"Of the seven deadly sins, many agree pride is the deadliest"
"I do not argue"
"However, deadly sin of sloth is the most interesting one to me", says Panteku.
"In the confusion it causes"
"Suppose", it says.
"Homeless Gregor, managed to lock himself in a room with an endless supply of food and water, tucking him away from the rest of humanity"
"Thus this version of his life, will have no records of incidents for Cretone to reveal, apart from eating and farting to death"
"So, technically there will be no evidence for me to bully him with"
"However", said the prosecutor.
"For all the thirteen thousand two hundred and ninety four days of life, all of it, I will attribute it to a single sin...the sin of sloth"
"So, Ansi, how would you statistically analyse such a case?"
"You wouldn't", Panteku answered itself, "instead the defence will be something like, he tucked himself away to avoid any form of temptations, thus he was virtuous"
"In his actual case he did not lock himself away but he did, spend roughly thirty-three percent of his life sound asleep, why would we account for such incidents as a point for Heavenly administration? Or a point for Hell executions?"
"If I were to use a statistical approach"
"How many days or incidences rather, would go in your favour and not be attributed to sloth?"
"Which is why, I say sloth is the most intriguing of the seven"
"It seems more like a mechanism cleverly placed to get the mortal to interact with his environment rather than avoid it entirely, than it is a punishment for moral flaw"
"Even if sloth was not a sin"
"The Homeless man has spent his whole life tucked away from possibility, he'd have no points that favour the bid of an ascend"
"And because sloth has already been labelled a sin, makes the issue more decisive, for if I were to go down that route, how many such incidents of your client would suggest sloth and what would it take for it to not suggest sloth?"
"See? The statistical approach just does not work in cosmic judgement. It never will"
"Also to address the exam analogy you used"
"I'll say, it is not that you are failing the test because you got one or two questions wrong, it is that your entire question paper may have only consisted of those one or two questions and you failed that one question"
"Everything else in the exam was nothing but a distraction"
"But all of this is something even you know"
"You must love dabbling with poorly thought out arguments", it teased.
"Yes", Ansi agreed, "which is why I fail to understand why you walked us through this route"
"Consider two commandments of the tenth simultaneously", the advocate began.
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me and"
"Honour thy father, and thy mother"
"Obedience has a lot to do with the latter", Ansi says.
"But it is emphasised one must honour one's parent under the condition that their methods and instructions are in line with that of God"
"For example if one's parent is honouring other gods, a child is permitted to disobey them, thus you have no weight to charge them with"
"Correct?"
"Basically", replies Panteku.
"Thus", continues Ansi, "there is precedence amongst the ten"
"Some commandments are more important, while others are only true if a previous condition was true", it deduced.
"That said I do wonder, if a child is born into a household that honours other gods, and when the child does adopt his parents ways are they doomed for Hell or does He Himself intervene to try and save the child?"
"That question has no relevance in Homeless Gregor's case"
"So I will leave it for a relevant trial"
"You are giving me more reason as to why the statistical approach does not work", Panteku adds, "precedence among the ten also implies some deeds have greater penalties over others"
"So you'll no longer be averaging the number of incidences but instead you'll be trying to balance sin against goodwill, and excusing lesser over greater ones", it said.
"A mortal could be found not guilty on nine commandments, apart from the commandment of greatest precedence, Thou shalt have no other gods before me, and every other deed would be in vain"
"In fact even if he is not guilty of dishonouring that commandment, but is guilty of dishonouring the other nine, I would question which God was he honouring"
"I am surprised, you would even bring up the statistical approach given it works better in my favour than it ever will in yours", says Panteku.
"You are so fixated on trying to prove me wrong, that you've failed to see what I'm getting at", Ansi countered.
"Since there is, as you've admitted before the court, precedence among the ten I ask you to support and prove your charges?"
"Pardon?", questioned Panteku, "I already have, the evidence is clear"
"The evidence is what we've seen out of my client's actions"
"But as I've just said, honouring one's parent comes with the condition, that they are acting out of God's will"
"Thus it is not enough to show the court through Cretone how my client disobeyed his parents"
"You must also show that his parents were in line with God while guiding my client during those incidences of his life"
"Prove that of every instruction, Homeless Gregor ever obeyed or disobeyed, came from a parent that was in line with God's will"
"And only then will your charges stick"
"But as you were so quick to say, precedence among the ten does invalidate some deeds when prerequisites are not met"
"Your job now is to prove that the necessary prerequisites to charge my client of dishonouring his parents were met"
"If not, then members of the court, we must be fair, none such charge of this context should stick"
"That's a very weird thing you are suggesting", Panteku said.
