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thelegion2017-12-15 09:11 pm
legionnpcs) wrote in thelegion2017-12-15 09:11 pm
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Legionnaires Legacies: America Beeny
[The Legion World staff maintains a feed of all Legion-related media so Legionnaires can be kept abreast of any reporting that's done on them. Two women appear on the screen, sitting at a desk, their appearances altered by glam filters so that one is all pink hair and skin and sparkles, and the other is all in blues. They look pretty flashy and tacky but this is the future. Reporters don't exist anymore; they're "personalities" now.]
Shellee: I'm Shellee Star! [That would be the pink one.]
Tammee: And I'm Tammee Tim! [That would be the blue one.]
Shellee: Welcome most popular deep investigation show on the air: Legionnaire Legacies!
Tammee: We would like to warn users that today’s footage is highly disturbing. There will be blood, gore, violence towards children, regular violence, applied violence, nudity, scenes of torture, war, disease, hunger, murder, and more. It’s recommended that children only view this through the Uncle Plorb’s Peacetime Safety Filter.
Shellee: The time: 22nd Century. The place: Mega-City One!
Tammee: City of mile-high skyscrapers and pleasure domes! City of robots and sleep machines, face-change parlors and Futsies! City of dreams...
Shellee: ...And nightmares. Do not go out at night.
Tammee: Danger lurks around every corner. Crime runs riot. Aliens and mutants prowl the streets. And worse… MUCH worse.
Shellee: A special breed of evil that demands a special breed of law enforcer. Here, there are no police, no trials, no juries... Only the Judges.
Tammee: Vested with the power of instant sentence. A Judge’s court is the streets of Mega-City One. A Judge’s word is the Law!
Shellee: Their duty: to seek out lawbreakers wherever they may be found. To administer instant justice without favor. Without mercy.
Tammee: This is the world of Judge Beeny!
Tammee: But first, we should explain how such an insane system was put into place.
Shellee: It all starts with one man. Eustace Fargo, the Father of Justice. A brilliant young man with a bright future, he worked his way up the ranks of the government, being appointed the Government Special Prosecutor for Street Crime by the President of the United States of America in 2027.
[Footage now. Fargo addresses Congress, in a packed hall filled with cameras.]
Fargo: Our police are beleaguered! Out courts are a laughing stock! Our streets have become No-go areas! I am reminded of the words: ‘All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. I promise you, I will not rest until I have reclaimed this nation for the people!
[A long distance shot of the White House. A protest march parades outside. They stop, lower their signs. From somewhere in their midst, rocket propelled grenades scream out, and suddenly the protestors, armed with military grade hardware, home-made guns, swords, explosives, everything you could ask for, charge across the lawn, laying siege to the President’s home.]
Tammee: With this violence, perpetrated by a normal street gang, the President only managed to escape thanks to a daring helicopter rescue from the top of the white house. On Fargo’s command, hundreds of gang members were arrested.
Shellee: But through intimidation, blackmail, and outright murder of the jurors, not a single conviction was upheld and every last one of the criminals walked free. Even the ones caught on camera.
[A flash back to congress. Fargo stands at the front again, practically vibrating with indignation and rage. It might be a familiar look. The twist to his lip, the way he snarls… He’s identical in every way to Rico Dredd.]
Fargo: The law has failed us! Trials take years to reach the courts - and when they do is there a jury in this land that dares to convict? Our proud nation is being destroyed by the very principles we once held so dear! If our juries are too frightened to act - if our courts are powerless - we must find another way! It is time to take the judges out of the courts and put them onto the streets! We must choose good men and women trained to administer retribution and without delay. We must arm them with the power to dispense instant justice!
Senator A: Abandon due process? NEVER!
Senator B: It’s unconstitutional! A step too far!
Senator C: We won’t approve it, Fargo!
Tammee: Their constituents didn’t agree. In the election of 2028, not only was President Gurney voted back in, but all of the senators who had worked against him were voted out of office. With the President’s backing, Fargo’s vision came true.
Shellee: It would take two more years for them to strip away the last protections in their Constitution, to be replaced by a strict new Judicial Code. Fargo worked ceaselessly to find men and women capable of fulfilling his demands, of creating a new breed of law enforcement. Soon, there would be schools, Academies of Law, where children as young as five years old were selected to for education.
Tammee: Within three years, the gang that had assaulted the White House was dead, to a man. Executed by the Judges. The citizens, weary of their country looking more like the worst parts of Rimbor than the America of their dreams, welcomed it. New prisons, Iso-Blocks capable of holding hundreds of thousands of prisoners at once, were constructed, but due to the rise of automation and construction robots, prices went down and taxes stayed low. The citizens enjoyed that, too.
Shellee: Fargo only managed to keep things under control through his iron will and his own reputation for being harder on himself than anyone else. The single time he broke one of his rules, for falling to temptation and sleeping with an acquaintance, he resigned from his position of Chief Judge…
[The man, looking older now than Rico ever will, slumps in his chair, staring at the gun in front of him. The screen goes black, but the gunshot still sounds.]
Tammee: …And committed suicide. The crime was lust. The sentence was death.
Shellee: In time, the three great Mega-Cities of America, were given autonomy. Virtual self-government. Mega-City One, reaching from New York to Florida. Mega-City Two, covering the entire West Coast. And Mega-City Three, soon to secede and dub itself Texas City, taking many of the southern states with it.
Tammee: Soon after, the Judges would unveil their first clones. Unlike our world, cloning is totally legal in Mega-City One. In fact, by America’s time, a full third of the Judges available are clones. The first two being Arbitrator and his brother. Rico and Joseph Dredd. But this isn’t their story.
Shellee: And, in 2068, Robert L. Booth was elected President. He immediately seized oil fields across the world, ordering the extermination of anyone who resisted. When other countries objected…
President Booth: Attention! This is an urgent public announcement by Robert L. Booth, President of the United States! My friends - My fellow Americans - we stand on the brink of eternity! Foreign elements are at work in every corner of the globe, conspiring to do us down an' to undermine our position as the richest, greediest nation on Earth. I have issued an ultimatum to world leaders - get off our backs an' start playin' ball or face annihilation! That ultimatum has now expired! I have in my hand the button that will launch the greatest nuclear holocaust in history! Let the world know they won't have President Robert L. Booth an' the good old U.S. of A. to kick around anymore! An' as Americans, it is only fitting that you should have a ringside seat for the holocaust. So I would like to share this moment with you. Didn't sound like much, but believe me, folks, those nukes are flyin'! The first missiles are speeding towards their targets. The war to end all wars has begun. My fellow Americans, when it is over we will be raising the Stars and Stripes over the entire globe. We didn't want this war - we didn't ask for it - but as sure as God is my judge, we will finish it!
Tammee: This was the beginning of the Atom War. When it was over, the world’s population would be halved. Of nearly eleven billion people, only six billion survived. And many of those would be horribly twisted and warped by the radiation.
[Mutants. The screen flashes to Judges in action, wearing old-style uniforms. There are grown men and women on the streets… And some children in uniform, as young as ten years old. Pressed into it by sheer need for numbers.]
Shellee: In the chaos that followed, the Judges were hard-pressed to do all they could. What’s worse is that America’s own military turned against its people, raping and pillaging like any common criminal. The Judges, horrified by the actions the President had taken, spoke out.
[A hard-faced man behind a podium, identified as Chief Judge Solomon, gives a speech.]
Chief Judge Solomon: We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people – it is their duty - to throw off such government. I quote these words from the Declaration signed nearly three hundred years ago. Today America, the nation our forefathers fought and died for, lies in ruins - destroyed by the criminal machinations of one man - President Robert L. Booth! I have issued President Booth with an ultimatum - that he resign and surrender immediately for trial! In the meantime, I declare his tenure to be at an end! Until further notice – and with your consent – the Governance of Mega-City One will be assumed by Justice Department!
[A call to civil war. The President refuses to budge. The military is shown gunning down protestors in front of the White House. Mass battlefields, with Judges, the Booth Loyalists, and the militias loyal to the Judges, battling it out for supremacy. Eventually, after countless dead, Booth is caught and arrested… And sentenced to a hundred years of suspended animation so that future generations may decide a more appropriate punishment for the final President.
Meanwhile, Mega-City One grows. By the 2080s, it has a population of 800 million. The Judges consolidate their power, near tyrannical now. Comic books are outlawed. Soap operas are outlawed. Addictive substances like caffeine and sugar are outlawed. Crimes like littering are treated as grave offenses. Owning a gun without a license is an offense that sends people to the cubes for years at a time. The citizens are given homes in massive blocks, everyone is given welfare checks. Unemployment skyrockets as robots start to take over jobs, with numbers displaying at 95% unemployment. ]
Tammee: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, but the Judges treat everyone equally. More than one financial empire falls because the rich believe they can buy off the Judges. And those who do allow themselves to be bought receive unpleasant visits from a special kind of Judge.
Shellee: For a Judge who breaks the law, there is only one punishment. Twenty years of hard labor on Titan, the moon of Saturn. Unlike in our time, Titan has not yet been terraformed, meaning that those Judges who get caught must undergo horrific alterations in order to survive.
[And through it all, life goes on. Slowly, the focus of the camera turns to a class in Friedrich Nietzsche Block, with two teenagers.]
Tammee: Bennett Beeny and America Jara. A singing comedian and a political activist. Bennett became a comedy music star and a crooner, earning millions. America, however, was a political activist.
Shellee: America Jara and America Beeny. They look so much alike, don’t they? Nearly identical. Unfortunately, Democracy is a dirty word in Mega-City One. Associated with terrorists who think that the people deserve to rule themselves. Perhaps if more people felt that way, the city would be better off. But so many citizens are happy as long as their needs are met and don’t care about anything more.
[As the two hosts talk, half of Mega-City one simply vanishes in yet another nuclear holocaust. It’s 2104, the Apocalypse War. More horrors follow. Zombie invasions. Gang uprisings. Alien attacks. Extradimensional warlords.
Speaking of Democracy, there’s a vote. Less than thirty percent of the citizens even bother. The rest are too lazy, or too disinterested, to care. Thanks to those who do, however, the Judges win. Overwhelmingly so. Democracy had its voice, and the people didn’t care.]
Tammee: Over time, young America would get more and more involved with the fringes of the Democratic movement. And soon, she would help form an organization dedicated to bringing Democracy back to the people.
[America Jara walks through the streets. She crosses paths with a Judge, averting her eyes. He smiles. Then cries out as two men jump at him, pinning his arms. With a swipe of her hand, and the concealed razor blade, she slashes the Judge’s throat open and the men let the bleeding body hit the floor, ignoring its gurgles. She reaches into her purse, shakes a can of spraypaint, and tags over the body. ‘Total War’.]
