“Thank you, Mr. Weeks. Eddie, do I have to say anything more?”
“What are you suggesting, Bob. You’re not thinking TSTL? That would be a travesty in this case. I can’t—”
“Relax, Eddie. The Feds will waive jurisdiction on this. He’ll plead to the grand theft, do two years. With time off for good behavior he’ll be out in eighteen months, provided he accepts TSTR.”
“I—”
“It’s a good deal, Eddie, and you know it. On these facts, the right jury might just find TSTL. You want to take that chance?”
“Let me talk with my client.”
The two men whispered together, their conversation dropping to an indecipherable murmur.
“We’ve tried to reconstruct that section,” the Commissioner apologized, “but the sensors in those days… well, there just wasn’t enough of the signal present to do us any good.”
“TSTL, Commissioner? That’s—?”
“—Too Stupid To Live, yes.”
“And TSTR would be—Too Stupid To Reproduce?”
“Yes, those were two of the vernacular terms. In common parlance, the catch-all phrase was ‘Felony Stupid.’ ”
“But those terms weren’t part of the formal usage as I recall.”
“That’s right. The history is quite interesting, really. Initially, my countrymen adopted a punishment enhancement if a weapon was used in the commission of the crime. Some years later they enacted a further punishment enhancement if the criminal had a long record of other serious offenses. From there it was a relatively short step to enacting a modification of sentence if the convicted defendant was deemed to be so stupid as to be a danger to the society in general.
“TSTR’s were the more common enhancement. The official name for the sentence was a ‘Genome Protection Procedure,’ or GPP.”
“Was this fellow, Weeks, really in danger of being found to be TSTL?”
“Oh no. My ancestor was merely using that threat as a bargaining chip. The truth is that TSTL’s were only imposed on the most vicious and irredeemable criminals for whom a death sentence could not otherwise be levied. Unless he had shot two or three people during his little robbery, that fool, Weeks, would never have rated a TSTL, or as it was officially known, a DFRP, Dangerous Felon Removal Procedure—oh, look, Manion is done talking to his client.”
“We’re talking standard V-job here, right, Bob? There aren’t any sexual aspects to this case and I don’t want any suggestion of a castr—”
“Straight Vasectomy. No MDSO implications. The government will even pick up the tab for the procedure.”
“I want a guarantee of no more than a two-year sentence.”
LaTureene pursed his lips slightly, then nodded and stuck out his hand:
“Deal.”
“Deal,” Manion agreed and, as their hands met, the pictured misted, paled to gray, and faded to invisibility. The last image Luden Fornell noticed was a peculiar expression of mingled relief, confusion, and despair fleeting across Willard Weeks’s face.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” the commissioner said when both men had turned away from the screen.
“To say the least. And to think that practice went on for generations! One wonders….
“I know, but think about it. It seems so simple. So intuitively correct.”
“In this case, their intuition was clearly wrong.”
“It usually is. Intuitively correct decisions are usually the most dangerous. They ignore the subtleties that can turn an ordinary mistake into a truly horrific one.”
“As they certainly did here. Didn’t your ancestors know anything of genetics, Commissioner?”
“One would have thought so, but whatever they knew, they ignored in their single-minded quest to eliminate the criminally stupid. We’re still paying the price for that error, of course.”
“Yes, I’d say you are. It still amazes me that they didn’t understand that if you eliminate all the stupid criminals—”
“—Then all you’re going to be left with are smart criminals. Yes, they culled the herd as it were. Year after year, generation after generation, they kept sterilizing and killing the dumbest members of the criminal classes so that with each generation the lawbreakers became smarter, more clever, more devious. Oh, to be back in those halcyon days when a policeman could depend on the criminals to be fools, to make dumb mistakes, to blurt out their guilt at the drop of a hat! It must have been heaven. Now their intelligence level is ten points above the mean.”
“Ten points!”
“A bit more, actually. If only my ancestors had only slightly changed their policies. If only TSTL and TSTR had meant—”
“—Too Smart To Live, Too Smart To Reproduce,” the ambassador broke in, completing the commissioner’s thought.
“Quite so. If only they had had the sense to make it Felony Smart,” he added, wistfully.