The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

Chapter 60/some relationships are too crazy for words

Everybody turned their heads towards us.

At the front, behind a small wooden gate stood Memphis looking up to the human judges.

The doors opened and Io with Casey Young rushed in. 

"and here," said Memphis "is my client."

He said it's confidently like we had always timed our entry to this point. I admired his unshakeableness. There were two tables behind which sat either the defense or the prosecution.

"Will your client please take the defendant box" said the chief judge.

He look up at the wall I followed his gaze and saw a large old mechanical clock. It was precisely 10 o'clock, Io was on time.  George, Leo and Kinda Soul were sitting bruised in the public seating.

"Excuse me" I said looking up at Dante, his face covered in  bruises.

"Excuse you for what?" said Dante.

"This for a start" I grabbed him and kissed him.

You could hear the public gallery gasp in surprise. This was followed by the judge banging his gabble to get attention.

"I'm sorry I should've done this along time ago. I want you to know I'm an idiot. I want you to know that while I can be pretty stupid and selfish that I love you actually completely and beyond doubt. If you could possibly imagine a future with me then that would be pretty cool with me." I said. 

"What about your marriage on Mars? " said Dante.

"It's off. It's so off it smells like three months worth of rotting cabbage you can smell all the way from mars. The only person I love is here now before me. So can I ask you out on a date ." I said.

"I think I can manage that," said Dante and kissed me back.

"Miss Banks" shouted the judge again this time. "Will you and Mr Tyrell please sit down.  We have an inquest to complete"

"About that" I began. "As a concerned citizen, I think I have some significant evidence to present the court"

 I walked up to Memphis and persuaded him to let me have a chance.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury" I said walking up to the jury.

"the problem has been all along if IO is a human being or a machine. You have heard evidence that it is possible to build a biological computer and if Mr Bentham's Smart lawyer bot is to be believed Io is nothing more than a computer that can bleed. You have also had evidence presented to show that just having emotions isn't enough to guarantee that she is not a machine." I turned round and walked back down infront of jury "I put it to you that all we need to do is be sure if Io is not a computer. How then can we tell. I would like to Bring my robot Kentro to the stand"

It took a moment and Kentro walked to the witness box.

"My dad took me to the zoo on Mars once. He told me this lion is stronger, this bear had handle the cold, this cheetah is faster.  So I asked him how come were here and they were in there? Yeah humans are pretty week. Other animals are stronger, faster, better suited to swim or climb, eat grass, but here we are. Building zoos and putting the others in them. My dad said what made us win out isn't how good we are it's how adaptable we are. I was standing in dome on a life less planet with practically no atmosphere so he was right."

"Could the concerned citizen get to the point" said the Judge. 

"We have heard that emotions don't make you human. Fine, animals have emotions so I'm good with that. I put it to you the jury and the judges that what makes the difference between a machine and the person is that the machine is built for a purpose. If you put a robot into a situation for which it has never been prepared, it will not be able to function , like putting a bear on mars in a space suit. I used to  wonder why we don't have so many robots on Mars. Why we still work. It's because on Mars there is still the unexpected. If you put a human being into that situation which she has not been  trained for will begin to make sense and then adapt to whatever situation is at hand. We might not be appropriate, it might not be sensible but we will come up with something. Io has not been programmed for many things she has done. She never believed she would do anything apart from work on a spaceship cleaning stuff . Kentro could you show images of Io at school?"

Kentro reached into his video memories and began to play images that he had collected of Io. In this case at school.

"Yeah, she is coping with something she was never prepared for." I began."School" I picked up moments from Io's has life on earth. Her giving the speech to a bunch of robots, and finally I ended up showing a video of Io on the roof of Casey Young's Studio in the morning watching the sunrise, and describing it as beautiful.

"No one prepared Io for that sunrise, no one programmed her to see beauty and the color of the sky and yet she did."

The jury work clearly nodding in agreement.

"This woman has done things no robot could ever conceive. She has seen many new things she was never prepared for including love. Yes, sure, she wasn't very successful to begin with, but you know what who is? Then she learned, she adapted, she discovered what she wanted, she created her own agenda, she made her own special sense of the world. This is what we do. Now I'm not going to say that the difference between robots and people is this or that because as soon as we say robots are machines because they can't do this then someone just makes them do it. 

I'm saying you drop a human and a robot in a jungle for which they haven't been prepared even heard of before and  the human will survive. I'm saying a human can do things that have not been anticipated. What I am saying is that computers still need to be given purpose. And while we might be pretty useless humans create their own purposes. Yeah sure our purposes can be pretty mad, frequently useless, but we invent them for ourselves nonetheless. I'm saying this girl has handled many things a second class cleaning robot could never cope with. She's not a machine, she doesn't fit anywhere or anything. If that isn't a good definition of being a person I don't know what is."

I looked at Io.

"Io if you can look at me and tell me you that any machine on your spaceship could handle what you have done. Could they have lead a robot strike ? If so then tell me your a machine, but I'm asking you. If you think for just for one moment that you're more capable of life than a cleaning machine then tell me your human."

Io though for a moment. "then Io human" said Io.

Suddenly Dante stood up and began clapping. He was followed by George and Leo, then others and soon the entire audience was clapping. Memphis took over he was smart enough to pick up that the jury was convince. He improvised around what I said and produced enough legal backup to convince the jury judges.

Case over the jury went off to make a decision.

I turned to Dante.

"I'm sorry, I've not been myself lately," I said.

Io walked passed. "who have you been?" said Io but Casey pulled her away before I could answer.

"It took a tightrope walk over 20 stories high to remind me I was Scarlett Banks. If you could live with that girl she's here for you now" I said.

Dante took me.

"Miss Lilly Scarlett Banks," he said "no, pajamas. Are you dating anyone now? Because if you're not I'd like to take you out to dinner. I hope you like expensive water. It's from Titan".

***

An hour later the jury came back in. Then the judges came in. Then the court robot asked for the jury's verdict.

"Do you find the girl know as Io Swatchkof human or not human?

"We find the girl known as Io to be human. By reason of her capacity to have a cute smile" said the Jury. Looks like we had a whole bunch of Bentham voters but I wasn't arguing.