Shellee: America would end up assisting in the murder of three more Judges, unfortunately crossing paths with Bennett on the fourth one.
[More footage. America gunning down a Judge with a small squad of men. She turns to Bennett, warning him, but one of her new friends has a different idea. He shoots Bennett in the throat with a hand-held shotgun.
Bennett’s shown being questioned by a Judge, still in the hospital. He uses a computer to answer, insisting that he doesn’t remember anything. The Judge stands, and his badge reads ‘DREDD’. There’s none of Rico’s casual demeanor, his happy little cruelties, in the man’s demeanor. Dredd is solid. Serious. His frown is practically chiseled out of granite. Even from this brief appearance, it’s obvious that the two couldn’t be less alike.]
Tammee: Joe Dredd. Not his brother, the Legionnaire.
[Weeks later, at Bennett’s mansion, there’s a knock on the door. Bennett’s robot butler answers, and it’s a smiling America Jara, with flowers.]
Shellee: America Jara came to tell him her side of the story. Her hatred of the Judges, her suspicion that they sabotaged a peaceful protest years ago, killed her boyfriend, and then her claims that they faked a mutation in her unborn child to force an abortion. Mutants, remember, are not legal in Mega-City One. The Judges want to keep their people… pure.
Tammee: That said, the test results were real. The Judges are monsters, but America Jara was always small change for them. But that was before she murdered four Judges.
Shellee: She seduced Bennett Beeny, finally giving him the love he’d craved from her for all those years. And then… She asked for money.
Tammee: America had come to him hoping to get funds for her next terrorist attack. Total War was going to blow up the Statue of Liberty, and they needed all the credits they could get if they were going to afford enough explosives. And then, the day of the attack. Be warned, the following footage is extremely violent.
[And it is. It starts slow. And then the Judges spring their trap. And it ends in tragedy as planned.]
Shellee: And with that, America Jara was gone. But her body would continue living. The Judge who shot her received a verbal reprimand, and that was the end of it as far as they were concerned.
Tammee: She received horrific brain damage, beyond the ability of their primitive medical technologies to correct. Unable to let go, Bennett Beeny kept America on life support for months. And then, finally accepting that she would never improve…
Shellee: He impregnated her. And transplanted his brain into her body.
Tammee: And so, with one of the most disgusting violations I think I’ve ever witnessed, America Beeny was brought into the world. Because of her father’s medications, she was born with no immune system and had to spend most of her life in a bubble.
Shellee: Fortunately, when she got out, she lived a bright, happy life. For all of his many flaws, Bennett Beeny did love his daughter. And, in the end, America Jara got her revenge.
Tammee: She rejected him a final time, with her body breaking down in its refusal to accept his brain.
[Footage of Bennett Beeny, in America Jara’s body. His speech is slurring, his motor control is weak and sloppy. He can’t walk without assistance from either a cane or his butler.]
Shellee: In time, America’s old terrorist cell came for Bennett. They talked him into agreeing to carry out a terrorist plot at the Academy Awards, known fondly as the Arnies, for Arnold Schwarzenegger, the greatest classical film actor in Mega-City One’s history. Bennett was nominated for his music, and the plot would require him to become a suicide bomber. With his failing health, and a new reason to hate the Judges, Bennett agreed.
Tammee: Unbeknownst to him, however, the Judges kept a watch on his associations.
[The gate to the property opens, unprompted, and a Judge strides in, moving like he owns the place. Once again, it’s Dredd, marked as J. Dredd by the graphical overlays. America, now a five year old girl carrying a lizard easily half as tall as she is, greets him.]
America Beeny: I’m teaching my lizard to sing. Do you want to hear him?
Judge Dredd: I’ll take a rain check.
America: My dad says you’re bad. You hurt people.
Dredd: Sometimes it’s necessary.
America: Judges killed my mommy.
Dredd: She broke the law. That’s what happens.
Mrs. Wilson, America’s caretaker: America, come away…
[A scene shift to the Statue of Liberty… What’s left of it Only the base and the torch remain, someone’s finally managed to destroy it. Bennett lays down roses at the torch and sits there for a moment before America comes from behind to embrace him.]
America: Did Mommy blow up the statue?
Bennett: No. That was someone else. But she tried. Your mother was very brave. And you’re going to… have to be very brave too, my darling.
America: Are you going to die, daddy?
Bennett: Yes, darling.
America: I don’t want you to die.
Bennett: I don’t want to either. Sometimes these things happen.
America: I’ll be all on my own. Who’ll look after me?
Bennett: Mrs. Wilson – and Robert. Don’t worry, they’ll take good care of you. You’ll have everything you could want.
America: I want you.
Bennett: I’ll be there. Up in heaven, with your mommy. We’ll always be watching over you.
[The scene fades.]
Tammee: Soon after, Bennett tried to back out of Total War’s plot, but they’d kidnapped America both to act as leverage and to raise as a figurehead for the Democratic movement after he died. Fortunately, the Judges saved her and Bennett survived the shooting at the Arnies that followed his refusal to carry through with the bombing. But his time was limited, and he was rapidly deteriorating. He had to make a choice. Rather than prolong the suffering, he went to one of the city’s many Euthanasiums.
[A blinding light clicks on. When the image refocuses, a Judge is standing over a bed.]
Judge: America Beeny. Come with me.
[America sits up, rubs at her eyes, and follows without question. Her head has been shaved, and she’s wearing pajamas with a patch on her shoulder reading ‘Cadet Beeny’. She’s lead to a brilliantly lit office, where she stands at parade rest. Or as best as a five year old can manage.]
Judge-Tutor: I’m sorry to inform you that your father was quietly put to rest last night. [He pauses as her face crumples, and the other Judge places a hand on her shoulder.] Be brave, child. He wanted you to have this letter. I see no reason why we should keep it from you. You have a big future here with us, America. Your father did the best thing, even if for the wrong reasons. Work hard. Apply yourself. Make him proud of you.
America: Y-yes, sir. I will.
Judge-Tutor: Give her an hour for grieving. Then best if she joins the other cadets.
[The next flash has her standing in formation with hundreds of other cadets. All of them about five years old.]
Tammee: The Academy of Law. The hardest school on Earth.
Shellee: Even Khundia doesn’t measure up.
Tammee: Fifteen years of grueling lessons, designed to turn each person who passes through its doors into someone worthy of dispensing instant justice.
Shellee: Five out of seven candidates never make it to graduation. Some are dismissed as unfit, while others are maimed, or worse, during training.
[A scene of a Judge-Tutor lining up the cadets and holding up a stuffed bunny. He’s snarling, and one of the cadets looks near tears. Another scene of two cadets beating a third. A Judge-Tutor drops his hand on each of their shoulders, ending their careers. The cadet on the floor is crying, and is therefore also dismissed. A scene of cadets in a combat class, nine or ten years old, all practicing with batons. One of them lunges and catches the other in the throat, crushing it. And, finally, a group of teenagers roaming the Cursed Earth, the nuclear wasteland that was once America's heartland. The ground shivers, and then they're set upon by a swarm of mutants riding tarantulas the size of an Abrams tank. Only one makes it out alive.]
Tammee: The years America Beeny spent in the Academy were hard years. Formative years. They learned the Law above all else, learning that they weren’t to be allowed the ‘luxuries’ of family, love, or anything like that.
Shellee: For a Judge, to love is to distract from your duty. Possession of property beyond Justice Department issue, is a sign of attachment. There’s no pay. No vacations. No retirement plan.
Tammee: When a Judge has lived out their useful years, most of them take one of two choices. Either to become a Judge-Tutor at the Academy of Law, or take the Long Walk beyond the bounds of Mega-City One, striding forth into the wilderness to bring Law to the Lawless… until death.
Shellee: For ten years America worked to become one of these elite machines.
[A collection of scenes. America’s alone, shunned by most for her father’s Democratic leanings. But, despite her surroundings, she’s still friendly, outgoing. Slowly, she gathers cadets around herself, her charisma acting as a magnet, until she’s practically the leader of the class. When Total War, her mother’s organization, sets off nuclear explosives in the city, no one so much as blinks at her. Here, she’s beyond reproach.
Her teachers, however, don’t have it so easy. She’s constantly questioning them in classes. Never to the point of insubordination, but it’s clear that she has a rebellious streak, that, as perfect as some of them find her, she’ll never be one of their types. Worse, at least from their perspective, the other cadets are following her example, looking at the flaws they perceive in the Justice Department’s methods and their relationships with the citizens.]
Shellee: She learned to fight harder than the next five men. Shoot better than the next twenty. Psychology, history, sociology, forensics science, she excelled at them all. But her specialty was interrogation.
[Many scenes of her as a cadet, sweating down other cadets in practice runs. Then citizens. She’s cool, calm, collected. It’s eerie to listen to a young girl slice apart an alibi with almost no emotional inflection, or to order more chemicals pumped into her subject in order to induce honesty.
The reactions of the citizens are telling. They’re terrified. Even of a cadet. And she uses that terror to strip away the lies until they tell her what she wants to know. That their parents have been dealing drugs. That their boyfriend stole the pay register from his last job. That the slidewalk accident that resulted in the deaths of dozens three years ago was because they’d spat their gum out and hadn’t picked it up.
She rarely raises her voice, and never applies physical violence. That’s illegal
Not that she’s immune to such treatments. Despite it being illegal, the Judges must be trained to resist torture. And they bring in experts for that. Thankfully, nothing is shown except the closed door, but her shrieks are played unedited. When the door opens, she’s carried out by a pair of other cadets, while a stone-faced Judge walks out, cleaning his gloves, and confers with the tutors.]
Tammee: In the tenth year of her schooling, at the age of 15, Cadet Beeny was expected to carry out an investigation on her own, with assistance from one Judge and none of her tutors.
Shellee: She chose a subject near and dear to her heart. But first, she’d have to call in the man in charge of that situation, Arbitrator’s brother. Judge Dredd.
[The scene plays out. America begins with an introduction that swiftly breaks down into an accusation. and she lays down the same arguments to Mega-City One’s Top Cop that she does to her tutors. And, finally, she gets to the point.]
Shellee: Undoubtedly some Legionnaires will be pleased to find out that they’re not the only ones to get that treatment from her.
Tammee: America had taken a huge risk in choosing Dredd as her co-investigator. He didn’t like her to start and a word from him could shatter her career before it even began.
Dredd: The streets aren’t a city simulation. The people are real. The judgements you make could mean the difference between life and death – theirs or yours. If we see a crime, we can’t ignore it. It may be dangerous. Stay alert. Look to your own safety at all times.
America: Yes, sir.
[But it was paperwork first. Once they got to the Grand Hall of Justice, America brought in pile upon pile of papers from the archives. Dredd, upon seeing the stacks, looks like he’d rather lick a leper.
