Writing Battle Prompts:
Genre: Sci-Fi | Chaperone | Ballot
[Placed 2nd in genre (top 8 overall)]
Blood smears the begrimed walls of the derelict building. I swallow against rising bile, averting my eyes from the empty stare of the broken body. Flies buzz. I flinch each time one veers close, stomach lurching at the thought of what its thick bulbous body might have already touched.
How had this happened? It should have been impossible!
Chaperone Stefan. I require your instruction as to how to proceed.
My hand swats past my ear as though the voice is just the whining drone of an incessant gnat. But it’s futile. Once the Overseer is in your head, it’s there forever.
The Exodus brought civilisation to the very brink. Many fled throughout the universe but some clung to what they had here. Held on for just long enough to grasp a new way to survive. Survival eventually grew into a way of living.
Except no one who glimpses over the edge of existence returns unscathed. Those who remained lost faith in themselves. They didn’t trust that they could maintain peace without an impartial observer. So, from the last remnants of technological knowledge, the Overseer was created: an AI intended to stabilise the recovery of society.
Yet the Overseer did not possess sentience. Instead, it stored the collective experience of those first survivors. But the fullness of life isn’t found in a few select experiences. Hence the introduction of the ballot. A means of humanising the process so that everyone might have a chance to contribute their mind to the Overseer, each adding to the depth of experience which it could draw upon to provide guidance.
The reward? To join the Chaperones: a select group who led the scattered communities, providing empathy and passion to balance the Overseer’s indifference and impassivity. The perfect check and balance: man and machine, two halves of a whole.
Chaperone Stefan. I require your instruction as to—
“Shut up!” I choke the words out, pressing my knuckles against my temples, scrunching my eyes shut. I still see the mangled corpse. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Except an equal partnership was not what the Exodus survivors really wanted. Complete autonomy was too heavy a burden. The first Chaperones gave over many of their obligations to the Overseer. The second generation of Chaperones granted even more. And now in the third generation? It made no sense to argue against the recommendations of the Overseer. Those original survivors had ploughed all their energies into its creation. Who were we to argue?
Chaperone Stefan. I require—
“I don’t know!” My strangled admission bounces against the walls, its echo mocking me over and over.
Spinning away from what lies just beyond my closed eyes, I snatch in strained breaths, far faster and far shallower than my burning lungs demand. “I don’t know,” I repeat, this time amid the softness of a hiccupping sob. “How could you let this happen?”
The first murder shocked everyone. Needless violence was a luxury from before the Exodus.
The second murder frightened them.
The third murder terrified them.
There was an uproar, demanding that the Chaperones do something. Wasn’t that our role: to ensure the well-being of those under our care from themselves as well as each other?
We had done what any Chaperones before would have done: pleaded with the Overseer to instruct us what its collective consciousness – or was it conscience? –recommended should happen.
An investigation, it stated. The perpetrator must be apprehended. We eagerly agreed.
The Overseer collated the data about the murders, extrapolating the necessary information and running the required calculations. Within a day, it identified an individual who was statistically the culprit. Did we wish to consult the data, the Overseer asked. No, we replied, just tell us what consequence should follow.
I force open my eyes, focusing on the crumbling debris. I have no idea what this place used to be. Like many of the buildings here, its purpose existed before the Exodus and has not been required since. I could ask the Overseer but I don’t want to speak. Even the flies have succumbed to the still silence.
The Overseer waits.
The consequence of so violent a crime could only be agreed by a jury of peers. The Overseer was not a peer; only the Chaperones could perform such a role.
Panic flared amongst us. We did not make decisions; that was reserved for the Overseer. Yet our protests served no purpose. The consensus of three generations had informed its conclusions.
We sought refuge in the familiar: a ballot. We instructed the Overseer to compile a list of all punitive approaches relative to the crime. The three most frequently referenced would form the ballot: retribution, rehabilitation, incapacitation.
Twelve Chaperones made their choice, submitted to the Overseer in the privacy of the mapping chamber. Yet when the votes were tallied, there had been no need for secrecy: unanimity. Twelve votes for incapacitation: remove the problem entirely.
I tremble. Had I hesitated over the enormity of what I participated in? Not for a moment. We told ourselves again and again that execution was the only option. There were no resources to sustain incarceration, no means of ensuring exile, and no inclination to invest in rehabilitation.
“You said the execution was completed,” I force out.
Graham Newton was executed on—
“Then who murdered him!” I shriek, stabbing a finger at the corpse. “We executed an innocent man! You let us kill an innocent man!”
All available data concluded that Graham Newton was the perpetrator.
I drop my head into my hands, stifling a sob. How could this have happened? The Overseer had identified the murderer. We had exacted punishment! Now this? “What does all available data conclude now?”
Graham Newton was not the perpetrator of this murder.
So easy. So simple. To methodically adjust conclusions with the discovery of new information.
“You were meant to prevent this,” I whimper. “After everything…”
Chaperone Stefan. I require your instruction as to how to proceed.
I can’t answer. I have no answer.
C.A. Raine 