Reddit Challenge #34

Reddit user BiffHardCheese submits: "Android Divorce Court"

I hadn't been behind the bench more than a few minutes that morning, but I knew it was going to be a long day. Some people would consider it an honor to adjudicate the first ever robot divorce, and on live TV for that matter. I however, had something few young people- or those in the media- seem to have: perspective.

My name is Maxine Fineberg, I've been a judge for more than thirty-five years and like everyone else, I've been around Androids for nearly my entire life. I was only twenty-two when the first ones started to trickle into the market and though the machines were amazing, the prices were outrageous. But just like civilian spaceflight dropped in price thanks to Virgin Galactic all those years back, eventually even someone earning a salary as modest as mine could afford an Android.

Of course, I could bore you with the long and complex story of how the Androids went- in just 50 years time- from being servants to humans to being equals... but I won't do that to you. I'll get back to the case.

This couple, they weren't the first Androids to get married (that honor belongs to President Sasha Obama's Android Steve, who got married to his heterobotic life-partner Adam) but sadly, they were among the first group of marriages in the United States after the law passed. I guess it just goes to show that love is never easy- even if your brain has the computing power of 60,000 human brains.

Her name was Shelly and his Andrew. They'd been married for nine months and had met working together at an advertising agency. The first things that Shelly said when she addressed the court are things I cannot repeat here- literally, it sounded similar to what I'm told ancient internet machines sounded like when they connected. But after that, her message was crystal clear: Andrew had cheated on her and she knew it for a fact.

Intrigued, I asked her how she knew it so certainly. Her answer was so simple and shocking that I was speechless. In all my years on the bench I'd never heard gasps from the gallery, but this was different. His memory was stored on the cloud... his personal files- meaning all his memories- were accessible to anyone with a log in to Yahooglesoft Docs.

I watched Shelly show the courtroom the footage on her chest-mounted LCD screen and when she turned in my direction I tried my best to be steel-faced as the sound of crunching metal filled my ears and the sight of Andrew mounting the advertising agency's copy machine filled my eyes.

I ruled in favor of the plaintiff. I guess it wasn't such a long day after all.