Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me

by DataPacRat

Burden of Proof

The attack, when it came, was from an unexpected direction.

When I woke up, in the royal dairy along with the other cows currently stabled there, I found a scroll on the ground in front of me. Unrolling it, I discovered it to be a subpoena, which, translated from the legalese, demanded that I produce my birth certificate. This was rather absurd on the face of it, since the pony bureaucracy was not yet sufficiently entrenched to require them from ponies, let alone other sentient species. But, when I went to Page to look it over with her, it actually seemed to be in proper order, signed by one Judge Wicked. I gave a double-take at that, since those particular two words were what I had told Pinkie Pie my name translated as, before I adopted the nom-de-bovine of 'Missy'. But, Page assured me, that was a real, well-known judge, whose full name was Wicked Heights, whose parents were extreme rock-climbers, and who had earned a name for fairness as a referee before moving to law - where he had gained a further reputation as being entirely willing to smack down nobles who oppressed their underlings.

If he was part of a political attack on the Dairy and myself - then I was facing one of the worst kinds of people to have as an enemy: a good, honest stallion, who was willing to bend the letter of the law just enough to do what he felt was right.

I took advantage of one of the few pieces of advice from Earth that seemed relevant: I lawyered up. And I did what I would have done no matter who issued the subpoena: I requested a meeting with the judge, at his earliest convenience.

---

Wicked had a light-grey coat, black mane, mustache, beard, and tail, and an orange cutie mark of a crossed pickaxe and hammer - though the latter might have been a gavel. Just Cause looked the same as she had when she'd help me with my case involving my would-be rapists - a black-coated, blue-eyed unicorn.

The judge glared through his overhanging mane at the two of us. "Do you really feel that you need a lawyer present during this meeting, Miss Missy - assuming that is your real name?"

"Your honor; while I am an expert at many things, I simply have not had the time to study the finer points of law and precedent. In addition, I have seen far too many lives ruined which didn't need to be, simply because people thought that such details were irrelevant, and that they could defend themselves adequately simply because they happened to be right."

"Hmph. In that case - did you come to deliver the documents described in that subpoena?"

"As I hope you would be able to guess, if you are familiar with my circumstances: no. I'm here to provide you with all the evidence I could think of, and which Just Cause recommended, describing why that is impossible. I'm hoping that actually being able to prove that I'm unable to fulfill a subpoena's demands will be sufficient to prevent my being jailed for contempt of court."

"I'm listening."

Just finally moved forward, and set a folder of documents on the judge's big, hardwood desk, for him to look at. I described some of them, "The central point is that about two months ago, I found myself near Ponyville, with... memory issues. You have there reports from three independent psychologists who examined me. There's something from the Royal Guard who investigated where I may have come from. The general consensus seems to be that I am likely the last survivor of a herd captured by diamond dogs, the rest of whom were, um, eaten, thus leading to my mind protecting itself from the trauma by forgetting, well, a lot, and confabulating whatever my subconscious felt was necessary to fill in the new blanks."

"Yes, I was aware of the general circumstances - though I wasn't expecting you to be this thorough in your paper trail."

"Pardon?"

"This," he closed the folder, and tapped it with his hoof. "Is it true?"

I frowned. "Assuming it is - then how could I possible know it was?"

"Cute. Then I'll put it another way - do you believe it is true?"

"I believe there's something in there from Princess Luna attesting to my honesty, as demonstrated by royal truth-telling magic."

"I'm sure that's very nice. But you didn't answer my question."

I frowned further. "Before I answer that... in your opinion, how much jail time is one pony's life worth?"

"I'm not sure what you're asking."

"Let's say that Just, here, had a secret identity," Just jumped at this and stared at me, then relaxed as I continued, "perhaps she knew damaging information about a powerful noble. And you subpoenaed me for information about her - which, if I gave to you, would lead to that noble having her killed in short order. So I didn't tell you - and you slapped me in jail for contempt. How much time should I spend in jail rather than see her dead? Or, if you prefer the more general question: what is one life worth?"

"Are you trying to tell me that simply telling me whether or not this... story," he tapped the folder again, "is true, will lead to somepony's death?"

