The Machinery Of Justice (Altered Ending)

“William Eggbertson Ludd. By the power invested in me by the city and the state of New New York, I am hereby charging you with the wilful and premeditated destruction of the Artificially Sentient Police Officer known as R-Thur Twelve; which under Penal code 45813/z is a charge which carries the same penalty as the charge of homicide. You are not obliged to say anything but anything which you do say may be computer logged as evidence and used against you in a court of law”, said Police Lieutenant Mayhew, holding up his NNYPD badge and feeling proud that, for once, the shield upon it was truly being used as a shield of justice.

It had not been an easy case. Although the department had given Mayhew their full support (Thousands of A.S.P.O’s or Artificially Sentient Police Officers were employed by the NNYPD and they were all fully paid-up union members) and it hadn’t been difficult establishing a motive or opportunity for Ludd, he was an outspoken member of the mecha-hating C.C.A.R (Christian Citizens Against Robots) aswell as a battle-scarred veteran of the Mining-Robot Uprising on Pygmalion 6 and they had CCTV and Biometric Scanner Data which proved that Ludd had been in the vicinity of R-Thur Twelves apartment building shortly before the time of the murder.

But R-Thur 12 had been killed, according to the forensic comp, by a custom made tazer designed to carry electro magnetic pulses and, try as they might, they hadn’t been able to work out where Ludd had disposed of or hid the weapon nor had they been able to discover a paper trail linking him to the purchasing of the weapon and without a murder weapon they knew that their case was pretty weak and so did Ludd.

“You charging me with murder?”, he asked, when Mayhew had finished reading him his rights,
“Based on what evidence? From what I hear, you aint even found the weapon that trashed that heap of junk”.

“That was the case”, replied Mayhew, “But this morning I remembered something about my last visit to this apartment. I remembered seeing your son Joey playing with a toy Robot and at the time I thought nothing of it but this morning it occurred to me, ‘Why would a man who claims to hate Robots so much give his child a toy robot to play with?’. Then, I checked out the purchase of that toy and discovered that it was bought from a TRS enterprises, not a toy store but a front
for the same gun runners who had supplied the human colonists with guns during the Pygmalion 6 uprising. ‘But why would a gun runner be
selling toy robots?', I wondered. That’s when I remembered an old 21st century movie I’d seen in one of those retro-multiplex’s”, then Lieutenant Mayhew turned to Ludd’s son Joey who, as luck would have it, was holding the robot in his hands, “Can I see your toy for a second,
Joey?”, he asked the boy.

Joey looked over at his father for permission.

“Go ahead and give it to 'im", he said, "The bastards can take it anyway”.

Joey timidly handed the robot to the Lieutenant.

“That old 21st century movie I was talking about”, said the detective pushing the robots head down into its torso and twisting and clicking its limbs into position until it took the form of a gun, “It was called Transformers, and this”, he said holding the gun and pointing it towards Ludd, “was the gun that you used to murder R-Thur Twelve. You probably should have destroyed it while you had the chance but you wanted us to see your son playing with it, to dangle it right under our noses because you thought that we were so stupid that we would never see it”.

Ludd just laughed hoarsely, his throat damaged from years of inhaling toxic fumes in the mines of Pygmalion 6, “You know what them renegade mine-bots used to do to humans that they captured”, he said, unzipping the front of his camouflage jacket and revealing a bundle of neutronite sticks wired to an electronic timer that was counting down from 2 minutes and 30 seconds, “They used to strap mine explosives to ‘em just to watch their frail human bodies blown apart”.

“Mr Ludd”, pleaded Mayhew, frantically, “Your son is in the room. Are you really going to blow yourself, me and your son up too?”.

“Well?”, Replied Ludd, his eyes blazing wildly with a mixture of battle trauma and religious fanaticism, “ Me and my boy’ll go to heaven, won’t we? We’ve got souls, unlike that pile of walking scrap metal that I trashed”.

Mayhew didn’t even blink. He knew just what to do. Grabbing up Ludd in both his arms he threw himself, Ludd and the bundle of neutronite strapped to him through the plate glass window of Ludd’s super-scraper apartment and a moment later there was a loud mid-air explosion.

Mayhew had been the departments prototype realistic android police Lieutenant; designed to look and sound just as a human does but to behave only as a human should.