Old Stories - Court of the Nameless

Author's Note: Another old Solar Order story, the last one I ever wrote!

[story]

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The court is the darkest shade of white I’ve ever seen. I can detect no direct light source – not even an ambient light – and yet the stark white chamber I’ve been brought into is flooded with shadow.

“Nerolei Jacen. Do you understand why you’ve been brought before the Nameless?” They all speak at once, all gazing down at me through their eyeless, faceless helmets. I’m not sure whether they would be more intimidating if they had just gone with some kind of basic, black hooded robes – but the big, gray, blank, mechanical armor that each of my five judges wears is off-putting to say the least.

I let out a tired exhalation. We all know how this is going to end, and I’ve never been one to go through the motions. “...The roast was undercooked?”

“Incorrect. You have been brought before an impartial quintet of the Nameless for the crimes of slander against Faylan Lexworthy, Medical Authority of the Solar Order. How do you plead?” They start, continue, and finish each other's sentences continuously, seems like there's never just a single Nameless speaking at any one time. I’m not sure if they share a mind, or if they know this song and dance so well by now that they can afford a little added creepiness.

“Actually, I may not be Nameless -- but last I checked, slander involved lying about someone. I never did that.” I strain my arms very slightly against the clockwire ties that bind my wrists. I feel a slight rolling of the miniaturized gears, and the lock tightens around me. I try not to roll my eyes.

I know what they’re talking about, of course. I said some things that, while they weren’t untrue, I still probably should have refrained from saying aloud. At least, where Solar Order loyalists could hear. Faylan Lexworthy, and the Order’s entire medical system, was laughable at best – the only way to get what few tried treatments were available was to either not need it, or be royalty, and the unending game of denial and politics was worse in Oldaya than anywhere else (besides, perhaps, Valdengar – though their only blessing was being so far distanced from the Order). That was something everyone knew, it was just something everyone knew not to say.

Except, apparently, for me. But hey, I’ve never claimed to be some great genius. Before this I was an overseer at the Clock Vaults, making sure everything ran smoothly. I looked over the technology, the conveniences, that have made everyone so complacent with the Order's invasion. Sure, medical care didn't exist. Sure, the justice system was a joke. Sure, nobody was even allowed to choose their own career path -- but flipping a switch for water, having incandescent furnaces that both heated and lit your entire house, having perpetual-motion granaries that turned themselves? People were willing to put up with injustice in exchange for a little bit of luxury.

Except, apparently, for me.

"Your public words carried the implications that Faylan Lexworthy's services to the Solar Order are undesirable. This is unacceptable."

"Unacceptable, maybe. Not slander." My knees are starting to ache from the cold slab of featureless white stone beneath them. I said I wasn't one to go through motions -- maybe I lied, just a little bit. I don't like to go through other people's motions. I think that's reasonable. "At least be honest."

"The Nameless are incapable of dishonesty." It sounds like a single, vaguely echoing sentence to my ears, but I know that at least three of my judges speak the words at intervals. It's really getting on my nerves. "Your implications are unacceptable as well as incorrect."

"Well, let me call my lawyer, see what he has to say." It's a joke and we all know it. Nobody laughs.

"Lawyers were outlawed in the year S13, and have been dismissed as unneeded. The Nameless decline your request."

"Then what? Out with it -- you've already made your decision, that much is obvious." I close my eyes and look away from my five inhuman 'peers' -- try to distance myself from the whole thing. I try to think of Leya. I wonder how many days it will be before someone tells her that the Nameless have me. Before she learns I'm dead. As much as she wanted kids, I thank the Banned Gods that we never could. They don't deserve to have to live under a Solar Order orphanage, taken by force for only having a single parent. Turned into soldiers or Nameless or worse.

“The crime of slander is dire and not to be accepted.”

“Unacceptable, I got that part!”

“The Court of the Nameless sentences you to death by force-hanging in an hour's time.”

So there it was. Those booming voices, faceless metal masks, the pale, shadowy room around me – none of it truly prepares you for when they say it. The moment that you hear the sound you've been waiting for this entire time. You can't predict the way it's gonna feel, that cold creeping sensation that seems to start in your bladder, turning your piss to ice before it moves onto your stomach and twists it into knots. Like that feeling you get when your neighbor asks you to babysit her two-year-old, and you can't think of a single excuse not to. Except, obviously, a little more unbearably horrible.

“Gonna fix me up with a last meal, then? What do I get to do with my hour?” My voice is a monotone when I finally manage to force it out. My back bends slightly, stooping to help me properly hang my head in despair.

“Think about what you've done.”

The Nameless leave me in the chamber, alone. I hope it will be somehow... I don't know, fast? Like they'll vanish in a puff of smoke and save me the shame of being abandoned. I get no such luxury. Each alien, armored judge steps past me with slow, heavy footfalls, moving fluidly around me but never touching me. The momentum-locks turn and sway out of the way, opening the single, massive door and letting the Nameless step outside.