America: Phone records from Portnoy’s place in Canadia.
Dredd They already went through these.
America: And they got it wrong. Let’s get it right.
[Several hours pass, thankfully in time lapse. Finally, Dredd stands, stiffly. He’s nearly sixty, not a young man.]
Dredd: Getting stiff. Let’s take an hour on the streets, show you what real Judging’s about.
America: I’d prefer it if we just kept at it. If you don’t mind, sir.
[Dredd’s frown deepens to the point where it threatens to sever his chin. But he sits back down. After this, the scene transitions to the mess hall. The food they’re eating is nearly unrecognizable, it’s slop. Some of it looks like it could have been a leafy green vegetable at some point in its past.]
Dredd: Why me, Beeny?
America: Sorry?
Dredd: The way you see it, I killed your mother. Why choose me?
America: If you come down to it, yes, you did kill her. You could have stopped it earlier, before anyone got hurt. But you wanted to make an example. But then if I was going to blame anyone, I’d have to blame the whole department. It’s the way we work. It’s the way we are. Our whole culture is wrong.
Dredd: And you’re going to change that?
America: Yes. I am. I told you once you were bad. I don’t think that anymore. You’re not bad, you’re just what the System made you. As far as this case goes, you have an intimate knowledge. You’re a first-rate investigator and it’ll irk you that the original investigation never got at the truth. So I believe you can help me. I really want to know the answers.
Dredd: Fair enough.
Tammee: Soon after, the investigation finally took them to the streets, where the dynamic duo discovered a drug deal gone sour.
[America is seen holding her hands over a victim’s bleeding gunshot wounds. One of the perps, lying on the ground, reaches for his shotgun, only for her to shoot it away with him and go back to trying to stop the bleeding. By the time Dredd returns with two others in tow, the medics have already arrived.]
Med-Judge: This one’s gone. Nice try, cadet.
Dredd: Drug feud. Two less of the scum to worry about. Isn’t that right, Enrique?
Enrique: Shut your stinkin’ mouth!
[On the ride home, Dredd jabs at America.]
Dredd: Don’t tell me – I was too hard on those dirtwads. They’re victims of an uncaring society. All they needed was a little understanding.
America: Won’t get any from me. They’re peddlers of poison. They ruin people’s lives. They got what they deserved.
Dredd: Hmmph.
America: Get some sleep. I need you sharp in the morning.
Dredd: Crime doesn’t have a bedtime. I’ll grab ten in the machine if I need it.
[The investigation continues for days. They pour over a dead man’s personal life, trying to figure out who could possibly be his terrorist allies. Eventually they find a lead, but it seems to be a dead end. America, lost in thought, returns home. Not to the Academy of Law, but to 4 Ridley Scott Estate.
While not an overemotional reunion, it is a happy homecoming for her as she mulls over the questions she has.]
America: He didn’t write this, did he, Robert?
Robert: I’m sorry, miss?
America: Dad was too far gone by then. The degeneration had eaten away his nervous system. He was incapable of using the computer. You wrote it, didn’t you?
Robert: I merely put into words what he wanted to say. I’m sure he would have approved. And for the record, I believe in you too, Miss.
America: Thank you, Robert.
Shellee: Unbeknownst to America and Dredd, however, their investigation was closer than the thought. Two restaurateurs they interrogated had not only worked with, but they’d been in love with her mother!
Tammee: With one being brain damaged and the other having a vocal implant, neither of them triggered the Judge’s lie detectors, so the Judges believed them innocent. Far from it, unfortunately, as America was about to find out.
[A man is shown breaking into America’s mansion, America has him at gunpoint, but Robert, declaring that he would handle the ‘ruffian’, gets between her and the home invader. Robert’s shot, his back exploding, and shrapnel takes America in the temple, knocking her flat.
By the time she’s recovered her bearings, the man is on top of her, raving about his love for her mother, and how her father’s ‘vile seed’ has tainted her forever. He puts a gun to her head, when a burst of song from the taxidermied body of her father (If the viewers haven’t twigged on to the fact that he was very unwell yet, they never will) distracts him. The man guns down her father’s body, and America takes the distraction to bury her boot knife in the seat of his pants. She rolls him off of her and stands as Dredd and several other Judges kick down her door.
Afterwards, she and Dredd exchange words.]
Dredd: The investigation will be handed over to the Anti-Terror unit. I suspect DeLong is no longer heavily involved with Total War, but he can still tell us a lot. You’ll be kept informed, of course. You should have informed the Academy of where you were going, Beeny. That’s a black mark against you.
America: Just didn’t think. Too wrapped up in the case.
Dredd: I’m pleased to say the rest of my evaluation will be entirely positive. I’ll look forward to seeing you on the streets – if that’s what you decide you want.
America: That’s what I want. I have to make it. There’s so much to do.
Dredd: Maybe we do need change. I don’t know. You get so close to it. Just don’t try to do it all too fast. …Your droid’s a write off.
America: Poor Robert. Hard not to think of him as human. He was the last link with my family, as much as it ever was a family. All gone now…
Dredd: [He places a hand on her shoulder.] We’re your family now.
Tammee: And life went on. With Dredd’s recommendation, America was fast-paced through the Academy, sent on an accelerated course that had her taking classes three or four years before it was recommended for her. However, Dredd wasn’t done with her yet.
[America pulls out on her motorcycle, still wearing the uniform of a cadet. There are three Judges waiting for her, as well as a van that looks more like a prisoner transport than anything else. Judge Joseph Dredd, Judge Glasswell, and a Judge named Rico. No last name. a small infographic helpfully informs that he’s another clone of Judge Fargo, sent to Texas City as a baby for part of an exchange program. He moved back to Mega-City One later on and took the name Rico to honor Dredd’s brother.
However, as is swiftly obvious when Dredd and Rico are next to each other, Rico takes after Dredd himself. There’s no trace of Rico Dredd’s humor, self-interest, or sadism, in his expression.]
Dredd: Rico and Glasswell. They’ll be coming along.
America: Charmed, I’m sure.
Glasswell: You catch Rico’s face when you did the charmed bit?
America: I did notice a certain stony glare.
Glasswell: We’re not riding with the Cackle Brothers, that’s for sure. I’d keep the humor to a minimum if you don’t want to get back with demerits coming out your ass. They turned down the Old Man’s motion to repeal the mutant laws. He’s in a real stinker.
Shellee: Mega-City One’s mutant laws, as mentioned earlier, forbade any mutants from living in Mega-City One. Even if they were born there. All mutants were exiled, and those who sneak back in were executed on the spot.
[The trip doesn’t go well. The transport van breaks down on the way to the mutant camp, leading to Dredd to declare the entire line obsolete and marked for immediate replacement. America nods to herself slightly as he mentions that they should be treating the mutants with some semblance of humanity.
As soon as they arrive at Mutant Facility 8, it’s clear why Dredd brought America along. The scene is horrific, like an old concentration camp. And that’s only a teaser. As their tour of the mutant camps continue, they arrest eighteen wardens in one camp, the entire staff of another, twelve and twenty-one wardens sent for ‘mandatory re-edcation’ in a third camp, and one camp condemned as unfit for human habitation.
Finally they reach Mutant Camp 5. It is… paradise. The mutants are educated. Happy. Singing. But ravaged by a nearly incurable disease. At a play, America is instructed to look around by Dredd, and finds another victim of ‘newmonia’. She comforts the victim’s mother as best she can, then, on a hunch, follows the meat wagon taking them to be cremated, and discovers the operation behind it all.]
Tammee: One of the most horrifying crimes in America’s world is known as ‘organ-legging’. Organ leggers find healthy victims and dissect them, taking their healthy organs and supplying them on the black market for people who can’t afford to wait for healthy cloned samples to be grown for them.
Shellee: ‘Camp Sunshine’ was using drugs and make-up to fake their own disease and sell their ‘guests’ for a hefty profit. With Cadet Beeny’s discovery, all that was over.
Dredd: Remember this, Beeny, the next time you start thinking there might be some good in human nature.
America: Yes, sir. I’ll remember.
[The scene shifts. America’s receiving a black helmet, her full-Eagle badge, and her Lawgiver. The date is 2130, she’s fifteen years old. Waiting for her at the steps of the Grand Hall of Justice is a tall, smiling Judge. His badge reads Roake.]
Tammee: With strong recommendations, again, from Dredd, Rico, and Glasswell, Judge Beeny graduated from the Academy of Law after only eleven years. She was one of the youngest graduates ever.
Shellee: The Chief Judge assigned one Judge Roake to be her partner for the first two years of her career. Normally, this wouldn’t be the case, but with her being barely older than some of the Legionnaires when they started, the feeling was that other Judges might resent having to treat someone so young as an equal.
[And they were right. Several scenes play, with America being forced to assert her authority many times throughout her early career.]
Tammee: One wonders just how much of America’s struggles with her teammates in the Legion have been due to this kind of attitude from her fellow Judges.
[She and Roake worked well together, taking on gangs, assassins, drug dealers, jaywalkers, muggers, and child genius serial killers. They work together, eat together, fight together, and he advises her, working to temper her drive and keep her from overreaching herself. Over time, she grows harder, steelier, and some of that youthful amusement leaves her entirely.
When they’re on the streets, they try to solve things non-violently, or take people prisoner, but whenever one or the other is threatened, the gloves come off. A pair of kill counters appear in the lower-left of the screen, marking each perp America guns down. People who raise weapons to her, who raise weapons to Roake, who threatens a citizen, many of them are shot, stabbed, or knocked senseless. Compared to Roake’s, America takes in many more people alive and intact, but by the end of their first year together she’s still marked as being responsible for the deaths of hundreds.
What goes uncounted, however, are the lives they saved. As often as they show Beeny gunning down criminals in cold blood, she’s seen delivering babies, diving into fires to rescue citizens, disarming hostage situations, ordering restaurants to open their doors to the homeless during storms, savagely beating abusers, breaking down sweat shops… Sometimes all in the course of a single day.]
Tammee: What we’re watching is not sped up. These aren’t highlights. There are no long periods of downtime for a Judge. The worst day in a Legionnaire’s life was simply another Tuesday for Judges Beeny and Roake. They move from a crime to a disaster almost immediately, as soon as it’s called in. And, as a Judge, America saw the worst humanity had to offer.
[Riots. Sexual assaults. Drug dens. A tree with skeletons too small to be those of adults hanging in it. Roake and Beeny capture a slaver after chasing him to three different worlds in the solar system, and when questioned as to why he bought so many slaves from so many planets, his only response is ‘fertilizer’. Through it all, America’s expression only grows harder, and exposure to the depths of depravity people sink to only make her response to others more vicious.
Her actions aren’t limited to the people, either. Twice, she’s shown running into corrupt Judges. One beating a witness for testimony. The other collecting money for protection. One ends up dead at her hands, the other ends up on a trip to Titan.]