"No - at least, not yet. I'd like to know where you draw an ethical line - and then I can base my answer upon that. How about this: if my telling you Just's secret leads to her death, and I know that, then it could be argued that telling you would be legally equivalent to me murdering her with my own hooves. How much time in prison would I get for that?"

"Hrmph. You really aren't a lawyer - that's not quite how it works. But for the sake of argument - let's say twenty-five years."

"Okay, that's a start. So if I were to tell you, then I'd end up with twenty-five years behind bars. If I don't tell you, and you keep me jailed for any amount of time less than that, then I'm doing better than I would by telling you. What's the longest anyone's ever been held for contempt of court?"

Just piped up, "Fourteen years. But that was an extraordinary case. Even four years is extremely long."

I nodded. "Thank you. Now let's say a hundred innocent ponies' lives were at risk if I disclosed, not even a fact, but simply that it was possible I was aware of a fact. On the one hoof, I could be said to be at risk of a hundred consecutive twenty-five year sentences if I said anything - or a couple of years, up to a decade on the outside, if I don't. And that's completely avoiding the moral impetus of not wanting those ponies dead. The more ponies whose lives are at risk, the more the moral calculus says that it would be better for me to remain silent." I paused, then shrugged, and added, "Of course, it would be even better if I manage to avoid getting imprisoned for contempt of court at all."

"I suppose that explains the paper describing that you have a 'security clearance level'."

"That's right."

It was Wicked's turn to shrug. "In my court, I rule supreme. The appeals courts and the Princesses can overturn my judgments - but they can't stop me from making them, as long as I remain on the bench. I was told to expect that you would try to find some way to weasel your way out of answering the subpoena."

"Um..." I scratched my head, "told by who?"

"That's not important - only whether or not what they said was true. And, so far, it is."

I paused. There were several things I wanted to say at this point - but most of them would get the judge rather annoyed with me, which would defeat my whole purpose in meeting him. So I tried, "What else did this mysterious 'they' say?"

"Quite a bit. Mainly, that they think you're some sort of foreign infiltrator, who came up with a way to get around ordinary background checks - and who can defeat even truth-telling magic. So the fact that you passed a magical honesty test is actually a strike against you, not for you."

"Oh, come on," I declared, exasperated. "That goes against every useful standard of evidence there is. If passing a truth spell means I'm more likely to be guilty, then that means that failing a truth spell means I'm more likely to be innocent. That's just like saying if I live an evil and improper life, I'm guilty; but that if I live a good and proper life, this too means I'm guilty, because guilty people supposedly try to appear especially virtuous. That's wrong on a literally mathematical level - however messed up my mind might be, I've gotten confirmation from others that the math I know about evidence, belief, and confidence checks out. I can take you through the equations if I'm doing a bad job with the words I'm using."

"And what if guilty people do appear either improper or virtuous?"

"Then you run into the problem of actually separating out the guilty from the innocent. I'm assuming that you think it's at least a mildly bad thing for a court to find somepony guilty of a crime they didn't actually commit - and that the principle that ponies are considered innocent until they are proven guilty is useful in preventing that."

"And if I'm quite willing to lock up some innocent ponies to ensure the guilty ones get locked up, too?"

"Then I suppose it depends on what ratio you're willing to put up with. I seem to recall someone once having said, 'it is better a hundred guilty ponies should escape than that one innocent pony should suffer'."

"That is quite a foolish sentiment. Guilty ponies make innocent ponies suffer if they're let free."

"Then, if you applied that principle to its full, ponies would look at the results, and see that being innocent was no protection from being punished by the courts - and so the courts would lose all their influence in nudging ponies to do right rather than wrong, and the very court system itself would simply be an evil upon the land, lashing out and making ponies suffer - and all harmony in the land would be lost."

"I think you overestimate the effect one pony can have on Equestria as a whole."

"If one pony cannot significant affect the whole population - then why bother making a threat to imprison them if they fail to hand over a piece of paper that, most likely, doesn't exist, and if it did, is in an unknown location, and if its location were known, would be impossible to tell apart from all the similar papers?"

