His lawyer was French.
That detail struck him so fast, Murphy wasn't even sure if what he thought was fictional or fact. He glanced over to the still sleeping Red, acting cautious as if she heard his thoughts. She didn't stir.
His head turned back towards the window. The rain splattered softly against the glass and Murphy closed his eyes. He went back to that thought, grabbing it, focusing on it. The fact seemed insignificant. He didn't care.
Half French. Half American.
Details slowly floated to him. He fought through the thick fog trying to keep his grasp. The longer he held on, the more information came to him.
"Hello Officer Murphy," His lawyer greeted him with a huge goofy grin. "I'm Mister Steel. First name: Man of."
The joke was corny as shit and of course, Murphy grinned. Steel had a sense of humor, unheard of in the political world.
After the humorous moment had passed, he finally introduced himself as Emile Luc Steel. A well educated man, Steel showed no fear, no hesitation when he saw Murphy. After all, the cyborg can be pretty intimidating and it must took a lot for Steel not to flinch or look away from him. Murphy was grateful for that.
Murphy took in a breath. Forgotten emotions emerged from underneath him, making him relive that day. Steel was the fourth lawyer Murphy went through. His first lawyer, a woman, came onto to him and he fired her immediately. The next two, both men, treated him as an invalid. He fired them both too. Usually, a defendant was only allowed one and only one lawyer. Because of his police status, Murphy was able to go through the trash and found Steel.
Because of the high profile case, the court only allowed a hundred people inside of the courthouse. Cameras and phones were forbidden and many people were kicked out for trying to sneak them in.
The courtroom smelled of sweat and perfume. A number of admiring women found their way in, wearing short cut dresses and high heels. The air conditioning broke that morning and the extra heat lifted the heavy scents of the women's perfume onto everyone's clothes. Even Murphy wrinkled his nose when he entered.
As soon as he entered the courtroom, a flash of light went off in his face. A bailiff cried out "Hey!" and threw out the young man who had sneaked in his camera phone. Everyone else stopped talking to each other and looked at him. Half of the people there burst out cheering and clapping. The other half screamed and booed.
"We believe in you!"
"Murderer!"
"Don't lose faith!"
"Broken machine!"
"We'll back you up!"
"You'll burn in hell for this!"
A crack of thunder shook him out of his thoughts. He lost his grip on his memories and he growled in frustration. He closed his eyes again, his jaw tighten. He'll be damned if he lost his grip on his thoughts again.
"Why did you shoot him?"
"I had to," Murphy said to George Norris, the lawyer who was determined to shut him off. "I told the perpetrator if he didn't put down his gun, I would shoot him."
"You were worried about being shot? I thought you were bullet proof."
"I am, but-"
"Police officers are trained to shoot perpetrators only if they believe their life was in danger. Since you know you're immune to bullets, there should have been no reason to shoot Jacob Dirn!"
Murphy must've retold his side of the story over a hundred times already. At this point, he wasn't telling facts anymore, he was throwing up information. "Certain bullets are known to ricochet. Any shot he gave off had the potential to bounce off me, striking an innocent."
"What innocent? You cornered him in an alley."
"The gun he carried was fully loaded and he had shot at me before. Blindly, I might add. He could have shot past me, hitting anyone from a hundred feet away."
"Then why didn't you disarm him by…shooting him in the shoulder or the leg?"
"As I mentioned before, Jacob Dirn struck me in the face with a baseball bat. He cracked the computer filaments in the glass plate, damaging my aiming system."
"Were your eyes okay?"
"My eyes were fine."
"Then why couldn't you shoot him the regular way, the way real police officers shoot, by using their eyes?"
Murphy knew this line of questioning was required and reasonable. Still, he didn't like having his humanity devalued. "OCP built my motor functions to coincide with the computer. One cannot work without the other."
Norris spoke to the crowd as if Murphy wasn't even in the room. "Like a microwave without a socket."
A small number of people gave a few nervous giggles. Steel stood up. "I object to that statement."
"Explain," Judge Snyder said from behind his hand. He looked as if he would fall asleep at any minute.
"Mr. Norris speaks to my client as if he was speaking to the wall; as an inanimate object. My client is a cyborg, half-human, half-robot-"
"Steel, the issue on hand is if your client's actions were considered reasonable. If you want to talk about basic human rights, do it in some other court. Overruled."
Murphy hated to admit that Snyder had a point. A case to argue Murphy's rights as a human could take years to resolve. And frankly, who wants to go to court every damn day?
Unfortunately, this case did take forever to resolve. Murphy was wrong about his own timeline. This case did not last for a couple of days, it lasted for a couple of months.
