Trolley Problems

I stumbled out of an unlit hallway, recalling nothing of how I arrived there, just as I had countless times before. As always, my most recent memory was of my last ride on the trolley, vivid enough that a lingering, phantom agony still pervaded my once again whole and healthy body.
The old trolley station was now depressingly familiar to me. It was made almost entirely from mottled grey bricks, unevenly eroded by the slow trickle of leaking, fetid sewer water along their surface. Harsh yet faint incandescent bulbs caged against the walls and ceiling provided the only source of illumination, other than the garish backlight of an automated drink dispenser; our only source of sustenance, should we desire any.
At the edge of the rusted old tracks was a single iron bench, the kind they deliberately make uncomfortable so that the homeless won’t sleep on it. It was long enough to hold five people, and there were already four upon it. Since I was the last one needed to fill up the bench, I knew that the trolley would be coming soon.
I recognized the man nearest to me, a heavy-set and dark-skinned man by the name of Gregory, as we had ridden together before. He was doing his best to remain stoic, but I could tell by the slight tremble of the coffee in his hand that he was dreading the oncoming trolley as much as I was. At the other end of the bench was a dishevelled middle-aged woman quietly sobbing to herself, and next to her was a younger woman who seemed more confused than frightened; almost certainly a first-timer.
In the middle of the bench sat a preteen girl with dark black eyes and wavy dark hair pulled back in a half-ponytail, wearing a red and white velvet dress, knee-high white socks and shiny, buckle-up shoes. It wasn’t just her age or her well-groomed appearance that set her apart from the rest of us, but the fact that she was happily swinging her legs and sipping at her hot chocolate as she waited for the trolley. She even gave me an enthusiastic wave as I approached the bench.
“Hey, Max. Good to see you’re still keeping it together,” Gregory greeted me, raising his coffee cup slightly in a commiserative toast. “Ladies, this is Max. I’ve ridden with him before a few times. Max, this young lady next to me is Sara, and that there’s Desiree. The woman at the end isn’t talking though, and she’s got every right not to. We’ve got a kid with us today, which might boost our odds of being the surviving trolley. On the other hand, we’ve got a newcomer, and the committee will probably think she needs to pay her dues.”
“Ah… hello there, Sara,” I said to the girl in the softest tone I could. “Is this your first time here?”
“Nope. I’ve ridden the trolley lots of times!” she replied with an enthusiastic grin. I gave Gregory a bemused and horrified grimace, to which he merely shrugged in response.
“Ah, hi. I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand what the hell is going on here,” Desiree interjected. “I must have gone into the wrong station, but when I tried to go back, I just ended up back here. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“The only way out of here is on the trolley,” I explained to her patiently. “Passengers only come in through the hallways, not out. The trolley never comes until there are enough people to fill the bench, which varies each time. Never miss the trolley. If the trolley leaves and you’re not on it, the lights go out and you’re stranded here in pitch darkness. Then you’ll start hearing things. Whispers at first, but they get louder. They talk about you, but never to you, not even when they’re standing right in front of you. First, they’ll talk about how horrible you are and all the terrible things you’ve done, all your worst sins and secrets. Then they start talking about all the horrible things they’ll do to you as punishment once they finally find you. It’s such a bizarre and unnatural form of torment that you’re sure you must be in hell. Then the lights come back on, and…”
The older woman broke out into anguished wails, and I couldn’t bring myself to finish. I hope I didn’t need to finish.
“Okay, you people are messing with me, right? This is some kind of hidden camera show or something?” Desiree asked in disbelief.
“They’re in the tunnels too, but at least then you can escape for as long as you can see the light,” Gregory added, not bothering to try to debunk her skepticism.
“And don’t think you can get out of riding the trolley by throwing yourself in front of it, either. Trying to take the easy way out will only make it harder on yourself,” Sara warned with an insidious smirk.
Before Desiree could ask her to clarify what she meant, we heard the god-awful screeching of the trolley as it pulled itself along its rusty cables, and saw its cyclopean, incandescent headlight in the gloom of the tunnel.
