 What is the punishment for murder in the future?
A gun is an interesting weapon; it can be hired, of course, and naturally doesn't care who hires it. Something much the same can be said of the gunman, too.... The evening was dark, it was unlikely that the other even saw the circle of steel that was the mouth of the shotgun barrel, now resting on the car's window ledge. And at that moment, the universe caved inward upon Joseph Marie Prantera. There was a falling through all space and through all time. A door slid open in the wall in a way that Joe had never seen a door operate before. The other spoke precisely and slowly, the way a highly educated man speaks a language which he reads and writes fluently but has little occasion to practice vocally. He wondered, all over again, if this was some kind of pressure cooker. The maternal linage was almost universally ignored." Whatever the something else was, a slot opened in the middle of the table and a glass, so clear of texture as to be all but invisible, was elevated. "What is the date, Old Calendar?" "2133," Reston-Farrell said. "2133 A.D. they would say." Warren Brett-James said softly, "Mr. Prantera, you are no longer in the year 1960, you are now in the year 2133." Reston-Farrell said, "Suffice to say, you are now one hundred and seventy-three years after the last memory you have." For the second time, Reston-Farrell said, "Where would you go, Mr. Prantera?" The two men of the future said nothing more for long minutes while Joe Prantera's mind whirled its confusion. You were ... you are, a professional assassin." A citizen, I might say, whose demise would probably have caused small dismay to society." "That we confront you now indicates that the problems of your day were solved. Our pedagogues are hard put to convince their students that such ever existed. More than a century and a half ago our society eliminated the reasons for international conflict. Depressions? The second industrial revolution was accompanied by revolutionary changes in almost every field, certainly in every science. Your ancestors found, Mr. Prantera, that it is difficult for a man to be free so long as others are still enslaved. Today the democratic ethic has reached a pinnacle never dreamed of in your own era." What I wanta know is what's all this about me giving it ta somebody?
 Psychiatric Care
 Death  Erasure from the timeline  Life in prison  Psychiatric Care