The formalities of a plea having been summarily dealt with, the question now at hand was sentencing. Electron wondered if he would be sent to prison. Despite lobbying from Electron's lawyers, the DPP's office had refused to recommend a non-custodial sentence. The best deal Electron's lawyers had been able to arrange in exchange for turning Crown witness was for the DPP to remain silent on the issue of prison. The judge would make up his mind without input from the DPP. Electron fiddled nervously with his father's wedding ring, which he wore on his right hand. After his father's death, Electron's sister had begun taking things from the family home. Electron didn't care much because there were only two things he really wanted: that ring and some of his father's paintings. Kayser called a handful of witnesses to support the case for a light sentence. Electron's grandmother from Queensland. The family friend who had driven Electron to the hospital the day his father died. Electron's psychiatrist, the eminent Lester Walton. Walton in particular highlighted the difference between the two possible paths forward: prison, which would certainly traumatise an already mentally unstable young man, or freedom, which offered Electron a good chance of eventually establishing a normal life. When Kayser began summarising the case for a non-custodial sentence, Electron could hear the pack of journalists off to his side frantically scribbling notes. He wanted to look at them, but he was afraid the judge would see his ponytail, carefully tucked into his neatly ironed white shirt, if he turned sideways, `Your Honour,' Kayser glanced backward slightly, toward the court reporters, as he warmed up, `my client lived in an artificial world of electronic pulses.' Scratch, scribble. Electron could almost predict, within half a second, when the journalists' pencils and pens would reach a crescendo of activity. The ebb and flow of Boris's boom was timed in the style of a TV newsreader. Kayser said his client was addicted to the computer the way an alcoholic was obsessed with the bottle. More scratching, and lots of it. This client, Kayser thundered, had never sought to damage any system, steal money or make a profit. He was not malicious in the least, he was merely playing a game. `I think,' Electron's barrister concluded passionately, but slowly enough for every journalist to get it down on paper, `that he should have been called Little Jack Horner, who put in his thumb, pulled out a plumb and said, "What a good boy am I!"' Now came the wait. The judge retired to his chambers to weigh up the pre-sentence report, Electron's family situation, the fact that he had turned Crown witness, his offences--everything. Electron had given a nine-page written statement against Phoenix to the prosecution. If the Phoenix case went to trial, Electron would be put on the stand to back up that statement.