Shellee: Eventually, Dredd managed to push reforms to the mutant laws through, enabling all mutants to become legal citizens of Mega-City One. However, this proved unpopular with many of the more… conservative Judges, and the Chief Judge was eventually replaced by someone more willing to take a hardline stance against the ‘muties’.
Tammee: The mutants were allowed to stay in the city… But only if they agreed to a mandatory sterilization process so that they couldn’t spread their genes throughout the ‘norm’ population. Dredd was unofficially exiled, forced out of the Mega-City to set up mutant townships so that they could continue to live in relative comfort.
Shellee: In a direct snub to Dredd, Judge Beeny was sent to be his deputy, with Roake declining to join them out in the Cursed Earth. She was thought of as his protégé, and so they punished him through her.
Tammee: As reinforcements, they were sent the dregs of the department. Insubordinate. Borderline incompetent. Clumsy. And a painkiller addict. And, in a further insult to Dredd, Judge Rico was sent to join him as well.
Shellee: When the first muties arrive, the townships still aren’t built yet. With a lack of Judges around, America took the responsibility of falling back on the old trial-by-jury system. After an incident with giant spiders-ew-out in the Cursed Earth, the Judges were down one member and denied reinforcements. And America had her hands full with the two that remained. While Dredd struggled and went on needless Cursed Earth excursions to satisfy his own need for action, America ran everything.
[ Her decisions weren’t the most popular, but they were fair. Eventually, she finds herself standing watch over Munn, broken after psychic torture from a mutant, and covering his work load without complaint. She’s handling the job of three men, plus her own. She teaches the citizens the law, arms the militias and the deputies, trains them, oversees what buildings go where… utterly buries herself in admin work.
Meanwhile, the townships continue to grow and evolve. They’re proper homes and cities now. A little rustic, perhaps, but it’s functional. Reinforcements come in, resentful of her at first, but she swiftly earns their respect. Even the pillhead from earlier, Ramone, is addressing her as ‘Ami’ rather than spitting her name in disgust. Finally, her kill counter slows to a trickle, only two executions not connected to a jury trial over the course of a year. Twelve executions decided by the community and carried out by her. Roake’s numbers continue to climb, however.]
Tammee: Finally, after a year, Dredd found a way to send her home. Roake and Beeny, the dream team, are formed again, and almost immediately get wrapped up in their work. They uncover the most famous serial killer in Mega-City One posing as the Mayor, break apart an art forgery deal, chase people with overdue library books through the Cursed Earth… No crime is too big or too small for them.
Shellee: If Roake were here, America would undoubtedly be in a better standing. Unfortunately, all partnerships end sometime.
Tammee: When a brain-damaged Psi-Cadet predicts disaster, Dredd, having returned from his exile to the Cursed Earth mutant townships, assigns her and Roake to interpret her visions.
Shellee: Meanwhile, wanting revenge for their defeat in the Apocalypse War they caused, the remnants of Sov-City 1 arrange for a plague to be released into Mega-City One.
Shellee: A crucial clue, something that would have saved everyone had Beeny and Roake simply caught onto it…. “You have something for me while I’m waiting” was the note they got from the precognitive cadet. It should have read “You have something for me, Wile. I’m waiting.”
Tammee: Roake and Beeny did their best, but they were betrayed from within. A Judge named Wile was actually a Soviet sleeper agent who not only impeded their efforts to investigate, but assassinated several core members of their defense, including the Psi-Cadet.
Shellee: In the chaos that followed, the plague, the Chaos bug, made its way into the city. A terrorist group, at the same time, started poisoning the City Blocks, where up to a hundred and fifty thousand people lived. P.J. Maybe, the serial killer America had put away less than a year before, managed to escape by hypnotizing his guards. And Roake…
[Roake is gunned down by a Sov sleeper agent. When America arrives on the scene, heartbreak flashes across her face, and then it’s replaced by the same steel mask she wears every day on the streets, assisting the other Judges at the scene in their investigation. As if this was just another day.]
Shellee: If you’re watching, America, we’re sorry. Losing a partner of six years couldn’t have been easy.
Tammee: But there was no time for mourning. With the death of Judge Roake, the Sovs stepped up their plans. They bombed the Statue of Judgement, where the Judges had hidden their public surveillance unit. Terrorists instigated riots. City block rivalries came to a head and block wars spread across the cities. The Academy of Justice was destroyed by rocket attacks, killing thousands of Judge Cadets.
Shellee: The Chaos Bug, which enhanced everyone’s aggression, spread throughout the city. And when doctored images of the Judges burying victims in mass graves outside the city were shared, Mega-City One finally turned on its protectors. Four hundred million people against less than a hundred thousand Judges.
[What follows is a bloodbath. Some citizens are innocent, and Beeny’s shown doing her best to protect them. Others, however, wage an all out war against her. Beeny’s kill counter skyrockets, reaching the quintuple-digit range, over the course of three days as all the rules are lifted. Through it all, her condition and control steadily deteriorates.]
Tammee: To make things worse, the Dark Judges were freed by Sov agents. Genocidal, eldritch beings from a Deadworld, they decreed that since all crime was committed by the living, life itself should be a crime. They had taken over the city before, and unleashing them onto Mega-City One was a death stroke… Or it would have been had they not simply vanished. Beeny was lucky to survive her encounter with them.
[At one point, Beeny simply snaps, striking a citizen for lying to her. She attempts to hand in her badge, to place herself under arrest, and it’s refused simply because the numbers can’t be spared.
Later, as the carnage slows down, the scene finds her standing on the very edge of a ledge high above the streets, watching the stars. She wavers for a moment, but a new scream catches her attention and she steps back, turning to investigate whatever it is this time.
The scene shifts. She’s organizing people, trading food for labor, getting them to clear bodies out of the hab-blocks or clear out rubble..]
Shellee: By the time the Day of Chaos was over, Mega-City One was decimated. Three hundred and fifty million people were dead. The Chaos Bug had a 95% fatality rate, and then there was those killed in the riots.
Tammee: Of the Judge Cadets, only six hundred survived. Of the adult Judges, only a few thousand. The robotic population of Mega-City One was put to work rebuilding, but its people were needed to clear out the dead so that the living would have somewhere to live. And even then, there was still crime.
[America, on her own, taking on entire gangs. Uncovering smuggling rings that stole food from other people’s mouths to feed the rich. Taking out chump dumpers, gangs that took money to take people into space on one-way trips, then voided them all and raided the bodies for valuables. Destroying drug dealers that would have preyed on the horror of the people to push forth their ‘goods’.
A scene has her rolling up on a stoning. She barks an order to cease, and they split up. She catches one in the knee with a gunshot, another in the back, but holds back from chasing the rest to check on the victim, pulling back his hood to reveal heavy cybernetic modification. A Titan job. She scowls, then goes to her bike.]
America: Control, Beeny. what do we have on a Thomas Boyce? Ex-Judge. Looks to have had a Titan conversion.
Control Judge: Definite on that. Arresting Judge was Judge Dredd. Dereliction of Duty in , sentenced to twenty years hard labor on Titan. Just so you know, there’s no backup available in a twenty-minute radius. If he’s giving you trouble, I’d suggest execution and move on.
[A pause on America’s side.]
America Dereliction how?
Control: He, ah. Watched three males sexually assault one… Citizen Bennett Beeny. Allowed them to take turns before arresting them. Suspected to be the reason Beeny agreed to bomb the Arnies.
[America turns to watch Boyce for a moment, jaw clamped.]
Control: Judge Beeny?
America: That will be all, thank you.
[She approaches Boyce, then stares down at him, fists planted on her hips.]
America: …Neil Patrick Harris block is three miles that way. They’re passing out food and medicine there. Pick up your attackers and drop them off at the med tent, then get in line to work. You already screwed up your life and paid the price. Don’t make another mistake that will cost you your life.
[And, with a sour look, she swings back onto her bike and leaves. Boyce is quite for a moment, then spits off to his side and moves to collect the two wailing criminals, marching off in the direction America indicated. The screen abruptly snaps back to a smiling Tammee]
Tammee: Finally, the mutant laws were repealed, for good, allowing mutants to come in, become citizens, and help the Meg rebuild.
Shellee: But there would be no rest for America Beeny. She continued to work for twenty-three hours a day, stopping only for fifteen minutes in the sleep machines, for the next year, as if she could bury the horror of what happened with her job.
[She doesn’t look great. Fortunately, Dredd manages her to talk her into a vacation day, where she just… sits. And stares at a wall. For hours.
But when she stands up again, she seems… better off, somehow. She actually takes a shower. Changes out her gear for something more in repair. Polishes her boots. And when she’s back on duty, it’s almost like old times.
Except she keeps starting to say something off to her right, where Roake always walked.]
Tammee: Despite the horrors she’d seen, America never forgot why she became a Judge. Even when it cost her points with her superiors.
Shellee: The Child of the Revolution could never forget what she had to do. She just had to figure out how to do it. And then, in 2137, she assisted Dredd in the investigation of a member of the Council of Five. After that…
[Five Judges are gathered, speaking. A Judge-Tutor, a member of the SJS, a cyborg, a woman wearing the Chief Judge’s regalia, and a portly man with a moustache.]
Chief Judge Barbara Hershey: Before we start this morning, I’d like you all to welcome Judge America Beeny -- the youngest ever member of this council and, I’m reliably informed, a woman of strong opinion.
America: Thank you. As I’m here, and for the moment have your indulgence… [She lifts a sheaf of papers.] …I’d just like to raise a few issues.
[A skyborne shot of Mega-City one. Slowly, one by one, the lights are turning back on.]
Tammee: Twenty-two years old. The Council of Five.
Shellee: For those who don’t realize the significance, that’s like one of our own Legionnaires being elected to the President’s cabinet.
Tammee: In one day, America was given the authority to not just enforce policy, but make it. No longer was she a mere Judge, now she was a leader of their military, a lawmaker, and one of the most important representatives their city could have.
Shellee: Change is slow. It always is. But under America Beeny’s guidance, with a steadily growing population, perhaps the Judges can finally change for the better.
[America's kill count is frozen, and highlighted. Almost forty thousand dead, by her hand alone. And then another counter is shown, with numbers rapidly rising. 'Lives saved'... in the tens of millions. There's no attempt to place them on a scale. Simply highlighting the answers. The numbers fade, and the sun rises over the Mega-City slowly.]
Tammee: Mega-City One, 2138 AD.
Shellee: This vast urban hell on the east coast of post-apocalyptic North America is home to over 72 million citizens.
Tammee: Unemployment is near-total, boredom universal, and crime is rampant.
Shellee: Tensions run a constant knife-edge, and stemming the chaos are the Judges, empowered to dispense instant justice.
