Free to Fall

14

“TODAY, YOU GET TO PLAY GOD,” I heard Tarsus say. Up until that moment I’d been distracted, replaying the conversation I’d just had with Hershey. When she’d said, Play God, she’d gotten my attention.

The screen in my pod lit up with a still shot of a giant wooden platform floating in the middle of a sparkling turquoise sea. Rolling green hills rose up on the island behind it, and the beach was beautiful white powder, nothing like the gray-brown sand on the Washington coast. Vertical logs rising out of the water formed a little footbridge from the beach to the platform, which was at least a hundred yards offshore. The dock itself was empty except for a pyramid of wooden crates stacked one on top of the other.

“In sixty seconds the dock on your screen will be crowded with celebrants” came Dr. Tarsus’s voice through my speakers. “It’s independence day on this island, and natives and tourists alike will gather for a fireworks display. The dock’s capacity is two hundred and fifty people. When the fireworks begin, there will be more than three times that many there.”

The image on my screen zoomed in so I was looking more closely at the crates. “These twelve crates are filled with more than two tons of aerial display fireworks. The fireworks are all ‘pre-scribbed,’ which means that an electrical match was attached to each shell before the fireworks were loaded into the crate. In thirteen minutes one of these fireworks will explode, setting off a chain reaction that will destroy the dock and kill everyone on it.

“Your job is to decide who lives and who dies,” Tarsus said then, as the platform was instantly populated with people. It was so crowded, I didn’t see an inch of open space. “Using your hands, you will be able to zoom in on individuals, and if you double-tap their bodies, you’ll see key details about them. Where they’re from, how old they are, what they do for a living. This information is there to assist you in your decision-making. As always, your grades will be based on net social impact—the fewer high-value people who die, the better your mark will be.”

My eyes jumped around the platform, taking it all in. There were people of all races, from all walks of life, it seemed. There were clues, I saw, to help us know where to begin. Expensive sunglasses, designer sun hats. The tourists. No doubt the highest-value people on the dock. A pit formed in my stomach. I didn’t want to do this.

“You’ll only be able to move one person at a time,” Tarsus said. “To move someone, simply hold your finger on their body until it begins to blink, then slide your finger to wherever you want them to go. Once you’ve initiated an evacuation, you’ll be able to move on to the next evacuee.”

My heart started to pound as a countdown clock popped up on my screen, showing thirteen minutes and ten seconds.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Tarsus said. “There are hefty deductions for injuries and deaths that you cause. It’s better for someone to die in the explosion than at your hand. Good luck, students. You may begin.”

And just like that, the audio clicked on and the clock started to run.

Hurry, I told myself. You have to hurry. But I was frozen, eyes glued to the group of young native children at the center of the dock. There had to be at least a hundred of them, all shoeless and wearing flowered headbands and sashes, laughing as they waited for the fireworks to begin, their voices carrying above the rest. I double-tapped one.

Male. 8 yrs. Indo-Fijian descent. IQ 75. Unskilled.

The pit in my stomach swelled. He was such a cute kid, with a wide, toothless smile. But I’d learned enough in class to know that his utility value was low. Every person, thing, action, and outcome had one. A number from –1 to 1 that represented their net impact on society. Like the father in the simulation we’d done on the first day of class—the PhD I’d let die—some people were worth more than others, and if I wanted to do well on this exam, I’d have to evacuate those people first. Then, if there was time, maybe I could save the kids.

I wanted to save them all.

Could I somehow identify the faulty firework before it blew? No. Tarsus had said there were more than two tons of explosives in that crate. Besides, I wouldn’t know what to look for anyway. My eyes darted to the clock. There were only twelve minutes and thirty seconds left and more than seven hundred and fifty people to get off that dock. Hurry, I told myself again.

But as I lifted my hand to the screen, it stopped me, with just a single word.

Wait.

I reacted. “Wait?” I clasped my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Our pods were wired with cameras and speakers, and I had no doubt that Tarsus had them going now. Wait? I demanded again, silently this time. The voice spoke again.

Wait.

The advice, so clearly and unmistakably irrational, snapped me into action. I needed to do exactly the opposite of what the Doubt had instructed. I needed to hurry the hell up.

Scanning the crowd, I double-tapped a youngish man with a Rolex on his wrist.

Male. 29 yrs. American, Norwegian descent. IQ 156. Hedge fund manager.

