The Karma Booth. Jeff Pearce

      “Weintraub was briefed,” Benson said tightly.

      “He knew?” And as Benson nodded, Tim wondered aloud, “I cannot believe the government gave him carte blanche like this. How could they?”

      He ran his hand through the straw-blond comma of hair over his forehead, always a classic sign that he was trying to work something through. It was unbelievable. The technology would be fascinating no matter how the booths had been developed, but to learn of this naïve, irresponsible adoption of them and then blindly putting them to use—

      “Weintraub made his case for human trials,” Benson was saying.

      “How? How could he make a case for human trials with absolutely no empirical evidence of his own to demonstrate what they can do?”

      “The way I hear it, our good doctor told the cabinet secretaries something like this: ‘Put aside all the conspiracy theories, all the bullshit. Just imagine for a moment that there’s incontrovertible evidence that Oswald did shoot JFK in Dallas. And that you have the Karma Booth to fix that.”

      Tim sighed in disbelief. “Aw, come on, that doesn’t fly. That whole hypothetical shows you exactly what problems we’re going to get with this thing. There are still doubts to this very day over Oswald’s involvement. Great! What happens when you do have a case that sparks public outrage but the evidence isn’t clear-cut?”

      Benson offered a lopsided smirk. “Come on, Tim, that’s why they invented appeals. Yes, I know they fast-tracked the Cody James case, but they’ll come up with a new process. What? You think if they fried Oswald, and he didn’t do it—”

      “Go ahead, tell me what happens.”

      “Nothing happens!”

      “Nothing happens? You’re sure? How do you know? How can you possibly know, Benson, until it happens?”

      And as he saw Benson grapple with that one, he nudged the man’s elbow, urging them to keep walking. The walking always helped him to think. He just wished it worked for others. He didn’t want to be distracted into the tired arguments for or against capital punishment. Those in the pro-Booth camp had the ultimate trump card, and yet no one was pausing over the enormity of a far more humbling truth of the machines.

      “Benson, listen to me,” Tim tried again. “I’m not a physicist or a medical doctor, but it baffles me that I should be the only person waving the red flag here. Let’s say these things work properly—they bring back a victim while they execute the murderer. Then we have physical laws of Nature that may actually follow a moral principle. Can you wrap your head around that one? Because I can’t!”

      Benson licked his lips, eyes downcast, clearly wanting to speak some truth to the issue. “Tim, listen, the Booth can still be used,” he said slowly. “If it does follow a moral principle then we have scientific means to guide us in—”

      Tim cut through him brutally. “Project past your wishful thinking. The Booth has this enormous power. It was built—by a man or a team—somewhere. That means somebody already has insight into how these mind-boggling principles work. They may even be able to manipulate these principles, whatever they are. You comfortable with that one, too?”

      Benson allowed himself another long pause to consider. “Maybe that’s why the tech is a gift. The responsibility is so huge.”

      “So I’ll ask again: Who gave it to you?”

      “Orlando Braithewaite.” Benson waited for the surprise then nodded as he saw something else on Tim’s face. “That’s right, they say you met him once. Had some kind of enlightening special meeting with him and your dad.”

      “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that.”

      Benson shrugged. “Call it whatever you want. Find him, and you’ll get your answers.”

      “It’s not like I have Braithewaite on speed dial and can get an appointment.”

      “That just makes you the same as everyone else who’s tried,” replied Benson. “He gave us the goods, briefed Weintraub about it and then nicely buggered off on his Gulfstream. Anybody else, yeah, of course you ask about a gift horse in the mouth, but…”

      “Yeah, I get it,” said Tim. “Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Orlando Braithewaite.”

      Yes, he knew about Braithewaite. He had known about him for decades.

      “Look, if you can find him, more power to you,” said Benson. “The cabinet secretaries are expanding the parameters of their—your investigation. We need more than just your input as an ethicist. We need you to figure out how this damn thing works, Tim. What the long-term effects are, what kind of trouble we could get into, what our billionaire’s real agenda may be—everything, everything—”

      “You need a scientist to make those kind of evaluations,” argued Tim. “And you’ve already got one with Weintraub. I’m not an investigator for State anymore, pal—I’m not even a diplomat. I’m busy raising the next crop of Oxfam workers and correspondents for The Economist.”

      Benson stopped at a corner and dropped his voice to a whisper, pointing a finger into Tim’s lapel. “You are exactly the guy we need. You think for one second we’re going to get an objective view from Gary Weintraub? Are you shitting me? Get real! Yeah, sure, he’ll tell us what he knows for equations and physical effects, that’s it. I mean… Jesus, they go on and on about Oppenheimer and those other guys and their conscience over the bomb. Well, they still built the fucking thing, didn’t they?”

      Benson stepped back and looked around them nervously, as if he had just confided a dirty little secret. “You get your retainer plus twenty-five percent above that. We’re giving you unlimited travel—first-class commercial when it’s regular business, private Hawker Horizon when it’s a priority, on loan from Justice.”

      “What do I need a jet for when the Karma Booth’s right in New York?”

      And as soon as he started the question, he heard his own words trail off, as if someone else had spoken them in a distant room. He had his answer. “Jesus Christ…”

      “You got it,” said Benson.

      “There’s more than one out there.”

      “There’s several of them,” said Benson. “We should have known Mr. Braithewaite wouldn’t play Santa Claus only with the United States. The Japanese came to us on their own about their Booth after Weintraub’s news conference. The Israelis won’t admit they have one, and we’re not holding our breath over Saudi Arabia either. I’ve got a list of the others. Intelligence ops confirmed pretty early that Moscow has one. The liberals at State are bitching how Russia signed the European Convention on Human Rights, so capital punishment ought to be outlawed there already.”

      Tim rolled his eyes dismissively. “It’s not like we can claim the moral high ground when we execute people. And these same geniuses should remember that Russia never ratified the protocols. Anyway, there hasn’t been an execution there in years—the last one was in Chechnya.”

      Benson shrugged. “Hardly makes a difference, does it? I’m sure everybody’s rulebook is getting thrown out the window. By the way, we’ve discovered the regime in Iran is a complete bunch of hypocrites—their mullahs denounced it, but Iran’s got one.” He crouched down and snapped open his briefcase, fetching a file and passing Tim a large photo blow-up. “Do you know what this is?”

      Tim pulled out his reading glasses and looked. The color photo took in a large swath of a city skyline, and it took him only an instant to recognize the Montparnasse district of Paris. After all, he used to keep an apartment there. But then he saw in the foreground what the picture was really about.

      “La Santé Prison,” offered Tim. He tapped the grim, brown blockhouses stretching out like spokes on a wheel. “The French have a Booth? It’s