AfterNet 01 - Good Cop Dead Cop

think,” the male assistant said.
    Yamaguchi told them, “A portable terminal, like ours, can be set to accept input from a single person by matching their energy fingerprint against a stored fingerprint. Munroe and I set that up the first time we used the terminal. But unconnected to the Internet, a portable terminal can’t match that fingerprint against the AfterNet database of verified identities.” She took a breath before adding, “which is what an AfterNet terminal can do.”
    “Great, so what do we do now?” Feldman asked of his assistants.
    “Once we get a terminal in the courtroom, it’ll show that this really is Munroe, right?” the woman assistant said.
    “Won’t do us any good,” Feldman said. “The sneaky bastard’s already accomplished what he wants. Made the jury doubt Munroe’s identity. Next, he’ll just say, ‘How do we know that it was Munroe who saw the payoff?’ Or even, ‘How do we know the man we’re talking to now is the same man who testified earlier?’”
    “The judge would never allow … oh, he doesn’t have to,” the male assistant said.
    “It’s my fault,” Feldman said. “I should have brought a full terminal in the courtroom. I just thought the portable terminal looked friendlier.”
    Yamaguchi kept quiet. She had emailed her suggestion to Feldman that they use her portable terminal the week before. She thought Munroe’s digitized voice on her terminal sounded friendlier than the one that came out of a public AfterNet terminal.
    The ADA and his team went into a huddle and left Yamaguchi and Munroe alone. “I hate lawyers,” Yamaguchi said quietly.
    “I know. You’ve told me. Frequently,” Munroe said.
    “I gave him the idea of using my terminal and the boom box.”
    “It was a good idea.”
    “I’m sure Slavin would have found something else to complain about,” she said, referring to the defense attorney. “Oily scum-sucking lawyer,” she said, quite a bit louder.
    “You called,” said Feldman, who was now standing behind her.
    Yamaguchi spun around, her eyes wide. “The other oily scum-sucking lawyer,” she said. Munroe could have sworn at least two attorneys in the hallway wanted to respond to that.
    “The defense attorney,” she added.
    “Yes, thanks for the clarification. Look, I need you and Munroe to just do what you were going to do. Don’t try to fix anything.”
    Feldman returned to his assistants. Eventually the group broke up and they and Yamaguchi took the recess break as a chance to go the bathroom, make a phone call or raid a vending machine. Munroe ran downstairs to a public AfterNet terminal to check his email.
    Yamaguchi was eating a doughnut when he came back, just in time for the bailiff to call everyone back into the courtroom.
    This time Munroe communicated through a full terminal placed on the audiovisual cart. He actually had to stand in front of it to capture the field, rather than go into the witness stand. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to cause yet another delay, but it looked odd to see the defense attorney addressing the empty seat.
    “All right Officer Munroe, now that we really know it’s you, let’s continue. Oh, but wait a minute, how do we know it was you in the park that day?”
    “Your honor, this is ridiculous,” the ADA Feldman said, rising to his feet.
    “All right, all right, I’m willing to drop it and accept this officer’s word that it was he that day,” the defense attorney said. He favored the jury with a smile and a half wink. He turned back to face the witness stand.
    “Now officer, let me make sure I understand how the dead … disembodied that is, communicate.” The defense attorney paused and Munroe realized the man was confused for a split second. He’s expecting me to nod so he can continue but there’s nothing to see. “Uh … where … as I understand it, the dead cannot hear.”
    “That is correct,” Munroe said.
    “And yet you hear me now?”
    “The terminal recognizes your speech and translates it into words that I can read, either by watching the terminal’s video screen, like you’re doing, or by the words that appear in a virtual screen projected by the terminal that only the disembodied can see. I’m not sure how it works, but it does.”
    “And the dead cannot speak?”
    Where’s he going with this? Munroe thought. “No, we can’t.” He wanted to explain more but he remembered the rule: Answer yes or no.
    “So the voice we’re