"Shit."
I scowl as I look at the photograph that appeared next to me when I woke up.
"It hasn't even been a week."
- You have a month.
"I know."
- You still have 11 months and-
"I KNOW."
I get up angrily and stuff the photograph into my pocket.
- You can come back if you wish.
"There's no point in playing pretend. It's not a prison if you can freely come and go."
- Just admit that you don't want to serve the rest of your sentence.
"Of course I don't. It's prison. I'm not supposed to enjoy it. Now get me out."
...
I examine the boy in the picture. He's smiling with hollow eyes. His hair is short and black. He has plain features, but I notice his long eyelashes.
I watch him.
He's quiet. He lives alone. He sits alone. He walks alone.
Same as the others.
I see a truck.
Bump.
Sirens.
Silence.
...
I lower my hands into my arms. The darkness is a sharp contrast to the whiteness of the room.
"Haaaaaaa."
It's different this time. No, every time is different, but this one was even more so.
"What now?"
[It] didn't reply.
I began counting. One beep. Two beeps. Three. Four.
The door opened just after I counted the 521st beep.
I raised my head and looked at the nurse. He fiddled with the equipment and scribbled some notes, then left.
I lost my count. 1. 2. 3.
60 beeps later, [It] finally said something.
- This is similar.
[It] seemed bothered.
"Yeah."
- Your job is not done.
"Yeah."
- I cannot help you.
...
We sat in silence the hospital room, [It] and I. People came and went. They couldn't see me, and I didn't want to see them.
- Let's talk about the trolley problem.
[It] suggests.
I nod.
- Imagine there is a trolley that will hit a thousand people.
- Imagine there is a boy like the one in front of you, with no close relations, barely alive.
- Imagine there is a button that would divert the trolley, saving half of the thousand people but putting an end to the boy.
- Will you push the button?
I struggle to answer, but the word refused to come out.
"It's different," I finally managed to spit out.
"This stupid trolley problem. It's different."
- There is a variation that I believe to be more appropriate. Would you like to hear it?
[It] doesn't wait for my response.
- Imagine there is a trolley that will hit a thousand people.
- Imagine there is a boy like the one in front of you, with no close relations, barely alive.
- Imagine that if you push the boy in front of the train, you could save half of the thousand people.
- Would you do it?
"... What should I do?"
- There's no correct answer. There was never supposed to be a correct answer.
"What does it say I should do?"
- Philippa Foot. Humans have both positive and negative rights. Negative. The right to have no interference. Positive. The right to receive support. Negative rights are stronger than positive.
- If you were driving a trolley and could only control the steering, she once believed you should steer towards the one. The negative rights of many is greater than the negative rights of one. To steer one way is to allow less harm to happen.
- If you had to kill a person to stop the trolley, she once believed you should not. The positive rights of saving many is less than the negative rights of one. To kill is to initiate harm, which goes against the one person's negative rights.
"Then what about the lever. Isn't pulling the lever initiating harm in its own way?"
- That may be true. I do not know what she would think.
- Instead, perhaps Judith Jarvis Thomson? She came up with the lever example that you knew.
"What does she say?"
- If you had to pull a lever, you may if you wish. If you had to kill a person, you should not.
- She once believed in the distinction between diverting an existing harm and initiating a new one. To pull the lever is to divert. To kill is to initiate.
"So I should pull the lever?"
- That is for you to decide.
"... Fuck. This makes no sense."
- Few things do.
...
Knotted. Twisted. Shattered. Broken. The throbbing pain in my chest made me gasp. It hurts. It hurts.
It hurts a lot.
"Shit," I managed to swear once before the room faded to black.
...
I wake up. I can see the bottom of the patient's bed in front of me.
I flip over so that I'm facing upwards, feeling the coldness of the tile seep into my back. With my arm, I shield my eyes from the light.
- You are awake.
"I am."
- Have you decided?
"... How much time?"
- Two days.
The pain in my chest flares, and I inhale sharply, then twist my lips into a something resembling a smile.
"Ha."
It's funny, how foolish I am.
"Ha."
It's funny, how something I believed I already knew would surprise me.
"Ha. It was never about a trolley."
I say my thoughts out loud, more for myself than for [It].
"I wanted to be consistent. Humans tend to want that.
"What if I thought it was wrong to pull the lever?
"Would I think the same way if there were six instead of five? What about seven? If they were my friends and family?
"How many lives justify pulling the lever? A hundred? A thousand?
"If there was one less person, would the answer be any different? Why?
"So the most consistent answer is to always pull the lever. Even if it's just two against one.
"But what is pulling the lever, exactly?
"Is it really just allowing harm to happen?
"But by pulling the lever, a person who would have lived would die instead.
"Doesn't that mean I'm sentencing someone to death?
"How is that any different from murder?
"The most consistent answer is to say 'it's not.'
"So I became a murderer.
"I killed people.
"I hit them with trucks, believing that by killing them, they would be reborn as heroes. They would save countless people in other worlds.
"I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I continued to do it because I thought it was the least wrong I could do.
"I thought it was the same as the trolley problem.
"I thought it was the same choice: to kill one for the sake of saving many.
"But I was wrong.
"It's not the same.
"There is a difference.
"Somewhere in there, something is different. I don't know what.
"All I know is there was never any damn trolley. There was never any damn lever. And there was never any damn answer."
...
The beeping of the heart rate monitor stopped that night. [It] and I were gone before the first rays of light brought the next morning.