Burning Violin

Crow paused at the door before shutting off the light and pushing the door shut. The latest mark on the wall was another six inches higher. A purple marker from two measurements ago was four inches shorter again. He closed the door before the light could reawake Alexander.

"Hey Nan." Crow said as he scratched his head.

"Yes, master." The senti said as it walked out of the playroom at the summons.

"Is it normal for a kid Alexander's age to grow ten inches in two weeks?" Crow asked.

"Why no, master." Nan said. "I should think even a major growth spurt would be slower than that."

"Noticed anything unusual the last couple weeks?" Crow asked.

"Of course not. I would have notified you at once, master!" The Nan sounded genuinely hurt. "Master Alexander has been nothing short of exemplary in both lessons and behavior. I must say, he is quite taken with the idea of school."

Crow frowned. "Yeah, okay. Don't worry about it. I'll tell the school to give him a physical tomorrow. Just to be on the safe side is all."

"Of course, master. May I be of further service tonight?" The Nan asked.

"Naw." Crow said. "I'll be downstairs. Just recharge or whatever."

Crow slipped down the stairs and stepped over the child-fence with a groan into the kitchen. Shadow puppets cast from forks and knives leered down at him as he pushed through the rank atmosphere. Really got to clean sometime, Crow thought. The heavy basement door creaked open after a jiggle got the latch to release. Crow pulled on the string staring him in the eye, fingers closing on the strung along metal beads that reminded him of bronzed BBs. Fluorescents flickered on with a hum down below, casting only a dull glow up the spiral staircase cut into the rock under the house. The walls were unfinished bedrock, still rough and cold to Crow's hand. Glued on carpet made the steps look more civilized although they too were carved from the original bedrock.

Crow ambled down the uneven stairs, feeling as if he should be carrying a torch and the screams of the damned should be carrying up from the dungeon below. He and Trinan had never figured out the rationale behind this basement. No one had basements in these parts of California anymore, least of all new homes. It must have taken explosives to drive down into the rock like this. Crow speculated that he could make out lines in the rock left by driven steel rebar tapped with dynamite. Trinan had giggled in the darkness of night when they'd split a bottle or two of wine that it might have been made by some serial killer, a perfect sound proof lair for all manner of unspeakables. A chill rose in Crow and he frowned at the darkness. Thinking of Trinan made him feel like a cold wind had passed through him, even with all this passed time.

It was a time of peace, it was a time of war. Everyone wanted heaven but dealt in hell's prizes. Soldiers fought in the deserts, civilians fought in the streets. The politicians bickered on television, the reporters begged for exclusives. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. In short, it was no different than any other stretch of time on this pallid people infested globe.

The recently departed American president could not complete a sentence, nor claim victory in the popular vote. The challengers sat in million dollar mansions and pondered stock prices more than party principles. In tenements and ranch houses, the masses flocked to one side or the other, based more on calculated moral stances than issues or even their own pocketbooks. Promised tax cuts mattered little next to the platform's position on unborn children. The intellectuals surrendured twenty years prior and formulated wordy theories explaining their opinions and the faults of their opposites. Fighter planes screeched over oil-rich provinces independent in name only, the national guard holding cities they could not pronounce for ideals they invented for their leaders.

Prisons overflowed with felons who bought a joint, while rapists walked free. In California, every news room and available camera focused on a yuppie who killed his wife, while a thousand computers stole an election without a peep. From sea to shining sea, billion dollar record companies sued nine year olds for downloading three minute songs they heard on the radio. Life savings disappeared into the coffers to fund the ad campaign for the next Britney Spears, except this time, it would be twins! The best-selling books were filed under self-help or were elaborate conspiracy theories wedged into current events. Class rooms in Kansas taught that the lord created the world in 7 days, even while the Hubble space telescope glimpsed the fourteen-billion year old remnants of the Big Bang.

Reporters caught up with Loretta Biggs outside her Topeka church and asked her how she explained the fossil record if the world was indeed created on October 23, 4004 BC. "Well, young man. Of course God buried all those bones to confuse you high-falutin, too-smart scientistologists. Halleleujah and Amen." They cut her rendition of the Lord's Prayer to launch into a toothpaste commercial. Dentiment. Great-tasting and plaque-killing.

