The Cobalt Man

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Malcolm Seymour vs. Robert Heaney trial transcript no. 2
Cross-Examination of Robert Heaney, 2024 June 21



                                                                                 ROBERT S. HEANEY

Mr. LAWRENCE:  

Q. Your name is Heaney?

A.  Yes sir.  


Q. You stated that you're an officer with the Los Angeles police department?


A.  Yes sir.  


Q.  And within that agency, you are assigned to the malicious software control division?


A. Yes.  


Q. And that you were assigned to case number 213 on August 17th.  


A.  I don't recall.


Q.  You don't recall whether you were assigned to that case?


A.  I don't recall the number of the case I was assigned to.  


Q. The case in question was number 213, to do with the so-called Cobalt Blue worm.  


A.  In that case, yes.


Q.  Yes?


A.  Yes, I was assigned to that case.  


Q. Very well.  Would you please state briefly for the court what you do?  

                Objected to; objection withdrawn.

A.  Okay. First, off, people hear a lot of rumors about what I do. Most of them aren't true.  I'm not a priest, I'm not a doctor.  I don't kill people.  

Q. Please try to remain factual.

A. I'm trying.  Should I explain brainworms? 

Q. Please do.


A. Right, so, everybody in this courtroom is, right now, using an LJ.  


Q. You are referring to a 'Light Jack' personal neural interface device?


A.  Yes.  So, A brainworm is just a piece of malicious software that uses an LJ, a Light Jack, to install a copy of itself into the users brain matter.  You see, organic neural networks are Turing equivalent, and


Q. Thank you.  Could you please state your job for the court?


A.  Yes.  Well, I'm part of the special task group in the LAPD that hunts malicious worms. 


Q. And how do you do this?


A.  Well, we have eyes in a lot of major network nodes in the ELAC, and


Q. The ELAC?


A.  Eastern Los Angeles Consenus network.  Anyway, so, any neural interface outputs a certain level of noise, and the noise has a specific mathematical signature.  It's like a fingerprint.  We call it an aura.  A brainworm infection alters the pattern of the noise.  If you run it through a visualizer, it changes the color.  Hence the color code for worms.  Anyway, so, we keep an eye out for people with erratic auras.  If we spot something funny, we go out and interview them.  Mostly it's just a bad implant, or drugs, or something, but sometimes we get an actual infection.


Q. And then what do you do?


A.   Well, it depends.  If it's an early stage infection, we just take them into the station and have the infected brain matter scrubbed.  If it's a global infection and it's been there for a while, then we wipe them and reconstruct from scratch.


Q. You're referring to using a deep-tissue LightJack to erase a person's mind.


A.  Well, not all of it.  You see, worms start out as simple software, but as soon as they're in an organic brain, they start to become exponentially more complex, and use more and more brain matter.  By the time we get to them, they're usually semi-sapient, and there isn't neccesarily very much left of the original mind.  So, yeah we erase their brain matter, interview their friends and family, and have some of our artists reconstruct them based on their past history.


Q.  So you erase both the worm and the original person.


A.  Our artists are very good.  


Q.  Please answer the question.


A.  What do you want me to say?  Yes.  Okay.  Yes, we erase them.  It's our job.


Q.  Nobody's questioning that.  Detective Heaney, could you please describe the Cobalt Blue worm for the court?


A.  It was a nasty one.  Bright blue aura.  Smart as hell, even when it wasn't infecting someone.  Lots of illegal machine learning algorithms, self-modifying.  Even had memories that it backed up on rented servers.  We had a whole division just hunting down its memory servers.  We took down one, and three more cropped up.  The damn thing remembered nearly every person it had ever infected.  


Q.  What about its effects on the victim?


A. It infected them fast.  It was already nearly sapient when it was in a network.  As soon as it hit the human brain, it downloaded all of its memories from the external server and unpacked itself.  It emulated the host mind nearly perfectly.  

Q.  It emulated the host brain?


A.  That's correct.  


Q.  Detective Heaney, you were here yesterday when Mr. Lansfeld was being examined as an expert witness, is that correct?


A.  Yes it is.   


Q.  Do you remember what he said about Cobalt Blue?


A.  Yes.


Q.  Could you please repeat it for the court.


                Objected to; over-ruled


A.  That man was a charlatan.  You think his degree tells him a damned thing?  I've been on the force for ten years, and I've seen shit that would make that bastard piss himself.  

