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Appeals Court
by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross
________________ Editorial note: Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross are the gold-dust twins of post-singularity social commentary. "Appeals Court" was first published in Argosy #2 (April/May, 2004), and is reprinted here in the Infinite Matrix for the benefit of the many who never got to see the final issue of that short-lived but well packaged magazine. It is a sequel to Stross and Doctorow's story "Jury Duty". For deep background, check out this provocative article on post-Singularity SF by Gregory Mone in Popular Science: "Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?" at http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/e9fb0b4511b84010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html .
Cory and Charlie are releasing the story here under a by-ns-sa Creative Commons license. You are free to copy, distribute, and perform this work, and to create derivative works, as long as you attribute it to the authors, do not make commercial use of it, and distribute any derivative works under the same license. See the license agreement for complete details, at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ . (c) 2004, Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. _________________
Appeals Court
by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross
What finally wakes Huw is the pain in his bladder. His head is throbbing, but his bladder has gone weak on him lately -- if he doesn't get up and find the john soon he's going to piss himself, so he struggles up from a sump-hole of somnolence.
He opens his eyes to find that he's lying face-down in a hammock. The hammock sways gently from side to side in the hot stuffy air. Light streams across him in a warm flood from one