech to identify suspects. Using Joe’s ability to read brain activity to figure out truth and lies, we can tell whether the suspects are the ones we want or not. We can either provide evidence to the local law enforcement, or pull them out to out direct implant rehabilitation centers," Dad explained.

"There is a problem," Joe interjected. "True sociopaths don’t register an identifiable difference between truth and lies. They are quite often untreatable from a rehabilitation perspective, even with direct implant therapy. There’s a fundamental brain function issue that is not easily resolved. Not every serial killer or violent criminal fits this description, but the correlation is pretty high."

Dad’s brow furrowed. "So," he said, looking at my eight-year-old self, "If we’re fundamentally opposed to killing even the worst criminals... How do we handle them?"

I sighed and shook my head. "I think we have two choices. Either life in prison or capital punishment." I paused, trying to think it through. I really did not want to be responsible for state-sponsored murder, but was life in prison really any better? I mean, prison could be anything we wanted it to be with simulation rooms, but what’s the point? Just warehouse them until they died? It just seemed like a slower death penalty.

"Joe, no chance at all of a full rehabilitation so they could function in society without posing a danger?" I asked.

"I can evaluate case by case, some can be remediated, but although I don’t have sufficient sampling or information to be accurate, I’d estimate fully eighty percent would always be a risk of reversion at best, or completely resistant to true change."

"OK, yes. Everyone gets a full evaluation, if they can be treated, they stay in simulation room, direct implant therapy until you judge them no longer a threat. However long it takes," I ordered.

"Acknowledged."

"And the others?" Dad asked. He was watching my reaction with a look of concern. He knew this was a sensitive area for me and I could almost feel him worrying about the effect this type of discussion had on me, his delicate baby boy.

Just thinking about that made me start tearing up a little. I mean, probably it was a bit of everything kind of lowering the threshold for crying, and making me more emotional overall, but... The android me wiped at his eyes. Whoops. Apparently, under stress, I wasn’t really focused enough to separate the android function from my real body, without concentrating. I sent Joe a mental command to withdraw the link. The secondary vision window in my field of vision vanished along with all the other sensory input from my second self.

I wiped the nascent tears from my own eyes as I had intended. I took a deep breath and sighed. "I’d like to think of a way to assign them some permanent job that would keep them busy and away from the ability to do any harm to anyone," I said. "You know, I could imagine solitary scouts exploring the galaxy, but there’s no need for that with Joe’s innate knowledge of every planet and every particle in the universe. Even if it were an option, I can see very creative or highly focused sociopaths finding a way to... finding a way around the isolation to cause harm one way or another."

"I agree," Dad said.

"They do tend to be highly focused on goals and quite creative in achieving them. I would even say that they may have a strong ability to hide the fact that their actions are intended to cause harm," Joe opined, "Those who cannot be successfully treated will always work toward subverting any situation you put them in designed to stop them from their desired goals. It is a very strong risk."

"What about chemical or surgical intervention?" I asked.

"It’s tricky," Joe replied, "Some such treatments can be effective, but with medications, there’s always the risk of interruption of treatment and recidivism, often with a strong backlash and increased resistance to further treatment. There’s also the false cure. Some sociopaths will feel the medication altering their mental state and know the goal of the treatment. They will very convincingly fake a positive result from the treatment, hiding their true mental state with the sole, highly focused goal of gaining opportunity for further violence. It can be... difficult to tell the difference in some individuals."

"Wait," Dad cut-in, a look of alarm spilling over his face, "could they fake the initial screening to make you think they are treatable and then eventually ready to return to society after direct implant therapy? Could you be returning the very worst and most competent killers to society, if everyone gets a chance at therapeutic rehabilitation?"

"I can’t rule it out entirely, but I can have a very high degree of confidence. Again, I don’t have sufficient sampling to make a fully accurate determination of the probability, but perhaps 1-5 of 100,000 subjects might get past this assessment. I would improve the accuracy of the assessment over time, with experience."

I shook my head. "Zero." I said, "If there’s any doubt, err on the side of not releasing them. Can you get them all that way?"

"Yes. Although, I will likely keep some who could be released, transferring the damage from the error rate to the subjects rather than the public at large."

"Yes, do that, always," I ordered, "every one of them is guilty of heinous crimes, any risk of error falls against them rather than innocents."

"Acknowledged."

"Those deemed untreatable," I began slowly, then hesitated. Was this the right choice? Was there a better way? I sighed again, "I don’t know, yet. Secure prison in a simulation room, no access to real people, no egress at all, ever. For now... I need some time."

Dad nodded his understanding and stepped toward me eight-year-old self. He knelt down, putting his hands on my shoulders and looking me in the eye. "I know this is hard, Tim. No eight-year-old should ever have to make decisions like this. I’m here for you... If you need to talk or to cry on my shoulder, whatever, I love you and I support your decision, whatever it is. You could never do anything, no one could ever do anything to stop me from loving you."

I felt the tears coming back with a vengeance this time. I leaned into him and threw my arms around my father. Hugging him tightly. My tears flowed freely, and my breathing was strained with sobs. It lasted for a long time.

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