Judgment Day

by Liam Hogan

Nine Judges rode in around noon. At the gabbled news the smattering of day-timers pushed away tumblers of whiskey and, with a curt nod from my father–the saloon owner–I stepped out onto the porch, still carrying my broom, to watch them arrive.

No horses. Equal in pace to any of God’s creatures, Judges don’t need them.

Gran says they travel as swift as the gas-guzzling automobiles of old, though the only one of those I ever saw at a county fair wasn’t any faster than a slow man walking.

“This town is in lock down,” Chief Justice Fisher announced, her voice echoing from clapboard walls as she pinned the proclamation to the door of the church with a metal hand. “By order of the Scotus, until we complete Judgment.”

Father Petherton blustered up the steps, staring at the notice as though it were a personal slight. “This here’s a God-fearing–”

“You too, Alfred Sebastian Petherton. Your time will come,” the Judge said, turning her back on the priest, and you could see his legs crumble as his words dried up. He staggered away from the cordon of Judges until he vanished into the sullen crowd.

It was hard not to feel singled out, even if the Judges, always in their nines, were pinning identical declarations to dozens of other churches across the forty-eight States.

Father Petherton had not been our priest during the last lockdown, shipped in by a Scotus-confirmed Church of America decree when Father Kelross succumbed to the coughing sickness.

And I? I’d been too young to make sense of it. If I remembered the Judges’ previous visit at all, it was mixed in with Gran’s tales and the nightmares I guess all kids have.

But I was near thirteen now, two years shy of my maturity. This time around I was curious to see what the Judges did. If I had done no wrong, I had nothing to fear–so taught Mr. Cowper, in the two-room schoolhouse.

I should have listened to my Gran, who liked to point out that it wasn’t whether I thought I’d done nothing wrong that mattered.

“We will use the church, the schoolhouse, and the five rooms-for-hire of the saloon.”

I frowned; some of them were occupied. Our paying guests would have to be turfed out until the Judges left. Though with nine of them, that might not take long.

“Every citizen will be Judged. Do NOT attempt to evade justice.”

We wouldn’t be so foolish; the Judges were armed with the Right Hand of Judgment. Flechettes would cut down anyone trying to flee, guilt proven by their actions. A hangman’s noose for more measured judgment, and an electric lash to punish minor transgressions.

“We will start with the town’s oldest citizen. Who claims that position?”

“That’ll be me,” came the gruff reply.

I looked around in surprise. Gran’s smallholding was north and out of sight of town, which was the way she liked it. She came in once or twice a week and I usually knew when, as she was on a mission to make sure my schooling was up to scratch. She’d spend an hour quizzing me on all I’d learned, scoffing at much of it, but only correcting the more egregious errors, be they mine, or Mr. Cowper’s. And whenever I asked how she knew so much, she’d reply awful coy, about how long she’d lived and how you couldn’t not learn stuff over so many years. Rumour was, there were books hidden somewhere in her homestead, though the occasional official search had never turned any up. Some said it was Gran that was the book, and that, I kinda believed, her skin as pale and fragile as paper.

“Mrs. Angela Rose Fogerty–”

“It’s Barrett, as I tell you every Judging.”

“–And every Judging, Angela Rose Fogerty, we remind you that your legal name, as a widow, is that of your son-in-law. Fine: ten dollars.”

“Fine,” Gran snapped back, and I heard the collective intake of breath from those gathered. “Let’s get on with it. I’m a busy woman.”

All nine Judges–all nine of them!–escorted Gran as if she was a hardened criminal into the cool, unseen dark of the church. I felt a tap on my shoulder: my father, Gran’s son-in-law, Roger Fogerty.

“Shel; back to the saloon, there’s work to be done. You’ll be Judged late in the day, if not tomorrow.”

I started to protest, I wanted to make sure Gran was okay. But what could I do, either way? Other townsfolk suffered the same quandary, some drifting away, others, of more advanced years, eyeing up shady spots. I guessed they were figuring to be next in line, no point in wandering far. All of them a decade younger than Gran. An outlier, she claimed her eighty years wasn’t that special, it’s just that everyone else was dying young.

The Judges had their part in that. But not as much as waves of coughing sickness and failed harvests, or even late summer nights, when whiskey flows and tempers flare and grown men, armed with rusting knives and ancient firearms, behave like spoiled children.

I was about to open the side door when it opened for me. Five Judges marched metronomically past as if I–and the dust I’d swept into a now scattered pile–didn’t exist. Glued to the wall, heart thumping, I clutched the broom tight.