“It’s here! Trolley’s here! Trolley’s here! Trolley’s here!” Sara screamed, excitedly bouncing up and down on the bench.
Sparks flew off both the overhead cables and the tracks as the trolley screeched itself to a stop in front of us, its flaking crimson paint hardly distinguishable from the rust underneath. The number five was just barely legible on its side. The doors slid open, and the woman at the end of the bench immediately raced through them, and the giggling young girl skipped along after her. With a heavy sigh, Gregory rose from the bench and trudged along after them. I patted him on the back as I followed, standing in the doorway as I waited for Desiree.
“I understand why you’re skeptical, and why you wouldn’t necessarily want to board a death trap of a trolley with two strange men, an obviously disturbed woman and a possibly psychotic little girl, but the trolley really is the only way out of here,” I implored her. “If you stay, you’re going to find out the hard way why none of us would ever risk missing it again.”
She seemed to deliberate for a moment between the risks of being alone at the station or being trapped on the trolley with us, grudgingly settling on the latter. She hopped onto the trolley, and the instant I stepped out of the doors, they snapped shut. The blood-red interior was in slightly better condition than the exterior, the space above the windows plastered with ads for things I’d never heard of like CODE NIGHTMARE REGENT RED energy drink, Satin Stag Cigarettes, and Stygian’s Classic Pizzeria.
“Buckle up, and be sure you’re able to hold onto something,” I advised Desiree as I sat across the aisle from Gregory. The older woman had curled up into a fetal position at the back, and Sara had claimed the front seat for herself.
“Wait, what? What’s going to happen?” Desiree asked, the alarm obvious in her cracking voice. Before I could answer, the trolley’s speaker system crackled to life.
“Good evening, passengers, and thank you once again for choosing Gedanken Express – turning philosophical thought experiments into real-life atrocities for far too long,” a soothingly smooth male voice announced in an old-fashioned cadence, exhaling like he was smoking a cigarette. “I’ll be your conductor for this evening, and for anyone who hasn’t boarded their trolley yet, this is last call. That’s right, newbie on Platform Three, I’m talking to you. You’re sure you don’t want to get on now? No? That’s fine. That just means a previous trolley-dodger gets your ticket for next time. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled.”
With a loud pneumatic hiss, the trolley began slowly chugging down the track and into the tunnel.
“For anyone riding Gedanken Express for the first time today, or any of our regulars in need of a refresher, there are ten trolleys on the tracks, each with a varying number of passengers,” the Conductor explained. “Every one of our passengers has had both their Kantian and Utilitarian moral value quantified by the infallible experts on our award-winning Ethics Committee. And if you take issue with your ranking, tough cookies. You’re not an award-winning ethicist, now are you? Actually, I can see we do have an ethicist on tonight’s roster. That’s part of what makes this so fun! While half the trolleys are ‘controls’ filled with random people, the other half are filled with passengers deliberately chosen to confound the system. Tonight, for example, I can see that Trolley Number Nine is filled with genetically identical clones of Adolf Hitler, but none of whom have any actual history of violence or extremism. Don’t ask me where we got them; that’s not my department.
“At multiple junctures along your journey, I will be required to choose which trolley must be sacrificed to ensure the survival of the others, until there’s only one trolley left. I can base my decision on each trolley’s net moral value, either Kantian or Utilitarian, or average moral value, or which individual is most or least deserving of surviving, or maybe none of the above. But I will tell you this; when in doubt, I pull the lever, since that’s usually the correct answer to a trolley problem.
“Please keep in mind that while this isn’t a social experiment per se, any attempt by passengers to sway the odds in their favour or take out the competition will result in me making ad hoc deductions to their moral scores, decreasing their overall chance of survival. I realize these experiments can be stressful, but keep in mind that you’re doing it for science. Or philosophy, rather; which is just as important as science, I’m pretty sure. Try to be good sports about it, and remember that even if you don’t make it, there’s always next time.”
“Wait, how is there a next time? He’s going to kill us, isn’t he?” Desiree demanded.