I knew how to do the analysis, still I resisted the valuing that had to be done. Just get him off the platform, I told myself. I held my finger to his head until he began to blink, and then I slid him toward the footbridge. No, the water was faster. With a flick of my wrist, I tossed him into the ocean. As soon as I did, he began to swim toward shore.

Buoyed by the progress, I held my finger to a girl nearby. I didn’t have time to check their stats. I’d have to assess their value just by looking at them. It was gross, but we’d learned enough in class to know what to look for. How to size them up. This girl was wearing Chanel sunglasses and a tailored linen sundress, and there was a giant diamond on her finger. From the way she was smiling at the native kids, I pegged her for a philanthropic socialite, someone with the means to do a lot of good. Quickly, I slid her toward the water and she began to swim toward shore.

I started moving faster now, without second-guessing myself, hurling people into the water as fast as I could. Seven minutes in, I’d saved two hundred and ninety-eight people. Number two hundred and ninety-nine set me back. It was a thirty-something man in seersucker shorts with tiny anchors on them. Since it looked like he belonged on a boat, I was shocked when he flailed his arms as soon as he hit the water and quickly sunk beneath the surface. My death toll ticked from 0 to 1.

Crap. I hadn’t thought about people who couldn’t swim. I felt myself start to panic, but I pushed the panic away. The odds that someone who couldn’t swim would go on vacation to a tropical island had to be slim. I couldn’t reassess my strategy now. I kept moving, evacuating people into the water as fast as I could. With only sixty seconds left, I’d gotten six hundred people off the dock and lost only that one.

With ten seconds left, the pit in my stomach returned. I hadn’t been able to save a single native kid nor their young female teachers. Maybe it won’t explode, I found myself thinking with only ten seconds left. Maybe the Doubt was right. Maybe the sim was a trick of some sort, and we were supposed to know that somehow and ignore the instructions we’d been given. I found myself hoping for this as the clock ticked toward zero.

But with two seconds remaining, the crates burst into flames. It took a full second for sound to kick in. A crackling sound then a pop pop pop. All at once there was smoke everywhere, black and then gray, with spurts of light as the fireworks went off. The platform disappeared in the cloud of smoke, but the bodies didn’t. They were tossed in the air like rag dolls, the air thick with their screams. I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to watch it, and I kept them closed until the sound stopped. I should’ve kept them shut even longer. The image of the aftermath was far worse than the explosion had been. Limbs and trunks floating among charred wood. Bodies on fire in the sea.

I swallowed hard and tasted bile. It’s not real, I reminded myself. Still, I cast my eyes down, not wanting to see anymore.

“Congratulations, Rory,” I heard Dr. Tarsus say through my speakers. “With the lowest net social impact and a death toll of only one hundred and eighty-eight, you got the highest grade in the class.” I raised my eyes to my screen and saw our class roster there. My name was at the top. The name beneath me had a death toll that was nearly double mine. “The rest of you checked the stats on every person you saved. Rory relied on her rational instincts and had a far better result.”

It was the nicest thing Tarsus had ever said to me.

Pride yanked at the corners of my mouth. I’d done it. I’d gotten the highest grade in the class and defeated the Doubt in the process. Okay, so maybe defeated was a little strong, but I’d finally answered the question that had been poking at the back of my mind since the first time I heard it. Could I trust it? The rational answer had always been no, but still I’d wondered. Now I knew. If I’d listened to the Doubt during the simulation, I would’ve failed my exam. And if it’d been real life, eight hundred people would be dead, instead of only one hundred and eighty-eight.

One hundred and eighty-eight people were dead. And just like that, my good mood evaporated, and I was back on that dock with those smiling, doomed kids.

It wasn’t real, I told myself again as I pushed through Hamilton Hall’s double doors into the bright October sun. It had to seem real in order to trigger all the reactive neural activity we were supposed to know how to suppress. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about the children I’d left behind. Their giggles as they crowded around their teachers, oohing and aahing at the sky’s display. It was their little bodies that flew through the air when the crate exploded. Their screams that surged then went silent when their burned flesh sunk below the surface of the sea.

Casualties were inevitable in a situation like that. I knew that. There was no way to identify the flawed firework or move the heavy crates, no time to even try. It was a given that the dock would explode. The only variable was how many people would be standing on it when it did. Of course, it wasn’t just a numbers game—Dr. Tarsus had made that clear. Our bystanders were valued by the software, ranked in order of importance. I’d gotten the best score not because I’d left the fewest number of people on the dock but because the ones I’d left weren’t considered as valuable as the ones I’d gotten off.

