Jerry can’t really figure out how to prove this, but the lawyer suggests that he refers to the seventh clause. It is an article saying that you have the right to request any legal information if it serves your need. If you make such a request and it is found that this request hasn’t been made before, it shall be regarded as an evidence for unawareness of the area of the request. The prosecutor asks if the accused is willing to make such a request and Jerry accepts.

The trial is adjourned to await the procedure of the request and Jerry is restored to his cell. He asks the lawyer how long this will take and the lawyer tells him that it will probably take no longer than a couple of weeks. But he can’t tell for sure, because the seventh clause has never been invoked before. There could be many aspects to consider and it is important that everything is properly done, for otherwise innocent people may fall foul. Although this seem to be a very long time under the circumstances, Jerry don’t mind the waiting. After all, the least he wants right now is to fall foul.

Jerry has to answer many questions during the process of the request. They want to know where he comes from, how he got here, why he puts out this request and what he intends to do with any received information he might be granted. Jerry tells his story and says he is making the request to prove that he is innocent. But the office-holders doesn’t approve of such justification, so the request is overruled. The lawyer explains to Jerry, that he can’t give grounds for making a request as a means of confirming his innocence, as that implies that he has no real use of the information itself.

Jerry raises a new request and states that he needs the information to be able to behave properly in the local area. This starts a new process with a bunch of questions from the office-holders who wants to know why he is making the same request with a new reason. Jerry   justifies this with the fact that he had made a mistake on the previous request and had given the wrong reason. Such explanatory statement don’t appease the office-holders however, so the second request is overruled too. The lawyer finds that the statement may look slightly suspicious, as the requests still appears to be made only to be used in court and no where else.

A touch of despair is beginning to grow and Jerry asks the lawyer what the right wording should be. The lawyer says that the right thing to do right now is to ride out the right time for the making of new request. Only time can prove that the intentions are right in a situation like this. Putting a new request now would make them even more suspicious no matter the wording and therefore it is better to wait no matter what. Jerry wonders how long they will have to wait and the lawyer answers that only time can tell.

Jerry tells the lawyer that he is innocent and that everything must be a mistake. The lawyer says he is going to do his very best to help Jerry, although it will be difficult as he was caught red-handed. Jerry wonders why the lawyer didn’t enlightened him of the prohibition of talking to such a person, but  the lawyer says that he was not entitled to confide him with such information as he was not on duty at the time being.

“Does this mean that no one have talked to you since you became off duty?” Jerry asks the lawyer.

“Oh no!” the lawyer replies “Off course they have been talking to me, it’s not illegal if you are not in need of a lawyer.”

“But I didn’t need a lawyer when I started talking to you?” Jerry wonders.

“The law enforcement believe you did, inasmuch you had committed other crimes at the time being” the lawyer explains.

“But I wasn’t accused of any crime then?” Jerry says questioningly.

“Exactly, and that’s your mistake here. It is not allowed to talk to a lawyer if you’re not accused of any crime” the Lawyer ascertains.

“Unless you’re not in need of one off course” Jerry adds.

“I think you’ve got it” the lawyer concludes somewhat smiling.

Jerry is a little bit confused about the slightly strange regulation, but decides to trust the lawyer anyway. Especially as the lawyer seems to be the only friend he has got in the whole wide world in this very moment.

“So, lets look at the other accusations” the lawyer proceeds. “I understand you don’t have any documentation proving you are white, is that right?”

“I didn’t know such documents existed at all” Jerry says despondently.

“They are quite unusual actually, usually you can manage without them, but they are required when they are requested.” the lawyer explains.

“And when are they requested?” Jerry questions as if he was an involuntary participant in a stupid guessing game.

“When you are in need of them off course” the lawyer responds with a hint of a sly smile on his legal lips.

“This is ridiculous!” Jerry bursts out in frustration with the impression of running around in vicious circles.

“Are you referring to anything particular sir?” the lawyer queries in a now more formal tone. 

“Well, to me it looks like you could be needing whatever the authorities may want from you.” Jerry despairs.

“They are off course bound to the law” the lawyer comments on and spells that every decision they take is brought to the legal dictionary and realized as an established regulation.

“What if the authorities comes up with the idea that it’s forbidden to eat” Jerry argues “we will all starve to death!”

