I own neither Dredd nor Aeon Flux.
Please let me know what you think.
Pandemic Judgement.
Bregna, or Mega-City 1 as it was now being called, was a vast sprawling Metropolis of glass, different kinds of concrete, and steel extending from Boston all the way to the Eastern Seaboard of America. It had taken the survivors over a decade to fill up the space between the cities until there was a vast collection of sprawling boulevards, suburbs, tower blocks stretching further than the eye could see in every direction.
As he stood in the centre of the birthing chamber of the crowned Hall of Justice, Trevor Goodchild blew out a breath as he slowly walked around the exowombs. The precious cylinder-shaped devices were linked to a bank of computers that controlled temperature, nutrients being pumped inside the wombs and monitored the growth of the embryos. Trevor looked blankly as he studied the smooth metal cylinder.
Mega-City 1 was under enormous strain, not because of the population; the size of the mega-complex which was Bregna was mostly down to the desire of Goodchild and the regime he backed to face a vast living space, but as the population rose through a combination of the vaccinated survivors and the embryos grown either from cloning or from embryos which had been taken long before the pandemic.
But for some reason that Goodchild had never been able to comprehend, a number of groups of terrorists had been formed, and in their wake gangs of criminals were appearing all throughout the city complexes. That was why the city was under enormous strain, the terrorists and the criminals of the city were causing so much strain on the city's precious resources the Judges had been formed. Goodchild wasn't sure if he particularly liked the new system despite its effectiveness, but as a scientist, he was looking objectively at the situation. However, he had been pushed into a corner with this project. This was a moment he had waited for patiently along with Chief Judge Fargo for the last eight years of his life. When Fargo and several other senior members of the Judges Council had come to him with the proposal to
Trevor sighed as he gently rested his hand against one of the wombs. He had spent a lot of his life around the exowomb technology which he had pioneered along with dozens of other scientists ever since the pandemic which had wiped out 98.5 percent of the human race. Trevor closed his eyes as he remembered those terrible years.
The pandemic had come out of nowhere. It was so contagious and variants of it made it incredibly hard to study, never mind cure. Along the way millions died. Cities rapidly became empty, or they were locked down so tightly that nothing can in or out, and any sign of infection was quickly contained. There were dozens of methods, all of them bad. That on top of the Food Riots, the witch hunts which had been implemented to find those who could be blamed only made things worse.
Trevor had never understood why people felt they needed to pin the blame. They twisted the facts, using ideals and religion to form their opinions, and like moths to a flame so many people followed. And on and on it went. So many people suffered for something that was not their fault. Punishments were severe, but all it did was see the deaths of so many people which brought the human race closer to the edge of extinction.
Trevor had done his best to avoid the damage. He had been working with other scientists to finally stamp out the pandemic. He remembered how they had tried everything that they could to slow down and stop the pandemic from taking more lives.
It had worked.
But millions had still died, and the population had dropped to such a level that what was left could survive in just one city. Mega-City 1 had been designed and built to house those survivors, but unfortunately, instead of really trying to work together and try to build a new world out of what was left, so many people were turning to violence and crime.
That was why the Judges had been founded, to maintain law and order, but Goodchild had been reluctant to help Fargo because of his own personal beliefs that law as Fargo saw it was brutal in the extreme. He had seen the kinds of things mandated by the Judges already on the streets and while he agreed narcotics and violence should be stopped, he didn't like the violent way it was being carried out.
Another reason was the fact the creation of the new Judges using DNA to create, in effect, genetically manipulated and augmented clones. While there were hundreds of clones out there and being grown day after day now the reins on the technology had been eased to grow the gene pool and keep it healthy while regular genetic tests were made to quickly identify variants and evolution of the pandemic which had brought humanity to its knees and take everything from them in the process, Goodchild firmly believed this was not a good use of the city's resources.
But Fargo and the other Judges and members of the ruling council had overruled his objections. They firmly believed anarchy was coming and it needed to be stopped and purged before it could start.
But what if anarchy comes because of the Judges?
That thought had been running round and round inside Goodchild's head ever since the Judges and the council came out with their ridiculous paranoid beliefs. Strangely he was reminded of a Doctor Who story where the Doctor was confronted point-blank in the fact that his enemies kept coming for him because he terrified them, and that they had kidnapped an innocent child with his traits to be trained up as a weapon to kill him. At the same time, he recalled the Batman and Spider-Man comics he had collected since he'd been a kid, and how both superheroes had been forced to fight more colourful and dangerous enemies.
Trevor was a scientist. He was trained in logic and reason, and he knew that there was a logic behind the enemies of the superheroes, but what worried him was the Judges would use more brutal methods than they already did to put down the gangs, but more would take their place. He could see it right now in his mind; the Judges would wipe out as many gangs as they could in Mega-City 1, and their deaths would inspire other gangs to take their place.
He sighed and hoped he was wrong, but he couldn't help but feel that he was right.
He merely hoped the public did not pay the price.