Tammee: And here on the Legion, we have Judge Beeny -- she is the Law!
Shellee: She’s Tammee Tim!
Tammee: And she’s Shellee Star!
Both: And we are Legionnaire Legacies! Until next time!
Shellee: I'm Shellee Star! [That would be the pink one.]
Tammee: And I'm Tammee Tim! [That would be the blue one.]
Shellee: Welcome most popular deep investigation show on the air: Legionnaire Legacies!
Tammee: We would like to warn users that today’s footage is highly disturbing. There will be blood, gore, violence towards children, regular violence, applied violence, nudity, scenes of torture, war, disease, hunger, murder, and more. It’s recommended that children only view this through the Uncle Plorb’s Peacetime Safety Filter.
Shellee: The time: 22nd Century. The place: Mega-City One!
Tammee: City of mile-high skyscrapers and pleasure domes! City of robots and sleep machines, face-change parlors and Futsies! City of dreams...
Shellee: ...And nightmares. Do not go out at night.
Tammee: Danger lurks around every corner. Crime runs riot. Aliens and mutants prowl the streets. And worse… MUCH worse.
Shellee: A special breed of evil that demands a special breed of law enforcer. Here, there are no police, no trials, no juries... Only the Judges.
Tammee: Vested with the power of instant sentence. A Judge’s court is the streets of Mega-City One. A Judge’s word is the Law!
Shellee: Their duty: to seek out lawbreakers wherever they may be found. To administer instant justice without favor. Without mercy.
Tammee: This is the world of Judge Beeny!
Tammee: But first, we should explain how such an insane system was put into place.
Shellee: It all starts with one man. Eustace Fargo, the Father of Justice. A brilliant young man with a bright future, he worked his way up the ranks of the government, being appointed the Government Special Prosecutor for Street Crime by the President of the United States of America in 2027.
[Footage now. Fargo addresses Congress, in a packed hall filled with cameras.]
Fargo: Our police are beleaguered! Out courts are a laughing stock! Our streets have become No-go areas! I am reminded of the words: ‘All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. I promise you, I will not rest until I have reclaimed this nation for the people!
[A long distance shot of the White House. A protest march parades outside. They stop, lower their signs. From somewhere in their midst, rocket propelled grenades scream out, and suddenly the protestors, armed with military grade hardware, home-made guns, swords, explosives, everything you could ask for, charge across the lawn, laying siege to the President’s home.]
Tammee: With this violence, perpetrated by a normal street gang, the President only managed to escape thanks to a daring helicopter rescue from the top of the white house. On Fargo’s command, hundreds of gang members were arrested.
Shellee: But through intimidation, blackmail, and outright murder of the jurors, not a single conviction was upheld and every last one of the criminals walked free. Even the ones caught on camera.
[A flash back to congress. Fargo stands at the front again, practically vibrating with indignation and rage. It might be a familiar look. The twist to his lip, the way he snarls… He’s identical in every way to Rico Dredd.]
Fargo: The law has failed us! Trials take years to reach the courts - and when they do is there a jury in this land that dares to convict? Our proud nation is being destroyed by the very principles we once held so dear! If our juries are too frightened to act - if our courts are powerless - we must find another way! It is time to take the judges out of the courts and put them onto the streets! We must choose good men and women trained to administer retribution and without delay. We must arm them with the power to dispense instant justice!
Senator A: Abandon due process? NEVER!
Senator B: It’s unconstitutional! A step too far!
Senator C: We won’t approve it, Fargo!
Tammee: Their constituents didn’t agree. In the election of 2028, not only was President Gurney voted back in, but all of the senators who had worked against him were voted out of office. With the President’s backing, Fargo’s vision came true.
Shellee: It would take two more years for them to strip away the last protections in their Constitution, to be replaced by a strict new Judicial Code. Fargo worked ceaselessly to find men and women capable of fulfilling his demands, of creating a new breed of law enforcement. Soon, there would be schools, Academies of Law, where children as young as five years old were selected to for education.
Tammee: Within three years, the gang that had assaulted the White House was dead, to a man. Executed by the Judges. The citizens, weary of their country looking more like the worst parts of Rimbor than the America of their dreams, welcomed it. New prisons, Iso-Blocks capable of holding hundreds of thousands of prisoners at once, were constructed, but due to the rise of automation and construction robots, prices went down and taxes stayed low. The citizens enjoyed that, too.
Shellee: Fargo only managed to keep things under control through his iron will and his own reputation for being harder on himself than anyone else. The single time he broke one of his rules, for falling to temptation and sleeping with an acquaintance, he resigned from his position of Chief Judge…
[The man, looking older now than Rico ever will, slumps in his chair, staring at the gun in front of him. The screen goes black, but the gunshot still sounds.]
Tammee: …And committed suicide. The crime was lust. The sentence was death.
Shellee: In time, the three great Mega-Cities of America, were given autonomy. Virtual self-government. Mega-City One, reaching from New York to Florida. Mega-City Two, covering the entire West Coast. And Mega-City Three, soon to secede and dub itself Texas City, taking many of the southern states with it.
Tammee: Soon after, the Judges would unveil their first clones. Unlike our world, cloning is totally legal in Mega-City One. In fact, by America’s time, a full third of the Judges available are clones. The first two being Arbitrator and his brother. Rico and Joseph Dredd. But this isn’t their story.
Shellee: And, in 2068, Robert L. Booth was elected President. He immediately seized oil fields across the world, ordering the extermination of anyone who resisted. When other countries objected…
President Booth: Attention! This is an urgent public announcement by Robert L. Booth, President of the United States! My friends - My fellow Americans - we stand on the brink of eternity! Foreign elements are at work in every corner of the globe, conspiring to do us down an' to undermine our position as the richest, greediest nation on Earth. I have issued an ultimatum to world leaders - get off our backs an' start playin' ball or face annihilation! That ultimatum has now expired! I have in my hand the button that will launch the greatest nuclear holocaust in history! Let the world know they won't have President Robert L. Booth an' the good old U.S. of A. to kick around anymore! An' as Americans, it is only fitting that you should have a ringside seat for the holocaust. So I would like to share this moment with you. Didn't sound like much, but believe me, folks, those nukes are flyin'! The first missiles are speeding towards their targets. The war to end all wars has begun. My fellow Americans, when it is over we will be raising the Stars and Stripes over the entire globe. We didn't want this war - we didn't ask for it - but as sure as God is my judge, we will finish it!
Tammee: This was the beginning of the Atom War. When it was over, the world’s population would be halved. Of nearly eleven billion people, only six billion survived. And many of those would be horribly twisted and warped by the radiation.
[Mutants. The screen flashes to Judges in action, wearing old-style uniforms. There are grown men and women on the streets… And some children in uniform, as young as ten years old. Pressed into it by sheer need for numbers.]
Shellee: In the chaos that followed, the Judges were hard-pressed to do all they could. What’s worse is that America’s own military turned against its people, raping and pillaging like any common criminal. The Judges, horrified by the actions the President had taken, spoke out.
[A hard-faced man behind a podium, identified as Chief Judge Solomon, gives a speech.]
Chief Judge Solomon: We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people – it is their duty - to throw off such government. I quote these words from the Declaration signed nearly three hundred years ago. Today America, the nation our forefathers fought and died for, lies in ruins - destroyed by the criminal machinations of one man - President Robert L. Booth! I have issued President Booth with an ultimatum - that he resign and surrender immediately for trial! In the meantime, I declare his tenure to be at an end! Until further notice – and with your consent – the Governance of Mega-City One will be assumed by Justice Department!
[A call to civil war. The President refuses to budge. The military is shown gunning down protestors in front of the White House. Mass battlefields, with Judges, the Booth Loyalists, and the militias loyal to the Judges, battling it out for supremacy. Eventually, after countless dead, Booth is caught and arrested… And sentenced to a hundred years of suspended animation so that future generations may decide a more appropriate punishment for the final President.
Meanwhile, Mega-City One grows. By the 2080s, it has a population of 800 million. The Judges consolidate their power, near tyrannical now. Comic books are outlawed. Soap operas are outlawed. Addictive substances like caffeine and sugar are outlawed. Crimes like littering are treated as grave offenses. Owning a gun without a license is an offense that sends people to the cubes for years at a time. The citizens are given homes in massive blocks, everyone is given welfare checks. Unemployment skyrockets as robots start to take over jobs, with numbers displaying at 95% unemployment. ]
Tammee: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, but the Judges treat everyone equally. More than one financial empire falls because the rich believe they can buy off the Judges. And those who do allow themselves to be bought receive unpleasant visits from a special kind of Judge.
Shellee: For a Judge who breaks the law, there is only one punishment. Twenty years of hard labor on Titan, the moon of Saturn. Unlike in our time, Titan has not yet been terraformed, meaning that those Judges who get caught must undergo horrific alterations in order to survive.
[And through it all, life goes on. Slowly, the focus of the camera turns to a class in Friedrich Nietzsche Block, with two teenagers.]
Tammee: Bennett Beeny and America Jara. A singing comedian and a political activist. Bennett became a comedy music star and a crooner, earning millions. America, however, was a political activist.
Shellee: America Jara and America Beeny. They look so much alike, don’t they? Nearly identical. Unfortunately, Democracy is a dirty word in Mega-City One. Associated with terrorists who think that the people deserve to rule themselves. Perhaps if more people felt that way, the city would be better off. But so many citizens are happy as long as their needs are met and don’t care about anything more.
[As the two hosts talk, half of Mega-City one simply vanishes in yet another nuclear holocaust. It’s 2104, the Apocalypse War. More horrors follow. Zombie invasions. Gang uprisings. Alien attacks. Extradimensional warlords.
Speaking of Democracy, there’s a vote. Less than thirty percent of the citizens even bother. The rest are too lazy, or too disinterested, to care. Thanks to those who do, however, the Judges win. Overwhelmingly so. Democracy had its voice, and the people didn’t care.]
Tammee: Over time, young America would get more and more involved with the fringes of the Democratic movement. And soon, she would help form an organization dedicated to bringing Democracy back to the people.
[America Jara walks through the streets. She crosses paths with a Judge, averting her eyes. He smiles. Then cries out as two men jump at him, pinning his arms. With a swipe of her hand, and the concealed razor blade, she slashes the Judge’s throat open and the men let the bleeding body hit the floor, ignoring its gurgles. She reaches into her purse, shakes a can of spraypaint, and tags over the body. ‘Total War’.]
Shellee: America would end up assisting in the murder of three more Judges, unfortunately crossing paths with Bennett on the fourth one.
[More footage. America gunning down a Judge with a small squad of men. She turns to Bennett, warning him, but one of her new friends has a different idea. He shoots Bennett in the throat with a hand-held shotgun.