“There is a regulation against starving to death, so that is not a possible outcome I’m afraid” the lawyer mentions.

“What, that they won’t ban eating or that we will not starve to death?” Jerry asks pawky.

“Starve to death, off course” the lawyer responds very quickly. “They ban eating if it serves their purpose.”

“And what is their purpose?” Jerry wonders somewhat puzzled.

“To protect and to serve” the lawyer remarks.

The lawyer has to go and jerry is left alone in his lonely cell waiting for the trial.

O

She didn’t think about it much though, she just did it. Without any other options available there was nothing else to do but to keep up with the endless working. It could be worse off course and at least she had a job. Who was she to be longing for something better? In the end it was nothing but a wasteful escape from reality that didn’t serve any purpose at all. So she kept on with her everyday toil and disregarded the indisputable fact that her existence only came to live when her work was undone.

 One day there was a poster on one of the company boards. “Company Awards” was written in big graceful letters accompanied by the company logo. Yeah right, the cleaning woman was thinking, credit for puppets. Real workers has to keep on working and that’s it. When she got home there was a letter from the company in her mailbox. It was an invitation to the Company Awards with a request for a proper dress.

The cleaning lady spent much thoughts on the event the following days. Never before had she been invited to such a gala. Imagine that cleaners were invited. What would she wear? She didn’t have any proper dress at all. Neither did she know the meaning of “proper”. If she had been one of the regular crew she could have talked to her workmates and asked them what they should wear, but now she was just a cleaner and they didn’t have any fellow workers.

And so the time has come for the event to take place. The cleaning woman had obtained a new dress and was hoping that no one would ever notice that it was on sale. As a coincidence the dress happened to match the company colours. In usual order, no one did take any notice of her as she entered the hall. Everybody were busy discussing the situations in the projects they were engaged in. Nobody but the cleaning woman was engaged in the cleaning project, so she had to discuss that with herself.

The awards regarded the best performance of the year. To be able to win that award the contestant had to have been working very hard with a very little gain for himself and with the best interest for the company in mind. Everybody thought that the award should go to the sales manager, as he had secured three very big clients to the company this year, which was a very great achievement as they all were very busy clients with great potential for huge investments.

But the award went to the cleaning lady. Her gain for herself was so small that it was regarded as priceless. Everybody in the company were influenced by her work (although they didn’t think of it until it was realized by the compere), but only a couple of people were gained by the efforts of the sales manager, so there was no doubt that the price should go to the cleaning woman. Everybody gave and shook her hand. Never before had the Company Awards been so exciting.

The cleaning lady was the woman of the moment and for the first time she was the centre of everybody’s attention. This was the best day in her entire life and she wished that it would never end. When she fell asleep that night it was with a smile on her cleaning lips. And she woke up the next morning and almost floated on her way to the big successful company. She entered the premises and started her important cleaning work. Now she had a reputation to fulfill. Though no one didn’t seem to notice either her or her work as before, she now knew that she actually made a difference. And that was what mattered.

The habitants of the town, who were all white by the way, were all satisfied with the name and didn’t understand what the problem was. As long as they could recall, the name had been the same without any concerns from anyone. How could a name suddenly become racist when there hadn’t been any changes in the town recently? In fact, things had always been the same and everyone had been pleased about it.

In the media the issue was intensely debated and most debaters held that a change was necessary. Representatives of the city argued that it was ridiculous to change the name as everybody who lived in the town was happy with the way it was. The opponents claimed that this was a much greater issue that concerned the whole nation. They didn’t think it mattered that no one ever had heard of the town until a poor lost hiker had sat foot there and come into trouble.

Eventually the name of the city was changed to "Neithertown" after some heavy compromising. For a while everybody was happy, but pretty soon the opponents realized that the old name still was used in documents, maps, literature, the  papers and so on. That was not acceptable! The name was literally banned and wasn’t allowed to be used in any context. And so they engaged one person on a full time basis to trace all occurrences and alter them to the new name, no matter where they were found.

Pretty soon they realized that this project required far more resources than expected. Before the incident with the lost hiker, the name of the town only occurred occasionally mainly in authority documentation, but since it all became of national interest the old name had spread like a cancer. On this purpose, 15 civil servants where hired to search and replace all occurrences in any text by all required means!

