He wanted to look at them, but he was
afraid the judge would see his ponytail, carefully tucked into his
neatly ironed white shirt, if he turned sideways,
`Your Honour,' Kayser glanced backward slightly, toward the court
reporters, as he warmed up, `my client lived in an artificial world of
electronic pulses.'
Scratch, scribble. Electron could almost predict, within half a
second, when the journalists' pencils and pens would reach a crescendo
of activity. The ebb and flow of Boris's boom was timed in the style
of a TV newsreader.
Kayser said his client was addicted to the computer the way an
alcoholic was obsessed with the bottle. More scratching, and lots of
it. This client, Kayser thundered, had never sought to damage any
system, steal money or make a profit. He was not malicious in the
least, he was merely playing a game.
`I think,' Electron's barrister concluded passionately, but slowly
enough for every journalist to get it down on paper, `that he should
have been called Little Jack Horner, who put in his thumb, pulled out
a plumb and said, "What a good boy am I!"'
Now came the wait. The judge retired to his chambers to weigh up the
pre-sentence report, Electron's family situation, the fact that he had
turned Crown witness, his offences--everything.
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