“Then he brings us back. Don’t ask us how,” Gregory explained. “We just stumble back onto the trolley platform like it never happened, just so that we can do it all over again.”
“Over and over and over again!” Sara cheered, bouncing in her seat as the woman in the back sobbed to herself.
We emerged from the tunnel out of the side of an impossibly tall stone wall, out across a vast wilderness of sharp rocks and ragged gullies far below. We were held aloft solely by a pair of steel cables strung up by wobbly wooden poles, racing alongside several other trollies to either side of us.
“What the hell?” Desiree asked as she peered out across the unfamiliar landscape, no doubt at a loss as to where we were or how we had gotten here.
“Isn’t it cool? It’s just like we’re flying, except if the cable snaps we’ll fall to an instant fiery death!” Sara exclaimed. “Hey, can anyone see the Hitler clones? I want to see the Hitler clones!”
“I find it best not to look at the other trolleys,” I replied, though I was speaking more to Desiree than to Sara.
“Same,” Gregory nodded.
“Sorry passengers, but it looks like we’ve already run into our first trolley problem,” the Conductor informed us. “Seems like there’s not enough power for all of us. That’s funny, since it’s more of an engineering problem than a moral one. I’m just going to have to ditch the heaviest trolley; moral worth of its occupants be damned. Trolley Number Seven; you’re out. And before anyone there goes fat-shaming anyone, it has nothing to do with the passengers. Even completely empty, Seven’s just a big old clunker. Nothing but bad luck. Such a tragedy.”
We heard the distinctive sound of a mechanical lever being pulled, and Trolley Number Seven plummeted down to the sinister land below, smashing open upon the murderous rocks.
“Don’t worry folks; even if they didn’t all die on impact, the local wildlife will make quick work of them,” the Conductor assured us. “And now that they can’t hear us, I’ll admit that I did pick the trolley with the most fat people to maximize the amount of food the scavengers would get. On a related note, if anyone here familiar with trolley problems is wondering, you can’t actually stop a runaway trolley by pushing a fat person in front of it. Believe me, we’ve tried!
“Anyway, now that we have plenty of power, we can afford to speed things up a bit. Everyone hold on tight, now.”
We were all thrown back in our seats as the trolleys suddenly shot forward, the cables weaving around rocky outcroppings and other obstacles almost like a rollercoaster, a resemblance that only the ever-effervescent Sara seemed to appreciate.
“Folks, if you’ll be so kind as to look out to your right, you’ll see Gedanken Express’s pride and joy; our very own Euthanasia Coaster,” the Conductor bragged. “A five hundred meter drop – the tallest in the world – followed by seven progressively smaller inversions subjects passengers to a full minute of ten gees, which invariably proves fatal. It’s the ride of a lifetime, if you’ll pardon the pun, but there’s one little problem; no one’s riding it! Why, this is going to be terrible for the economy! I’m afraid one of you is going to have to go for a spin to drum up some business! Since it’s a Euthanasia Coaster, I suppose I should send the trolley with either the lowest quality of life or shortest life expectancy to keep up appearances… but since it is the most humane death on offer tonight, maybe it should go to the trolley that deserves to suffer the least? Decisions, decisions.”
“The Euthanasia Coaster is awesome! Everyone should get a chance to go on it!” Sara opined. “I think the trolley with the fewest people that have already ridden the coaster should be the one to ride it.”
“Passengers… one of you just made a very thoughtful suggestion, and I think I like it,” the Conductor proclaimed with glee. “No one on Trolley Number Four has ever been on the Euthanasia Coaster before, and there’s a first time for everything. Enjoy the ride while it lasts!”
Another lever was pulled, and Trolley Number Four was diverted to the dazzling and monstrous roller coaster looming on the horizon.