A resistance movement evolved to fight back the hectorism of the authorities. For every occurrence that was replaced, they produced two new copies of the old name. Pretty soon the old name was all over the place and there was no way to fight it down anymore. The authorities had lost the battle, but had far no intentions of losing the war.

As a result of the controversy all mass media were abolished. It was no longer allowed to run a News paper or a TV-station. From now on the authorities had exclusive right to anything that enabled communication to a broad mass. The state was run by the government and they had to show everybody who was in charge.

The underground movement didn’t care. They had already introduced a sophisticated messaging system using plain old scraps of paper conveyed by homers. Although the authorities registrated an increased rate of pigeons, they left it unnoticed as they were focused on more high-tech equipment regarding hostile activity. This was a negligence that would cost them dearly.

The underground messaging system had grown so strong that when it came to the attention of the authorities it was way beyond their reach to take control of it. But the implications were bigger than that. They had no longer any means at all to control the citizens. No one ever read the papers or watched television anymore.  The public had also given up on electronic communication as it was regarded as the core in the propaganda machinery of the authorities.

The pigeons brought forth the message that Neithertown again had become Niggertown while it emerged as the symbol of freedom, democracy and free speech. As it always had been until a lost hiker appeared and disturbed the peace.

In the town he faces numerous strange plates that spells "Negro Inn", "Black Affairs"and "African Suburb". Everywhere he lies his eyes there is implied that this place only is populated by a certain kinds of people. Nevertheless, he doesn’t see anyone with the slightest sense of a dark skin, although the town is fairly populated.

The White Burden

Jerry comes to a back street where it is a small shack sandwiched between two fractional buildings. On the door the words "The White Burden" is slatternly written in big letters, giving the impression of someone’s claiming for territory. Through a belfry window ha catches sight of three very fat and naked white women who is revelling real good with various deliciousness. Through an open window on the roof an eaten drumstick comes sailing, nearly hitting jerry in the head.

A caravan of three waiters appear on the back street and heads towards the shed with  pastries,  cookies and all sorts of candy among others. There are also three bottles of wine with appropriate glasses. The waiters enters the door and is leaving empty-handed a couple of minutes later. The three fat women change places with each other and starts the dessert session. Although Jerry is disgusted by this gluttony, he can’t help himself stay and watch the spectacle.

The Weeping lawyer

If it had not been for the heartbreaking sound of crying, I am sure Jerry would have continued watching the show for a very long time, but now he felt an urge to locate the source of this unpleasant sound. Around the corner of a side street to the back street he finds a somewhat shabby weeping man sitting halfway through a gangly staircase. Jerry wonder what kinds of ugly event could make a grown up man sitting crying in a staircase.

The man claims to be a lawyer and tells that there is nothing left for him to do as there are no crimes committed anymore. What good is a lawyer when everybody comply with the law?

“No crimes anymore, but that is great!” Jerry bursts out.

“Yes, it appears so at the first glance, but looking at it further reveals big issues” the lawyer ascertains despondently.

The lawyer adverts the fact that there are many professions in the society that are dealing with the effects of criminal activity in one way or another, like the police, the care, the security business and the insurance companies for example. And lawyers. Now when there are no crimes, they are all left redundant.

“But you could all get re-educated to something more appropriate in a world without crime” Jerry suggests a bit tentatively.

“And who is going to support our families in the meantime?” the lawyer wonders with a bitter voice.

Jerry is about to mention scholarships and similar funding, but keeps it to himself as he is not really sure about the real implications of a world without crime. Maybe the criminal activity has been more profound to the society than anyone could ever imagine. What if he is part of it too?

“Excuse me sir, may I ask you to raise your hands where I can see them” a voice is calling from behind. “I’m representing the law enforcement agency and with all due respect sir, you are under arrest”.

Facing the law

The law enforcement officer explains to Jerry that he is under arrest on behalf of the possible violation of three acts of law. The first infringements deals with illegal staying in the town without having valid documents proving that he is white. Jerry, being whiter than the finest snowflake complains unsympathetically:

“But you must be able see that I’m white?”

“Yeah, yeah, everybody claims that they are white, but it is not valid until it’s in your papers. 

