"Let's begin with opening remarks. Dr. Namtar, you have the floor."

"Thank you, your honor. We have only a brief comment. Steven Detroit is guilty. We should skip the irrelevant verbiage and get right to the death and rebirth thing."

"Well done. I am tempted to agree, but in the interest of historical justification, I'll allow the defense attorney a brief statement, followed by a very short cross examination of Mr. Detroit. We'll do the capital punishment thing, and then we can go to lunch. Have you seen the new Italian Restaurant on Front Street?"

"No, but I heard it was good."

"Objection, Your Honor. Italian food is objectionable and I have to pee. Can we get on with this.

"Certainly. You may proceed, Mr. Sadaya."

"Thank you, Your Honor. My client, Sir Steven Timothy Ishmael Esquire the Third, comes from a proud aristocratic family of Pre-Collapse Peasants. He is no ordinary jack off, Your Honor. He is The Supreme Jack Off. With a little tutoring and a lot of medication, he can be partially rehabilitated.

Sure, we know he is guilty. Sure, he did it. He even confessed that he still does it. But is this really a capital offense? Do we really need to bury him alive just because he didn't pay his traffic tickets? Is masturbation such a big deal when we get right down to the soiled evidence?

After all, he isn't very bright. He got into college using a magazine coupon. If his uncle wasn't rich and famous, we would have lit his application on fire and roared with laughter.

Sure, he could have kept a low profile. Sure, he should never have looked upon the school secretary. He should not have violated the personal space of the King. He should never have stripped naked at the post orientation orgy and made crude gestures in the direction of the King's harem. And of course, he joined revolutionary forces and opposed progress. Finally we know he wrote poetry in a professional school, a sin punishable by death.

But he didn't know. He is too dumb to understand. He don't get it, Tonto.

Do we hang our cripples? Are we a society so depraved that we put to death our retards? Where is our sense of forgiveness? What have we become? What time is lunch?"

"Noon, but if you stop rambling, we can go early."

"The defense rests, your honor."

Sybil: "The prosecution calls Mr. Steven Timothy Ishmael, alias Mr. Detroit, to the witness stand.

"Let's start with getting acquainted, shall we Mr. Detroit?"

"I promise to tell the whole truth."

"We're honored. Mr. Detroit, I'm wondering if you were the one who gave the King a migraine headache. Did you do that?"

"I think he's confusing me with someone else."

"I see. We have a note from your diary. It says "Then I thought, hey, if God made man in his own image then God had a penis, or rather he still has a penis; and that sucker must be huge." You wrote that, right?"

"You sure that was my diary?"

"And this from your diary: "I'm not going to pay my traffic ticket." You wrote that to your dead brother, didn't you."

"Where did you get my diary?"

"And this, you wrote this also: "I saw Napoleon; for a while I was Napoleon. I talked to a few very nice aliens on their way to a bowling tournament. I made friends with a monk from the fifteenth century. I argued metaphysics with a talking clock. I played Monopoly with God..."

"I was drunk."

"It sounds like the ramblings of a lunatic, doesn't it, Mr. Detroit?"

"No, not really."

"Did you write "Sometimes I hear myself over there, and then I'm over here, and then there are six or twenty of me arguing whether to pee or have a donut or be a saint or fuck the nurse with the steam coming off her butt." You wrote that too, didn't you?"

"Wow! I don't feel so well. I need a Pepsi."

"Mr. Detroit, did you write "It's really hard to pee when your penis is wearing a hat and a sweater."

"Well, it is. I stand by that. It makes you itch, too. Are we done yet?"

"Do you know God's first commandment, Mr. Detroit?"

"Sure. Everybody knows that."

"What is the first commandment of God?"

"Shut the Fuck up."

"Do God's commandments apply to you, or just to the rest of the planet?"

"Okay, I get the point."

"So, you are guilty, right? You violated God's first commandment. And more, you don't give a shit that you insulted God, made fun of His work, and never quite got around to shutting the fuck up. Does that about sum it up?"

"I'm not the only one."

"No, surely not. But you are the one on trial. Let the record show that the defendant admits his guilt regarding God's first commandment. Let's move on."

"I wish we would."

You are a believer, are you not, Mr. Detroit?"

"I certainly am."

"You believe in the Auto God?"

"Okay, but I was wondering, does "auto" refer to cars or does it mean "automatic"? Because I think it means both."