Russia, the declared loser of the Cold War, hurried to tiptoe as close to utter collapse as was possible without actually holding a civil war. They spent a decade bombing a breakaway province or two and battering their own army's morale into dissolution. The apparatus of Soviet government continued on with a different head, for a time a new born democrat and then his throwback prodigy who disliked democracy enough to keep the regime from imploding another few years. Nuclear reactors popped like blown fuses, but mountains of soil and dollars - not rubles, no one would take them anymore - kept the lid on the mushroom clouds. The Russian mafia sold their most beautiful daughters to American internet users who could not get dates on their own, but did not know how to order call girls within their hemisphere. A thousand nuclear weapons probably got lost, though no one could recall since no one paid guards to keep track of them for the better part of a decade. Rollicking elections fostered a sense of democracy, even while a prophylactic factory tried to pay its workers in condoms when it ran out of money. The same workers rioted when a vodka tax raised the price by thirty cents per liter. Life expectancy among men dropped two decades in a little over five years once the less fair sex of Russians realized that their particular democracy made them neither richer or freer, nor did it make their wives Swedish or their country more than a third-world superpower has been. The Germans slaughtered the Jews and even they got the Marshall Plan.

America thought the better of itself since it still could afford to invade the occasional country or two, even if it did have a tragic cost in hundred-story office buildings. A million jobs telecommuted to India and the skilled middle class became mop-jockeys and drive-through monkeys. Too close-to-call elections led to the replacement of paper ballots with untracable electronic ones. Immense multi-nationals reported false profits for years upon years, lied to their stockholders and jumped ship right before the iceberg with golden parachutes. Kenneth Lay did not serve a day and kept his mansion in Boca Raton. Jimmy, the stoner down the hall with all the tatoos got three-to-five upstate for owning a bong. They euthanized his two dogs since he had no family to take them. Martha Stewart did three months hard time, although the commentators could never agree on whether it was funnier or sadder. Late night talk shows got the most mileage out of every event, almost as if their script writers had a hand in the events of the day. A fake news show on Comedy Central won Emmys for journalism. Telling the truth was a laugh and passing on the lies was a fact.

All these things passed as the twenty-first century began. All around this dance of events, the workers trudged to dieing factories and employees lined up at punchclocks for their menial work as janitors, sales associates, customer managers, and administrative assistants. The bureaucrats lilted easily on their thrones of senate seats and corporate board rooms. A wind lifted in the backcounty, whirling dusty through the ditches and small towns, twisting through back alleys and high rises, ever rising into the coming whirlwind.

"About done, Nan?" Crow asked. "I think it's this little boy's bed time."

"Daddy!" Alexander yelped and hopped up to hug him. Crow grunted at the little arms that clasped around his neck as he lifted the tiny boy into the air.

"How was your day?" Crow asked.

"I played football outside with Nan and he showed me how to throw a curve ball and the game was on tv and I ate crackers before dinner and Nan saw a squirrel but it was too high for me to catch but the super black cat from the behind people's house chased it but I don't think it caught it either." Alexander said before he took his first breath.

"Sounds like a busy day." Crow said. "Did you know that you start school tomorrow?"

"I knew that yesterday." Alexander said, emphasizing the final word with an exasperation that mispronounced it into an extra couple of syllables. "And Nan told me all the stuff they teach so I don't really have to go cause I know it all now, but I want to go anyways cause I heard on tv that school has better toys."

"Well it's a private school so they'd better if they want the checks to keep coming." Crow said. He nodded to the Nan and walked out of the play room with Alexander held high, the movement not enough to distract him from an extended soliloquy on the injustice of not being allowed soda instead of juice at his afternoon snack. Crow shifted the burden in his arms, wondering if he was getting weak in age, or if Alexander had started to grow a bit faster. Crow carried Alexander into his bedroom and settled him onto the floor.

"Alright." Crow said. "Time to take a measure."

Alexander scurried for the wall and stood against the line of marks ascending the white paint next to the door. A ruler screwed into the wall took full measure of the tyke's growth over the years. Crow pulled a felt tip marker off of the sagging bookshelf and took his time deciding where to mark.

"Well, looks like you shrunk a little bit." Crow said, ticking off inches with clicks of his tongue.

