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Category: Science Fiction
Description: Awakened after being cryogenically frozen for forty years, a death row inmate is cleared of a murder by The Innocence Machine, an infallible piece of machinery that has replaced juries and judges. Set free into a landscape ravaged by disease, he searches for his son, the only witness to the murder. There is only one problem--what if The Innocence Machine was wrong?
eBook Publisher: eXtasy eBooks/Devine Destinies, 2011 2011
eBookwise Release Date: January 2012

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [65 KB]
Words: 13029
Reading time: 37-52 min.

Dead Man Walking--that's what they used to call prisoners on Death Row. In my case, Dead Man Rolling would have been more appropriate. When you're strapped into a gurney with your head immobilized, you have nowhere to look but straight. You can't look left, you can't look right; you can only look straight up at the glare coming from the lights overhead. You'll do anything to slow down time, to lengthen the few minutes of life you have left.

I tried counting the squares in the plastic panels covering the fluorescent lights as I passed under them. One, I noticed, covered a burned out bulb, the dark gray empty space providing relief from the bright glare cascading down on me.

"Clarence," I shouted. "You have a light out." I had a brief, insane notion that they'd actually stop to fix the bulb.

My only Death Row friend, a guard named Clarence, responded in a deep, baritone voice. "I'll see that it gets fixed."

"That's good, Clarence. You...you always do the right thing." So much for that idea.

"Yes, sir."

How many times have you gone into a supermarket, pulled a cart from the hundreds that are lined up, only to find out that it had a wheel that jiggled? You try to ignore it for a while, but the more you feel it shake, the more it gets under your skin. Well, I had a gurney that jiggled. I tried to ignore the shaking that rose from the floor to my body, but then I heard an unknown voice mumbling something about God.

Before I was strapped down, you see, I had decided to go out with dignity and ignore the little things that ate at me, like my crappy last meal and the cobweb in the corner of my cell. What was the point of complaining, anyway? No one would listen. They just wanted to get on with it, to get rid of me and move on to the next prisoner. But the jiggling gurney drove me mad, and I changed my mind. Go ahead and complain.

"I think there's a wheel out of whack on this gurney, Clarence. The whole thing is shaking. It's very, very annoying. Could we take a few minutes to fix that? Can we fix this fucking thing?"

"Now, Phil. We got the reverend..."

" Fuck him! And fuck his prayers! Tell him to shut up. I don't want to hear about God. If there was a God I wouldn't be in this situation!"