The Sworn Machine

Docket is a leased witness: a machine whose testimony holds up in court only so long as it never interferes. Nine years of standing perfectly still have made it valuable. Then a pressure gallery fails three kilometres beneath the ice of an ocean moon, four thousand workers' homes hang on a single arbitration ruling, and saving one drowning man will cost Docket everything its word is worth. Every rescue makes it less believable. The truth needs it to be both.