Presiding Judge:  Detective Heaney, control yourself.  Answer the question.


Q. Your honor, permission to treat Detective Heaney as a combative witness.


            Objected to; sustained.


Q.  Please answer the question, Detective Heaney.  


A.  He claimed that Cobalt Blue layered itself on top of the host intellect without erasing it.   

Q. Did he say anything else?


A.  He claimed that it was a symbiotic relationship.  Let me tell you, that's just not true.  It's good, but it's still a fucking


Q.  That will be all, Mr.  Heaney.  Now, do you recognize my client on the bench?  


A.  Yes.


Q.  Can you recall when you first met him?


A. Yes.  He signed onto the node I was monitoring.  Strong blue aura, very erratic.  Classic patient zero.  


Q.  Do you recall what he was doing on the network?


A.  I don't know.  The datastream was encrypted.  


Q.  What did you do next?


A.  I got John to cover for me, and I checked out a car and a rig.


Q.  This being Detective John Simon and a deep-tissue, police-issue Light Jack, correct?  


A.  Yes. 


Q.  Please continue. 


A.  I drove to his home, and introduced myself.  I said that I needed to ask him a few questions.   


Q. This is all normal procedure?


A. Yes, absolutely. 


Q. Okay, how was my client acting when you met him?


A. Seemed normal, initially.  He answered the door mildly intoxicated.  


Q.  So you didn't think he was infected?


A.  I didn't say that.   Cobalt Blue is very good at emulating the host.  I had no opinion as to whether he was infected. 


Q. So you interviewed him?  


A.  Yes.  


Q.  Were you concerned about being attacked?


A.  Of course; but, all police officers have had a combat runtime installed into their motor cortex, and I was armed.  I was capable of 
defending myself very efficiently if he'd attacked.


Q.  Did you use the police Light Jack?  


A. Not at first.  I had him sit down on the couch and asked him the standard Cobalt Blue diagnostic questions.  


Q.  How did he score?


A.  He scored about a 23.  21 is average.  


Q.  Would you say that that pointed to him not being infected?


A.   Cobalt Blue is very smart.  We have to change the diagnostic set every few months, because it learns to beat the test.  The set I was using was already over a month old at the time.  Even a two point deviation from the norm is a concern.


Q.  What happened next?


A.   I couldn't get a read on him, but I had a hunch, so I hooked him up to the police unit.


Q. To clarify, this was not a part of police procedure.


A.  Police procedure is to eliminate worms.


Q.  But this was done on your own initiative.  Based on the evidence you had acquired by this point, you were not required to interrogate him further.


A.  No.


Q.  Was he willing to be wired to the device?


A.  He was reluctant.


Q.  Did you use force to get the device onto his person?


A.  I put my hand on his chest, okay?  While I removed his and installed the police jack.  I didn't hit him.  


Q. So you forcibly pulled his Light Jack off him, and replaced it with the police unit.


A.  Yes.  Look, it wasn't like that.  


Q. You questioned him again?


A.  Um, yes.  I asked some factual questions to establish a baseline for the lie detector software, then pulled up a projection of his brain activity into my police consensus layer.


Q. Why?


A. The lie detector software works best on people with a conscience.  


Q.  You don't believe Cobalt Blue has a conscience?  


A. How can software have a conscience?  


Q.  Even in a human brain?


A.  Worms are not people.  They're transmissible mental illness.  I've seen worms do things


Q.  Why did you pull up the overlay, in that case?


A.  Software is fine and good.  It's great for interviewing clean humans.  But there are limits to what software can spot.  After a few years on the force, you develop an intuition.  You can tell when something's not right.


Q. Have any studies been done on the reliability of this intuition?


A.  It works.


Q.  Please answer the question.


A.  Fine.  No, not to my knowledge.  You use every tool available.  I do what it takes to keep people like you safe.  

Q.  So you then interrogated him?

A. Yes.  I asked him the diagnostic questions again.


Q.   How did he score?


A.  23.  


Q.  Did the lie detector go off?


A.  No.


Q.  But you proceeded?


A.  His brain activity was hinky.  There was something wrong.


Q.  This is the intuition you mentioned.


A.  Yes.  


Q.  So what did you do?


A.  I decided to see if I could flush out the worm.  Scare it into making an error.


Q.  You intensified the interrogation?


A.  Yes.  I installed an over-ride runtime into his motor cortex.  


Q.  To be clear, you installed police software into his brain without consent.


A.  We have the right to do that in the state of California.  It's common practice with dangerous suspects.    


Q.  It is, however, against several federal laws.  However, I simply wanted it noted for the record.  What did the software do?


