No Longer Quivering
Doug titled this section of the book “Gonzo Law” but “Gonad Law” fits better. This is the longest chapter of the book, clocking in at a gut busting number of pages. It involves the courtroom shenanigans of Ace and Jon Hunt versus cartoon-y evil district attorney representative Connor Connorson. It can be summed up thusly—if you cannot dazzle them with brilliance just baffle them with malarkey!
Last chapter is here.
It’s clear reading through this that the closest Doug has even been to a real life (read mostly boring) courtroom is not even as in depth as watching a “Law & Order” episode. Oh, and Douggie boy manages to awkwardly shoehorn in romance by the end.
We start out with under-educated Stephanie Hunt telling her dad Jon, a many years experienced litigator that he needs to practice “Gonzo law”. She tells him to figure out what she means. Stephanie refers to the other sides “so-called reality.”
Many pages and lots of talk about ‘gonzo’ before we end up here:
“This is what I mean. If their crazy worldview were a car, you get into that car and drive it into a tree.”
Stephanie posits that they must make sure that the jury is one third sex robots, because since the victim is a robot, and that whole jury of ones peers thing she thinks that justice can only really truly be served by robots on the jury.
Pulling myself off the floor because I am laughing too hard to sit in a chair now. The problem with this is obvious. Robots are not sentient beings. They don’t vote, so they aren’t on the voting roles, so they cannot legally be roped into jury duty. They don’t have the executive functioning skills by the way Doug describes them to form any sort of judgment on right and wrong. Jon goes here with it:
“But these jurors couldn’t vote … not unless somebody programmed them to vote. Ah, and that’s just it, isn’t it? Neither the defense nor the prosecution could be entrusted with that programming, the sex-droids would just sit there. A built-in hung jury.”
No, Jon, you have to be a living breathing person registered to vote in that jurisdiction to actually sit on a jury. It’s the freaking law.
And we get to the courtroom. Doug’s description of the jury deliberation room shows that either he’s never served on a jury, or the county he lives in is a poverty stricken hell hole. I have served a number of times and have never seen one so, as he describes it, ‘spartan’.
Jon immediately makes the dumb argument that the jury pool requires sex robots too. Connor mentally twists himself into knots trying to figure out what Jon is up to, but says he does not object to sex robots on the jury. But he will file immediate charges of jury tampering no matter which way the robots vote. The stupid, it burnnns.
The next day in court Jon tries to make the argument that Sally wasn’t a robot so much as a concubine because Mr. Sasani already had a ‘bio-wife’. She was a purchased slave wife.
After all the definition wrangling is over the first witless witness is called, Isadora, she who tried to falsely accuse Ace of various sexual abuse things earlier in the book. Pages wasted, over twenty on her allegations and Jon shutting them down by proving that she and Ace were never on the same campus at the same time. Idiotic side ramble.
Next Connor calls Ace’s old boss at the recycling plant Dave Moby. This goes stupid too. Moby states that Ace is the cat’s pajamas, the cream of the proverbial crop. When confronted about his angry gesturing on the tape he points out he did that most common of things, play cover his biscuits by appearing angry. This takes up 22 pages. Le sigh.
Then Stephanie takes the stand, why I do not know. She didn’t meet the doll, or witness Ace smush it or even know him before the doll crushing. She thinks this:
“And Connorson was obviously a flamer..”
What? Doug has to twist that ‘he’s a homo’ knife a few more times. Like sexual orientation has anything to do with job fitness, which it does not.
Connorson goes somewhere illegal an unexpected in his first question:
“Ms. Hunt, are you a Christian?”
Her father rightly objects, calling for the relevance of the question. But she starts babbling out that yes she is. Connorson chides her when she says she became one because she didn’t want to be like Connor or the others after Ace. He then gets into a legal watusi with her over her lies about the lawyer sexually abusing her. She says it is as true as Sally being Sasani’s wife. In other words a freaking lie. 26 pages wasted on this nonsense.
If you are counting you know we are now at almost 70 pages in this chapter. Another example of the author’s demented pacing.
Stephanie is immediately baptized as a new Christian right after court and Ace officially makes her his girl.
“My central temptation for the last month or more has been that of wanting to kiss a non-Christian. I have been manfully restraining myself.”
Oh, Ace, Ace, Ace! You sure did not restrain yourself with Sally, and for bonus points Jon Hunt told you to stay away from his daughter! Zero romance, and this leap straight into lurve, just as false and forced as Doug’s romance novel.
“She would just walk up to me and talk to me with that mouth. And it was just two feet away.”
I don’t know, sounds very rapey from here.
They plot to go to the courthouse the very next day and get a marriage license, but to put ‘concubine’ in the line for ‘wife’ to use in this stupid trial. They do it and film it.
Jon calls a surprise witness at the trial, Trish Sasani.
I have to stop here and state that nothing about this trial seems real. Prosecutors and defense attorneys get lists of witnesses that the other side plans on calling well in advance. Surprise witnesses just do not happen. Usually if someone is added there has to be some notice given so that the other side can prepare their questions. It’s the law.
Plus, no lawyer ever asks a question he does not already know the answer for. Unless he is an idiot.
Doug says this about Connor’s lack of knowledge on who Trish Sasani is:
“….the prosecutor was just scribbling notes, on the assumption that this was some cousin twice removed, brought in to testify about how Steven had taken too many barbecued ribs at a family reunion once.”
If this were actually a real trial there’s plenty taking place that would make the verdict easily overturned. Add in that the judge is thinking about what the governor ordered him to execute as the verdict already.
Jon leads Trish through a recital of their marriage, the S & M, and all the other kink. She grew weary of it and asked for a divorce. He then drugged her, and locked her behind up in the basement. Then he’d have sex with the robot in front of the door so she could watch. Kinky.
Somehow Trish became a Christian, magically, down in the basement before being rescued by Stephanie to go live in the Hunt’s attic. She’s starts insisting they call her ‘Mrs. Sasani’ instead of Trish.
She spills the beans that Sally was merely number four in her husband’s parade of sex robots. He destroyed the robots once they turned rebellious. He even had one of them smushed in the metal recycler down at the recycling plant, the same thing that Ace stood accused of.
The judge tries a little jury tampering, telling his paid thug to tell the jurors:
“…I would like you to explain to them that if anything other than Ace’s conviction for murder comes back to me from them, all of them will be very, very sorry…”
He goes on to threaten their families, puppies and cute little bunny rabbits too. The governor demands it. Is this a mafia state or something?
The jury freaks the fudge out and starts discussing this threat. And we’re done. We only have two more chapters in this wretched tale filled with the improbable, the impossible and the insane. This chapter clocked it at well over two hundred pages on my Kindle set at medium text size. Doug should have chopped this idiotic bad boy up into at least four chapters instead of turning this one chapter into the never ending stupid story.
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