Chapter 2: He Said, She Said

                                    

                                              


                          
            Sandra Murray slipped in her Twitterverse earpiece and glanced at the projection of her personal comm unit worn 24/7 on her left wrist. The appointment reminder indicated she had 30 minutes to drive her movicle to the remote location the FBI had selected for its experimental Truthfinder project.
                          
            The comm reminder option also blinked an anniversary date she would have been happy to have overlooked. Today was exactly a year from the time in 2029 when her world had changed. One moment life had been a steady progression from her birth in 1984 – a year made famous by George Orwell's sci fi novel with the title "1984" – and the next moment the entire continental land mass west of the Mississippi River had vanished. No communication or transportation into or out of the land mass, no satellite imaging, no anything. 
                          
            Sandra thought of it as the abyss, although the media referred to the event as The Disappearance while the U.S. government preferred to say "the unknown incident." Scientific communities around the world alleged that the science of what happened could be explained. But no one had yet figured out how to reverse what occurred.
                          
            Sandra climbed into her movicle unit and set it to drive on automatic. Usually she preferred to drive it herself on manual pilot, yet today she needed the time to prepare herself mentally for what she expected to be an extremely unpleasant experience. Why she had been chosen for this experimental test of the Truthfinder project she had no idea. Her boss at the FBI had not explained, just given her the background information along with the date and location of the test.
                          
            Of course she had known about the alleged rape case even before reading the background information.  It had been big news with minute-to-minute courtroom updates available on all personal comm units for people age 13 and above. When there had been a hung jury, the government – under the recently revised criminal code – had decided to hand over the case to the FBI for resolution via the Truthfinder project. As in her being chosen to be the first to use this new "tool," the reason for the case being handed to the FBI had not been announced.
                          
            Yet with the public outcry for justice on rape and sexual assault cases, the government decision had been met with media enthusiasm. Sandra could only hope that, regardless of the result of the test, her name as the lead interrogator would never be released.
                          
            The accused and his alleged victim had reported separately to Homeland Security yesterday, and Larry Klein, a Homeland Security personnel with whom she had worked on other cases, would bring Paul Kutler and Marian Smith to the test location.
                          
            Whenever Sandra thought of Larry she felt relieved for herself and unhappy for him. His wife and teen daughter were on the other side of the Mississippi River when that land mass was instantaneously caught off. He did not know whether they were alive or whether they were caught in any of the other horrendous possibilities that he could imagine. The U.S. government had provided mental health professionals to help people deal with the separation from their loved ones. The government had also helped with housing and employment for people from the land mass of The Disappearance who had been stuck east of the Mississippi when The Disappearance occurred.
                          
Sandra had no close relatives on the other side and she had never married. Her 13-year-old son James had resulted from an unintended although consensual sexual encounter with a teen boy. His family had lived next door to her in a city west of the Mississippi. He'd brought over a bottle of wine on her birthday that he said was a gift from his parents. In fairness, he hadn't had even one glass of wine. But she had drunk almost the whole bottle herself before he leaned over and kissed her. A boy of 18 but she'd felt desire well inside her. When his hand went to her breasts she hadn't stopped him.
                          
Not sexually active at that time, she wasn't on the pill, but they'd used a condom – she'd put it on him herself. In retrospect, perhaps he'd been carrying it around in his wallet for too long. There must have been a tear. Because nine months later James was born.
                          
She hadn't had an abortion – at 33 this might be her only chance of a child of her own. And she hadn't said anything to the boy or his parents, although they couldn't help noticing she was pregnant. She made up a story about artificial insemination because she wasn't getting any younger, and the parents clearly believed her. But the boy no longer spoke to her and there were no more gift bottles of wine. She had put "father unknown" on James' birth certificate.
                          
Sandra had never told James how he was conceived or who his father was. Now she had not told James that she had been assigned interrogator on the Truthfinder project for the Kutler case. As James would not be eligible for a Twitterverse earpiece until age 16, perhaps he had been spared some of the detailed sexual descriptions of the court case. 
                          
            As her movicle sped over the road leading to the remote location, Sandra considered it unlikely that her son was innocent of such descriptions, although perhaps as yet he had no personal knowledge. While most STDs had been eliminated, pregnancy was still a risk, a risk she had warned him about since he turned 10.
                          
            Sandra's boss had assured her that Paul Kutler and Marian Smith would not be able to see her, only hear her voice. And then her boss had thrown in an additional element in the test. A visiting Chinese data scientist by the name of Charlie Liu was to be with her. Charlie had been briefed that, when appropriate, he could ask his own questions, although he was to defer to her.
                          
            When Sandra had first been told that a Chinese citizen would be partnered with her, she had protested the security risk. All Chinese citizens from the age of six when they started school had an implant at the base of their skull. The implant provided information in front of their eyes, an augmented experience compared to the information provided by the personal comm units given to children in the U.S. at age one. And, Sandra suspected, the implant could record the Truthfinder interrogation sessions and transmit these back to the Chinese.
                          
            Sandra's boss had assured her that the test facility had sophisticated signal blocking in place that would prevent Charlie Liu from live transmitting while still enabling the test facility itself to transmit to various locations east of the Mississippi.
                          
            This assurance of signal blocking was of particular note, Sandra thought, because the actual Truthfinder project was not as high tech as one might expect in 2030. Polygraphs weren't used as these had been shown to be beaten by some people. No truth serums or "enhanced" interrogation methods were allowed.
                          
            Instead the Truthfinder project had been developed based on the psychology of observation.  Social scientists would remotely watch the interrogation and then make a group decision. The scientists would not even be allowed to give Sandra questions to ask. She was to use her own initiative, although during the interrogation she could play audio recordings of the courtroom presentations as well as audio monitoring of conversations of the accused and accuser, in theory legally obtained as part of the government's security evaluation network.
                          
            Sandra had listened to all available recordings in the month she had been given to prepare. The criminal court case itself had taken less than two weeks, and those days of courtroom testimony as well as the other recordings did not require a full month of preparation. She had tried to be better prepared by reading selected writings of philosophers, looking for ethical answers to the thorny questions raised by a "he said, she said" scenario not captured on video. And even a video recording would not have necessarily been conclusive. For example, one person's back could have blocked what was happening. Video providing 360-degree views was still too expensive for most monitoring.
                          
            At the test facility Sandra used her personal comm unit to enter her identity info into the outer door reader, and the door clicked open. 
                          
How many days – and nights – would it take for the social scientists to determine whether there had indeed been a rape? Thank heavens she didn't have a vote in the determination unless there were a tie. She would only have to announce the verdict to the accused and the accuser.
                          
        
                          
© 2018 Phyllis Zimbler Miller
                          
Phyllis Zimbler Miller blogs on topics including gender disparities at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com and her novels are on Amazon at www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller
                          
Her feature film screenplay adaptation of THE TRUTHFINDER is available on Amazon Studios.