Just spoke up, "A potential contemnor's ability to comply is one of the four elements of proving contempt. We have provided ample evidence that my client does not have the ability to comply. If I wished, I could bring up the whole irregularity surrounding the fact that my client does not actually seem to have been charged with a crime, in which the documents described would be evidence for or against anything. If I didn't know better, I would say that this entire subpoena is nothing more than a fishing expedition - but I know that's not possible, since I can't think of a single reason why you would be willing to risk the sanctions you would receive for being a willing participant in such a thing."

Wicked silently fiddled with a pen for a few moments. "Consider," he finally said, "that, perhaps, there really is an infiltration being made into Equestria by outside elements, hostile to our way of life. Who would destroy us from within, if they were allowed to. Would not the disbarment of a single judge be a small price to pay for preventing such a catastrophe?"

It was my turn to be silent - as what Wicked seemed to be describing was awfully close to my own efforts to prevent Equestria from being destroyed by the Game. I glanced at Just, who was giving Wicked a rather wide-eyed look, so it seemed continuing the conversation was up to me. "If that were so," I said, "and the most significant member of this 'infiltration' was so bluntly obvious as to appear with no past, a claim of amnesia, some way to defeat the immortal alicorns' magic, and who made absolutely no secret about their ideas for adjusting Equestrian government... wouldn't that tend to suggest a level of competence low enough that that particular infiltration wasn't anything to worry about?"

"Or, perhaps, such an infiltrator would be the obvious decoy to draw attention away from the real infiltrators, who have already started replacing prominent members of society."

My forehead wrinkled. "That seems like it would require an... extraordinary level of conspiratorial maneuvering. In order to have significant effect, they would need to replace a good number of ponies, well enough not to have any significant leaks, and in such positions that the inevitable lesser leaks could be swept up and contained - all without notice by the Princesses, the Guard, or any noble house's defenders. And all such conspirators would need to be of the same mind, to prevent even a single defector from blowing the whole thing wide open. Which would require some sort of shared goal, a reward for each and every one of them that would motivate them to go to all this trouble and effort. To be honest, I've never seen any evidence for anything like that having ever happened, let alone being happening right now... and I've seen more than one case of ponies seeing conspiracies where none existed. How about you, Just?"

"Y-yes - I mean, you're right, it all seems unlikely to me... not to mention, uh, being an inadmissible justification should any of this matter come to light in an open court."

Wicked grunted, and glanced down at the folder again. "Let me take a good look through all of this - come back tomorrow."

---

The next day, Just and I went back to see the judge with the cutie mark of a hammer and pickaxe. He gave Just a friendly nod, then turned to me and brusquely stated, "I'm quashing the subpoena. Entirely no justification for it. You can go back to your life and act like none of this ever happened."

That... hadn't been anything near the sort of response I'd been expecting from him. But since he did have the authority to order me jailed for contempt if I pressed matters, it seemed best not to look a gift horse in the mouth. So Just and I rapidly bid farewell and made our retreat, and I went back to the Dairy, still puzzling over what anypony might have hoped to gain by any of this, and what the next stage in their plans against me might be.

But despite having read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu, having seen just how much backstabbing could happen in a single game of Diplomacy, having learned as much as I could about Equestria from watching all of the first and most of the second season of cartoons and then spending two months embedded in it... I just couldn't quite make sense of what had just happened, or figure out who might have been behind it, or why.

And that in itself worried me.

Comments

[devas]

This smells of changelings
Also, probably Just Cause or Judge Wicked have already been replaced

[Doctor Whooves]

You really do update these at odd times, don't you?

And yes, Just Cause seems very much to be a Changling.

[strangephantasm]

YOU'RE NOT CADENCE! You're one of the kung fu changelings on the rampage.... Two!

[nemryn]

The next day, Just and I went back to see the judge with the cutie mark of a hammer and pickaxe.

Well, this jumped out at me. Is DataPacRat refusing to lie to us the audience, though narrative implication, by referring to the individual in question as 'Judge Wicked'?