Jerry doesn’t have any papers saying he is white. And more, it also seems to be illegal to act as a spectator without permission in this town. Several people had seen him staring at the three naked women in The White Burden. The officer asks him to show some invitation for that event, but Jerry says he was not aware of the need for such a requirement. Nevertheless, it is still forbidden.

In addition to all that, it also turns out to be forbidden to address lawyers without being accused of any crime. No doubt could the officer himself establish that Jerry had been talking to the lawyer. There might be some accusation that wasn’t out in the open at that time, but that was not something that the officer was aware of and therefore he is entitled to take him into custody.

A glimpse of hope is spiring in the eyes of the lawyer. He offers his services to Jerry with a wish for a long and rewarding cooperation. Jerry shakes the lawyer’s hand and is thankful that his newfound acquaintance turned out to be so convenient.

Money is all that matters

Once the money were introduced they spread like a cancer all over the place. From the beginning companies based their existence on the tasks they achieved to solve basic human needs. Soon the services also were performed to other companies. Over time the companies moved their focus from the business tasks itself to the task of making money. It was no longer important what you were doing as long as you made money.

The companies grew bigger and bigger and expand their businesses to other industries and markets worldwide. The bigger companies bought the smaller companies and formed themselves in corporate groups. They started up business chains which spread themselves all over the world and made travelling useless as everything looked the same wherever you went.

Size is all that matters

The emerging super-companies vacuum-cleaned the market on non-super-companies until all that existed was two competing super corporate groups in each industry (the governments didn’t allow monopoly positions). Once in a while there was a challenger who tried to enter the market, but it was like swimming among sharks and did rarely succeed.

Due to the size of the super-companies, they achieved absolute power and controlled everything. They decided what people should eat, what to wear and what to think. Most important, they told the politicians how to legislate. In a position of absolute power they could do anything. But it was the money that told them what to do.

Money makes the world go around

And there were not enough money in the whole world to cover the greed of the managers and the directors. The whole world ran out of money and so did the companies. But as the managers and the directors were members of the same club as the politicians, there were no problem getting a refill in the money box.

Business went on as usual and the history repeated itself over and over again till the end of time. Because when it comes to money, it heals every wound and hide all the bad experiences, so all you got to do is to make more money and pretend it never happened. For without money the world would stop spinning. Again and again.

I’m sure there must be lots of alternatives to arranging your means of transportation than hitchhiking on a lonely road in the middle of the night, but sometimes faith doesn’t provide any better option than that. While Jerry do his best to advertise his wish to getting a ride with anybody who is kind enough to bring him out of this awkward situation, all potential helpers just swooshes him by as if he didn’t exist at all.

Their speed are crazy, they could actually be doing 500. It’s quite ridiculous. How do they do that? A vehicle is slowing down, pulls over and stops right in front of him. The car has "Law Enforcement" written all over the body and out of it comes a law enforcement officer with a scowl.

Good evening officer, how may I help you? Jerry is giving his best effort to soften this maintainer of the law, but the awesome fellow doesn’t seem to be impressed at all.

"it is forbidden to hitchhike here" the officer says with a heftily voice.

"Yes I know, but I was left here by the police and now I can’t get home"

"My condolences. Hitchhiking is still forbidden nevertheless. This offence is forcing me to take action."

The officer makes a brief telephone call and a few minutes later an ambulance arrives to the place. A medical team appears and sets up a rudimentary surgery. A police car joins the group bringing two sturdy policemen who grab Jerry and ensure he can’t move.

Now we are going to remove your thumb, the Law Enforcement officer explains. It will only take a minute. Jerry is not quite capable of copy any information at the moment and before he know it, the medical staff has given him anesthesia, cut off his right thumb, sewed him up and packed their equipment. Highly efficient and professional.

"You should have those stitches removed in two weeks" one of the medics informs Jerry. Before  he knows it everybody is gone. And so is Jerry’s thumb. No more hitching for Jerry, unless he gives his other thumb a shot off course. Mind you, once bitten, twice shy though. I believe that Jerry will have to find another way of getting home now. Good luck from us all, Jerry!

A star is born

There once was two mates, Jimmy and Johnny, who was very skilled at soccer. Jimmy was real talented and was capable of doing anything with the ball. Johnny was a team player who worked in the background and didn’t care much of being in the centre of everybody’s attention.

