The trial was over by 16:45, four hours after it had begun.
Shell was taken to prison.
02
There was a sudden ping—a message had arrived.
The Doctor looked suspiciously at his PDA after fishing it out of his jacket pocket.
They were in the middle of an early dinner at one of the fancy restaurants in the neighborhood of the Broilerhouse.
It was the sort of place lawyers went to celebrate a victory or victims went to celebrate after being awarded a windfall compensation. Balot, the Doctor, and Oeufcoque were celebrating there too, although it wasn’t so much in order to enjoy a gourmet meal as to take a much-needed pause before the case was finally wrapped up. A pause to mark the end of one chapter in Balot’s life, to celebrate all she had achieved and to prepare her to embark upon a new chapter. Oeufcoque and the Doctor felt she needed a little treat.
“It’s from the DA. Apparently the other side wants to talk, and they’re putting in their offer to us immediately.” The Doctor looked away from his PDA and toward Oeufcoque, who was still in the form of a choker. “The person offering the settlement isn’t even directly related to this case—he’s stepped in to try and broker a settlement.”
“Who is it?”
“The director of OctoberCorp. Shell’s boss—and putative father-in-law.”
–What’s going on? I don’t understand.
Sensing that Balot was concerned, the Doctor smiled in order to try and calm her down. Behind his spectacles though, his eyes weren’t smiling. Rather they were set in steely resolution.
“You remember the man standing beside Shell at the Casino. Cleanwill John October. Well, he’s proposing a negotiation.”
–To negotiate what?
“The second case, as it were. The one that will implicate all OctoberCorp officials for more or less ordering Shell to commit his crime spree. You see, we intend to use your case as a vein and continue digging till we find the mother lode—it’s not just Shell that we’re after. That’s what they’re afraid of, so they’re asking for certain facts to be made public…”
–Use my case?
Balot frowned a little.
The Doctor hastily covered his tracks. “Not in a bad way. I just mean that the chips you won give us a lot of power and leverage.”
–So, to put it in blackjack terms, what we’re doing is instead of staying, we’re hitting in order to try and draw out some more criminals?
“Well, in the end, Shell’s just as much a victim of OctoberCorp as anyone else is. You’ve seen his memories firsthand, so I’m sure you understand that.”
Balot nodded. Oeufcoque remained silent.
The Doctor continued. “The brain surgery Shell received as a child, the A10 operation, that was OctoberCorp’s handiwork. It’s entirely possible to believe that this is what made him slavishly follow OctoberCorp’s orders.”
–You mean they messed around with his head and made him their slave?
“Not in the sense of controlling his thought processes directly, but I’d say there was a good chance they were artificially stimulating his pleasure centers, making it far more likely for him to follow orders with blind devotion.”
–How?
“Well, for example, they could make it so that every time he hears the OctoberCorp name or sees its symbol, a dopamine shot is released inside his brain, and he feels just that little bit better. Reinforced tens, hundreds of times, it becomes an unbreakable habit, absolute.”
–I think that all Shell really wanted to do was escape. From his own life.
Oeufcoque interjected for the first time in the conversation. “And what OctoberCorp did was provide him with an escape route. The ultimate inducement into temptation.”
Balot nodded. She started to remember what it felt like when she was watching Shell’s memories.
–Shell seemed to think that working for OctoberCorp was just like a fish returning upstream to spawn. He considered himself as no more than a little fish, placed deliberately in the river.
Then Balot turned straight to the Doctor to look at him and ask him a question.
–The case that they want to try and settle—is it my case too?
The Doctor was about to nod, but Oeufcoque interrupted him. “You’ve already solved your own case. There’s no need for you to put yourself in danger’s way anymore.”
“Hey, wait a minute, Oeufcoque. Her case leads to the mother lode. All that’s happened so far is that Shell has temporarily lost his liberty. As yet, OctoberCorp is still untouched and untroubled. In any case, she’s already been officially recognized as a co-opted civilian aide to this case. As your user, we do really need her.”
Oeufcoque was unconvinced—and not only that, he was now uncharacteristically raising his voice. “Are you saying that we are the ones who get to choose whether Balot gets burnt out in the process?”
The Doctor appeared to falter, but he had a rejoinder. “I don’t know if you noticed, but at the trial just now, Balot’s Life Preservation Program was extended indefinitely. You know why, don’t you? Because the Broilerhouse recognizes that she’s still in danger. We don’t know what Boiled’s got up his sleeve, and depending on how these negotiations go, we may find that both Shell and Balot end up targets of OctoberCorp…”
–Half-baked little Oeufcoque…
Balot spoke quietly. The Doctor swallowed his words. Oeufcoque also was silent.
–Thank you so much for trying to protect me from ending up even more burnt out.
Just as Oeufcoque could now sniff out Balot’s innermost feelings, Balot was attuned to Oeufcoque’s emotional state. She knew full well that he blamed himself for not being able to protect her from the worst excesses of Shell’s corrupted memories while she was in her dream state.
–This is what I’ve chosen, though. I want to use you constructively. If you want to protect me, the best way to do that is to guide me.
“Even if, as a result, you end up facing something deeply unpleasant?”
–Bell Wing called you my guardian angel. Guardian angels are strict but kind. If I run away from everything that’s unpleasant, I’ll end up just like Shell messing with his own mind in order to try and find peace.
Why me? She still wanted more answers to this question. She was the Concerned Party in this case, and she wanted to find out what that really meant…
She wanted to determine with her own eyes what exactly it was that lay beyond the depths that she and Shell had fallen into.
She wanted to be able to feel with conviction that her own life was somehow meaningful.
She touched the choker on her neck, gently transmitting these feelings to Oeufcoque, like a prayer.
–This is our case. Yours and mine. All three of us. Won’t you please show me your way of resolving it?
Oeufcoque stayed silent for a while. Then, wordlessly, he agreed to bring Balot out. To take her away from her safe place and into the maelstrom.
“We need to solve the second case, and as such I’d like Balot to use me,” Oeufcoque said eventually.