with all hands raised against me

by PreludeInZ

Heavenward is a story about John and EOS, and a handful of other things. So far a list of these things includes hospitals, boardrooms, pretzels, deception and minor kidnapping. We add: Midtown Manhattan, gin and tonic, opt-in PTSD and rather more major kidnapping. This is the third part of Heavenward. It follows the iterated prisoners dilemma. Art via artsekey dot tumblr dot com

1. prologue

A show of hands is an informal means of tallying votes in a deliberative assembly. When a party has gathered in the name of determining an outcome, the majority ruling can be loosely determined by putting the question to vote. While more precise than a voice vote-a call of yea or nay-it is similar in that the results are the most obvious when there is a strong bias in favor of one option or the other.

It's not the sort of vote that's used in the decision of a verdict. The sorts of questions that are put to juries require unanimity, and rightly so. Questions of life or death really should.

This is, regardless of what its believed to be, the sort of question that's being put to the Board of Directors at Tracy Industries. This is the final court of appeal, the last people of whom the question can be asked; whether or not it's worth it to fight for the protection of a new type of AI, developed within proprietary International Rescue software.

The formality of the vote won't matter, in the end. In the end, it will be unanimous.

It will the go the way John expects. It won't go the way John had hoped.