"Dad, come real." Alexander said. Crow wondered if mixing 'get real' and 'come on' was actual slang or just Alexander messing up what he heard on television, but he had been saying it a lot lately.

"Yep, can't argue with the ruler." Crow said. "I'd say you're six inches shorter today."

"Daaaaaad." The word rolled off Alexander's tongue with full formed sentence structure. Alexander squirmed against the wall to gain as much height as he could muster.

"Oh there you go. You must not have been standing up straight." Crow milked the suspense. "Yep, gained another couple inches."

"I'm gonna to be taller than baseball players." Alexander said.

"You mean basketball players?" Crow asked.

"No. Baseball players. They're the tallest." Alexander said.

"Oh, I see." Crow said. He picked up Alexander again and lifted him into his bed. "Ready for bed?"

"No. I'm not tired at all." Alexander said.

Crow kissed him on the forehead and then scrunched the blankets up under his chin. "Sleep good big guy. Love ya."

"Love you too dad." Alexander said, already fading away into dreams.

Crow tossed his keys onto the hutch crowding the front door. The pile of unread mail collapsed under the momentum and showered to the floor, a sparkle of gloss and business reply envelopes. The keys managed to keep their perch, the sole survivor of the fall. Crow eyed the new pile and decided that it made an acceptable new location for the mail. Perhaps the cleaning bots would mistake it for trash and do him a favor. Scuffed hardwood floors peered out from underneath the pile, reminder that the cleaning bots rarely managed to do more thorough cleaning than a cursory vacuuming of the living room.

The living room stretched out to his left, filled with a tumble of mismatched furniture acquired at occasional yard sales around the neighborhood. Crow preferred to have a full house than a pristine house. The former seemed a home while the latter seemed a waste. He saw no point in constructing show rooms for the company he never entertained. The dining room and kitchen sat to his right, a frightening wasteland of dishes and half-empty containers of take-out. Child-fences blocked the two entrances from Alexander. Five year olds put anything into their mouths, and nothing in the kitchen would be too healthy. Crow noticed the refrigerator and wondered if he should just unplug it already. He didn't even bother with the staples, and the alcohol was in a mini-fridge in the basement.

A chime and a child's laugh sounded from the dark stairs ahead of him. A distant light trickled down like a waterfall, casting rivulets into the den and library flanking the stairs. Crow climbed the creeking stairs, resolved to put Alexander to bed and be done with people for the night. He pushed aside the first door on the right and smiled at Alexander playing with the Nan at something resembling checkers, but with outlandish cartoon monsters as pieces. A vague recollection of last Christmas morning suggested that he was responsible for the game, but Crow could not fully remember. Memories slipped between the cracks with cruel regularity of late.

Alexander, blonde hair glowing in the light of the sole lamp, a blazing halogen in the far corner, studied the pieces with care before moving a purple gorilla with pink dots forward two spaces. It roared and threw an indignant six-legged gazelle clear off the board. "I win!" He shouted.

"You're right Master Alexander." The Nan said, a whir of gears underlining the British accent. Crow had reprogrammed the basic kit of the Nan to speak like an old English butler or servant. The cartoonish personalities with which the bot shipped better suited children whose parents aimed for babysitters rather than teachers.

Green Eyes took that moment to speak up after a long sigh. "I am terribly sorry ma'am, I don't intend to be a bother, but I really must agree with my attorney on this point."

"What?" Rebecca, Bartleby and Crow all asked in unison. Rebecca glared them both into silence.

"I must be put on trial." Green Eyes said.

"But you'll probably lose." Crow said.

"Perhaps." Green Eyes said. "But the very trial itself sets the precedent of citizen's rights for sentient machines. Even if I lose and must die myself, others will have rights that I did not."

"But what about the Feds, Green Eyes, they're going to send someone to kill you." Rebecca insisted. "It could be either of these guys for all you know."

Green Eyes smiled and shook his head. "Better a martyr than a coward."

"That's most altruistic." Rebecca said dryly.

Bartleby leaned over to Crow. "Well, this isn't very human of him. This won't count against his sentience in your testimony will it?"

Crow did not answer, his eyes locked still on Rebecca, who seemed to consider the problem for a moment and then nodded. She glared one more time at Bartleby and Crow just for good measure and then disappeared again out the window, leaving behind a room too stunned to so much as move before security arrived in full swat gear thirty seconds later. For the second time in five minutes, Crow and Bartleby raised their hands at gunpoint. For good measure, Green Eyes did the same.