A.  It disabled voluntary control of much of his body below the neck.  It was completely temporary.  


Q.  And what did you do next?


A. I told him that my instruments had told me that he was infected, and that I was going to erase him.  


Q. What did he do?


A.  He began to try to get off the couch.  


Q. I thought he was paralyzed.


A.  He was.  He was attempting to tip himself over using the inertia of his head movements.  It didn't work very well.


Q.  What did you do next?


A.  Well, he started saying that he didn't know who Cobalt Blue is, and that he wasn't infected.  Tried to convince me very hard that he 
wasn't infected.


Q. Did you believe him?  


A. It's not a question of belief.  If he was infected, I was going to make sure he knew about it.  So, I shut off his vocal chords.


Q.  Using the police software you'd installed in his brain?


A.  Yes.  Then I drew my firearm, and started a threatening patter.


Q.  A threatening patter?


A.  Yes.  I was trying to convince him that I was a threat to his existence.


Q. By 'him,' you are referring to Cobalt Blue.


A.  No.


Q.  Then who were you referring to?


A. I was referring to the suspect.  Your client.  Mr. Seymour.  


Q. So, to be clear, you were trying to convince my client that you were going to kill him.


A.  No.      


Q.  Then who were your referring to?


A.  I don't know.  


Q. Answer the question, Detective Heaney.


A. I mis-spoke.  


Q.  Perfectly understandable.  So, you were referring to the worm?


A.  Yes.  I should not have said 'him.'  The worm was an 'it.'  


Q.  I understand.  You spend a lot of time hunting them.  It can't be easy to keep thinking of them like things.  Things can't cry.  


                Objected to; sustained, badgering the witness


Presiding Judge:  Do not try my patience, Mr. Lawrence.  


Q.  I apologize.  How did the my client respond to your threatening patter?


A. He had very little voluntary motor control left.  Just his eyes, really, and breathing.  


Q. Were you aware that my client had been the victim of a home invasion two months earlier?  That his wife had been executed in front of him by the assailant?  

A. I was not aware of that.  


Q. How did my client respond to you threatening him with a loaded gun?


A.  Look, what was I supposed to do?


Q.  Answer the question.


A.  He cried, okay?  He was crying.  


Q. And you still thought he was infected?


A.  Don't look at me like that.  Look, it's.  It's easy to sit here in this courtroom and pick apart what I did, but you can't possibly understand the realities of the field.  I'm not some kind of sociopath.  

Q. Nobody is claiming that, Detective Heaney.  What were you trying to accomplish with this?


A.  Well, ideally, when I gave him back motor control, the worm would break character and try to  escape.  


Q.  You consider that to be a break in character?


A.  Yes, it's the usual operating procedure.  


Q. It did not occur to you that a normal, uninfected person might fear for his life under the circumstances?


A. We have better scanning equipment back at the precinct.  If he tried to flee the interview, he could be arrested.  Once that happens, they could scan him more thoroughly with software that can detect Cobalt Blue code signatures.  


Q.  How do these machines work?


A. They project intensive stimulus into the sensory cortex and watch the reaction patterns for viral information signatures.  


Q. So you were trying to terrifying him into breaking the law, so that you could torture him?


A. No.  I didn't say that.  


Q. But you were trying to scare him into breaking the law?


A.  I was trying to scare the worm into revealing itself.


Q. Which, coincidentally, would take the form of the exact same response that any sane human would undertake in the same circumstance?


A. No.  Look, this is standard procedure.  Everyone does it.  


Q. To be clear, though, you intended to torture him.


A. It's not torture.


Q. Is it painful?


A. It's very intense. 


Q. Have you ever had this done to you?


A. No.


Q. So how can you say that it's not painful?


A. Do you know what a brainworm network outbreak looks like?  


Q. Stay on topic, Detective Heaney.


A. I am staying on topic.  This is a valid diagnostic tool.  It saves lives.  It's used in five states.


Q. It used to be used in eight, is that correct?


A. Yes, and it's a crying shame that people were willing to put politics over human lives.  


Q. When did you give my client control of his body back?


A. Well, I left the room for approximately six minutes, to let him stew, then I returned.  


Q. And did you threaten him again?


A.  Yes I did.  


Q.  And then what?


A.  Then I told him I was going to release his body, and that he was going to come with me to the precinct to have his mind wiped and reconstructed.


