hierophany | INBOX (noctium)

Detective work. I suppose it's not that difficult of a guess, when it's the only thing I've ever demonstrated any particular skill at.

Most people attend my school because graduating from that institution is supposed to guarantee a student success in life, based purely on the school's reputation and renown. My motives for enrolling were more personal.

The man who threw me away was the headmaster. I wanted to confront him.

I see.

I think that perhaps I know how this ends. Did you manage to confront him, before that?

I don't remember. But I assume I must've, given what I ultimately agreed to.

It's irrelevant, now. Whatever I did or didn't say will have to suffice, as there's no opportunity for anything more now.

What you agreed to. I imagine that was remaining after you achieved your goal. Being part of this 'zoo'.

Remaining following the destruction of civilization worldwide, technically. But yes, that's one of the purposes of a zoo, isn't it? Conservation of a species in a controlled, secure environment.

Our pact was to stay there forever. And survive.

I see.

Well. That is a grim thought. That would be a grim thought even if all had gone to plan.

Yes. But by now we've abandoned that plan.

That's what I was doing just before I found myself in the Burnished Crater. Walking outside into what remains of the world.

Which would be why you were interested in how viable it would be to bring survivors here.

I don't intend to waste your time saying that I'm sorry things turned out so dreadfully. But what the fuck.

Congratulations on surviving the end of the world, I suppose.

Correct. Of the sixteen of us that were sealed into the figurative zoo, six survived. The rest died.

I was framed for murder and slated to be executed myself. I hadn't done much to give my classmates reason to trust me, so when a scenario was arranged that I had no alibi for, there wasn't much chance of persuading them otherwise.

But you are alive.

[ She probably doesn't need to know what tone of voice that phrase would carry, if he spoke it aloud. ]

I think it's interesting that, given everything you know of me, you've never found it unusual that someone like me would have a "boy I'll spend the rest of my life protecting".

I'd be more surprised if you seemed like the boy-protecting type. In my experience, boys worth protecting only ever show up where they're not particularly wanted.

But I think I understand the implication.

...No. You've made me see otherwise. I don't deserve the generosity of leaving it implied.

I convinced them to execute him instead of me. And I was scared because I thought I was going to die. I made a mistake, and left a contradiction in my argument that he could have easily disproven by entering one simple fact into evidence against me.

He covered it up. And I let him. I thought it was better that I lived, of the two of us.

I see.

I think that normally, I would be tempted to ask if it was better. And I think that perhaps the honest answer would be yes. And I think that would do very little to convince you that you made the choice you did for the correct reasons, rather than because you were afraid. It seems a pointless discussion to have.

I suspect that he must have believed it to be the correct choice on more than blind faith, though.

It's the reason I was surprised when you told me you had died.

You're like me in most other things. It startled me to learn that we differed in that respect. It shone a harsh light on just how callous and ruthless I really am.

You're right. It does.

But I think you're wrong in your assessment that there is any difference at all in what we did. I

...

Welcome to DUNGEON.

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GUIDE
ENEMIES
! - DARK LORD immune to all magical attacks
~ - BARRIER breaks when touched by an ally, removing them from play

ALLIES
^ - PRIEST capable of using only magical attacks
% - KNIGHT attacks physically using a sword
* - MONK attacks physically using fists
? - THIEF attacks physically using a reckless disregard for standards of proper behaviour

RULES
If DARK LORD is not attacked by the end of the turn, GAME OVER
DARK LORD cannot be attacked while BARRIER remains
DARK LORD has an unknown amount of health and could require anywhere between 1-3 allies to defeat him
If DARK LORD is defeated, the game is won. There are no encounters after this one

Put that way, the logic is fairly straightforward. You have to use the priest to break the barrier because it's the only purpose he can serve. Anyone can remove the barrier but only three can potentially attack the dark lord, because he must be attacked physically. Therefore it's logical to reserve the three that can attack physically to do so, and use the priest for the function that doesn't involve attacking, which he won't succeed at anyway.

I see what you've done. Now what's the catch?

The catch is that this is a shitty game. Whoever made it didn't care enough to make sure it was winnable. Or perhaps they were crafting it to be unwinnable on purpose. The catch is that there is no catch. It's not a clever puzzle that you've failed to solve, and in order to understand that you have to be confident enough in your intelligence that you know better than whoever made the game.