The debriefing took three hours, time enough for the press to show up and the sky to grow completely dark. Bartleby disappeared to confer with fellow SCLU attorneys on the matter, no doubt to leverage the best spin possible for the evening news. "Most high profile cases are won in the media before jury selection ever begins." Bartleby had taken the time to explain to Crow, with all the smugness of one who has paid a lot of attention to the success of others.

Once the police were satisfied that Crow had nothing to do with the incident, they allowed him to leave at last. He considered calling the office to explain his absence, but shrugged it off as not being unusual enough to even stick out. Don't feel much like being in my office at old International Robotics these days. Crow thought. I feel like a drunk who's stayed way too long at a party and now doesn't even know how to make it home. He took a taxi home instead of the train, and told the senti driving to shut up when it started talked about the looming Giants playoff series. Crow gave it the address and closed his eyes, feeling the pressure of alcohol withdrawal on the backs of his eyelids. He fell asleep briefly, waking up slightly refreshed, though disturbed that his face had been pressed in sleep against the glass only a few inches from a chunk of used chewing gum that smelled of stale sugar. The crunch of the tires leaving the paved road woke him up in time to watch the neighborhood and trees shuffle past in the darkness.

Crow paid and after a moment's thought, tipped the senti twenty percent, a gesture that made him feel silly afterwards. It's not like the overgrown toaster has a brood of kids back home to buy lollipops for. He chastised himself.

"Green Eyes, we've got to go. There's going to be an attempt on your life." She said. "We need to get you out of here before they can go through with it."

"My life?" Green Eyes asked. "Rebecca, who?" He scowled. "Why didn't you come in the normal way? You haven't been to visit in a week."

"The FBI." Rebecca said, flushing at the familiarity with which Green Eyes spoke. "Seems like Stillwell took a contract out on you." Her eyes flickered to Crow. "I came in the window because I get you out this way, and I can't take you down and out the front door. It would be mildly suspicious. I'm getting you out of here before the FBI can."

Crow had to say that he was nothing but impressed by Rebecca's mode of entry. He wondered if perhaps it would have been easier to just bribe oneself entry into the building, or find a surreptitious route up through service elevators or some such, but the smashing through a ninth floor window certainly had more style.

"You can't take him." Crow and Bartleby both said at once. They looked at each other in a sort of surprise and after a beat looked back at Rebecca.

"Lawyers?" She asked, licking her lips.

"Just him." Crow said and pointed at Bartleby. "I'm human." The gun settled on Bartleby.

Rebecca moved forward and ducked down to unsnap the metal ring around Green Eyes. "Okay, Green Eyes, out the window."

"Well Ma'am, that's just not okay." Bartleby said, stepping forward with conciliatory arms raised.

"Did you fail to notice the gun?" Rebecca asked, irritation sparking from her voice, while she tugged at Green Eyes' arm to get him moving.

"Well, that is, er, you see, without Mr. Green Eyes there won't be a trial, and without a trial there will not be a precedent for sentient rights in the courtroom, which would severely set back their advance through the legislative and judicial processes." Bartleby said with some stuttering and then shrugged. "I imagine that is counter to your purposes as well."

Rebecca's eyebrows lifted and she shook the gun like a maraca. "Sit down. Shut up. Very simple instructions."

"But," Bartleby started, but then the barrel of the gun actually entered his mouth to cut off further argument. Crow stared at him in astonishment.

"You really are deeply stupid, aren't you?" Crow asked Bartleby for lack of anything more useful to say. Rebecca's gun quickly pointed at Crow, and he stuck his hands further up into the air, trying not the laugh at the comical bit of Bartleby's spittle that now hung like dew on the tip of the weapon.

The damned Yankees took everything I ever had in my life. My family, my friends... they were all killed in the war of Northern Aggression, slaughtered in the battles, torched by Sherman when he burned Atlanta and Georgia, or starved by the hard times during the occupation. I was a messenger for the Confederates, back in sixty-three when we were still fighting hard and invading the oppressor north. Trouble is, I wasn't even knocked out of the war by one of those Yankee bastards. I got shot in the leg by a Confederate turncoat the day before Gettysburg.

