“And how do you plead?” The judge asks.
“Happy,” you tell the court.
There are collective murmurs of disgust, like these people haven’t been committing their own kind of genocide for the past two hundred years that this court has convened.
“Right. Your sentence is death by magical suicide. Please state your method of death.”
“Satisfaction,” you say smugly, and the entire court pauses to collectively imagine their own circumstances. A couple individuals in their cloaked boxes grumble something like ‘degenerate’ or ‘perverse’ and you learn more about everyone in that room than you ever sought to know by the small sounds they make behind their shields. Some imagine perversity, some imagine gluttony, others imagine more genocide.
“And… what does that mean to you?” The judge glances angrily at the prosecutor next to him, who is sweating under the heatless witch light.
“I mean it could mean a lot of things, but let me think.” You sit back and rest your heels on the table, rocking back your chair. “I am really really good at this, so I knew you’d need my help figuring it out. Hit me with suggestions.”
“Would that make you satisfied?” The prosecutor is angrily making the spell circle, scribbling the glyph for ‘joy’ into the command box, the closest thing to ‘satisfaction’ he can think of. You wag a finger at him.
“Well my favorite thing with the biggest serotonin boost is genocide,” you remind everyone- and there are more angrily grumbles. “A genocide is defined as a systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of opinion, social status, ethnicity, religion, political opinion or other particularity. So if you want to choose a characteristic of mine? Eye color maybe? Skin tone’s a bit blasé, don’t you think? But up to you of course. Anyway, pick something and then kill me with a bunch of others with that characteristic and I’ll be happy.”
There’s a lot of outrage at that.
“What about the fact that I’m a murderer?” You grin. “Kill a large number of murderers. It’ll be fine. You do it every day. You’ll be doing the world a favor.”
The room gets excited at that, people casting their votes while the Prosecutor stares at you thoughtfully.
“Some people just protest,” he says during a lull in the discussions around you.
“Protesting highlights the oppression, not the system of oppression.” You wink at him. You guys have done this song and dance for so many years he’s nearly a friend at this point.
“See you in hell,” he says almost fondly, and draws the magical glyph voting yes on your sentencing. You like him so much.
“Not if I see you first,” you tease, and he shakes his head.
The judge bangs the gavel and you step into the center of the circle. You smile and take a last deep breath and then look at the judge peacefully since he and the prosecutor are the only two people not behind privacy screens. They’re bothering to look you in the eyes as you die. They should at least know what’s happening.
“You’ve all killed me,” you say peacefully, then, with feeling. “Murderers.”
The judge’s expression pinches as he parses what you’ve said. Then horror dawns in his eyes as the prosecutor completes the magic circle and it lashes out into the suddenly screaming courtroom- the white light connecting with every glyph that voted ‘yes’.
The last thing you feel is intense satisfaction.
Then you feel no more.