"If I prove that his parents were acting out of God's will, that rules me out from prosecuting his parents in the margins of that topic during their own trials"
"But if I can't prove it, and the charge does not stick, while you will still be able to advocate for them, you'd have given me the chance to charge them on so many incidents involving their son"
"What a weird, weird approach you are using", Panteku said as if it was startled.
"Yeah, it is only going to get weirder", Ansi adds.
"I'm going back to what I said earlier, as a mortal with mortal abilities, did Homeless Gregor have the ability to determine whether or not his parent's instructions to him were in favour with God's will?"
"It is severely unfortunate, that you can bring all these witnesses here, ask for their verdicts without particularly assessing their lives"
"You set up these charges by making use of the verdicts of his mortal friends, and with the use of Tretone, you managed to expose his thoughts so that they would change these verdicts"
"Through Tretone, you managed to charge him of envy, pride, disobedience of the ten"
"The most noticeable thing about this method was the fact that your friends only had a change of heart when my client's thoughts were exposed"
"And from that, members of the court, what did we learn?"
"The overlaying way the prosecutor achieved causes to charge him of such sins was by inspecting his inner workings"
"Fair enough". Ansi says, pausing before speaking up again.
"But take Chase for example he believed his friend to be of good heart, until he was not, so what Panteku implied was a good deed that appears to you on the surface might be a malicious one within"
"Thank you devil's advocate for the valuable lesson"
"But what now, if Cynthia's and Jeremy's deeds were as two faced as my client's deeds are implied to be?"
"What now if their thoughts were not in line with God?"
"Had this been their trial, and you used Tretone on them, would they get away as saints in the light of cosmic law?"
"Of course not, a mortal is meant to be flawed"
"But if your reason to charge a man for his crimes is born from other cosmic crimes, then you do not have a case at all", Ansi argues.
"However"
"If you still believe such charges should stick regardless of how flawed a parent may have been, regardless of how far away from God they were"
"Then that becomes an indirect acknowledgment on your part, that their intentions were pure on surface, and they were acting out of love for their child, thus then was Homeless Gregor not acting out of good intentions too?"
"And on what grounds would you claim otherwise?"
"When the inherent contradiction of your argument is an indirect admission that actions count for more than words do"
"Are you implying it is okay to dishonour a parent because they could be deceitful?", Panteku questioned.
"I have not implied anything", Ansi defends.
"I've allowed you to do the talking and now I'm taking advantage in the errors of your use of logic"
"I am showing everyone the problem that comes with charging a child for disobeying their parents, a logical problem that you overlooked or perhaps could not care about because it works to your advantage"
"Look, let me try to take it from the top and simplify what just occurred"
"The introduction of Tretone and all these witnesses created a before and an after", Ansi states.
"The before was the perception they held of my client before Tretone's input, and the after being the change they felt after Tretone spoke"
"This was Panteku's way of proving that a friend may not be a real friend, but since that is how the prosecutor judges sincerity amongst mortals, then why were the same methods not used in the incidents involving his parents?"
"For the prosecutor to allow itself to charge the Homeless mortal of sins in incidents regarding his friends than it is undermining the causes behind every charge"
"Anyone with sense could deduce that Jeremy in more times than none was acting out of pride rather than guidance, if any charge involving the two does stick, what would the legitimacy of it be?"
"Well how then did he dishonour a parent, if the parent was not in line with God? When we've just established that the two must be true"
"We both agreed that precedence among the ten does exist", Ansi said looking at Panteku dead in the eye.
"Did you not account for it before including them in this?"
"Penalise yourself, for indulging in logical fallacies and sleeping with contradictions"
"You are simply dragging this out", Panteku replied, "fine by me, I don't mind picking your bones"
"Cretone, could you please remind us of January seventeen nineteen eighty", the devil's advocate commanded.
"Just the final parts of that incident"
17/01/1980. Day Three Thousand Four Hundred and Forty Four.
"Mom", the boy said while reading her, "have you been crying?"
"Crying? What makes you say that?"