"You don't get it, Mr Ishmael. "Auto" refers to "automatic control, automatic payment, and automatic penalty for failure to pay". It refers to the activity of the google verse master machine that runs the Great Chain of Being, replacing all civil servants. Auto Priests were selected by the machine to assist humans in their worship of technology. Do you believe in technological progress, Mr Ishmael?

"I do believe in technology. I need my music."

"Do you need your poetry?"

"Well, it does exist, you know."

"Do you believe in infinity? Human existence? Vision? Reality? Death? Time? Space? Apple dumplings? Do you believe, Mr Detroit?"

"Absolutely."

"Do you know God's second commandment?"

"It hasn't been released yet."

"You missed the headlines this morning, Mr. Detroit. The news came out while you were day dreaming. Do you want to hear the second commandment?"

"Yes."

"And God said to his creations that while silent and with love in your heart "Don't believe a damn thing they tell you."

"He said that?"

"Yes, He did. And when I asked you, and I quote "Do you believe?" you answered "Absolutely." You violate God's second commandment absolutely. Let the record show that the defendant Believes and therefore violates God's second commandment."

"I didn't sleep with you. You lied to the King."

"You did sleep with me, at the orgy after orientation. And I'm pregnant."

"Oh shit."

"Did you rape thirty eight thousand women last year?"

"What!"

"Did you murder sixteen thousand human beings over the last six months?"

"I object your honor."

"Overruled."

"Did you machine gun or gas eleven million young boys in World War One? Did you murder forty five million civilians and young boys in World War Two? Did you flash fry sixty eight million women, children, grandfathers, and nursing dogs in World War Three? Did you blow away sixty million innocent people with the S-Bomb? You did, didn't you, you bastard. Admit it. Go ahead, confess."

"Do I have to answer this lunatics questions?"

"Did you break and enter?"

"I object, Your Honor; this has gone on long enough. The prosecuting attorney is confusing my client with an alpha male. My client is a C minus, O negative, gamma globulin wimp."

"Overruled."

Did you beat the shit out of four million wives? Did you abuse three million innocent children? Did you spend more money on pornography than on health care? Do you build twenty times more tanks than classrooms? Do you know more about property rights than relationships? Did you clean your room? Did you shower? Are you a male, Mr. Ishmael? Answer that question."

"Your Honor, please. This is insulting. My client has not been shown to have the cesspool alleles. He is not brutal; he is just dumb.

"Overruled."

"What part of "Love Thy Neighbor" didn't you get the first time around?"

"What are you talking about?"

"How many people has your sister killed? How many children has she abused? How many husbands has she punched out? How many banks has she robbed."

"How the hell should I know?"

"How the hell can you not know! This is your fault, Mr. Masculine. The earth is a cesspool because of you; not because of the likes of me. And now, Mr. Detroit I have to raise our child on my own. Your honor, the defendant has sinned against God every which way. He is guilty, admits his guilt, and must, by Sumerian law, be stuffed into a coffin and buried alive. I'll call the child Ishmael, after you. Goodbye, Detroit. No more questions, Your Honor."

"Mr, Sadaya, your rebuttal."

My head was spinning. I didn't kill anybody. I'm not a virile bastard. I'm a victim of circumstances. I didn't see the bullets coming. I was thinking about my brother; where in the hell did he get a nanoblaster?

"Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Ishmael, do you believe in the death penalty?"

"What?.... No."

"Do you believe that dead brothers deserved to die?"

"No."

"Do you really believe in the Auto God, or were you trying to save your skin?"

"The Auto God is an asshole."

"But do you believe in the traditions, in the Auto Bible, in the motor vehicle rituals; in the Sacred Parking Spaces; do you really believe all that?

"No."

"Do you like the school secretary?"

"I'm in love with her."

"Do men in love act strangely? Are they clumsy? Do they say silly things that they regret?"

"Yes."

"Do men in love sometimes appear to be so far gone that they look insane?"

"Yes."

"Are you sorry? Do you beg forgiveness? Do you pled for leniency?"

"I certainly do."

"Are you going to pay your parking fines?"

"Fuck no!"

"Very well said, Mr. Ishmael, defiant to the end. You will look heroic to the other adolescent ideolog nincompoops. Go get your toothbrush and your teddy bear because you are going on a little trip to Neverland. ....The defense rests, Your Honor."

"You're a shitty lawyer, asshole."

"Bring in the coffin."