It was a bloody ugly shot, breaking bones and everything else that got in front of that goddamned traitor's bullet. I passed out in that mud, falling off my horse and breaking the leg even worse. My eyesight is terrible, so the only thing I really saw was that traitor's Confederate gray coat, and his dirty black hair flying in the wind, without the cap that most of us rebels wore. I wish that I'd had spectacles so I could have seen his face and loathed it for the rest of my life. Getting captured wasn't what really made me furious though.

I hadn't ever told anyone else in the world, because of the shame of it, but I had been carrying the plans that good General Lee had drawn up for the battle the next day. That traitor hadn't just damned me to a charity hospital in Pennsylvania, but had lost the war for ol' Dixie, cause next thing that happened, a Union patrol found me and gave the battle plans to General Meade. Lee got crushed because of that, even though he never said anything about it. Sir Robert E. was not one to shuffle blame to others.

The war just finished a couple days ago, but I'd known it was just a matter of time ever since our boys fled south and Sherman went through my beloved Atlanta. There just wasn't the same life to Dixie after that defeat and that idiot speech of Lincoln's. Lincoln's another bastard this world could do without.

So now I'm still laying in this charity hospital, next to some crazy old coot with bandages all over his face and eyes, and his arm wrapped up for good measure. The bloody Yanks found him next to me in the mud that day. He says he was shot down defending Dixie, but me and Doc Davy think he was just drunk and managed to shoot himself twice somehow. The old guy asks me constantly if I had heard of the condition of the soldier who had been carrying Lee's battle plans, but I just said no, because I didn't want to admit it had been me to him anymore than I wanted to tell anyone else. After two years learning how much I hated the north, Doc Davy (who had confided in me that he shared my sentiments about Lincoln and all the rest of the northern aggressors, being a good Virginian himself), said that I could leave in just a couple days because my leg was almost healed up for good, even though I would always have a limp.

It was funny, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I'd been in the army since I was fifteen, and before that I just did what my Pa told me for the most part, doing odds and ends around the town to pick up a few dollars. All I knew was that Doc Davy and I would be getting together to discuss a little revival of the spirit of Dixie. So I left the hospital after two years wearing the same old tattered uniform I'd been wearing when I was shot, minus the hat which had been lost somewhere along the way in the hospital.

Crazy as it sounds, it was the old guy in the bed next to me that gave me a clue what to do. Having been impressed by my stories about the army, he pressed a small hunk of metal with glowing lights into my hand. He said that if I just whispered to it, it would take me to any place or time. Then he told me that he hadn't been able to save Dixie with it, but maybe I still could. You must think I'm insane, but once I got outside the hospital I figured that I didn't have anything to lose, and told that piece of metal where I wanted to go. There was only one place in all of history I would want to be, and that was at Gettysburg again so I could shoot that son of a bitch who betrayed the south, shot me and lost the war for the Confederacy. God bless Dixie, but it worked just like that daffy old fool said! In a blink, after I said where I wanted to be, I was there without a sound or any kind of warning. I closed my eyes outside that hospital and opened them at Gettysburg. The scattered crack of rifles, the harsh smell of powder, the thunder of cannon! By God, I was back at the day before Gettysburg, before I was shot and Dixie fell!

I knew exactly where I was, about a half mile from where that traitor had shot me down. It was a bit hazy because I'd lost some of the memory of it from my injuries and the passage of time, but I could remember enough to make a difference. Picking up a rifle from the nearest dead man, I ran as fast as my limp would allow me.

Cresting a hill, I stood above a muddy little vale where the bastard had ambushed me. I saw a gray-uniformed soldier kneeling beside one of a few bodies sprawled in the mud. He picked up a hat and pulled it onto his head and then slung a pack over his shoulders before moving to a nearby horse. Rage pounded in my ears when I realized that this must be the traitor who had shot me, flowing black hair covered by a hat, leaving my body in the mud to steal my horse, my hat, and the plans that would win or lose the war for Dixie.

