The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 15

06.06.02

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

Click image to enlarge

Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

15. [Plate 46]

The Nightmare Court

With so many nightmares loose in the world, it was inevitable that some

should occasionally be captured and brought to justice. But where could

they be tried? Nightmares are no respecters of borders. Their crimes

affront the sensibilities of all nations. Ultimately responsibility for

them must be global.

So an international court was established at the Hague. All the world's

most solemn legal minds were gathered together to deplore, to document,

and to pass judgment upon the captive nightmares.

These nightmares were always weak and spent, of course. They had to be. A

healthy nightmare engaged in mass murder, systematic rape, and ethnic

cleansing has no time for courts of law. It is busy, busy, busy! Only

when the supporting government has collapsed, the responsible militia

have been put down, and the sponsoring nations have taken their money

elsewhere is a nightmare vulnerable enough to be taken into custody by

mere policemen.

When it is, however, retribution is stern and comprehensive. The trial

takes decades. Witnesses are called in. Murderers are given immunity so

that they may relate their crimes in sickening detail.

It is possible that one or two of the judges may bear a strong

resemblance to the defendants. It is possible that they have in their day

killed many innocent people. Possible too that an unemotional account of

their careers would fill any humane listener with loathing and disgust.

But they are not themselves nightmares ? oh, no! Everything they did was

perfectly legal.

Anything is legal, so long as it's done by a standing government.

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This is the 15th of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

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