Bennett’s shown being questioned by a Judge, still in the hospital. He uses a computer to answer, insisting that he doesn’t remember anything. The Judge stands, and his badge reads ‘DREDD’. There’s none of Rico’s casual demeanor, his happy little cruelties, in the man’s demeanor. Dredd is solid. Serious. His frown is practically chiseled out of granite. Even from this brief appearance, it’s obvious that the two couldn’t be less alike.]
Tammee: Joe Dredd. Not his brother, the Legionnaire.
[Weeks later, at Bennett’s mansion, there’s a knock on the door. Bennett’s robot butler answers, and it’s a smiling America Jara, with flowers.]
Shellee: America Jara came to tell him her side of the story. Her hatred of the Judges, her suspicion that they sabotaged a peaceful protest years ago, killed her boyfriend, and then her claims that they faked a mutation in her unborn child to force an abortion. Mutants, remember, are not legal in Mega-City One. The Judges want to keep their people… pure.
Tammee: That said, the test results were real. The Judges are monsters, but America Jara was always small change for them. But that was before she murdered four Judges.
Shellee: She seduced Bennett Beeny, finally giving him the love he’d craved from her for all those years. And then… She asked for money.
Tammee: America had come to him hoping to get funds for her next terrorist attack. Total War was going to blow up the Statue of Liberty, and they needed all the credits they could get if they were going to afford enough explosives. And then, the day of the attack. Be warned, the following footage is extremely violent.
[And it is. It starts slow. And then the Judges spring their trap. And it ends in tragedy as planned.]
Shellee: And with that, America Jara was gone. But her body would continue living. The Judge who shot her received a verbal reprimand, and that was the end of it as far as they were concerned.
Tammee: She received horrific brain damage, beyond the ability of their primitive medical technologies to correct. Unable to let go, Bennett Beeny kept America on life support for months. And then, finally accepting that she would never improve…
Shellee: He impregnated her. And transplanted his brain into her body.
Tammee: And so, with one of the most disgusting violations I think I’ve ever witnessed, America Beeny was brought into the world. Because of her father’s medications, she was born with no immune system and had to spend most of her life in a bubble.
Shellee: Fortunately, when she got out, she lived a bright, happy life. For all of his many flaws, Bennett Beeny did love his daughter. And, in the end, America Jara got her revenge.
Tammee: She rejected him a final time, with her body breaking down in its refusal to accept his brain.
[Footage of Bennett Beeny, in America Jara’s body. His speech is slurring, his motor control is weak and sloppy. He can’t walk without assistance from either a cane or his butler.]
Shellee: In time, America’s old terrorist cell came for Bennett. They talked him into agreeing to carry out a terrorist plot at the Academy Awards, known fondly as the Arnies, for Arnold Schwarzenegger, the greatest classical film actor in Mega-City One’s history. Bennett was nominated for his music, and the plot would require him to become a suicide bomber. With his failing health, and a new reason to hate the Judges, Bennett agreed.
Tammee: Unbeknownst to him, however, the Judges kept a watch on his associations.
[The gate to the property opens, unprompted, and a Judge strides in, moving like he owns the place. Once again, it’s Dredd, marked as J. Dredd by the graphical overlays. America, now a five year old girl carrying a lizard easily half as tall as she is, greets him.]
America Beeny: I’m teaching my lizard to sing. Do you want to hear him?
Judge Dredd: I’ll take a rain check.
America: My dad says you’re bad. You hurt people.
Dredd: Sometimes it’s necessary.
America: Judges killed my mommy.
Dredd: She broke the law. That’s what happens.
Mrs. Wilson, America’s caretaker: America, come away…
[A scene shift to the Statue of Liberty… What’s left of it Only the base and the torch remain, someone’s finally managed to destroy it. Bennett lays down roses at the torch and sits there for a moment before America comes from behind to embrace him.]
America: Did Mommy blow up the statue?
Bennett: No. That was someone else. But she tried. Your mother was very brave. And you’re going to… have to be very brave too, my darling.
America: Are you going to die, daddy?
Bennett: Yes, darling.
America: I don’t want you to die.
Bennett: I don’t want to either. Sometimes these things happen.
America: I’ll be all on my own. Who’ll look after me?
Bennett: Mrs. Wilson – and Robert. Don’t worry, they’ll take good care of you. You’ll have everything you could want.
America: I want you.
Bennett: I’ll be there. Up in heaven, with your mommy. We’ll always be watching over you.
[The scene fades.]
Tammee: Soon after, Bennett tried to back out of Total War’s plot, but they’d kidnapped America both to act as leverage and to raise as a figurehead for the Democratic movement after he died. Fortunately, the Judges saved her and Bennett survived the shooting at the Arnies that followed his refusal to carry through with the bombing. But his time was limited, and he was rapidly deteriorating. He had to make a choice. Rather than prolong the suffering, he went to one of the city’s many Euthanasiums.
[A blinding light clicks on. When the image refocuses, a Judge is standing over a bed.]
Judge: America Beeny. Come with me.
[America sits up, rubs at her eyes, and follows without question. Her head has been shaved, and she’s wearing pajamas with a patch on her shoulder reading ‘Cadet Beeny’. She’s lead to a brilliantly lit office, where she stands at parade rest. Or as best as a five year old can manage.]
Judge-Tutor: I’m sorry to inform you that your father was quietly put to rest last night. [He pauses as her face crumples, and the other Judge places a hand on her shoulder.] Be brave, child. He wanted you to have this letter. I see no reason why we should keep it from you. You have a big future here with us, America. Your father did the best thing, even if for the wrong reasons. Work hard. Apply yourself. Make him proud of you.
America: Y-yes, sir. I will.
Judge-Tutor: Give her an hour for grieving. Then best if she joins the other cadets.
[The next flash has her standing in formation with hundreds of other cadets. All of them about five years old.]
Tammee: The Academy of Law. The hardest school on Earth.
Shellee: Even Khundia doesn’t measure up.
Tammee: Fifteen years of grueling lessons, designed to turn each person who passes through its doors into someone worthy of dispensing instant justice.
Shellee: Five out of seven candidates never make it to graduation. Some are dismissed as unfit, while others are maimed, or worse, during training.
[A scene of a Judge-Tutor lining up the cadets and holding up a stuffed bunny. He’s snarling, and one of the cadets looks near tears. Another scene of two cadets beating a third. A Judge-Tutor drops his hand on each of their shoulders, ending their careers. The cadet on the floor is crying, and is therefore also dismissed. A scene of cadets in a combat class, nine or ten years old, all practicing with batons. One of them lunges and catches the other in the throat, crushing it. And, finally, a group of teenagers roaming the Cursed Earth, the nuclear wasteland that was once America's heartland. The ground shivers, and then they're set upon by a swarm of mutants riding tarantulas the size of an Abrams tank. Only one makes it out alive.]
Tammee: The years America Beeny spent in the Academy were hard years. Formative years. They learned the Law above all else, learning that they weren’t to be allowed the ‘luxuries’ of family, love, or anything like that.
Shellee: For a Judge, to love is to distract from your duty. Possession of property beyond Justice Department issue, is a sign of attachment. There’s no pay. No vacations. No retirement plan.
Tammee: When a Judge has lived out their useful years, most of them take one of two choices. Either to become a Judge-Tutor at the Academy of Law, or take the Long Walk beyond the bounds of Mega-City One, striding forth into the wilderness to bring Law to the Lawless… until death.
Shellee: For ten years America worked to become one of these elite machines.
[A collection of scenes. America’s alone, shunned by most for her father’s Democratic leanings. But, despite her surroundings, she’s still friendly, outgoing. Slowly, she gathers cadets around herself, her charisma acting as a magnet, until she’s practically the leader of the class. When Total War, her mother’s organization, sets off nuclear explosives in the city, no one so much as blinks at her. Here, she’s beyond reproach.
Her teachers, however, don’t have it so easy. She’s constantly questioning them in classes. Never to the point of insubordination, but it’s clear that she has a rebellious streak, that, as perfect as some of them find her, she’ll never be one of their types. Worse, at least from their perspective, the other cadets are following her example, looking at the flaws they perceive in the Justice Department’s methods and their relationships with the citizens.]
Shellee: She learned to fight harder than the next five men. Shoot better than the next twenty. Psychology, history, sociology, forensics science, she excelled at them all. But her specialty was interrogation.
[Many scenes of her as a cadet, sweating down other cadets in practice runs. Then citizens. She’s cool, calm, collected. It’s eerie to listen to a young girl slice apart an alibi with almost no emotional inflection, or to order more chemicals pumped into her subject in order to induce honesty.
The reactions of the citizens are telling. They’re terrified. Even of a cadet. And she uses that terror to strip away the lies until they tell her what she wants to know. That their parents have been dealing drugs. That their boyfriend stole the pay register from his last job. That the slidewalk accident that resulted in the deaths of dozens three years ago was because they’d spat their gum out and hadn’t picked it up.
She rarely raises her voice, and never applies physical violence. That’s illegal
Not that she’s immune to such treatments. Despite it being illegal, the Judges must be trained to resist torture. And they bring in experts for that. Thankfully, nothing is shown except the closed door, but her shrieks are played unedited. When the door opens, she’s carried out by a pair of other cadets, while a stone-faced Judge walks out, cleaning his gloves, and confers with the tutors.]
Tammee: In the tenth year of her schooling, at the age of 15, Cadet Beeny was expected to carry out an investigation on her own, with assistance from one Judge and none of her tutors.
Shellee: She chose a subject near and dear to her heart. But first, she’d have to call in the man in charge of that situation, Arbitrator’s brother. Judge Dredd.
[The scene plays out. America begins with an introduction that swiftly breaks down into an accusation. and she lays down the same arguments to Mega-City One’s Top Cop that she does to her tutors. And, finally, she gets to the point.]
Shellee: Undoubtedly some Legionnaires will be pleased to find out that they’re not the only ones to get that treatment from her.
Tammee: America had taken a huge risk in choosing Dredd as her co-investigator. He didn’t like her to start and a word from him could shatter her career before it even began.
Dredd: The streets aren’t a city simulation. The people are real. The judgements you make could mean the difference between life and death – theirs or yours. If we see a crime, we can’t ignore it. It may be dangerous. Stay alert. Look to your own safety at all times.
America: Yes, sir.
[But it was paperwork first. Once they got to the Grand Hall of Justice, America brought in pile upon pile of papers from the archives. Dredd, upon seeing the stacks, looks like he’d rather lick a leper.
America: Phone records from Portnoy’s place in Canadia.
Dredd They already went through these.
America: And they got it wrong. Let’s get it right.
[Several hours pass, thankfully in time lapse. Finally, Dredd stands, stiffly. He’s nearly sixty, not a young man.]
