When the precogs predict a murder, the machine in PreCrime carves the names of the murderer on a red wooden ball and the victim on another red wooden ball. What is the point of this? I see a lot of downsides:
- The process takes a while, which given that reported murders are imminent and every second counts, seems like a problem
- You can't store them very easily for record keeping
- The balls are identical except the names, so if you drop them, you could mix up the two and arrest the victim
Given all this, why does the PreCrime machine report its murders through carving names on wooden balls, instead of just displaying them on a screen or printing out a sheet of paper? I know that someone says a screen could be faked, but I find that to be a dumb explanation given that an engraving machine is basically a glorified printer (so why not use that and just have special watermarked paper or something)?