"Lusanda, she used to cry in her bed"
"She would cover herself with blankets and put a hand over her mouth to cry"
"At night when she thought I was asleep I could hear her cry"
"When she woke up and washed her face, to make it like she had not been crying, but I noticed"
"It's the same type of eyes you have right now", he remarked.
"I…uh…wasn't even aware", Cynthia said, "you got me, sorry"
"I was crying, but it's nothing to worry about"
"Gregor", she said, holding him by the cheeks, "even when things are hard, remember we must remain honest with one another"
"What's done is done"
"But you have to be honest with me, so I know what to do, or at least try to know, right…"
"It's like I said, I cannot parent what I don't know", she said.
"I'm trying to drill that into you as much as possible"
"School is around the corner, I'll have to sit down with you before then"
"There's clearly much to discuss"
"Mortals should be judged according to the ability of mortals", Panteku said returning Ansi's words, "for the time being, I shall not debate that matter"
"But why haven't you taken it a step further, and spoken of individualistic abilities?"
"From this clip, we see, that the young Homeless man was capable of some amount of observation"
"Noticing his mother has been crying, not because she did it in front of him"
"But because her eyes looked similar to that of his sister, when she used to cry", Panteku told the court, "we can conclude that indeed the accused was capable of a decent level of observation, and thus had a fair awareness of the people around him"
"I'm sure even you, Ansi, can agree with this assessment?"
"I do", it said.
"Observation is a skill perhaps not granted to all mortals, but it is one that shaped his name tag"
"Which brings me to the next part"
"Cretone has not shown us what his mother wanted to discuss with him that day"
"I thought it would be tedious to go through all such clips, but if I must truly justify my charges, than tedious this trial shall be"
17/01/1980. Day Three Thousand Four Hundred and Forty Four.
"You've finished eating?", Cynthia had asked.
"Yes mom", he replied, "thank you for the food"
"Okay, don't go to sleep just yet, remember that I needed to talk to you"
"Oh, yes", said young Gregor, sitting back down.
"This won't take long", Cynthia said, putting the dishes aside.
"Now that your sister is gone, I thought that we need to return to the drawing board"
"Oh, however the saying goes", she says.
"Why did she leave?", young Gregor asked sympathetically.
"Well, I cannot say why, but as I told you before, she was pregnant"
"I don't even know if you know what that means"
"Of course I do mom"
"You do?"
"Yes, you are always telling me about how my birth came to be, you know the bus and aunty Dorothy"
"Oh yes, yes, looks like my mind is all over the place thus I completely forgot"
"But, look, getting pregnant at a young age is not good, you can't get pregnant, but you can make a girl pregnant"
"Though you are not of age yet, I think it is best I start telling you now"
"To avoid what happened with Lusanda, that is"
"Yes. Having kids is great, it is fantastic, but there is a time for everything. It shouldn't happen like that. Not when you are young and have a long way ahead of you"
"Go to school, focus on your work and stay away from girls", she advised.
"I don't mean run away from them, I mean don't date them, you're not of age yet"
"And if you think you are of age speak to me first, if you think you've fallen for someone again talk to me first, let's see how to best approach the situation"
"Otherwise something could go wrong and...I don't know, let's just work together"
"I couldn't stop what happened to Lusanda, because I failed to foresee it, but things could be different with you"
"So, please just be transparent"
"How is that relevant!?", demanded Homeless Gregor as soon as Cretone came to a stop.
"I followed her words of advice", he claimed.
"Good to see you still have a spine, despite having no ground to stand on", replies Panteku, "but that clip wasn't for you, it's for your stubborn advocate"
"Handler and members of the court"
"I admit what Ansi said is true, the dishonouring of a parent can only stick if the parent was acting out of His will"
"So it does create room for questions and doubt"
"I therefore, alter my angle of prosecution", it says beaming with a smile.
"I shall now charge depending on specific rules made by a parent that fall in line with something in the holy scriptures"
"Sex before marriage, does appear in the holy scriptures, not as a commandment, nor a derived sin, but a law"
"If a holy scripture law is a law a parent passes onto a child, but the child disobeys, then he has dishonoured the parent and my charge should stick", Panteku argued.
"Homeless Gregor, you get it now, you get why I had to bring up that day of yours", the Homeless man looked at his prosecutor in confusion.