One of the five squeaked as they ascended the back stairs. Step, squeak, step, squeak. I wondered who maintained them? Was that a better job than tending a saloon? If so it would surely go to a boy. Boys were taught more interesting things than us girls, or so I gathered from snatches I heard through the thin walls that separated the classrooms. Mr. Cowper split his time between us, but he sure as heck didn’t split it equally.

A minute or so later I heard footsteps on the stairs, those off to be Judged. Maybe the Judges did their maintenance themselves. Maybe they carried screwdrivers and spare parts and cans of oil. I imagined them putting their feet up after a day’s Judging, having another Judge tend weary limbs…

Gran appeared at the saloon door as I was wiping down tables. She looked frail, in pain, and there were angry red stripes across her forearms, already darkening to purple.

“Kiddo, a whiskey.”

Gran wasn’t one for liquor, except at Thanksgiving. She tottered to the nearest chair. “Kiddo?” she repeated, and I creaked into action. Father was nowhere in sight, nor anyone else for that matter. But there’s no particular skill to pouring whiskey, ‘cept not to spill any.

“And water,” Gran demanded, as I eased the cork back into the government-labeled bottle. Let the cowpokes drink their rotgut and take the licks if caught. My father always bought legal hooch, properly taxed, even if it was weaker.

By the time I’d made my way toting water and whiskey, Gran was looking less frazzled. “Everything okay, Gran?”

She barked a laugh. “No, but I’ll live.” She downed half the tumbler in one and I waited for the inevitable splutter, but it didn’t come. Made of stern stuff, our Gran.

“I was born in America,” she said, apropos nothing, and I took it as an invitation to pull out a second chair with a scrape of wood on wood. “But I spent a dozen years abroad.”

I’d heard hushed whispers of this, but nothing concrete. “Where, Gran?”

“Hmm?”

“Where did you live?”

“Oh, all over, Kiddo. Canada. Europe. A spell in Australia, even.”

Mythical places. Filled by heretics and non-believers, to be sure, those who have strayed far from the one true church. But the things she must have seen!

“My family–parents and younger sister–returned when the last sections of the wall were going up. As America shut itself off, abandoning the parts that didn’t fit and, behind bolted doors, began to implode.”

That wasn’t the way Mr. Cowper taught it. I knew the basics, the wall, which wasn’t that much of a deterrent, except it was policed by forerunners of the Judges. Deadly autonomous drones that didn’t care if you were coming or going. Necessary to protect what we still had. And, when the Presidency abdicated its responsibility to take appropriate measures, it was the Scotus that filled the void, to maintain, at all costs, the rule of law.

“The point, Kiddo, is that I was an adult, albeit a young one, at the time. I had a choice. I could have stayed, led a different life in a different country, following a different set of rules. Kinder rules.”

“But… leaving your family?”

“Indeed. A choice then, but not much of one. I don’t regret it, even on days like today. If I hadn’t returned, I would never have met your grandfather. Never have had your mother, who would never have had you.”

At that, I knew Gran was hurting. Gran rarely mentioned my mother, who I was named after, too painful, was all she’d say on the topic. She didn’t blame my father for her death and that of the child that might have been a sister, or a brother. No, she blamed the cowpoke who forced himself on my mother, despite her struggles.

I might have asked what punishment he’d got, from the Judges, when the time came, but I knew from experience that Gran would merely say he’d got what he deserved.

A hand, whip-cord muscles hiding beneath the liver spotted, tanned skin, reached out and briefly held my softer, paler one.

“Well, I’m good for another Judgment, I guess. Tell Roger you saw me, Kiddo.”

“You’re off?”

“Chickens won’t feed themselves.” She eased gingerly to her feet. “Remember; be respectful, answer truthfully, and don’t volunteer one scrap more than asked for.”

I didn’t need reminding. It was scripture drummed into me as firmly as my ABCs had once been by Mr. Cowper. Firmer, as it didn’t matter what else I was being taught at the school, from bible study to domestic science, Gran’s lesson was never retired.

“I’ll see you Friday,” she said, silhouetted by harsh sunlight at the saloon door.

I nodded, and she stepped out, and when the door swung shut it wasn’t just the saloon that darkened. Though I’d not expected to see her, now that I had, I’d hoped she’d be around for my Judging. Whenever I thought about it, it gave me the worst butterflies.

Gran’s post-judgment restorative was not the last of the day. I’d assumed we’d be empty, at least until the Judges rode out, but whiskey was what a man, or a gray-band woman like Gran, needed after their one-on-one with a Judge. No-one lingered. A slow conveyor belt of the town’s residents, from the hunched bulk of the blacksmith to the pinched features of the priest, old before his time.