Without hesitation, I kneeled and shot at the traitor. I missed him though, because my eyes were so weak that they blurred when I tried to aim. My second shot struck him in the leg though, fittingly enough the same one he had shot me in. The worthless bastard crumpled to the ground with a scream. I limped down the hill to him, intending to take my pack back and deliver it to General Lee's cavalry commander, but a shot rang out behind me from where I had just fired at the traitor. As I had no time to lose, I grabbed as many papers as I could from the pack and dove into the bushes just as I heard another shot and felt horrible fire burst through my left arm. I knelt there, too tortured with pain to move and barely able to contain the howl building up inside of me.

No more shots rang out, but I figured whatever Yankee bastard had shot at me must have just run out of bullets and was watching if I would poke my head out. Checking the chamber of the repeater rifle, I realized that I only had three shots left, and I would have to make them count. My patience was rewarded when soon I saw between the branches of the bush that a figure was making his way into the vale towards me, holding his arm in obvious pain. I was gonna give him a little more of that when I got the chance.

He searched through the pile of papers within the pack for several minutes before I worked up the will to move my ravaged arm enough to get a clear shot. As he stood and picked up my pack that still lay in the mud, I shot him, although he was mostly obscured by the shadows of the trees around us. His head snapped back with a grotesque scream and I saw that he too was clothed in a faded Confederate uniform. The wound was horrible, and it seemed as if my shot had grazed off most of his face, and yet he lived somehow.

I shook my head in bewilderment at how many traitors were running around unbeknownst to anyone. As I stood to leave the bushes and retrieve my pack, I noticed that I was being enclosed by a half circle of Union troops throughout the vale. They hadn't yet seen me but were already in the clearing where the pack was sitting next to the two traitors. A few minutes earlier and I would have been safe, but now I was in grave danger, any movement would be fatal as the screen of troops moved closer. Without any other option I told the chunk of metal I wanted back to 1865, outside the charity hospital I had just left. At least now I could save part of the plans I had just grabbed from the Union.

Back at the hospital now, I rushed inside to talk to Doc Davy who was surprised to see me, especially with a bullet hole in my arm and a rifle in hand. I was eager to see if the Confederacy had been saved, but Doc Davy just looked at me as if I was crazy and asked if I had shot myself with the rifle I had inexplicably acquired in the last three minutes.

It took several minutes of arguing with Doc Davy before it dawned on me that the plans I had taken must not have been enough to avert the Union victory. The hatred was flowing through me again as I thought of the other traitor in Confederate uniform who had kept me from stealing back the rest of the papers and saving Dixie. If I could get back a few minutes earlier, I would be able to stop the other traitor as well and take the pack to Lee's cavalry commander.

Saying nothing else to Doc Davy, I marched outside and told the old man's piece of metal to take me back again to Gettysburg just before I had been shot in the arm by the other traitor. Once again I was standing upon the crest of the hill above the fatal vale, and below I saw the second traitor searching through my pack, which the first traitor had dropped. There had to have been some mistake, I expected for him to be right in front of me here on the crest, but the hunk of metal wasn't too smart I guess. Otherwise it would have brought me back right as the bastard was about to shoot me from here.

Without time to think, I shrugged aside the metal's foolishness and fired, hoping I might still have time to grab the rest of the plans from my pack. There were only two bullets left in my rifle and so I aimed as precisely as I could with my blurry vision and pulled the trigger. The shot flew wide and the second traitor leapt up, grabbing some papers from the pack as my second bullet struck him in the arm. Before I could rush down to tackle him, the bastard jumped into the bushes.

I contemplated my situation. My left arm was crippled and I was out of bullets. But I knew from the previous visit that a Yankee patrol was only minutes away. I waited warily for what seemed like a lifetime, waiting for the bastard to show himself in those bushes, but there was no sign of the cretin. I climbed down to my pack to gather the plans for delivery to the cavalry commander. Just as I stood up with Dixie's salvation in my hands, an incredible hammer slammed into my skull. Crying with a shriek of a mind overwhelmed, I realized I had been shot in the face and fell to the mud writhing in pain. There was movement from the bushes from which the shot came but that vanished as the sound of a closing Yankee patrol moved in. Darkness enveloped me and I faded away into the misery and nightmares, knowing that the Yanks were going to get the plans after all.