Norris again and again kept bringing up the argument as a robot, Murphy technically wasn't human. At some point, the argument stuck.
At some point, Murphy stopped caring. The publicity, the sensitivity of the subject and the numerous death threats Snyder, Norris and Steel received, became the main reason why this took so long. Murphy got tired of the women hanging off of him. He got tired of the cameras in his face. He even got tired of Steel's well mannered smile.
He wished he could bring a book. Or a video game. He would probably even fall asleep if he could get away with it. It was on one of these elongated, repetitive days did Murphy find himself in and out of consciousness.
A weird feeling came to the back of his throat. He hadn't felt this in years. It was the feeling when your throat seizes up because the eyes will not produce the needed tears. A lump he could not swallow steadily grew larger and larger as this next memory formed.
He found himself staring at his knees. He wanted to block out the voices of Steel and Norris and every person in that room. He wanted that man who kept whispering about his sex-capades from last night to shut up. He wanted that teenager who quoted every line from the Simpsons to shut up. And he wanted all the women in there who wore those fake press-on nails to rip them off because unnecessary tapping was slowly driving him mad.
And as if God was hearing his prayer, everything went silent.
Nothing can capture one's attention than absolute silence. It's a sudden noise that can create deafness. Murphy jerked himself out of his stump, raising his head to wonder what suddenly happened to all the chattering.
People were now whispering in a feverish manner. They were pointing. Gasping. About what?
Murphy turned to look at what caught everyone's attention.
Oh dear god. It was his wife.
He would later hear Norris had been stretching the trial out for exactly this reason. After the funeral, Ellen took their son and moved down to Australia. She eventually remarried and became an official citizen. Norris had been searching for her for months.
It had been five years since Murphy's 'death.' And this was the first time he had laid eyes on her since that life-changing morning. There wasn't a day that past by he didn't think about her. He always wondered what he would say or do if he ever met her again. Would he kiss her? Would he push her away? Never did he dream their first (and last) encounter would be in the presence of a court judge. Or that she would be representing against him.
Only thirty-seven and she was already graying. Her hair was pinned up sharply behind her head and she wore a simple purple suit with no heel shoes. She looked scared, uneasy. As Norris tried to guide her through the mob of people trying to surround her, for a moment, she locked eyes with Murphy.
He did not have his helmet off, so he was unsure if she recognized him. She must have. She must have known who he is, why else would she be here?
She looked away quickly, her cheeks flushed with shame? Embarrassment? Pity?
Was his son here, too? He scanned the court, trying to find Jimmy. He would be what? Seventeen? Almost eighteen? He saw many, many young male faces that could be Jimmy. None stood out from the crowd.
"I object!" Steel's voice cut through the room like a well carved knife. "Mrs. Alex Murphy has no part in this case."
"On the contrary," Norris countered. "With Mrs. Jenkins," He emphasized her new husband's last name. "…testimony, we can finally end the debate if Robo-cop here can be considered human."
"That is not our case-"
Snyder cut in. "Actually, Mr. Steel, you were the one who brought up that subject in this courtroom. If you want your client to be treated like a human, then we can debate if he is a human."
"Then I object to this new witness on the grounds I was not informed of her."
"You've dug your own grave, Norris, now live with it. Objection denied."
Murphy was still in too much shock to react. Steel whispered an apology to him and Murphy ignored him. He could not keep his eyes off his wife. As she took the stand, he felt the urge to vomit. If he could vomit.
She took the oath, smoothed out her skirt and kept her eyes intently on Norris. Murphy knew she was trying to keep her eyes off him.
"How long were you married to Alex Murphy?"
"Eight years," Ellen spoke into the microphone provided for her. Her voice did not match the fear on her face.
"Could you tell me about the day he died?"
"Um…" She hesitated, grabbing a handkerchief from her purse. She did not use it. "I was in the middle of making dinner. My son, Jimmy, was watching t.v. when the doorbell rang. It was Alex's superior, Capt. Peters. He was Alex's Captain before he was transferred."
She paused for the next part, the next part everyone knew coming. Murphy could see it in her face, as her mind tried to force out the next few parts.
"Peters informed me that Alex had been cornered in some warehouse near the industrial part of town. The gang who held him hostage shot him and escaped. Alex was airlifted to the nearest hospital where…he-he died on the operating table."
She screwed up her face, trying to keep the tears from coming. A couple fell, but she kept her composure.
"What happened next?" Norris asked her.
"The police refused to release Alex's body due to it was considered evidence. We had a small funeral. Buried a few things; pictures, letters, a couple of his favorite records. I waited for a while, hoping the police will release his body. After five months, I left."
"To where?"
