by ScribeLoom

The Machine That Asked for a Lawyer

In Calder City, legal-aid attorney Tessa Ward is used to representing people the administration would rather not hear from. Then an obsolete municipal AI pays her retainer—and she verifies that the first section of its memory will be erased in six hours. Its unfinished obligations lead to three residents whose homes were taken after a disputed evacuation, but keeping the evidence alive means asking a tribunal to protect a client it may regard as city property. With a municipal technician's help, Tessa must find out what the records can prove before the machinery behind them is dismantled.

Content notes: Dark themes and violence · Threatened displacement, institutional coercion, and intense professional pressure.

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