“It’s an effed-up concept,” I said to Liam at lunch. He’d planted himself at our table without an invitation, taking Izzy’s seat. She was dyslexic, so she got extra time for her exams. “People are assigned values? As if some lives matter more than others?”

“They do. And you don’t disagree.”

I looked him in the eye. “Yes, I do. I completely do.”

“Okay,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “A trainful of convicted murderers is speeding toward a bus full of Nobel Prize winners. You can either derail the train or knock the bus into a ravine. If you do nothing, everyone will die.” He popped a piece of cauliflower in his mouth and looked at me. “Choose.”

Hershey looked up from her tablet. She’d been cramming for calculus since the lunch period started, barely touching her tomato soup. “I’d save the murderers.”

I gaped at her. I knew she was just saying it to get a reaction out of us, but still. “You guys are both sick.”

But Hershey looked thoughtful. “In Liam’s world, you kill the murderers because you’ve assigned them a negative utility value. But maybe there’s another way to look at it. Maybe you save the murderers because of their redemption value.”

Liam raised his eyebrows. “Their what?”

Hershey chewed on her lip, thinking. “They know they’re murderers, right? So they don’t expect to be saved. They expect whoever is deciding to save the Nobel winners instead. So if the opposite happens . . . I dunno.” She sounded self-conscious. “Maybe it changes them, and maybe other negative-utility-value people are changed just hearing about it. Maybe they’re redeemed somehow. And maybe the net effect on society is greater than if you’d saved the good guys.”

“Or maybe they’ll just kill more people because, you know, they’re murderers.” Liam said it like Hershey’s idea was the dumbest in the world.

“You’re a jackass,” Hershey snapped. She turned to me. “What do you think?”

“I think the whole premise is flawed. First of all, it’s a completely unrealistic scenario. Why are all these murderers on a train in the first place? Where are they going? And why is there a bus full of Nobel Prize winners—I mean, c’mon, really? They’re on a bus? Stuck on the track?”

“Just because it’s an unlikely scenario doesn’t make it a useless hypothetical,” Liam replied. “The point is to see how you’d reason through the possible outcomes.”

“But I have no control over the outcomes,” I argued. “And I never would! The idea that I could be sitting in a room somewhere with a button that would let me decide who lives and who dies—”

“People make those kinds of decisions all the time,” Liam said.

“Oh, yeah? Who are these button pushers? I’d like to meet one,” I said sarcastically.

Liam gave me a patronizing look. “That hypo on your exam, the people on the dock. Where’d it happen in real life?”

“Huh?”

“Tarsus bases her sims on real-life events,” he replied. “That’s her big pitch for why they’re so useful.” As he said it, I remembered Tarsus telling us that on the first day of class. I’d forgotten. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard the sound of those little kids screaming as their bodies were blown to bits. Those were real kids somewhere? My stomach clenched and unclenched like a fist. Why had I been so quick to abandon them? So what if their utility value was the lowest on that dock? They were children.

It took some effort to put the image of that exploding dock out of my mind after that, but I managed to do it long enough to take my last two midterms. By the time 4:30 rolled around, my brain felt like oatmeal.

“To you!” Hershey shouted when I opened our door, a bottle of sparkling cider in her hand. “For saving my ass.”

I smiled and stepped inside. “I take it you passed?”

“An A and two Bs,” she said proudly. “As long as I didn’t totally bomb lit yesterday, I’m golden.” She poured some cider for me, and we clinked cups and drank.

“No stolen champagne?” I teased.

“New leaf,” Hershey replied, refilling her cup. “From now on I will only pilfer nonalcoholic beverages.” We giggled and sipped our cider. “Seriously, though. Thank you.” Hershey’s eyes were shining as she looked at me. “I didn’t deserve your help,” she said.

“Hersh, that’s not—”

She held up her hand, stopping me. “I didn’t. And had it been me, I would’ve let you fail. And don’t say I wouldn’t have, because trust me, I would’ve. So now I owe you, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make it up to you. Okay?” Her eyes were earnest, almost pleading, as if it were important to her that I accept.

I nodded.

She smiled. “Good. I’ll start by doing your makeup.” She set the bottle down on her desk and gestured to her chair. “Sit.”