PUZZLE By the mid-twenty-third century capital punishment has been replaced throughout most of the civilized world by a punishment called “erasure.” The criminal’s head is placed inside an electronic machine called the “oblivion box.” It takes only a few minutes to expunge from the brain all memories of events experienced after the first six months of life. This, of course, returns the criminal to babyhood. It has long been established that no one is born with criminal tendencies— all are acquired by experience. Over a period of years the erased “baby” slowly develops into a new adult. Because erasure turns a person into a different personality, with no memory of his or her former self, the punishment is feared almost as much as execution. Another radical change in the administration of justice is the replacement of all judges, and some lawyers, by robots. Laws have become so numerous and complicated that only computers can remember all the details. Robot judges are carefully programmed to make only wise and logical decisions. It is impossible for a robot judge to lie. If a circuit in his brain malfunctions, and he makes any state ment that is false, his pronouncements are declared null and void and a new trial is scheduled. One of the most heinous crimes in the twenty-third century, on a par with murder and rape, is the crime of “fudging.” This means a falsification of data in a scientific experiment. Such an enormous respect has developed for the sanctity of scientific method that anyone declared guilty of fudging is automatically sentenced to erasure. Philbert X1729B was arrested for having fudged the data in a tooth-decay experiment he had supervised at the Oral Roberts Dental Research Laboratory, in Tulsa, Okla homa. Philbert could not afford a robot lawyer. His human lawyer, who was not very skillful, lost the case. At Philbert’s
sentencing the robot judge said: “You will be erased at 3 p .m . on one of the six days of
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THE ERASING OF PHILBERT THE FCJDGER