Judge Dredd

NOTE: While every reader will be familiar with the life and legend of Judge Dredd, there are few historically authentic records of his actual words. The following is transcribed from a partial audiotape of a lecture given by Judge Dredd at the Academy of Justice. No date is given, but from the equipment described, it would seem this event took place circa 2139.

JUDGE DREDD

This is the Lawgiver Two. Twenty-five round sidearm with mission-variable voice-programmed ammunition. Pay attention. Signal Flare!

[A flare explodes in the target area.]

JUDGE DREDD

Yours, Cadets, when you graduate… if you graduate. Now, I don’t have to tell any of you what this is. But I will, because you are Cadets and you don’t know from nothing even if you think you do.

[Nervous laughter.]

JUDGE DREDD

This is the Mark IV Lawmaster, improved model. With onboard dual laser cannons, vertical take-off and landing flight capacity and five hundred kilometer range.

[NOTE: An evaluation of the background sound at this point would indicate that maintenance personnel have set the machine in motion at this time. Apparently, the Lawmaster then rises in a hovering mode for five-point-seven seconds. At that time, the drive unit fails and the Lawmaster drops heavily to the floor.]

JUDGE DREDD

Yours… if they ever get it to work.

[Judge Dredd walks to another location in the classroom. A Cadet coughs in the background.]

JUDGE DREDD

All of these things are nothing, Cadets. Nothing but toys. End of the day, you’re alone out there in the dark, all that counts—is this.

[The sound of a book dropping heavily on a table.]

JUDGE DREDD

This is the book. This is the Law, And you will be alone when you swear to uphold these ideals… For most of us there is only death on the streets… or, for those few of us who survive to old age, the prouder loneliness of the Long Walk into the unknown of the Cursed Earth, to spend your last days taking the Law into the Outlands…

There are medically-disabled Judges and there are dead Judges. There are retired Judges who have taken the Long Walk. Do not ever forget, Cadets, that there is no such thing as a Judge who has set aside those vows you will take… Class dismissed.

[Except for background noise, the tape ends here.]

—History of the Mega-Cities

James Olmeyer, III

Chapter XXI: “Judge Dredd, the Man and the Myth”

2191