Dredd: Getting stiff. Let’s take an hour on the streets, show you what real Judging’s about.
America: I’d prefer it if we just kept at it. If you don’t mind, sir.
[Dredd’s frown deepens to the point where it threatens to sever his chin. But he sits back down. After this, the scene transitions to the mess hall. The food they’re eating is nearly unrecognizable, it’s slop. Some of it looks like it could have been a leafy green vegetable at some point in its past.]
Dredd: Why me, Beeny?
America: Sorry?
Dredd: The way you see it, I killed your mother. Why choose me?
America: If you come down to it, yes, you did kill her. You could have stopped it earlier, before anyone got hurt. But you wanted to make an example. But then if I was going to blame anyone, I’d have to blame the whole department. It’s the way we work. It’s the way we are. Our whole culture is wrong.
Dredd: And you’re going to change that?
America: Yes. I am. I told you once you were bad. I don’t think that anymore. You’re not bad, you’re just what the System made you. As far as this case goes, you have an intimate knowledge. You’re a first-rate investigator and it’ll irk you that the original investigation never got at the truth. So I believe you can help me. I really want to know the answers.
Dredd: Fair enough.
Tammee: Soon after, the investigation finally took them to the streets, where the dynamic duo discovered a drug deal gone sour.
[America is seen holding her hands over a victim’s bleeding gunshot wounds. One of the perps, lying on the ground, reaches for his shotgun, only for her to shoot it away with him and go back to trying to stop the bleeding. By the time Dredd returns with two others in tow, the medics have already arrived.]
Med-Judge: This one’s gone. Nice try, cadet.
Dredd: Drug feud. Two less of the scum to worry about. Isn’t that right, Enrique?
Enrique: Shut your stinkin’ mouth!
[On the ride home, Dredd jabs at America.]
Dredd: Don’t tell me – I was too hard on those dirtwads. They’re victims of an uncaring society. All they needed was a little understanding.
America: Won’t get any from me. They’re peddlers of poison. They ruin people’s lives. They got what they deserved.
Dredd: Hmmph.
America: Get some sleep. I need you sharp in the morning.
Dredd: Crime doesn’t have a bedtime. I’ll grab ten in the machine if I need it.
[The investigation continues for days. They pour over a dead man’s personal life, trying to figure out who could possibly be his terrorist allies. Eventually they find a lead, but it seems to be a dead end. America, lost in thought, returns home. Not to the Academy of Law, but to 4 Ridley Scott Estate.
While not an overemotional reunion, it is a happy homecoming for her as she mulls over the questions she has.]
America: He didn’t write this, did he, Robert?
Robert: I’m sorry, miss?
America: Dad was too far gone by then. The degeneration had eaten away his nervous system. He was incapable of using the computer. You wrote it, didn’t you?
Robert: I merely put into words what he wanted to say. I’m sure he would have approved. And for the record, I believe in you too, Miss.
America: Thank you, Robert.
Shellee: Unbeknownst to America and Dredd, however, their investigation was closer than the thought. Two restaurateurs they interrogated had not only worked with, but they’d been in love with her mother!
Tammee: With one being brain damaged and the other having a vocal implant, neither of them triggered the Judge’s lie detectors, so the Judges believed them innocent. Far from it, unfortunately, as America was about to find out.
[A man is shown breaking into America’s mansion, America has him at gunpoint, but Robert, declaring that he would handle the ‘ruffian’, gets between her and the home invader. Robert’s shot, his back exploding, and shrapnel takes America in the temple, knocking her flat.
By the time she’s recovered her bearings, the man is on top of her, raving about his love for her mother, and how her father’s ‘vile seed’ has tainted her forever. He puts a gun to her head, when a burst of song from the taxidermied body of her father (If the viewers haven’t twigged on to the fact that he was very unwell yet, they never will) distracts him. The man guns down her father’s body, and America takes the distraction to bury her boot knife in the seat of his pants. She rolls him off of her and stands as Dredd and several other Judges kick down her door.
Afterwards, she and Dredd exchange words.]
Dredd: The investigation will be handed over to the Anti-Terror unit. I suspect DeLong is no longer heavily involved with Total War, but he can still tell us a lot. You’ll be kept informed, of course. You should have informed the Academy of where you were going, Beeny. That’s a black mark against you.
America: Just didn’t think. Too wrapped up in the case.
Dredd: I’m pleased to say the rest of my evaluation will be entirely positive. I’ll look forward to seeing you on the streets – if that’s what you decide you want.
America: That’s what I want. I have to make it. There’s so much to do.
Dredd: Maybe we do need change. I don’t know. You get so close to it. Just don’t try to do it all too fast. …Your droid’s a write off.
America: Poor Robert. Hard not to think of him as human. He was the last link with my family, as much as it ever was a family. All gone now…
Dredd: [He places a hand on her shoulder.] We’re your family now.
Tammee: And life went on. With Dredd’s recommendation, America was fast-paced through the Academy, sent on an accelerated course that had her taking classes three or four years before it was recommended for her. However, Dredd wasn’t done with her yet.
[America pulls out on her motorcycle, still wearing the uniform of a cadet. There are three Judges waiting for her, as well as a van that looks more like a prisoner transport than anything else. Judge Joseph Dredd, Judge Glasswell, and a Judge named Rico. No last name. a small infographic helpfully informs that he’s another clone of Judge Fargo, sent to Texas City as a baby for part of an exchange program. He moved back to Mega-City One later on and took the name Rico to honor Dredd’s brother.
However, as is swiftly obvious when Dredd and Rico are next to each other, Rico takes after Dredd himself. There’s no trace of Rico Dredd’s humor, self-interest, or sadism, in his expression.]
Dredd: Rico and Glasswell. They’ll be coming along.
America: Charmed, I’m sure.
Glasswell: You catch Rico’s face when you did the charmed bit?
America: I did notice a certain stony glare.
Glasswell: We’re not riding with the Cackle Brothers, that’s for sure. I’d keep the humor to a minimum if you don’t want to get back with demerits coming out your ass. They turned down the Old Man’s motion to repeal the mutant laws. He’s in a real stinker.
Shellee: Mega-City One’s mutant laws, as mentioned earlier, forbade any mutants from living in Mega-City One. Even if they were born there. All mutants were exiled, and those who sneak back in were executed on the spot.
[The trip doesn’t go well. The transport van breaks down on the way to the mutant camp, leading to Dredd to declare the entire line obsolete and marked for immediate replacement. America nods to herself slightly as he mentions that they should be treating the mutants with some semblance of humanity.
As soon as they arrive at Mutant Facility 8, it’s clear why Dredd brought America along. The scene is horrific, like an old concentration camp. And that’s only a teaser. As their tour of the mutant camps continue, they arrest eighteen wardens in one camp, the entire staff of another, twelve and twenty-one wardens sent for ‘mandatory re-edcation’ in a third camp, and one camp condemned as unfit for human habitation.
Finally they reach Mutant Camp 5. It is… paradise. The mutants are educated. Happy. Singing. But ravaged by a nearly incurable disease. At a play, America is instructed to look around by Dredd, and finds another victim of ‘newmonia’. She comforts the victim’s mother as best she can, then, on a hunch, follows the meat wagon taking them to be cremated, and discovers the operation behind it all.]
Tammee: One of the most horrifying crimes in America’s world is known as ‘organ-legging’. Organ leggers find healthy victims and dissect them, taking their healthy organs and supplying them on the black market for people who can’t afford to wait for healthy cloned samples to be grown for them.
Shellee: ‘Camp Sunshine’ was using drugs and make-up to fake their own disease and sell their ‘guests’ for a hefty profit. With Cadet Beeny’s discovery, all that was over.
Dredd: Remember this, Beeny, the next time you start thinking there might be some good in human nature.
America: Yes, sir. I’ll remember.
[The scene shifts. America’s receiving a black helmet, her full-Eagle badge, and her Lawgiver. The date is 2130, she’s fifteen years old. Waiting for her at the steps of the Grand Hall of Justice is a tall, smiling Judge. His badge reads Roake.]
Tammee: With strong recommendations, again, from Dredd, Rico, and Glasswell, Judge Beeny graduated from the Academy of Law after only eleven years. She was one of the youngest graduates ever.
Shellee: The Chief Judge assigned one Judge Roake to be her partner for the first two years of her career. Normally, this wouldn’t be the case, but with her being barely older than some of the Legionnaires when they started, the feeling was that other Judges might resent having to treat someone so young as an equal.
[And they were right. Several scenes play, with America being forced to assert her authority many times throughout her early career.]
Tammee: One wonders just how much of America’s struggles with her teammates in the Legion have been due to this kind of attitude from her fellow Judges.
[She and Roake worked well together, taking on gangs, assassins, drug dealers, jaywalkers, muggers, and child genius serial killers. They work together, eat together, fight together, and he advises her, working to temper her drive and keep her from overreaching herself. Over time, she grows harder, steelier, and some of that youthful amusement leaves her entirely.
When they’re on the streets, they try to solve things non-violently, or take people prisoner, but whenever one or the other is threatened, the gloves come off. A pair of kill counters appear in the lower-left of the screen, marking each perp America guns down. People who raise weapons to her, who raise weapons to Roake, who threatens a citizen, many of them are shot, stabbed, or knocked senseless. Compared to Roake’s, America takes in many more people alive and intact, but by the end of their first year together she’s still marked as being responsible for the deaths of hundreds.
What goes uncounted, however, are the lives they saved. As often as they show Beeny gunning down criminals in cold blood, she’s seen delivering babies, diving into fires to rescue citizens, disarming hostage situations, ordering restaurants to open their doors to the homeless during storms, savagely beating abusers, breaking down sweat shops… Sometimes all in the course of a single day.]
Tammee: What we’re watching is not sped up. These aren’t highlights. There are no long periods of downtime for a Judge. The worst day in a Legionnaire’s life was simply another Tuesday for Judges Beeny and Roake. They move from a crime to a disaster almost immediately, as soon as it’s called in. And, as a Judge, America saw the worst humanity had to offer.
[Riots. Sexual assaults. Drug dens. A tree with skeletons too small to be those of adults hanging in it. Roake and Beeny capture a slaver after chasing him to three different worlds in the solar system, and when questioned as to why he bought so many slaves from so many planets, his only response is ‘fertilizer’. Through it all, America’s expression only grows harder, and exposure to the depths of depravity people sink to only make her response to others more vicious.
Her actions aren’t limited to the people, either. Twice, she’s shown running into corrupt Judges. One beating a witness for testimony. The other collecting money for protection. One ends up dead at her hands, the other ends up on a trip to Titan.]
Shellee: Eventually, Dredd managed to push reforms to the mutant laws through, enabling all mutants to become legal citizens of Mega-City One. However, this proved unpopular with many of the more… conservative Judges, and the Chief Judge was eventually replaced by someone more willing to take a hardline stance against the ‘muties’.