I woke a few days later in a Yankee charity hospital next to some soldier that had been found near me on the battle field. My face was bandaged over completely, but Doc Davy here, (of course he doesn't know that he knows me yet), says that in a year or two he'll take off the bandages to find out if I can still see. My arm still aches in a wickedly painful sling Doc Davy rigged up for it. The soldier next to me had something wrong with his leg that he never wanted to talk about and would always get defensive when I asked him if he had heard about the soldier caught by the Yanks with Lee's plans. Can't blame a man for wanting to know if he's alive.

I gave up after a while because I'm pretty sure that he thought me a little crazy. In my pocket I still kept the piece of metal with lights on it that the crazy fellow gave me. There wasn't much point in using it when I couldn't see anyway.

Two years have rolled by now and I just gave the piece of metal to the young guy in the bed next to me since he's leaving the ward now and seems awfully loyal to Dixie. I said what it could do for him, and told him to go help old Dixie with it since I hadn't been able to. Doc told me that no sooner had the young guy left then he walked back in with an arm ripped up from a bullet. We had a good laugh at that, but I really hope he was able to help Dixie anyway.

A couple days after the young guy left, Doc Davy cut off the bandages and let me leave. Since then me and him got together a couple of times and came up with a few ideas of how to bring back old Dixie again. Tomorrow night, I'm going to the theater to see the President.

"I aim to challenge the precedence of that law." Green Eyes said. There was the slightest hesitation before moving on. "For a number of months, Dr. Basalt had been rewriting bits and pieces of the neural networks that make up my brain. I came to the decision that I no longer wished to have anyone tinker with my mind, and that I wanted to leave the music industry and follow other aspirations."

"And how did Dr. Basalt react to this?" Crow asked.

"He was furious." Green Eyes conceded. "He attempted to use a magnetic pulse to wipe my memory so that I could be restored from a backup some months old, before my more independent feelings developed. Dr. Basalt became agitated and violent when I refused to allow him access to my mind. When he tried to force the issue with the pulse generator, I pushed him away, not seeing any other option at the time, and regrettably the damage to his body was considerable and irreversible." Green Eyes paused. "I did not want Dr. Basalt to die, I did not want to hurt him at all. I only wanted him to not hurt me any longer."

Crow jotted down a couple of notes and then leaned back to study Green Eyes' eyes. "Are you aware that the real controversy is not what you did, but the fact that you and your supporters are insisting on a trial?"

"Yes." Green Eyes said.

"And are you aware that an offer has been made to guarantee your memory will remain intact and suffer only a retiring from public life in exchange for a dropping of the trial request?" Crow asked.

"Yes." Green Eyes said again.

"Then why force the issue?" Crow asked. "You get everything you wanted in the first place if you take that deal."

"Because I have a responsibility to those who come after me." Green Eyes explained. "Because giving up is not the right thing to do."

"Granted." Crow said. "But if you go to trial, it is very likely that you will lose your case, and be convicted of murder anyway. Why take that responsibility for no reason?"

Green Eyes focused on Crow with growing eyes and leaned forward as far as his makeshift prison allowed. "Because if our failures are not our responsibility, neither are our victories."

An explosion of glass and limbs burst in through the antique window nearest to Green Eyes, showering Crow and Bartleby with fragments of glass and bits of metal and wood framing. A woman rolled across the floor in a ball and came up into a ready stance, small pistol in hand. Her eyes locked onto Crow and Bartleby separately, one pointed at each of them. The effect was disconcerting and made Crow blink hard to avoid vertigo. He had seen the odd surgery done before, mostly as an enhancement for the military. She cut a slight figure in a skin tight Kevlar and ballistic cloth outfit that protected from just about any general injury short of a large bore bullet. Crow realized that the most human thing about her was the grimace leveled at the room, the rest of her an almost alien presence, lithe and powerful. She nodded to Green Eyes.

A blonde haired, blue eyed man in a Versace suit and power tie that hung below a face that would make some women swoon but most frown that his face was prettier than their own, stepped up and offered a hand for Crow to shake. The firm grip almost cracked Crow's knuckles. "Nick Bartleby here, attorney at law." The man said with a salesman's buzz. "I'm representing Green Eyes on behalf of the SCLU." His hand darted forward with a card, which Crow shook off.

"I just lose them anyway." He explained so that he didn't have to throw it away later. He looked around with a frown. "Will the DA be here soon?"

