New Year's Resolution

The snow storm whipped ice crystals down my neck as I ran slipping and sliding from my automobile to the entrance of the 23rd Precinct police station. Inside, I took off and shook my coat. It was hotter and more comfortable in the front reception of this police station than anywhere in my own crappy apartment building. I'd been Uptown here once before, I recalled, delivering papers to a senior partner a couple of months ago at the start of Fall. My clients usually came from Downtown Precincts; as the most junior of the junior lawyers in this vast City law practice, I only did pro bono public defending. Yeah, cutting my teeth on defending the indefensible.

Depressing, I know, but that was going to be my lot until I graduate from newbie lawyer to well, junior lawyer, I guess. I knew I still had a hell of a long way to go before getting a sniff at junior partnership.

So the admin staff at the office had made a really big mistake, handing me this opportunity. But for me it was a case of opportunity only knocks once.

Back home among the flat land grain silos over Christmas, I'd determined I would have to turn over a brand new leaf to kick-start my legal career. I knew before I started that it was impossible to impress my Daddy, who's a small town Judge respected by everyone in the county. There was no way I could ever consider a practice in the same town as Daddy operated. I had hoped he'd be impressed by my moving to the biggest city of them all to gain experience. How could I explain to a big fish in a small pond, though, that a fresh-faced lawyer from Hicksville, USA, stepping up to compete with the big city attorneys was a lot more than just tackling a molehill? I could still taste the disappointment in his voice as he cross-examined every detail of my limited mostly downtown casework portfolio over Mom's turkey and cranberry sauce.

So, back in the city immediately after Christmas, I was even more determined than ever to put in the effort to change my life around and make him proud of me.

Tonight, everyone at the firm, except a skeleton admin crew and myself, were out seeing in New Years. Hey, the whole city was hitting the cocktails. Me? I had a streaming head cold and wasn't up to socialising. Besides, being from a small town without the right Ivy League connections, I wasn't even invited to the firm's party seeing in the new year.

I was the only lawyer in the office, so I took the damned call.

Being available and summoned to a public defending client in an Uptown precinct on New Years, was a big step in the right direction as far as my New Years resolution was concerned. I wasn't going to let this one slip away.

The ancient Sarge on the desk only kept me waiting five minutes and even offered me a cup of almost drinkable coffee. Both were firsts. Yup, Uptown was definitely the goal to aim for.

I was directed into a small well-lit room, the only occupant sitting on the opposite side of a flat desk was a small, pale-faced man, about mid-fifties, I guessed. He wore a white laboratory coat, as if he had been arrested at work, his studious look topped off with a neat bow tie. The lenses in his spectacles were not unlike the bases of whiskey shot glasses. He didn't look like a criminal, no, he looked more like my family doctor back home in Hicksville.

I checked the charge sheet more carefully again, Dr Wesley Newbold, my latest client. So he was a doctor, and charged with Federal property criminal damage. Hell, he didn't look like he'd do much harm to a wet paper bag.

"Dr Newbold, I'm Newton Makepeace, your new attorney."

"Why are you here?" he asked, in a cultured New England voice, making me feel more provincial even though I had consciously been trying to speak with less of a country accent for the past year, "I've already told the officers who questioned me that it's a fair cop. I'm absolutely guilty as charged."

"Well, Doc, we can determine your actual plea in court once we've discussed what kinda case the police have got against you. If they think you're guilty, they may have been sloppy in gathering the evidence. Don't give up your rights to a fair trial upfront, Dr Newbold, until we weigh up what all your options are."

I tried to sound upbeat, getting the whole speech out without sneezing, but had a sinking feeling that my resolve to improve my resolution to improve my career might be thwarted at the first time of asking.

Dr Newbold relaxed in his chair and regarded me, probably evaluating my worth as a defence lawyer and already resigned to his fate with or without my help. He spoke, "I don't actually have an attorney, I've never needed one, so you are who, exactly?"

"I'm a court-appointed attorney, to ensure you receive the best legal advice that—"

"Ah. My best advice to you, Mr ... Makepeace?"

"Yes sir?"

Doctor Newbold leaned forward.

"Get out," he hissed, "go away and forget you ever saw me. Get away now, kid, while you still can!"

"Please Doc, it's natural to feel that everyone's against you when you're stuck in a place like this. I get it. Oh boy, after seeing my Da— er, my father over the holidays, believe me I get it. Being trapped by unrealistic expectations, or, as you are, locked up like this in the slammer, kinda does that to you," I replied, almost as smoothly as any proper lawyer might, "I assure you that I'm completely on your side, I'll stick by you and defend you with every tool at the disposal of the most prestigious law firm in the city."

I may have laid it on thick, I was full of conflict internally, huge virus infection, overdosed on anti-cold medication and my new year resolve to become the best lawyer in town; yet still as wet behind my ears as the very ink on my diploma.

He considered me, intensely. His examining look was disconcerting and I squirmed. I desperately wanted to blow my nose but I withered under his scrutiny.

"So, Counsellor, if you are my attorney, we therefore have complete confidentiality?"

"Of course," I replied, slipping back smoothly into lawyer mode, "I'm bound by lawyer/client privilege, including full confidentiality rules. And anything you say to me won't affect how hard I try to defend you from the charges levelled against you. Admitting guilt to me won't affect your plea at all."

"Oh, I'm guilty, all right."

"The charges listed here are damage to Federal property, is that correct?"

"Absolutely, the research equipment, every last piece, including all my notes and records, were destroyed beyond all possible salvageability."

"I take it that you are a scientist, Dr Newbold?"

