The Robot Eyewitness

The Robot Eyewitness is a legal thriller in a science fiction setting: Space shuttles fly back and forth between the Space Worker's Transport Field and The Orbit, where factories producing all the world's manufacturing goods revolve above the Earth's atmosphere. Next to the transport field, is a faded blue two-story permaplastic building. The lower floor is the Law Office of William Shannon and Shannon's foul-mouthed legal bot Loraine. Together they've taken on an unwinnable 1st degree murder case. Penalty, lifetime in the Orbiting Banishment Facility. In a visual recorded by the victim's household bot Thomas, the defendant beats his fiancée to death. Again, unwinnable. When Shannon visits his client in custody and shows him the visual, he begins to scream "Thomas is framing me. He always hated me; he was in love with her." In a society in which robots are considered machines, commonly bought in big box stores, defendant's story is nonsense. Insanity is the only defense. But just to be thorough, Shannon hires leading AI/Robotics expert Dr. Sharon Lee to study Thomas's neural network. And that changes everything. Built by RobX, Thomas is the most advanced bot Dr. Lee has ever encountered. For Shannon, the mention of RobX brings agonizing memories of a so-called accident in which Shannon's parents, son, and RobX's Chief Developmental Engineer were killed, run over by another RobX bot driving the family car. Worlds were merging, with all powerful RobX at the intersection.