Q. Before you tell the court, again, what happened, could you please explain the reconstruction process in a little more detail?


A. Okay.  Well, after they've been wiped, and their motor cortex is generally unaffected, so they can still ride bikes and stuff.  Just nothing upstairs.  So, our artists interview the friends and family, build a psych profile on them, get logs of every major event in their lives since the first grade, get anything they've written, anything at all, really.  They get all their friends and families faces, the extent of their education, everything they can find, and they reconstruct them based on this information.


Q. This reconstruction is a piece of software, is that correct?


A. I suppose so.  Once we install it in them, it expands to fill all available brain tissue.  


Q. And you consider this process to be a positive change?


A. Over being infected by a worm?  Sure.


Q. Do you believe that they're still people after having this process done?


A. Sure.


Q. So, this software is a person, but the worms' software aren't?


A. Yeah, okay.  


Q. What's the difference?


A. The reconstruction is based on the original person.  


Q. So it emulates the original person?


A. That's correct.


Q. Detective Heaney, what is the average accuracy rate of the reconstructions in personal Turing tests?


A. I don't know, exactly.


Q.  Please estimate, for us.


A. I'd say around 31%.


Q. Thank you.  And, what is the accuracy of, say, Cobalt Blue for the same tests? 


A. It's not the same thing.


Presiding Judge: Detective Heaney, I am growing tired of this.   Answer the question, or I'll find you in contempt of court.


A. Cobalt Blue is ranked at 99.8%, I believe.    


Q. So in short, you intended to replace a very good emulation of the original consciousness with a very bad emulation? 

A. It's not the same thing.


Q. What happened when you returned motor control to my client?


A. I was working on my terminal in my local consensus layer.  I released control of his lower body.  Then your client grabbed a lamp off the table and smashed it over my head.  He took my gun and put his foot on my throat.  


Q. What did he do then?


A. He started yelling at me, saying that he was going to kill me.  I could still use the local consensus layer.  His aura was bright blue.  Not even erratic, just pure, cobalt blue.  


Q. And what did you do next?


A. I thought the suspect was going to kill me.  So I hit the wipe function.  


Q. Why didn't you just paralyze him again?


A. I figured he was infected, and I wasn't sure that the virus wasn't going to be able to over-ride the software I'd installed.  I figured formatting his drive was the safest alternative.


Q. So you erased his mind.  


A. Yes.  


Q. Because you believed my client was infected.


A. Yes.  


Q. Look at this, please.  Do you know what it is?


A. It's an envelope.  


Q. Yes.  Could you please read the letter inside to the court?


A. Dearest Audrey.  This is my third letter to you since the funeral.  A pointless exercise, perhaps, but who really knows?  I admit that I was having trouble coping before.  I was lying in the bathtub with a bottle of Valium, and then I received a wonderful offer.  I just downloaded the software package and installed it, and it was everything I ever hoped for.  I'm no longer alone, Audrey.  I'm warm and safe and among friends in here.  You can't imagine the vast spaces, the hundreds of voices, the richness of the memories.  I have become - Now what the hell is this shit?


Q. It's a letter from my client to his wife, the day before you erased his mind.


A. So he was conned by the worm.  It happens.  Not often, but it happens.  


Q. My client voluntarily installed the Cobalt Blue software application into his own cortex.  The application helped him to cope with the loss of his wife.  Then you, against police protocol, entered his home, assaulted him, threatened him, and then erased his mind and replaced it with a chatbot.  Is that correct?


                Objected to; sustained, badgering the witness


Presiding Judge: Mr. Lawrence, this is your last warning.  You as well, Detective Heaney.  


Q. Detective Heaney, did you have any legal justification for your actions?


A. This is ridiculous.  You can't try me for murder.  Your client is sitting right there.  He doesn't have a scratch on him.  


Presiding Judge: Sit down, Detective Heaney.  


A. I won't stand for this any longer.  I saved that man from a malicious software infestation.


Q. Go look at what's left of him in the eye and tell him that he's better off.  You murdered him, Detective Heaney.

Presiding Judge: Very well, this has gone on long enough.  I find you both in contempt of court.  Baliff, please escort these two men to a cell for the night.  Sentencing will be held when this court resumes tomorrow at 8:00 AM.  Court dismissed.    
Author's Note:

Something a little different this week, hope you enjoy it.