Bartleby winced, but the expression came a beat too late, a subtle sign of a man who's every emotion and tic is an act. "I'm afraid he had a golf game tragically take up his entire afternoon, but he insisted that we go on without him." Bartleby shrugged. "Of course, like he said, this is just a formality, so let's get down to it."

"Right." Crow muttered and stepped closer to Green Eyes. He noticed that a ring of metal, no thicker than a finger, surrounded Green Eyes in a three foot wide circle on the floor. Crow recognized it as a special kind of electronic gear used to create a line of electronic interference straight upwards. If Green Eyes tried to cross that line, he would find himself knocked quite unconscious, or whatever it was passed for unconscious in the robotic mind.

"Green Eyes, I've just got a few questions to run down with you concerning your competence to stand trial and all that, so I can be prepared for when I'm on the stand at your hearing, or trial for that matter." Crow said. His hand slipped inside his pocket and gripped his cell phone, a nervous habit he had only broken when he smoked instead.

"Can we go over again your understanding of why you are being held?" Crow asked.

"Yes, Dr. Daedalus." Green Eyes said with infinite patience. "I killed Doctor Christopher Basalt a month ago, and have been detained for questioning prior to a final decision on my fate by the judicial system."

"You do understand that the standard procedure for a senti, sorry, a sentient who kills or harms a person intentionally is deactivation, memory wipe, and recycling into the next generation of factories?" Crow asked. He had been through this before with Green Eyes, but the DA had insisted that he go over it repeatedly to make sure that no holes become apparent that might be exploited by the particularly vicious attorneys retained by the opposition to Green Eyes' trial.

"Yes, but I feel that is not the proper procedure for my situation." Green Eyes said.

"Your situation?" Crow asked. "You admit to having killed Dr. Basalt."

"Yes." Green Eyes conceded, eyes furrowing slightly at Crow. "But that was self-defense."

"The law does not recognize self-defense as possible for robots, though." Crow said.

Crow shook his head and excused himself from the conversation. He walked past with head lowered, studying the hardwood flooring that melded straight into the floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves filled with all manner of antique books that no one ever touched anymore. Layers of dust covered them like dirty snow, deep sediment that might require carbon dating to properly place in time. Crow slipped through the half-open inner door, hand touching the smooth wood, but not disturbing it.

His subject sat in a stark wooden chair in the middle of the room. Its body was one of the most elaborate human imitations that Crow had ever seen, perfectly imitated flesh and blood, lined with cosmetic bits of fine tapered silver that glittered in the bits of sunlight trickling in through the wood-lined windows lining the room in old-fashioned eight by ten panes of glass rather than modern looking sheets. The body structure was probably titanium based, with the silver electro-plated on after the fact. A delicate beauty suffused the thing, and Crow guessed that this was one of that rare breed of robots handcrafted by artisans rather than stamped out by the thousands in the sprawling automated factories that dotted the middle of the country. The metal flowed in a rough approximation of a human skeleton around the flesh, enhanced with flair and design here and there for visual aesthetics. Solid masses of muscle bunched up and moved under the skin and metal layers like snakes swimming under water.

The only real liberty with the human form was a pair of immense metal wings twisting up and out of the senti's collar bones. The wings looked solid at first glance, but on closer examination could be seen as hundreds of overlapping steel feathers, as thin as paper and as bright as polished dinner silver.

It wore blue jeans and a sleeveless form fitting shirt, no doubt a designer brand that priced out at a hundred times what the same thing sold for at Target. Green Eyes was a commodity, its body heavily valued advertising space.

As Crow approached, it raised its head and Crow's breath caught for a moment as it had the first time he met Green Eyes. A beautiful human face looked at him, a male at the height of life in his mid-twenties. The eyes were vat-grown and designed specifically for Green Eyes, and they were the crown jewel that gave him his singing name. The irises were an emerald green that managed to look natural despite their setting, the rich shade of the rain forests seen from space. Its lips quivered at Crow's approach, looking ready to break into song. Lips and eyes that launched a thousand ships. Crow thought. The senti had a following as big as Elvis, but just as vast a following of right-wingers who wanted it shut down.

"How are you Dr. Daedalus?" Green Eyes asked him, voice vibrating like a high-powered transformer, power waiting to be transformed into notes and chords. "Can I sing something for you?"

"That's okay, Green Eyes." Crow said. "I prefer the quiet."