"I was a scientist, but no more. They'll lock me up and toss the key, I'm sure, no trial. I expect to be removed from here shortly, as soon as the 'proper authorities' find me, and all trace of my existence will be removed. I suggest you reconsider being my lawyer an'all."

"I'm afraid we're stuck together," I smiled, "look, here's my cards on the table so that you are in no doubt as to my determination to defend you to the hilt. I do all the crappy jobs in my firm. It's New Years and everyone else at the firm was on at least their third cocktail when your call came in from the public defender office on your behalf. They had nobody either, so tonight I'm the only city lawyer who's still in the game."

"OK, kid, I'll give you my story," Dr Newbold held up his hands in mock surrender, "but don't say I didn't warn you."

"I understand," I confirmed, not really understanding, but I needed to stay in the game, on the team of the Doc and me, facing whatever crime he had committed against all the might of the Federal State.

"I started out years ago researching improved optics for observation drones, using software-controlled single beams of light, to enable me to capture leaking light via reflections from tiny objects, which help disclose what would otherwise be hidden out of direct sight. Do you know what that means?"

"What, like finding leaks in overground oil and gas pipes?" I interrupted, knowing in my state that drones were used to check miles of piping.

"More like fractures hidden inside deep underground pipes," he said. "I added artificial intelligence interpretation to the software to amplify and reflected or direct emissions of transmitted wavelengths beyond the wavelength of light, which could be recorded, slowed down and interpreted as visual images, and I began getting some startling results. I was encouraged to improve on my techniques and was heavily financed by those that control the purse strings." He raised an eyebrow, before asking, "Why do you think they'd do that?"

"Military applications?" I suggested. Governments always focus the big money on the military. Even a kid like me knew that.

"See, you aren't that stupid, Counsellor," he replied, smiling disarmingly.

"Resolutions, that's what I was working on," Newbold continued, "new ultra high resolutions, in fact, high resolution enough for mapping targets from satellite rather than drones, that we code-named Hi-ROD."

"Hi-ROD?" I asked with a slight groan, I hate acronyms. As soon as I look 'em up, I forget them, and have to look 'em up again.

"Hi-Resolution Optical Definition," he replied, "Hi-ROD accurately mapped the surface of a grain of sand to a definition way beyond electron microscopes... then Hi-ROD made a breakthrough, picking up light transmissions from within a single grain of sand."

I stuttered, "Light transmissions?"

'What? From within a grain of sand? Is that even possible?' I asked myself.

"Yes, artificial intelligence learns from events as they occur. Hi-ROD is programmed to follow a light beam of any spectrum it has identified through to its source and expand receptors to build up pictures of objects otherwise hidden from view, but hinted at by reflections and tiny refractions of light."

"What did your Hi-ROD find?" I wanted to know.

"A microscopic universe, filled with galaxies, made up of star systems, with planets and, through the atmosphere, I could see the planet surface and, as we zoomed in close ... strange aliens, sunning themselves beneath a red sun."

"All inside a grain of sand?" I asked incredulously.

Dr Newbold nodded, smiling grimly. "It's all in the level of resolution. Hi-ROD looked inside a speck of dust on that alien planet surface. It only had a fraction of a nano-second to do this at that distance, because of the natural movement of planets, which sufficed to record yet another universe inside that speck of dust, deep inside that grain of sand. AI stretched out that tiny sample into hours of visible light, recording aliens interacting, mating, living their microcosmic lives in ignorance of our existence or the fact we could, on a whim, melt their very existence into a pane of glass or a beer bottle."

"Really?"

"Yes, but then I had to know more."

"Know more what?"

"Everything. You'd want to know too, I know you would. Even if you couldn't use it to help a client, you'd still want to know. We all would if we reached this point of understanding." He grinned with a grim-set mouth, yet conveying no warmth to his eyes at all.

"I pointed Hi-ROD at our stars to see if there was anything beyond our universe. And Hi-ROD's artificial intelligence soon recognised a familiar micro wavelength and it captured the echo that that light beam brought with it. Hell of an echo, Counsellor."

He wiped a hand across his brow, removed his glasses, polished them languidly on a spotted and slightly grubby handkerchief drawn from his lab coat pocket.

"So I destroyed Hi-ROD, totally, including the spare parts, the plans, everything. Then I totalled all the tapes, all the disks, all my handwritten notes. I wiped every hard drive I had ever used in the lab, everything linked to the Federal secure storage in the cloud. I had no choice, for the sanity of humanity's sake. If the truth got out, where would religions stand, where would those who weren't religious but considered themselves masters of their own destiny?"

"What did Hi-ROD find, before you destroyed it?"

"Through a chink it found in the fabric of our universe? ... well, it found a lot more black sky." He laughed humorlessly. "A black sky that was studded with stars. Beyond that black sky was a star system, there were galaxies, all belonging to yet another universe. All through a tiny crack at the very end of our universe."

I sat on the edge of my seat, dumbstruck.

"So Hi-ROD stepped back a little, and analysed the outer surface of our universe, around that little crack it had found when I first looked," he explained, "it extrapolated from refractions stored in that barely detectable light beam. Our universe, young man, everything you see here on this world, including the night sky above, was inside a grain of sand ... surrounded by uncountable grains on an impossible sandy beach."

***

I'd barely removed my coat before the doorbell in my cheap unheated apartment rang. No, they weren't New Years' revellers inviting me to join in their untroubled celebrations.

As the taser hit my chest I knew that, despite my New Years resolution, and because of high tech high definition resolution, I knew my Daddy would have to learn to live alone with his eternal disappointment in his disappeared offspring.

The end.