Tammee: The mutants were allowed to stay in the city… But only if they agreed to a mandatory sterilization process so that they couldn’t spread their genes throughout the ‘norm’ population. Dredd was unofficially exiled, forced out of the Mega-City to set up mutant townships so that they could continue to live in relative comfort.
Shellee: In a direct snub to Dredd, Judge Beeny was sent to be his deputy, with Roake declining to join them out in the Cursed Earth. She was thought of as his protégé, and so they punished him through her.
Tammee: As reinforcements, they were sent the dregs of the department. Insubordinate. Borderline incompetent. Clumsy. And a painkiller addict. And, in a further insult to Dredd, Judge Rico was sent to join him as well.
Shellee: When the first muties arrive, the townships still aren’t built yet. With a lack of Judges around, America took the responsibility of falling back on the old trial-by-jury system. After an incident with giant spiders-ew-out in the Cursed Earth, the Judges were down one member and denied reinforcements. And America had her hands full with the two that remained. While Dredd struggled and went on needless Cursed Earth excursions to satisfy his own need for action, America ran everything.
[ Her decisions weren’t the most popular, but they were fair. Eventually, she finds herself standing watch over Munn, broken after psychic torture from a mutant, and covering his work load without complaint. She’s handling the job of three men, plus her own. She teaches the citizens the law, arms the militias and the deputies, trains them, oversees what buildings go where… utterly buries herself in admin work.
Meanwhile, the townships continue to grow and evolve. They’re proper homes and cities now. A little rustic, perhaps, but it’s functional. Reinforcements come in, resentful of her at first, but she swiftly earns their respect. Even the pillhead from earlier, Ramone, is addressing her as ‘Ami’ rather than spitting her name in disgust. Finally, her kill counter slows to a trickle, only two executions not connected to a jury trial over the course of a year. Twelve executions decided by the community and carried out by her. Roake’s numbers continue to climb, however.]
Tammee: Finally, after a year, Dredd found a way to send her home. Roake and Beeny, the dream team, are formed again, and almost immediately get wrapped up in their work. They uncover the most famous serial killer in Mega-City One posing as the Mayor, break apart an art forgery deal, chase people with overdue library books through the Cursed Earth… No crime is too big or too small for them.
Shellee: If Roake were here, America would undoubtedly be in a better standing. Unfortunately, all partnerships end sometime.
Tammee: When a brain-damaged Psi-Cadet predicts disaster, Dredd, having returned from his exile to the Cursed Earth mutant townships, assigns her and Roake to interpret her visions.
Shellee: Meanwhile, wanting revenge for their defeat in the Apocalypse War they caused, the remnants of Sov-City 1 arrange for a plague to be released into Mega-City One.
Shellee: A crucial clue, something that would have saved everyone had Beeny and Roake simply caught onto it…. “You have something for me while I’m waiting” was the note they got from the precognitive cadet. It should have read “You have something for me, Wile. I’m waiting.”
Tammee: Roake and Beeny did their best, but they were betrayed from within. A Judge named Wile was actually a Soviet sleeper agent who not only impeded their efforts to investigate, but assassinated several core members of their defense, including the Psi-Cadet.
Shellee: In the chaos that followed, the plague, the Chaos bug, made its way into the city. A terrorist group, at the same time, started poisoning the City Blocks, where up to a hundred and fifty thousand people lived. P.J. Maybe, the serial killer America had put away less than a year before, managed to escape by hypnotizing his guards. And Roake…
[Roake is gunned down by a Sov sleeper agent. When America arrives on the scene, heartbreak flashes across her face, and then it’s replaced by the same steel mask she wears every day on the streets, assisting the other Judges at the scene in their investigation. As if this was just another day.]
Shellee: If you’re watching, America, we’re sorry. Losing a partner of six years couldn’t have been easy.
Tammee: But there was no time for mourning. With the death of Judge Roake, the Sovs stepped up their plans. They bombed the Statue of Judgement, where the Judges had hidden their public surveillance unit. Terrorists instigated riots. City block rivalries came to a head and block wars spread across the cities. The Academy of Justice was destroyed by rocket attacks, killing thousands of Judge Cadets.
Shellee: The Chaos Bug, which enhanced everyone’s aggression, spread throughout the city. And when doctored images of the Judges burying victims in mass graves outside the city were shared, Mega-City One finally turned on its protectors. Four hundred million people against less than a hundred thousand Judges.
[What follows is a bloodbath. Some citizens are innocent, and Beeny’s shown doing her best to protect them. Others, however, wage an all out war against her. Beeny’s kill counter skyrockets, reaching the quintuple-digit range, over the course of three days as all the rules are lifted. Through it all, her condition and control steadily deteriorates.]
Tammee: To make things worse, the Dark Judges were freed by Sov agents. Genocidal, eldritch beings from a Deadworld, they decreed that since all crime was committed by the living, life itself should be a crime. They had taken over the city before, and unleashing them onto Mega-City One was a death stroke… Or it would have been had they not simply vanished. Beeny was lucky to survive her encounter with them.
[At one point, Beeny simply snaps, striking a citizen for lying to her. She attempts to hand in her badge, to place herself under arrest, and it’s refused simply because the numbers can’t be spared.
Later, as the carnage slows down, the scene finds her standing on the very edge of a ledge high above the streets, watching the stars. She wavers for a moment, but a new scream catches her attention and she steps back, turning to investigate whatever it is this time.
The scene shifts. She’s organizing people, trading food for labor, getting them to clear bodies out of the hab-blocks or clear out rubble..]
Shellee: By the time the Day of Chaos was over, Mega-City One was decimated. Three hundred and fifty million people were dead. The Chaos Bug had a 95% fatality rate, and then there was those killed in the riots.
Tammee: Of the Judge Cadets, only six hundred survived. Of the adult Judges, only a few thousand. The robotic population of Mega-City One was put to work rebuilding, but its people were needed to clear out the dead so that the living would have somewhere to live. And even then, there was still crime.
[America, on her own, taking on entire gangs. Uncovering smuggling rings that stole food from other people’s mouths to feed the rich. Taking out chump dumpers, gangs that took money to take people into space on one-way trips, then voided them all and raided the bodies for valuables. Destroying drug dealers that would have preyed on the horror of the people to push forth their ‘goods’.
A scene has her rolling up on a stoning. She barks an order to cease, and they split up. She catches one in the knee with a gunshot, another in the back, but holds back from chasing the rest to check on the victim, pulling back his hood to reveal heavy cybernetic modification. A Titan job. She scowls, then goes to her bike.]
America: Control, Beeny. what do we have on a Thomas Boyce? Ex-Judge. Looks to have had a Titan conversion.
Control Judge: Definite on that. Arresting Judge was Judge Dredd. Dereliction of Duty in , sentenced to twenty years hard labor on Titan. Just so you know, there’s no backup available in a twenty-minute radius. If he’s giving you trouble, I’d suggest execution and move on.
[A pause on America’s side.]
America Dereliction how?
Control: He, ah. Watched three males sexually assault one… Citizen Bennett Beeny. Allowed them to take turns before arresting them. Suspected to be the reason Beeny agreed to bomb the Arnies.
[America turns to watch Boyce for a moment, jaw clamped.]
Control: Judge Beeny?
America: That will be all, thank you.
[She approaches Boyce, then stares down at him, fists planted on her hips.]
America: …Neil Patrick Harris block is three miles that way. They’re passing out food and medicine there. Pick up your attackers and drop them off at the med tent, then get in line to work. You already screwed up your life and paid the price. Don’t make another mistake that will cost you your life.
[And, with a sour look, she swings back onto her bike and leaves. Boyce is quite for a moment, then spits off to his side and moves to collect the two wailing criminals, marching off in the direction America indicated. The screen abruptly snaps back to a smiling Tammee]
Tammee: Finally, the mutant laws were repealed, for good, allowing mutants to come in, become citizens, and help the Meg rebuild.
Shellee: But there would be no rest for America Beeny. She continued to work for twenty-three hours a day, stopping only for fifteen minutes in the sleep machines, for the next year, as if she could bury the horror of what happened with her job.
[She doesn’t look great. Fortunately, Dredd manages her to talk her into a vacation day, where she just… sits. And stares at a wall. For hours.
But when she stands up again, she seems… better off, somehow. She actually takes a shower. Changes out her gear for something more in repair. Polishes her boots. And when she’s back on duty, it’s almost like old times.
Except she keeps starting to say something off to her right, where Roake always walked.]
Tammee: Despite the horrors she’d seen, America never forgot why she became a Judge. Even when it cost her points with her superiors.
Shellee: The Child of the Revolution could never forget what she had to do. She just had to figure out how to do it. And then, in 2137, she assisted Dredd in the investigation of a member of the Council of Five. After that…
[Five Judges are gathered, speaking. A Judge-Tutor, a member of the SJS, a cyborg, a woman wearing the Chief Judge’s regalia, and a portly man with a moustache.]
Chief Judge Barbara Hershey: Before we start this morning, I’d like you all to welcome Judge America Beeny -- the youngest ever member of this council and, I’m reliably informed, a woman of strong opinion.
America: Thank you. As I’m here, and for the moment have your indulgence… [She lifts a sheaf of papers.] …I’d just like to raise a few issues.
[A skyborne shot of Mega-City one. Slowly, one by one, the lights are turning back on.]
Tammee: Twenty-two years old. The Council of Five.
Shellee: For those who don’t realize the significance, that’s like one of our own Legionnaires being elected to the President’s cabinet.
Tammee: In one day, America was given the authority to not just enforce policy, but make it. No longer was she a mere Judge, now she was a leader of their military, a lawmaker, and one of the most important representatives their city could have.
Shellee: Change is slow. It always is. But under America Beeny’s guidance, with a steadily growing population, perhaps the Judges can finally change for the better.
[America's kill count is frozen, and highlighted. Almost forty thousand dead, by her hand alone. And then another counter is shown, with numbers rapidly rising. 'Lives saved'... in the tens of millions. There's no attempt to place them on a scale. Simply highlighting the answers. The numbers fade, and the sun rises over the Mega-City slowly.]
Tammee: Mega-City One, 2138 AD.
Shellee: This vast urban hell on the east coast of post-apocalyptic North America is home to over 72 million citizens.
Tammee: Unemployment is near-total, boredom universal, and crime is rampant.
Shellee: Tensions run a constant knife-edge, and stemming the chaos are the Judges, empowered to dispense instant justice.
Tammee: And here on the Legion, we have Judge Beeny -- she is the Law!
Shellee: She’s Tammee Tim!
Tammee: And she’s Shellee Star!
Both: And we are Legionnaire Legacies! Until next time!