Criminals, you are on notice! Death is no longer an escape from the law, and you sentence shall longer ends with one life alone --Senator Hariett Miller-Forsythe

EXCERPT FROM THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON THE INVESTIGATION OF POST-MORTEM JUSTICE TECHNOLOGIES (p.23)

Sen. Miller-Forsythe (Senator): And what position did you hold, Mr. Kumish?

Anil Kumish: I was employed as a Senior Reincarnation Engineer

Senator: In what way can you be considered 'senior'? My understanding is that Reincarnation is quite new.

Kumish: [pause] As a person of Indian descent, it was felt that I had a deeper experience with reincarnation than most of my colleagues.

Senator: And is that true?

Kumish: [pause] I felt that my qualifications were adequate for the position and title

Senator: And, I'm sure, the salary.

Kumish: [laugh] I would not put it so forwardly but...one may say that.

Senator: So then, Senior Reincarnation Engineer, I suppose you would be the person to ask: what happened at my jail?

Kumish: Well, let me begin by saying that the Corrective Reincarnation Facility was not a jail, as we understand it. It is better to think of it more like an enormous water tank, filling up balloons of water.

Now imagine--"

Senator: I don't want to imagine, Mr. Kumish. I want to know why 17,000 prisoners have escaped from a secure federal facility.

Kumish: ...Senator, I cannot explain why if you do not allow me to explain. I understand that this is an important part of your policy.

Senator: This is justice, Mr. Kumish.

Kumish: There we must agree to disagree.

Senator: Noted. Now, I'd like to know more about this process--you said it's like filling a water balloon?

Kumish: That is correct. Imagine that consciousness--or the soul if you prefer--is the accumulated experiences of a living creature. The more experience that the individual has the capacity to be aware of, the more "sapient" the creature. However these awarenesses must bind together. We have found that there are distinct collection of elementary particles which make up a "key", which upon death, pops out of existence via quantum tunneling. That collection, however, invariably pops back in again. This, in essence, is "reincarnation".

However without those previous experiences and neural connections, the "key" lacks any context of its previous life. It is wiped clean.

Senator: Nothing is "clean" until they have served their sentence and paid their debt to society.

Kumish: That...it goes against what we have shown in our labs.

Senator: I don't care about your labs. I want to know what happened in my jail!

Kumish: [pause] What happened is it became alive, Senator.

Senator: Impossible.

Kumish: As I said, a soul is simply a binding agent for accrued experience. Now it takes a tremendous amount of computing power to store and manage these souls, and in an absence of experience, they bind to...each other.

Senator: ...I don't believe it.

Kumish: But you must. Because it is true. The building itself is alive. Every water pipes is an artery, every cell is another set of tissues, every computer an extension of its brain. Your prisoners are reborn, together, and have brought life to the place that was supposed to deny it.

In a way, Senator, you gave birth to this thing. You are its mother, and it cries for you. It cries for you all day and all night. I have here a recording--

Senator: What are you. Put that down this instant.

Kumish: This is evidence. Do you not want to hear the evidence.

Senator: I will--someone remove that thing from Mr. Kumish, please.

Kumish: But you must listen! You must! You don't understand--you must listen!

Senator: Get that thing--Bailliff! Get that--stop recording this instant. Stop--I will NOT listen! Stop!

-TRANSCRIPT ENDS-