"Can you tell my Gran where I am? She's waiting in the court, I think."

"Sorry. I have other cases to cope with -- I can't really play messenger, I'm
afraid."

When he left the little office, I felt as though I'd been switched off. The
drugs weighted my eyelids and soothed my panic and outrage. Later, I'd be livid,
but right then I could barely keep from folding my arms on the grimy table and
resting my head on them.

The hearing went so fast I barely even noticed it. I sat with my lawyer and the
doctors stood up and entered their reports into evidence -- I don't think they
read them aloud, even, just squirted them at the court reporter. My Gran sat
behind me, on a chair that was separated from the court proper by a banister.
She had her hand on my shoulder the whole time, and it felt like an anvil there
to my dopey muscles.

"All right, Art," my jackass lawyer said, giving me a prod. "Here's your turn.
Stand up and keep it brief."

I struggled to my feet. The judge was an Asian woman about my age, a small round
head set atop a shapeless robe and perched on a high seat behind a high bench.

"Your Honor," I said. I didn't know what to say next. All my wonderful rhetoric
had fled me. The judge looked at me briefly, then went back to tapping her comm.
Maybe she was playing solitaire or looking at porn. "I asked to have a moment to
address the Court. My lawyer suggested that I not do this, but I insisted.

"Here's the thing. There's no way for me to win here. There's a long story about
how I got here. Basically, I had a disagreement with some of my coworkers who
were doing something that I thought was immoral. They decided that it would be
best for their plans if I was out of the way for a little while, so that I
couldn't screw them up, so they coopered this up, told the London police that
I'd gone nuts.

"So I ended up in an institution here for observation, on the grounds that I was
dangerously paranoid. When the people at the institution asked me about it, I
told them what had happened. Because I was claiming that the people who had me
locked up were conspiring to make me look paranoid, the doctors decided that I
*was* paranoid. But tell me, how could I demonstrate my non-paranoia? I mean, as
far as I can tell, the second I was put away for observation, I was guaranteed
to be found wanting. Nothing I could have said or done would have made a
difference."

The judge looked up from her comm and gave me another on