“No need for the rest of you to feel left out though. We’ve got plenty of chills, thrills, and kills left in store!” the Conductor promised. “If you look straight ahead, you’ll see that we’re just about to run out of cable. That’s okay, because you’re all carrying enough momentum to make it across the gap to the tracks on the other side. The bad news is that there are eight trolleys left, but only seven tracks across the gap. One of you isn’t going to make it. Which one should it be now? I could just pick the trolley with the fewest passengers, but if I play that card now it might just make for harder choices down the line. Yes, yes, I can hear you shouting ‘Hitler Trolley’, Number Three. Hmmm, what’s it called when you base someone’s moral worth solely on their genetic heritage? You know what? For your unabashed bigotry, I’m making an ad hoc deduction to your score. Trolley Number Three is off the rails!”
A lever was pulled, and almost immediately we ran out of cable and were sent arcing through the air. Despite what the Conductor had said, there were in fact eight sets of tracks, but Number Three’s had a large metal barrier erected in front of it that read ‘Out of Order’. Trolley Number Three crashed right into the barrier in a fiery explosion, and that was the last the rest of us saw of it as we sped along down our respective tracks.
“They also could have just shared a set of rails with one of us,” Gregory muttered.
“That’s not really in the spirit of ‘trolley problems’,” Sara chastised him.
Though I knew the worst was yet to come, I couldn't help but feel a bit relieved that we were on solid ground again. All the remaining trolleys continued chugging along down the winding tracks, which took us into a foreboding-looking pine forest.
“Oh oh. Don’t look now, passengers, but I think we’re being followed,” the Conductor informed us. Despite his warning, we all looked out the rear window and saw a single handcar barrelling down the tracks, its two-man team furiously working the pump to catch up with us. “Bandits! In a manually-powered handcar! They’ll overtake us for sure! We surely can’t trust them to pick the most morally acceptable trolley to raid, so we’ll have to let one fall behind so the rest of us can escape! I’m torn between picking the trolley with the best chance of defending itself and the one least likely to offer any resistance at all. It’s just two bandits, after all. If you don’t fight back and give them what they want, they might not hurt anybody. But maybe they’d rather not leave any witnesses, and standing your ground is the only just way to deal with scofflaws like these. What do you say, Trolley Number Eight? Do you big strong gents think you can handle these nare-do-wells, or would you rather I let some kiddies and old women beg for mercy? Eh? What’s that? No, of course, you can’t try begging for mercy, you coward! Time to grow a pair, Trolley Number Eight!”
With another pull of a lever, Trolley Number Eight began to slow down. Within seconds, the bandits had boarded it from the rear, and they were still close enough that we could clearly hear each bandit rapidly empty their revolvers into the passengers before they ever had a chance to land a blow themselves.
“Ah well. You know what they say. God made all men, but Samuel Colt made all men equal,” the Conductor quipped in a tone that implied he thought he was being very profound. “At least they didn’t die for nothing. Those bandits will never catch us now. With them behind us, we can focus on what’s ahead of us, like that railway crossing. Wow, that highway looks pretty busy. Shouldn’t the crossing lights have come on by now? Everyone just hold on a minute, please. I need to check something. Well, isn’t this just the worst of luck; the railway crossing lights are out! I don’t think those motorists are going to see us coming in time. I’m going to have to send one of you ahead into oncoming traffic. One train wreck should be enough to bring traffic to a halt, and the rest of us can just breeze on by. So, who’s it going to be?”
“This is insane. Does anyone ever make it to the end?” Desiree asked, her gaze transfixed on the torrent of vehicles running perpendicular to us, a collision both imminent and unavoidable.
“There’s no way to know. I run into at least one new passenger every few rides, so they’re regularly bringing new people on,” Gregory replied without raising his head, his hands gripping the seat in front of him as he braced for the worst. “Whether that means they’re letting people go or just collecting us like bottle caps, I couldn’t tell you. But I’ve never met anyone who claimed to have made it to the end and got put back on a trolley, so there’s that small bit of hope.”
“Passengers, I’m going to be upfront with you. On paper, this is a pretty straightforward trolley problem, and I should just send the trolley with either the fewest people or the lowest net moral value into traffic,” the Conductor said. “However, I’m getting a little tired of the actual ethicist in Trolley Number Ten thinking he’s better than me and telling me what to do! Here’s a lesson for you, Number Ten; moralizing at the person holding your life in their hands is never the right choice!”