Although the two guys were close to each other, Jimmy was the star and was meant to outgrow his fellow team members when the time was right. He played in the best club in town and was the top forward that was expected to make all the goals. Once he had earned this reputation, it became part of him and his identity.

Johnny’s soccer career developed quite well. His team climbed through the league system and Johnny was always regarded as a reliable force that everybody could count on. The team was a well-oiled soccer-machine without any outstanding superstars, but with very well cooperating  team players. It was not important who made the goals, the main thing was that they were made.

There can be only one

Although Jimmy was seemingly born to be a star, his career didn’t run quite that smoothly. It went well as long as he could be the single attraction, the one in the centre of all of the attention. But when the competition became harder it wasn’t that fun anymore realizing there was more than one who was capable of running a show. And sharing the glory is no option for a shining star.

Johnny kept up the good work and became captain of the national team. He had grown to be the core of soccer in everybody’s mind without being the centre of anybody’s attention. While Jimmy was busy finding the right path for himself, Johnny always kept to the path of his team. No doubt that Jimmy was the more gifted, but he failed to let his talent flourish to the benefit of his ego.

Once a star, always a star

Jimmy sought new paths in his life and tried to find them in the bottom of the glass. With the help of liquors everything became much clearer. Johnny came to see his old mate once in a while, but beyond the fact that they had grown up together, there was nothing they had in common anymore. Since long it had been clear to Johnny that the star had fallen before it had began to arise.

In spite of the fact that Johnny had all the success on his side, Jimmy still was the better one. Still he was capable of doing anything with the ball while Johnny was busy being the best team player in the world. In the end, Jimmy outplayed him no matter what. That was one of the truths he had realized from the bottom of the glass. Johnny was maybe the captain of the national team, but Jimmy was the one with the talent.

It’s hard to imagine how we could be in two places at the same time. How would we focus? Would we have to learn to do more than one task at a time? Or would this ability allow us to assume parallel processing consciousness?

When you dream you set aside your waking awareness and enter a world of total mental processing. Still the brain is alert on impressions from the real world (otherwise you wouldn’t be able to wake up from an alarm clock). This means that our brain is already capable of parallel processing and that it’s just needs to be applied to the consciousness.

Could we really be focused on two activities simultaneously? It’s easy to write something on the computer while listen to a conversation in the background. You can even attend to the conversation. It’s harder though to run two conversations concurrently. That’s because you only have got one single speech organ. So it seems to be the body, not the brain, that sets the limit of how much we can focus on. If we could exist in more than one body at the same time, we should be able to have multiple consciousness.

Basically, there are two things that needs to be done. First we need an interface that enables the contents of the brain to be transferred to an external device, for example an USB-stick or similar. Than we need an artificial body that is capable of processing the contents of the device and act autonomously.

Then we only need a way to duplicate our bodies, which could be achieved by genetic engineering or cloning. This however will provide a whole bunch of options for how we appear to others. This is discussed further in Exchangeable bodies.

Dynamic Personality

The bodies come with a set of personalities, where each individual body is capable of running a subset of the total set. One may think that every body should be able to handle any personality, but each personality are optimized to suit certain body types and that will make them less suited to others. For example, say you’ve got the personality of a slacker, then it won’t adopt very well to an athlete, hence the restriction.

When you are able to change your body, many new roads will be open for you in your daily life. Going to a job interview, you will change to an ambitious body with an appropriate formal suit. On the next date you will be the attractive charmer dressed for success. You will always be suited to every situation excluding failure as an option.

Dynamic mind

The extended version will come with the feature of an interchangeable brain with the option of increasing it’s functionality by request. For example will it be possible to extend the memory via an easy plug-in interface. The interface is standardized so you will be able to choose exactly the memory you need from any supplier you want.

The interface enables content upload which means that you can export your memories and import them to the brain you use at the moment. You might even connect the interface to a regular USB-stick and store your memories there. This is discussed further in Concurrent existences.

The final conclusion

The exchangeable bodies in general and the interchangeable brains in particular will bring extraordinary potential to any human being. Never before has it been more easy to adopt to demands of the every day world you live in, whoever you are or whomever you want to be.

No need for heavy exercise or long education, instead we could all focus on the things we want to do and just be the ones we want to be, without complicated detours. When everybody is capable of being anybody, there will at last be an opening for us all to live in a world of love, peace and understanding.