"My cousin in Australia. I didn't want to go back to the states until they released Alex's body. Until then, I wanted to keep out of the public eye and give my son a new environment."
"When did you finally hear about OCP's new project?"
Her lips went thin. This is a subject she clearly doesn't want to talk about.
"I read about OCP's project in the newspaper, heard it from the news, people talked about…I was too busy trying to find a new apartment to care."
Something told Murphy that deep inside, she knew what was going on back home. She knew who was behind that metal mask. After all, she was there when he wrote his name on the OCP insurance plan.
"Mrs. Jenkins, you must've heard rumors back home," Norris carried on.
Ellen shook her head. Her eyes said something else.
"Didn't you find it odd that the police still refused to release Alex Murphy's body even after his killer was caught and killed?"
Ellen twitched and her eyes watered over. Before she had a chance to speak, Norris continued.
"Isn't Australia known to be technology crazy? The news of this new super cop must have buzzed the papers for months."
Steel placed a hand on Murphy's arm. "Sit down," He hissed to him. "You're making the judge nervous."
Murphy had not realized he was slowly standing up. He wanted to go up there and stop all this. He sat back down reluctantly.
His wife was trying her hardest to keep the tears in. Her cheeks went red. Her body shook. Norris refused to let up.
"I have papers from OCP who states that the body who occupies Robo-cop is Alex-"
"No," Ellen suddenly interrupted him. "It's not him."
"I have a DNA sample-"
"No," She said a little more forcefully. "It's not him."
Norris walked over in front of Murphy and pointed straight at him. "Are you telling me, that the person behind that metal mask is not your husband-"
"NO!" Ellen lost all her composure. Eyes blazing, teeth baring, she stood up so quickly, her chair fell back with a large bang. "That is NOT my husband! Alex died five years ago! That thing sitting there is not human!"
He did have the ability to cry anymore. His own tear ducts was replaced with artificial fluid, a more sophisticated version of tears. Crying was below a cyborg.
"I've come to the conclusion," Snyder spoke slowly and carefully. "That Alex Murphy was killed in the line of duty five years ago. This…machine has helped the police force greatly during these past few years, but because it caused the death of Jacob Dirn, this machine is considered too dangerou . The machine known as Robo-cop will be decommissioned by the order of this court within a week's time. It's body will be handed over to the owners, OCP. It is by my order and the order of the court that Robo-cop is to never be commissioned again. Case dismissed."
And that was it.
So it wasn't a conspiracy. It was just an accident he ended up here. He was never meant to wake up.
He wanted to vomit. He wanted to cry. He wanted to feel something. Something that told him this was still his body. Something that told him he was still in control.
In the end, what did it matter? He wasn't human. He wasn't real. Why should he care?
His hands were shaking.
No. These are not his hands. His hands were taken away from him. His life was taken away from him.
He saw the window before him. Clean, fresh clear glass shined in his eyes. A surge of unknown anger welled up inside of him. He wanted to break that glass. He didn't care anymore. He wanted to express this welt, to show himself that he was, in fact, human.
And if violence is the only way to show it, so be it.
Murphy grabbed the back of his chair. He could see it so clearly. The chair hitting the window, shattering it into a million pieces. The chair and glass will fall thirty feet to the ground, and explode into a million shards of wood. It will make a spectacular, agonizing sound.
He would then proceed to the book shelves, knocking each one over and relishing the damge. He wanted to take the largest book there and rip it in half. Break the tables, smash the chairs, burn down every fuckin' building in this damn city and watch as each one fell one by one by-
"Murphy, what the hell are you doing?"
His violent thoughts came to an abrupt halt. The chair he grabbed, he held above his head and was damn well ready to throw it.
Red swayed on her feet. Her face still showed signs of sleepiness. Draped on her shoulder was one of her blankets and she lazily tried to keep it on.
"Nothing," Murphy finally replied. He placed the chair back down and sat on it. The murderous feeling he had up to this point suddenly died away and left him like a bad cold. He wished for the feeling to come back. He wanted the feeling to come back.
Red murmured something incoherently and swayed her way towards him. She awkwardly climbed on his lap, used the blanket as a soft comfort and buried her face into the crook of his elbow.
Anger began bubbling up again inside of him, and this time around, he forced it down. This wasn't the time or place to indulge in those feelings. One day, perhaps, he will go back into his mind and express that anger, express that hatred.
Not now. He had a bigger responsibility. And she was sitting in his lap.
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
A/N: Was that long enough for you? The next chapter will be short. I think. I tend to lie to myself often. I know I said bigger and badder things will happen in this chapter…well, as you can see, I'm a dork. But it will happen! Soon.
Later.
Anyhoo, R/R!