The Conductor pulled another lever, and Trolley Number Ten shot ahead of the rest of us. The instant it made it to the highway, it was t-boned by a transport truck and plowed right off the tracks. The car behind the truck slammed on its brakes and caused a multi-vehicle pile-up. The truck itself started careening sideways, slamming into several other vehicles before skidding to a halt, its massive tank of oil exploding into a raging inferno upon impact. To either side of the tracks, there was nothing but wailing and bloodied bodies trying to claw their way out of flaming and mangled wreckage, but the tracks themselves were now safe for us to cross.
“So beautiful!” Sara gushed as she gleefully gawked out at the carnage as we rode by, the sanguine firelight reflecting in her wonderstruck eyes.
“I think that little accident killed more motorists than trolley passengers. I bet they’re regretting not taking the trolley now!” the Conductor mocked them. “Hopefully the next time we put them back on a platform, they’ll make better choices.
“Well passengers, that’s five trolley problems down. That means there are just four more to go. By making it this far, you’ve proven to be more morally valuable than average! You should be very proud! And hopeful! Even if you don’t make it out this time, the odds are in your favour that you’ll make it sooner rather than later.”
“Don’t let him get your hopes up, Desiree. I’ve made it to the halfway point more often than not, and I’ve lost count of how many trolley rides I’ve been on,” I cautioned her.
“Passengers, I don’t want to alarm you, but I’ve just received a message from the Ethics Committee,” the Conductor said in a hushed tone. “It seems that bombs have been planted aboard each trolley by terrorists – not real ideological or ethnocentric extremists, though. More like the kind you’d see in an eighties movie. Anyway, the only way for them to figure out how to disarm them is for me to intentionally set one of them off. Don’t ask me how, though. I’m not an explosives expert – just an enthusiast! Oh, these trolley problems are getting tougher now, aren’t they? I just said that you were all of above-average moral value. None of you really seem to deserve to live or die more than anyone else here. In that case, I guess the only ethical choice is to pick a trolley at random, since killing some of you is better than letting all of you die. However…”
The Conductor pulled a lever, and Trolley Number Nine exploded, bouncing off the tracks slightly before capsizing altogether.
“And boom goes the dynamite! I just killed five Hitlers!” he boasted. “I know, I know, that’s a little hypocritical because of what I said earlier, but come on! In what moral dilemma is killing five Hitlers the wrong choice? Besides, ‘killed five Hitlers’ will look great on my CV – as long as I don’t go into too many details. I’m going to update that now, actually.”
“Have any of ever tried just breaking the door and jumping out?” Desiree demanded, her head rapidly swivelling between all the windows in the hopes of getting some early warning of the next horror we would be facing.
“It’s not easy, unless the trolley problem requires us to go outside,” Gregory explained. “But even when you make it out, and survive the jump, you never make it for long out there. It’s not just the trolleys that are unnatural, it’s this whole place. Even if you get off the tracks, there’s no escape. And if you become a trolley-dodger, they’ll put you on the motorway or worse until there’s a spare ticket for you. The only hope is making it to the end of the line.”
Desiree looked like she wanted to object, but didn’t know what to say. The surreal horror of a situation was difficult to process, and I don’t fault her one bit for not knowing how to react. If anything, she was doing better than I did my first ride. She turned back towards the front window, a bewildered and terrified expression overtaking her when she saw what was next for us.
“What the hell is that?” she demanded, pointing to the shark-finned, SS-emblazoned airship hovering in the distance.
“Yes! Nazi Zeppelin! Nazi Zeppelin! Nazi Zeppelin! We made it to the Nazi Zeppelin!” Sara cheered, bouncing in her seat again.
