NOVELLA

The Trial Of Summary James — Chapter Thirteen

A great African nation has risen in North America. But something is… wrong: Chapter 13 of 20 in the novella.

Check out the links at the end of this story under “Notes” for additional chapters.

Chapter Thirteen

After saying goodbye to Sonata, I headed back to the island. While sitting in the back seat of the rideshare, I felt for the network sniffer by patting the zippered pocket in my canvas shorts where I was keeping it.

After I told the rideshare to make sure it wasn’t being followed, I heard a buzzing sound. I guessed it was a compartment opening. This was confirmed when I looked over my shoulder through the rear window.

A small drone flew out of the vehicle, which then went off course, I thought. The car made several turns before I realized it was taking a purposefully circuitous route to the bridge.

The rideshare arrived at a location about a half-mile from the internment housing. I’d walk the rest of the way. When I exited the vehicle, the drone buzzed back toward the car and reentered its compartment. The rideshare left me on the north side of the island, but south of the internment housing.

I instructed it to drive about a half-mile north of the internments and wait for me. It gave me a price, which I paid. The car drove off. I realized it would be well past dark before I’d have a chance to crash in my hotel room.

The walk was pleasant enough. I crossed the busy highway to walk along the shore before veering back across the highway toward what Sonata had started to refer to as the prisoner tenements.

I had reminded her during our walk along the shoreline that these people were convicted of killing other people. Of course, she reminded me that Summary James was one of those people. “The Bible is clear about who the ultimate judge is,” she said. So were, she reminded me, the earliest congregational clerics when the criminal justice system in the Union was in its infancy.

The practice of rehabilitation over punishment was still a radical idea to most of the world more than 200 years after its successful adoption in the Carolina Union.

On a certain level, this made sense. The Union was uniquely capable of practicing this type of jurisprudence. The church was central to every aspect of Union life — political, economic, and legal. There were no intense logistical issues behind rehabilitating convicted criminals because every congregation had rehab houses, some more than others.

Every congregation also had the requisite number of spiritual gurus necessary to restore order to the wayward mind. The focus of the efforts was on spiritual re-enlightenment.

If drugs or alcohol were involved, which was often the case, the offender was told to quit. If he was unable, he was given help to do so. That alone resolved about 85% of criminal cases.

The other 15% produced a wrestling match between society and those who could not be successfully rehabilitated. Out of that 15%, at least half, it was found after a century of learning, was mentally handicapped. These people were typically enrolled in special schools, where the recidivism rate was eventually whittled down to less than ten percent.

I thought about this during my brief walk. I also considered how each congregation had its own way of dealing with murder before Campeche became the arbiter of homicide.

The result was a maze of largely unsatisfying solutions. Now, it looked like the one solution that had made everyone happy was under siege. In concept, I didn’t think Campeche Island was a bad idea. But if it had turned into a lair for drug czars and criminals hiding behind congregational pulpits, something had to change.

I reached into my pocket as I approached the tall buildings housing the prisoners. I pushed the button on the back of the network sniffer while walking as close to the buildings as possible without getting hassled by guards.

The sniffer worked silently. I saw a stream of tiny numbers and letters scrolling quickly down its screen. I couldn’t read any of it because they were moving too fast, but I was pretty sure none of it would make sense to me if I could.

Trace had informed me that the only reason he had included a screen when he designed the device was so that the user would know the device was working. There was something about moving text that made people feel comfortable, he explained. He could have just included a green light, or nothing at all. Instead, he wanted to broadcast to the device’s user that everything was functional.

The device went dark for an instant, then flashed the words, “scan complete” before turning off. He had instructed me to dispose of the device when I was done, so I set it on one of the large boulders that ringed the buildings and smashed it with a large rock. Then I walked across the street and threw the scanner into the bay.

The process didn’t take as long as I thought it might, for which I was relieved. The rideshare was where I expected it to be. When I signaled it with my phone, its backseat passenger door opened as I approached. Then it took me to my hotel, where I had the feeling I’d sleep very soundly if somebody didn’t wake me up and kill me.

End of Chapter Thirteen

You can purchase the full novella for 99 cents here:

Table of Contents (links will appear as additional chapters are published daily on Medium):

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20

NOTES

This short novella was unplanned. I wrote it under my legal name way back in 2021. Side note: The pen name Charles Bastille originated after the publisher of MagicLand convinced me my name would not be SEO-friendly — I’m no longer convinced that matters and haven’t decided yet if I should publish additional works under the Bastille pen name.

The novella takes place in an alternative North America that celebrates diversity, avoided genocide, and corrected the mistakes of slavery as a side-effect of a failed Revolutionary War. As such, although no human endeavor can avoid tragic error, it takes place on a much less dystopian continent than our current experience.

The world represented here is much larger than can be conveyed in such a short book. This world is more fully represented in a trilogy called Restive Souls, which begins in the late 18th century. It is still in final edits.

But the main character of this novella, Longman Jones, told me he wasn’t willing to wait for me to finish that novel. Maybe that is in part because he makes no appearance at all in the larger work.

But he is a restive soul, and he needed to get out of my head. So I took a couple weeks off from the main novel way back in 2021, and wrote this, in hopes he’d shut up. I never really promoted it, but I’m starting to now a bit.

If you enjoy this novella, please let your friends know that for 99 cents they can spend a couple hours with Longman in a more egalitarian world than what they may be used to. It will make him very happy if you do.

For updates on the Restive Souls series, visit https://medium.com/restive-souls. Or subscribe to my newsletter fiction here (takes you to a site off the Medium platform).

Consider this short novella a teaser for the broader work. And if enough people like it, I suspect Longman Jones will also make another appearance or three.

Thanks for reading!

This story was written by a human, not by AI or Grammarly GO (More Info).

Copyright © 2020–2023 Charles White

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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Published in the United States of America