A whisper went round: names of those who hadn’t stepped through the saloon door. Those who had suffered the Judge’s lash. Muttered gossip–mostly nonsense, even I could tell–over why, talk of long held grievances settled by outside reckoning, the judged skulking off to lick their wounds and contemplate their crimes. It was lucky no-one suffered worse. Capital punishments and even floggings would be held with the town in mandated attendance, and I hadn’t looked forward to that.

My father’s judging passed without comment. He came back down the saloon stairs and went straight behind the bar to serve those I’d been making sure didn’t serve themselves. He didn’t say a word about it, or anything else, for a goodly while.

In the late afternoon I’d already done everything I could think to do, and more. I took a hunk of bread from the pantry, well used to fending for myself in the evenings, and traipsed up the narrow steps to the attic.

I must have fallen asleep. A lantern shone in my face, and my father was shaking me awake. “Shel…” he said. “Shel… wake up, Shel…?”

I groaned. I was still clothed, my shoes kicked off somewhere beneath the bed. “What’s happening, Dad?”

“It’s your turn, Shel.”

It took a beat to realize what that meant. I blinked into the wavering light, dry throated. “What time is it?”

“Gone nine. I think they want to be done today.”

I groaned again and hastened to make myself presentable, wishing for a brush, for a bowl of water, and for fresh clothes. But there was no time for any of that. Besides, it wouldn’t change a blessed thing; the Judges don’t judge on appearance.

I expected to be sent to one of the rooms for hire, the short journey down the stairs not even giving me time to think. But, trust my luck, I’d been allocated to a Judge in the schoolhouse, the other side of town.

The buildings were as brightly lit as the Fourth of July, light in every window and lanterns dangling on porches, all aided and abetted by a half-moon and a clear sky. A shape detached from the schoolhouse steps as I approached and my breath caught. But it was only Mr. Cowper.

“Sheila,” he nodded, in greeting.

“Sir,” I nodded back.

“Remember–”

“–Respect, and truth,” I replied, cutting him off. He didn’t smile and I didn’t add Gran’s third commandment–Don’t Share–since it wasn’t strictly official.

“In you go, then. Girl’s classroom.”

In the gloom, the room I visited three times a week (and envied the boys who got five days, and an extra two years, and less chores to boot), was alien territory. A jumble of desks and chairs, empty bookshelves leaking shadows. The lantern at the rear was for my benefit; the waiting Judge didn’t need it. This one stood in front of Mr. Cowper’s desk, watching my tentative approach with faintly glowing eyes, weighing me in the scales of justice.

“Sheila Anne Fogerty: Stand in the designated spot for Judgment,” he instructed, when I hesitated at the edge of the clearing made by desks pushed to either side. On the floor was an arm-span circle sketched in chalk. Staring at my feet, I stepped into it, careful not to smudge the line.

The Judge’s left hand gripped my wrist. I felt sensors adjust their positions, an echo of my pulse, and a sting like a mosquito as a needle sampled my blood.

The robot froze. I tugged at my arm, but it wasn’t moving, not when held by bands of steel. Did the tests normally take this long? I felt rising panic. Was there anything I’d eaten or touched in the saloon, that might leave a chemical trace? The acrid, home-grown tobacco smoke, Gran’s whiskey…

“Be still,” the Judge commanded at my continued wriggling. “I am summoning colleagues.”

I quailed. What had I done? A single Judge was all that was required to make Judgment. They were linked, anyway, sharing the information that we spilled, weighing up rumor and gossip and spite to arrive at the solemn truth. But a minimum of three Judges were required to enact punishment or lay down a ruling. More, with the seriousness of the crime, until all nine were involved for a capital case, a straight majority of their individual programmings enough to send a man to the gallows.

Not that the Judges needed gallows any more than they needed horses. They provided their own nooses, their tall metal bodies the scaffolding. But I’d done nothing wrong. Had I?

I cringed, silently sobbing, tears running down my cheeks. The Judge didn’t say another word, not of comfort, nor contempt at my weakness. Did nothing, until the door opened and two more Judges entered, another male, and a female.

Cleaning the saloon even during daylight hours you heard a lot of scuttlebutt about the differences between the Scotus Judges. Some, the drinkers claimed, could be reasoned with, more or less. Others were hanging Judges.

Gran said they were all hanging Judges, and don’t ever forget it. Their mechanical bodies were identical, but the robes and hats they wore told you the gender and identity of the real-life Scotus Judge they represented. This female Judge was Jennifer Thompson. A relatively recent appointee, not one the drinkers took bets on who might be replaced next. And not much more to tell about her.