“Hey again, passengers. I’m… genuinely sorry for this one. I know these trolley problems tend to get a little more absurd the longer they go on for,” the Conductor said in a tone that sounded, if not apologetic, then at least sorry it was happening to him. I heard some ice clinking, and I presumed he was taking a drink of something alcoholic. “Ahh. Let me just try to read the nonsense the Ethics Committee gave me for this one. So, the SS Command is not happy that I killed their Hitler clones, despite their refusal to participate in any Nazi atrocities, and now they’ve come to avenge their loss. Just goes to show that even making the most ethical choices can have negative consequences if they piss off unethical people. The Zeppelin’s going to blitzkrieg us as we drive under them, and because when all you have are trolleys everything looks like a trolley problem, I’m supposed to elevate one of the tracks into a ramp to send one of you flying into it, destroying it Hindenburg-style. So, yeah – apparently Heinrich Himmler is on that thing. The memo in front of me doesn’t explicitly mention time travel, but I can only assume this is a time travelling trolley problem. I’m not sure if I’m only supposed to be considering the impact of destroying a trolley or all the ramifications throughout the timeline here. So… I’m legitimately pulling a lever at random this time. No matter what trolley I pick, Himmler goes up in flames. And a one, and a two, and a five, and a six!”
A lever was pulled, the track in front of Trolley Number Six rose up on a forty-five-degree angle, and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture began playing over the speakers. The trolley went sailing through the air and collided straight with the Zeppelin, causing the hydrogen-filled balloon to ignite and engulf the entire airship in flames. The burning wreck rapidly descended to the ground, frantic screaming and angry German expletives still audible over the roaring fire and classical music, and we were just able to make it to the other side before it crashed.
“Oh, the humanity!” the Conductor lamented theatrically. “Okay, despite my reservations about the set-up, that was admittedly pretty amazing. It was a good enough spectacle to sacrifice a random trolley for, at any rate. Rot in pieces, Heinrich. Rot in pieces.”
“Wow! Four explosions, two of them pretty big ones, and we got to see the Nazi Zeppelin! This is such a good trolley ride!” Sara gushed.
“What the hell is the matter with that kid?” Desiree whispered to me.
“Never seen her before,” I whispered back. “But… there are worse coping strategies than that, I suppose.”
“All right passengers, listen closely now. This penultimate trolley problem gets a little complicated,” the Conductor announced. “Three other trolleys on a set of tracks perpendicular to us left their station at precisely 3:43 PM Mountain Standard Time. Each is transporting live human organs for medical transplantation and is thus travelling at maximum speed and will not slow down for any reason. The slowest trolley is moving at seventy-three percent the speed of the fastest trolley, which is moving at a hundred-and-twelve percent the speed of the middle trolley. The fastest trolley is carrying the organs with the shortest shelf-life, and the slowest trolley the longest. However, the shelf-life of the organs does not necessarily correlate with their moral or economic value or that of their intended recipients. We also need to factor in the carbon footprint of each trolley and the potential labour rights violations of the railroad –”
“Bear!” Desiree screamed.
I looked out the front window and saw an enormous Kodiak bear charging down the tracks, growling furiously at us. As we whizzed past, it took a swipe at Trolley Number One, knocking it clean off the tracks. The bear immediately pounced upon it and clawed it open like a tin can, savagely mauling its occupants as they screamed and struggled to escape.
“Huh. That wasn’t a trolley problem, passengers. That was just a random bear attack,” the Conductor informed us. “I guess that no matter how much you try to control for every variable, some things are just outside of anyone’s ability to predict or control for. Also, them bears are mighty strong when they’re hungry, ain’t they? In any event, the loss of Trolley Number One renders that whole trolley problem moot, so I guess that means it’s time to pick a winner! I mean, survivor.”
We rounded a bend, and in the distance ahead of us we could see a tunnel built into the side of a mountain, its entrance obstructed by some fallen boulders.
“There it is, passengers; the way out,” the Conductor told us. “Unfortunately, there’s been an avalanche. The first trolley to hit it should be enough to clear the tracks, but it will surely be derailed in the process. It seems cruel that you both should make it within sight of the exit but only one gets to go through it. Trolley Number Two is ahead of Number Five, but I can change that with the pull of a lever, and you all know my policy on pulling levers!”
“Haven’t made it this far since my first ride. The bastard likes to get the newbies’ hopes up, that’s for sure,” Gregory said.
