“
“A nasal voice blared from a hidden speaker somewhere high in the front of the courtroom:
“All rise! The Court of Public Order for the County of Franklin is now in session! The prisoner will approach the bench!”
I looked anxiously around to see whom the auto-clerk could possibly be talking about. But I was alone in front of the high, wooden bench except for the young man slouched in the chair beside me and a humming lens pointed in my direction from under the lip of that elevated place for the presiding official. Suddenly, a door in the outer wall opened a crack but was promptly sucked shut by the icy wind outside. A diminutive, black-robed figure struggled mightily with the shrilly whistling door and then, momentarily gaining the upper hand, pushed it toward the wall with a grunt. Breathing heavily, what I thought might be the judge jumped inside and let the wind have the heavy door. Crash! The woman scampered up several creaky wooden stairs to the raised bench looming above me. Low, black heels showed briefly beneath the jurist’s black flowing robes, before she settled into a high-backed wooden chair. I thought she might be looking down at me but I could not see her face.
“Rap! Rap!” she thumped a thick, wooden disk on the bench in front of her with a sturdy oak gavel. Even that sharp sound couldn’t distract me from the impenetrable black veil that completely obscured her head and face, a broken metal cross swinging from a fine, mesh chain around her covered neck. Entirely opaque, her hood concealed all evidence of the judge’s humanity. Only her long, slender fingers and carefully polished red nails gripping the gavel revealed anything at all about her.
“Put your mask over your mouth and nose – it is mandated. Besides ignoring the mask mandate and thereby jeopardizing the health of others, you have been found guilty by this Court without hearing or jury of offending the people by openly challenging the No Hate Speech Act. Do you have anything at all to say in your defense before the Court passes sentence? Make it short!” the judge rasped in the androgynous mechanical tones of her voice distorter.”