In an intricate exchange which at no point left me free, the original Judge traded places with Judge Thompson, who then gripped my other wrist just as firmly, the two male Judges taking up places either side and a step further back.

“Sheila Anne Fogerty,” Judge Thompson intoned, “by Scotus decree and as witnessed by Judge Pereira and Judge Morden, I hereby install you with a fertility tracker. Attempting to remove or damage the wristband is a contravention of the 2042 Fertility and Pregnancy Act, and punishable most severely.”

She released my right wrist. I stared at the band encircling it like a noose as it slowly turned pink. A band only adult females wore. “But I’m not yet thirteen,” I protested. “I’m a child–”

“A woman,” Judge Thompson corrected. “Having attained her biological maturity. You’ve had your first period, haven’t you?”

I felt the blood–the betraying blood–rush to my face. My jaw clenched, but before I could utter a word, Judge Morden interrupted.

“Perjury is a serious crime. Think carefully before you speak.”

Judge Thompson’s grip was still tight around my left wrist, sensors picking up heart rate, perspiration, a dozen chemical indicators of stress, of truth. Even without that, what could I do but follow Gran’s repeated advice? I nodded. Stammered a yes when instructed to do so.

“Henceforth, you will be treated as an adult. That includes all laws, all amendments, that pertain to adult, fertile females. It is important, Sheila Anne Fogerty, that you know and understand these laws and amendments. Please answer clearly, for the record:

“What is your duty as a woman?”

“To repopulate America,” I answered on automatic. For the first time the response, demanded of us whenever we dared complain about our chores, actually applied to me, and not to some future, impossible to imagine version. It was our Christian duty to be fruitful. A child was a blessing, both Mr. Cowper and Father Petherton lectured, from the very moment of conception.

“And all of your actions have to be compatible with that duty. You understand what that means?”

I nodded, and the grip became painful.

“Speak! List the primary prohibition.”

“No birth control,” I muttered, feeling like the damp cloth I used to wipe tables. “Chemical, or physical.”

“If your tag changes from pink to blue, then you have been blessed with a child,” Judge Thompson went on. “You will bear the responsibility for bringing that child healthily to term. Further restrictions will be imposed at that juncture. What are those prohibitions?”

“No alcohol. No dangerous activities. No travel.”

“And?” the Judge prompted. I dredged up the memory of the final instruction, a fleeting image of Mr. Cowper, the sharp snap of the cane against the back of my calves, the word I always used to stumble over, especially when first taught it at the age of five.

“No abortifacients.” And still I stumbled.

The Judge tugged my imprisoned arm, forcing me to lift my head, and I stared into eyes that weren’t eyes, a face that wasn’t a face. Only the voice was human, the perfect mimic of the actual Judge who sat on the Scotus, and that, somehow, made it worse.

“What abortifacients, natural or unnatural, do you know, Sheila Anne Fogerty? What substances should you avoid, be it deliberate, or accidental?”

I stared back, horrified. “I don’t know!” I clamored. “I just know that you can’t…” I tailed off, miserable in my failure, teachings I couldn’t even recall having forgotten.

The Judge nodded her mechanical head. “As it should be. All women, from fertile age upwards, whenever Judged, are asked this question. It is best for them if they do not know the answer. If someone does attempt to tell you of such wicked, prohibited substances, what will you do?”

“Report them,” I half-muttered.

“And?”

“Um… Ignore them?”

There was the briefest of pauses. “Interrupt them, is a superior option. Tell them you won’t stand for such talk. And THEN report them. Understand?”

“Yes, your honor,” I said.

Walking out of the schoolhouse, rubbing my wrist, I saw other kids my age and even younger, abroad when normally they’d be home, obeying the unofficial curfew that kept us safe. And the look that Emily Perkins gave, when she saw the band around my wrist–hostile, naked envy.

The feeling of having crossed some line into adulthood kept me buoyed only as long as it took to return to the saloon. I don’t know what made me enter via the main door, instead of discretely at the side. But the hush that greeted me, the eyes that turned my way, the startled face of my father behind the bar… I was, again, the center of attention, and this wasn’t envy.

Hand wrapped tight around the fertility band, I rushed between the tables, hearing my name called from behind. I clattered up the stairs, not stopping until I could push my bedroom door shut and let the dark swallow me.

The knock, when it came, was tentative. “Shel?” I wondered who was minding the bar. I wondered if, if I didn’t respond, he’d go away.