“If I don’t see you again Desiree, remember to never miss a trolley,” I stressed to her. “I know that dying over and over again is Hell, but what waits for you on those platforms isn’t any better.”
She looked at me with horrified, tear-filled eyes, and we all just waited for the sound of the lever being pulled that would signal our end.
But it never came. Trolley Number Two stayed in the lead and crashed into the boulders, clearing them from the tracks before toppling off itself. We rode right by it, disappearing into the blackness of the tunnel before us.
“What?” the woman at the back of the bus croaked, the first thing I had ever heard her say.
“And we have a winner!” the Conductor proclaimed, though I think were all still more incredulous than relieved at making it to the end. “I know I said that I always pull the lever, but today the Head of the Ethics Committee wanted to ride to the end. Remember passengers, the true answer to any trolley problem you may face is whatever the boss says it is.”
Desiree understandably looked at me and Gregory with suspicion, but we both knew that neither of us could have been the one behind the trolley system. Technically, I suppose it could have been Desiree, or even the woman in the back, but Gregory and I didn’t even entertain that thought for an instant. We both looked straight ahead to the person sitting in the front seat, the only person the Conductor had ever listened to, the only person we had ever seen enjoy the trolley ride, and the only one of us who didn’t seem surprised by what was happening now.
Before we could decide how to react to this revelation, the trolley emerged from the tunnel at what looked like a train station in the real world.
“We’re out,” Gregory murmured, a tear rolling down his cheek. “We’re actually out.”
“That’s right passengers, and thank you for riding the Gedanken Express!” the Conductor said as the trolley slowed to a stop. “You made a real contribution to the field of moral philosophy and you should be very proud. While your phone plans may have lapsed, all your devices should be fully charged and capable of making emergency calls. Any changes to the timeline you may notice are most likely the result of me killing Heinrich Himmler. Let's hope that was worth it. Please exit the trolley in an orderly fashion, and have a pleasant evening. We hope you’ll ride with us again someday.”
With that foreboding farewell, the trolley came to a full stop and the doors slid open. The woman in the back immediately bolted through them, screaming and weeping as she ran across the platform. Gregory was next, followed by Desiree, neither wanting to miss their chance at escape. I was last, but as soon as I had one foot on the platform and one hand on the door, I paused. I looked at the front of the trolley, where Sara was still sitting, still smiling. I felt rage boiling up inside me, and as much as I wanted to get as far away from her as possible, some part of me demanded justice for everything I and every other passenger had been through.
“Why?” I demanded, the word coming out as a barely intelligible guttural growl. It didn’t matter to me then that she was a little girl, or had taken the form of a little girl; I wanted to smash her skull against the window until there was nothing recognizably human left.
“I like it when people die,” she replied in the same innocent tone of voice she’d had the entire trolley ride. “My senses are much better than yours, so I experience the fear and pain of every death in every trolley in magnificent detail. And not just the trolleys; I have other playsets besides this one. But I don’t like killing people, because then I can’t play with them anymore. So, I bring them back, good as new, and I get to watch them die all over again. I know it hurts you, but it makes me far happier, so everything's right in the end. I'm what philosophers call a Utility Monster, and that is my professional conclusion as the Head of the Ethics Committee. And I'm still nice to people, sometimes. My favourites get promoted from playthings to playmates and get to live forever with me, but the rest I usually just let go when they get too worn out from dying so much. It wouldn't be right to keep them after they stopped making me happy. Catch and release, you could say. I’ve watched you die enough now, so you’re free to go. Honest. Thank you for making me so happy.”
“Well, aren’t you a darling,” I hissed under my breath, seething as my desperate need for freedom and safety clashed with my apoplectic desire for revenge.
And then, she laughed. She just started laughing as if I had inadvertently made some hilarious joke or pun, and it was the sound of that laughter that finally made me run. It invoked some kind of primordial fear in me, and I knew there was no sense in attacking her. Her small form was brimming with otherworldly and unholy powers, and there was nothing I could do to oppose her, so I ran. I ran out of that trolley and back into the world I belong in, never to set foot in a train station again for as long as I live.
Category:The Vesper's Bell