Leaving me alone, in a dark white room, on my knees, with an hour to live.

Spending an hour thinking about what you've done before you're executed is exactly as much fun as it sounds like it would be. There's no genuine, heartfelt regret for my misdeeds, just a mental slap to my own face for my lack of caution. Couldn't I have just kept my mouth shut? Did I really have to make my feelings known to the world?

I spend what I feel was about twenty minutes contemplating suicide, wishing there was a way. There's not. My hands are tied, there are no weapons nearby, no objects at all. Even if I could wiggle out of the cuffs and tear my clothes apart, tie them into rope to hang myself with – the ceiling is a smooth dome. No protrusions. Nothing. The only option would be to beat my head into a wall, but the smart part of me, the scientist, realizes the idiocy of even attempting. Flogging myself into painful unconsciousness wasn't worth doing it on my own terms. Rumor had it force-hanging was very humane.

Which gave me an excellent topic to consider for the next, I can't tell, half an hour.  When the Solar Order banned all conventional execution techniques in S11, there was outrage. They hadn't come to full power at that time – taking away freedoms, altering our way of life, was still a distasteful notion back then. The Order had assuaged the citizens by replacing traditional rope-hanging with the more 'advanced' force-hanging. I'd never seen it done (executions are always performed in secret, these days), but I knew it was... well, non-contact, in some manner. I suppose I'll find out soon enough, won't I?

The rest of my agonizingly short incarceration I spend thinking about Leya. I don't have much time left before my judges, jury, and executioners return for me with the chamber prepared, and I want to fill that time with as many pleasant thoughts as I can. I don't think about how she'll feel when she finds out, how panicked she will be when she searches for me. I can't bring myself to comprehend her tears, her wailing, her mourning. I think about those soft, hazy green eyes, and how she felt in my arms.

I allow myself a smile when I remember the last thing I told her before leaving for the Vaults that morning: “I love you.” I'm glad I got that chance, even if I didn't know it would be my last. I'm glad I told her how I feel. I'm glad that 'neglecting my wife' is not among my regrets. I'll miss her, wherever I go after the Nameless finish with me. I'll miss her, but part of me hopes she doesn't miss me.

A blast of light – real light, golden, not the unholy white haze inside my cell – stings my eyes briefly, and I turn my head. The door has opened again, and they have returned for me. All five, one perfect unit. “The time for your passing has arrived.”

“Yeah, put a lid on it and let's get this over with. I haven't got all day.”

I spit on the floor of the cell as the Nameless drag me away. My absurd hope that maybe now, in some pathetically small way, Oldaya will remember Nerolei Jacen after he has passed, murdered by the Nameless and the Solar Order for a crime he didn't commit. Just maybe. It's worth the effort, my shot at a life that may last a few minutes after my body is destroyed. Someone will have to clean up a glob of saliva, and I find strange comfort in that.

Escape is not an option, so I don't pay attention to the winding hallways and empty courts around me. Gleaming whites and grays and chromes flit past me as my eyes glaze over, lost in my own thoughts and the resigned shuffle of my feet. The Nameless surround me in a star-shape – there is no way I will get past them.

The 'chamber' is a little different than I was expecting. Cleaner. Steel, glass, and a hard, dull blue material I am unfamiliar with make up a massive cylinder, perhaps eight feet in diameter and about twenty feet in height. The inside is empty, harsh tubular lighting keeping the upright cell ablaze with artificial brightness. One firm hand pushes me inside, and I don't resist.

The entrance to the cell closes behind me, and I carefully turn. The cell is smaller on the inside than it had seemed, and though I have never been one for claustrophobia I feel slightly unnerved by it. Not that I have any reason to be. After all, what could it possibly do? Kill me?

The Nameless don't speak a single word outside the chamber. I get no last rites, no dirge, no fond farewell, not even some sort of legal assessment of my wrongdoings. I know, they know. There's nobody here to sing and dance for.

A soft whirring sound makes me swallow a lump in my throat as the chamber... 'activates'. I can feel something, some sort of energy field, surround me, clinging to my clothes and my skin. My hair begins to stand on end and I close my eyes against the stinging light. I try to ignore it all as that field lifts me off of my feet, bringing me to the vertical center of the cylinder, and carefully... well, spreads me apart. My arms drift out to the sides, fingers not quite touching the sides of the chamber, and my legs spread into an upside-down V shape. Held aloft by an artificial, unnatural energy, that steady, droning hum grows louder. I can't hear the sound of my own heartbeat through it, the tuneless song of my unjust destruction.

It is only just barely incapable of drowning out the sickening snap when each of my bones disconnect from one another, jerked apart by a calculated surge in that energy field. One suddenly-bloodshot eye swivels rapidly towards the back of my head, while the other snaps open and stares forward. A trickle of blood runs out of one nostril.

Blame the Nameless.