He didn’t. The door was pushed slowly open, the light from his lantern spilling through. Father looked almost as miserable as I felt.

“Ah, Christ, Shel you should have told me…” he said. He ducked his head beneath the low beams as I drew knees up to my chest. Perched on the other end of the bed, he reached out and gave the fertility tracker a tug.

I winced, I’d already rubbed my wrist raw.

“Don’t try and remove it, Shel. It’s on, now. Can’t be undone.” There was a long pause, me staring at him, him staring at his shoes. “You’ll be completing your education at your grandma’s.

“What?” I gasped. Leaving home? Leaving school? “Why?”

“I’ll let her explain. She’s downstairs, waiting. Even brought a horse and trap. Gather your things, Shel. You leave tonight.”

“Ah, it’s not your fault,” Gran said, as I sat huddled beside her, a bundle of clothes wedged between us. “Bad timing, is all. If the Judging had been a couple of months earlier… We’d hoped you’d be safe until you were fifteen.”

“Safe?”

“Girl, it’s hunting season. With that band around your wrist, turning red at ovulation, you’re fair game for any man in town. Underage sex, consensual or not, would have been punishable by a Judge’s noose. But after the age of maturity, or, drat it, the first sign of your menses, rape is only a lashing offense, and rarely prosecuted.”

I’d assumed I was leaving town to get away from the Judges, hiding out on the outskirts, but Gran gave that voiced thought a withering glance. “It don’t just track your fertility.

“I should have known my son-in-law wouldn’t notice the signs. But then, I should have warned him you might keep ’em secret. Though how were either of us to know the timing would be so rotten?”

I tried hiding the banded wrist behind me, but Gran shook her head.

“’Ain’t nothing to be ashamed off, that. Heck, in this day and age they celebrate it, though it’s a pity they don’t celebrate the woman who wears it. But kid, whatever that band says, and whatever the law might say, you’re still a child. If you have any sense, you’ll lie low and learn what you can from me for the next two years. Maybe longer.”

“Farming, and washing, and sewing?” I moaned.

She chuckled. “And other things. Things the Judges wouldn’t particularly like.”

I frowned, though she couldn’t see it. “You can’t escape Judgment–”

“Oh, there are ways. They don’t see all, and they don’t know all. And there are ways of fooling even a lie detector.”

A thought struck me. “You incurred that ten dollar fine deliberately, didn’t you, Gran?”

“I did.” I heard the smugness in her voice, like when she was playing cards and laid down a winning hand. “It’s a sure-fire way to get me riled up. Puts quite the spike in my baseline! Not that you should ever deliberately lie, you understand? But sometimes you need to pick your words very carefully.”

The bone-weary nag came to a halt, unbidden, outside Gran’s barn.

“Is there any hope?” I asked in abject misery.

“There’s always hope, kid. There are always ways to resist. Some are… stupider, than others. But sometimes, just thinking about them, just persisting, is a kind of resistance. Proves we’re not mindless slaves. And someday, maybe sooner than you think, there’s going to be a different kind of judgment.”

“Like Father Petherton preaches?” I heard an echo of Gran in my scoffing. Scant relief, the Rapture. Pretty much everyone dies, even if a select few are saved.

Gran sat silent a moment. “No, Kiddo. See, I hear they’ve lost the ability to make new Judges. Those robotic brains are awful complicated. And Judges are tough, but they don’t last forever. There’s hope as long as there are still a few cantankerous old crones like me knocking around, and I aims to outlast them. Someone to remind folk of what we once took for granted, stuff they’d find in books, if books were easier to come by. Because just knowing it was possible opens up a whole different world. And, if needs be, I’ll pass the flame down to the next generation.”

She turned, the darkness of the barn and her homestead surrounding us, pressing down. Taking both my hands in hers, she stilled my trembling.

“And that, kiddo, for better or worse, means you. Best get some sleep. Lessons start bright and early tomorrow.”

Host Commentary

This is a classic and very timely piece of dystopian fiction, isn’t it? The judges are implacable, and terrifying, but there’s also a strong feel of small-town claustrophobia, and the judgment, rivalries and inequality that such places can foster. But I also love the sense of everyday continuity, of family bonds, of bloody-minded persistence. Even small rebellions are punished in this setting…but I do get the feeling that there’s a bigger rebellion coming, a little further down the line. We can’t always solve the problems we’re faced with, and Shel certainly can’t do much other than what she’s told right now – she’s only twelve, after all – but that won’t always be the case. Sometimes, we have to grow stronger before we can fight.