[Forevermore]

Hm, based on the evidence available to me, it seems likely that the subpoema was ordered by Captain Shining Armor (or one of the other two Royal Guard captains) or the even the princesses themselves as a way to confirm that Missy was not a changeling in disguise. It makes sense given that they were not aware of the changeling threat until recently (I believe it was Griffin who warned them? I think I remember him mentioning that) and were more than likely unaware of the full extent of a changeling's capabilities, given that its possible (from their point of view) that Missy could have been fooling them. Thus the subpoema was not an attack on Missy per se so much as it was an effort to protect the nation as a whole from a potentially dangerous infiltrator.

[DataPacRat]

1039645
you really do update these at odd times, don't you?
I have an excuse for last night's update time: I was watching Curiosity land on Mars.

1039996
a way to confirm that Missy was not a changeling in disguise.
A few details which may be relevant for such speculations:

This point in the story is roughly two months after the day Griffin (and Missy) arrived. Neither Missy nor Griffin saw the MLP-FiM second season's finale before being sent to Equestria. And in this universe, the wedding of Shining Armor and Cadence takes place roughly eight months after Griffin's arrival. Chapter 48 of GtG is roughly around the same time as this chapter, perhaps a week earlier, and contain's Griffin's warning and speculation based upon what he does know.

[Forevermore]

1040365 I'm confused, are you agreeing or disagreeing with my point? Depending on how you look at it your comment could easily go either way.

As far as the timing goes, one could assume that upon learning of the potential threat the first thing to do would be to examine all recent arrivals to the country, and given Missy's unusual circumstances she more or less stands out on the top of the list. Given Equestria's status as the Equis equivalent of a superpower, it's more than likely its leaders would assume any attack by a foreign power was years in the planning, making Missy even more suspect given that she's risen so far in such a short time. One could easily assume that such a rise was the result of powerful backing (which she has, both from the princesses and indirectly from Jack) which leads to the possibility of there being a powerful organization hidden in the bowels of Equestrian government, a possibility Missy herself seems to be exploring.

Which leads to the ironic conclusion that the good guys are hunting each other in their pursuit of the bad guys, Shining Armor (and the princesses) are hunting for an infiltrator, with the prime suspect being Missy for obvious reasons, and Missy is hunting for an organization powerful enough to force a subpoena (which in this case would be the government itself).

[DataPacRat]

1040413
are you agreeing or disagreeing with my point?
You made more than one point, so... yes?
One aspect of your speculation was that Shining Armor is hunting for changelings; most of my response was explaining that Shining Armor is unaware that changelings even exist.

As for the remainder... <whistles nonchalantly, wandering away...>

[nemryn]

1040413
Yeah, all that Canterlot knows at this point is 'some kind of threat'; they're not taking any specific precautions against changelings. Well, maybe they are, just in case, particularly if some of Missy's lectures have taken hold; but they're not focused on screening out changeling infiltrators to nearly that extent yet.

[DataPacRat]

1040365
Whoops - looking at GtG, I just noticed a detail which knocks some of my notes on the timeline a bit askew. In Chapter 48 of GtG, Celestia mentions that the wedding is only two months in the future from when she reads that letter... while, by the overall ChessGame timeline, Missy is still six months before that event. Somewhere, while trying to hammer out those details for my own purposes, I managed to lose an entire four months worth of time.

It's not a major obstacle to any of my planned plotline, and nothing in any of "Myou've"'s published chapters needs to be edited, but you may need to take some of my authorial comments with a grain or two of salt.

[Wheelwright]

Ah Diplomacy. Such an interesting and evil board game.

Been a while since I've played that. The game itself is so simple and pure, but you can't win without lying and backstabbing to maximum effect. I always wondered what age it is best to introduce that game to someone else.

[RealityDowngrade]

1038146

I did not mean that I thought you were taking plot points from it, I meant it as a writing style on how well you use the intelligence of you and your character. I just wanted to say I thought you were particularly clever there. Please don't hate me. :3

[DataPacRat]

1042930
I know how difficult it can sometimes be to get the point you meant to get across, across, when words can be interpreted in so many ways. You're someone who's actually reading what I've been writing, and offered a commentary on it, even if I didn't quite understand it at first - how could I possibly hate someone like that?

[coandco]

I frowned. "Assuming it is - then how could I possible know it was?"

"Possible" here should be "possibly" for the sentence to make grammatical sense.