It's not a difficult puzzle. Just about anyone could solve it. The trick is that you have to have enough confidence that you understand the rules you're playing by, no matter how stupid and unfair they seem, that you can choose the correct answer without second guessing yourself. Nobody would lose that game because they couldn't find the correct answer. They'd lose it because they found it, decided they didn't like it, and spent that turn uselessly trying to find a better one.

I didn't make some kind of meaningful sacrifice. I'd be happy with the situation, if I did. It'd seem like a fair trade. I chose the only correct answer to a stupid question, just the same as the both of you did, and I'm still furious that I was asked the stupid question in the first place.

And I don't know if I would have been brave enough to make the choice, had the correct answer been someone else. I don't know if I would have believed in my perception of the situation enough. I want to believe that I would have, but maybe I would just have been another idiot who loses the game by looking for a perfect solution.

I don't understand. Are you actually contending that your sacrifice was ruthless instead of noble, and that's what makes us the same?

You even admit that if it had been someone else, you would've lost the game trying to save everyone rather than sacrifice one for the good of the collective. I don't see how that makes your motives anything less than benign, unless you're calculating morality solely on the grounds of maximum lives saved.

It's fine to be terrible at the trolley problem. Decent people are supposed to be. But the ethics are in whether you pull the switch or not.

That is exactly what I am contending. We solved the same problem in the same way, we just happened to be on different sides of the answer.

I got lucky. It was lucky, that I was both the person forced to answer the question and the correct answer. I didn't have to answer the trolley problem, and so I don't have to live knowing what my answer is. It can remain a hypothetical for me. But if I didn't get lucky, I would still be dead. Everyone I love would be dead. Maybe the entire population of Cairo would be dead.

And I already expressed my feelings on luck as a virtue.

You're not made for an ideal world. You're made for a world where people make shitty unwinnable games and tie other people to train tracks for the sake of forcing people to make difficult choices. You've succeeded where I don't know if I could.

I'm not saying you should take pride in it. Just that you should do the same amount of not taking pride in it as I'm doing.

You're thinking about it, aren't you. Not about your dungeon anymore.

You're casting your own players into my dungeon, and you're ashamed that in my place, you would've faltered when you were faced with the prospect of throwing Jotaro to the wolves for your own survival.

Because for better or for worse, thev fact that I did still makes me something. Decisive. A strong negative character trait is still a strong trait regardless of its nature. The greater sin in your eyes is to be too weak to accept reality and flail about helplessly in spineless idealism.

Something like that?

Something like that.

I let a lot of people die that night without even thinking of it as a problem. I suppose, in my dungeon, they would be the dots that made up the floor. The things that don't even register as human until you stop and think about them. People were between us, and he killed them. And that was entirely his doing, but I could have stopped it if I just stopped and turned around and let him kill me.

I didn't. I don't even think of them all that often. I've never lost sleep over it. I was doing the right thing. If I had just died while achieving nothing, more people would be hurt than were from my running for higher ground.

And yet the people whose names I know? I don't think I could sacrifice them.

The trolley problem doesn't interest me in itself, so much as the way that answers change with the identities of the people involved. I could let a hundred people die for the greater good without a second thought, and yet I wouldn't be able to give up someone I cared about.

If there's a difference, that's where it lies. You are callous and ruthless, and I am callous and ruthless only until I might be forced to live with the consequences of my choices.

Like the child who grew up on a farm with livestock and foiled the season's meatpacking output by naming all the cows where the butcher could overhear it.

We started this conversation talking about sex and vulnerability, and what I'm capable of when I'm goal-oriented versus when I'm operating on emotion. What you've said is essentially just that I'm better at dropping into and maintaining that goal-oriented state than you are. And...that you have more people you care about than I do.

I can't help but consider the possibility that we're both envious of the other for divergent reasons. I envy you the connections with people that would make it hard for you to kill them. And you envy me the mastery of myself that makes me capable of doing things that others can't.

[...]

Socks.

I have no qualms about investigating corpses, even those of close friends and acquaintances. But I don't like to have to touch their socks.

INBOX (noctium)

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