TRIAL 01

[thecomputer]

Attention, Citizens! You have ten minutes to proceed to the Loyalty Chamber. Anyone who is late to the Loyalty Chamber, or who brings any weapons into the Loyalty Chamber, will be immediately executed.

[Once you arrive, you will find a large chamber, with twenty podiums spaced around the room in a circle. On the ceiling, a massive screen showing the digital eye of The Computer, turning to look at whoever is talking.]

You have one hour to come to a consensus about who to eliminate. Ties will be broken randomly.

[The floor of the chamber begins to split apart, eventually only leaving the twenty podiums as safe places to stand, above a seemingly bottomless abyss. Each podium lights up with a touch screen showing twenty user IDs (Seryu-R-CIT-1 is grayed out), plus the word “ABSTAIN”. The trial begins now!]

[[Vote Here.]]

Comments

[schrodingers_man]

You don't think the Indoctrinator's too boring for you? You talk to someone once and then after that, you're just the same as the other Communists. If we take the rules literally [ because that's worked out for him well so far ], the Communists don't even kill anyone themselves. It doesn't really seem to your tastes.

[dictator_ko]

It's better than having nothing to do at night.

[in_plain_sight]

...


[/re-examines the rules... he has a point, it doesn't sound like they personally kill anyone...]

Uh... now that you mention it... if the Communists just asked for Ubiquitous to be killed and didn't do it themselves...

...Doesn't that make thinking about the clues left at the crime scene pointless?

[plentyfriendly]

They might be able to specify how they want their target to be killed, but a lot of the details are probably not worth dwelling on.

[in_plain_sight]

Even if they asked for the body to be left the way it was, there'd be no clues that could do anything but lead us in the wrong direction. They wouldn't ask for a cause of death that could be linked back to them.

[plentyfriendly]

No, probably not.

[ossifragant]

I've been wondering about that.

If true, the clues aren't even meant to throw us off. They're just there for decoration.

[in_plain_sight]

That would explain why she was strangling herself in addition to being shot.

[That's been bothering her for a while. She knows a morbid sense of humor when she sees one.]

[ossifragant]

If the computer can manufacture the crime scene, it's possible neither the arrow nor being strangled is what actually killed her.

[in_plain_sight]

If you're going to get away with murder, a flashy cause of death is a liability anyway. But if the computer did it, it could have just locked her in a room and filled it with nerve gas. Then dressing up the body to confuse us wouldn't be hard.

[ossifragant]

[He might not know what nerve gas is, but he has an idea given the topic of discussion.

Let's re-check the rules, shall we?]

There's nothing in the rules about needing to solve the murder. The point of this trial is to choose someone to eliminate. I think we can consider the way she died and the way we found her irrelevant to this discussion unless the computer gives us a new rule to work with.

[in_plain_sight]

So... all we have to go on is the Loyalty Officer, who's kept quiet so far... and deciding who sounds the most suspicious. That's barely better than choosing who to execute at random...

[At least the mutual killing plan back home would have given everyone a real murder mystery to solve. Nothing should be less fair than something her sister came up with.]

[ossifragant]

[He doesn't like these odds at all, but Kimbley also has a point: the Loyalty Officer revealing themselves would mean they'd probably be the next person to go if they out themselves now.]

We don't have anything concrete to go on.

[If there was anything at all, he wouldn't be feeling as annoyed as is he. As it is, Greed is frustrated. They're not even grasping at straws here.]

[staunton]

The Loyalty Officer could out themselves and rely on the hidden Defense Officer to keep them safe, but that's a pretty huge risk to take.

[schrodingers_man]

It depends on how much of a sense of irony our computer friend has. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that there's one real hint hidden among everything else.

[ He didn't really get a good look at the body and crime scene during all his freaking out, but a few salient details stuck in his head, and he's gathered there was some weird nonsense from all this discussion about "Johnny." ]

For example, there was an arrow through the kid's heart, and only one profile lists archery as a skill. But it could just all be nonsense.

[ He's not really accusing Sakura of being a Communist. Maybe. Probably. Yomiel you've proposed like three potential Commies this trial already, slow the fuck down. ]

[in_plain_sight]

I can fire a bow.

[Yes, perfect, insist you be counted as a suspect! Get back on topic, Ikusaba.]

...Anyway, how would we weed out the fake clues from the real one?

[schrodingers_man]

The way these profiles look, I wouldn't be surprised if half the people here can.

[ Why is everyone so violent. ]

I can't really help with that, though. I didn't exactly get a good look at it.

[ What with it triggering a nervous breakdown and all. ]

[in_plain_sight]

So your best lead barely even narrows it down...


I guess at least for this first trial, we can't really learn anything from the body.

[She's kind of disappointed. She may be better suited to being on the supply side of murder, but she's always ranked hardboiled detectives second in coolness only to commandos.]

[schrodingers_man]

My "best lead" is still Moge-ko. We've got more to go on than just the corpse they left.

[respring]

Mmm...you're free, of course, to disregard my opinions in this case, but...I don't think I could fire an arrow with that amount of force, anyway. It was lodged right into her heart, but...only a crossbow or a longbow could do that. That in and of itself supports the 'crime scene decoration' theory.

[schrodingers_man]

I wasn't suggesting you personally killed her. Just that the arrow brings your profile to mind. If we really wanted to, we could probably come up with ways the clues point to all of us. She was strangled with a robotic arm, we've got a robot here. I've been told I look like a "Johnny" before, if we want to stretch it that far. It's probably a waste of time to think about it too hard.