The notes were mostly jottings of ideas that came into his head as he reviewed the files. Potentially exculpatory factual nuggets, ideas for alternative theories and creative defenses, possible counterclaims. The problem was, the law this court was enforcing was so upside down in its premises that it was hard to know where to even start. In essence, it was retroactively criminalizing things that had always been legal. The underlying idea wasn’t really that different than the wrongful-death claims Donny was pursuing in the Harrison case. Except that it was totally different, because the deaths it was treating as wrongful were the deaths of trees and animals, not people. And the only way to argue with the idea that cutting down an old tree is murder is to point out that it is not and never has been under any law known to Donny. Things that exist in nature do not have rights, and if you want to change that, fine, but you can only do so prospectively. A perfectly reasonable argument. This wasn’t about reason, though. And it wasn’t really about the past. It was about the future. About the future the current generation was supposed to have, a future of general environmental health, something it was reasonable to argue they have a right to. About how that future had been stolen, by people who razed the past. Long past the tolling of any statute of limitations, but very recently in the measure of geological time. And about how some people had gotten rich from that theft of the future, enjoying a decadent and pampered present while the rest of the world suffered—and was likely to suffer even more as the long-reaching consequences cascaded.

It was hard enough to prepare for a hearing in a kangaroo court, one whose rules you had no familiarity with. It was even harder when you realized you really were on the wrong side of the case. Donny had helped whiteboard the idea, but he never expected them to take it this seriously—any real judge would throw it out without so much as a hearing. But Percy and her colleagues and clients were right about the merits, at least in terms of real moral justice. And they were prosecutor, judge, and jury. They knew it, too, just as they knew they were tearing up centuries of precedent to make a radical new law codifying that justice. It was then that Donny decided there wasn’t much point in preparing an actual defense. The best strategy would be to plead mercy, warn of imminent danger, and try to work out a deal. Maybe Percy would help him with that, but somehow he didn’t think there was much of a chance. If Heather really wasn’t a true prisoner, maybe it wouldn’t matter—if he could figure out a way to persuade her.