Feather Dark

Chapter 20

Noah

In philosophy, which I considered to be a redundant discipline and not a science in any sense, there is an ethical thought experiment known as the trolley problem. It represents a clash between two schools of moral thought: utilitarianism and deontological. In layman's terms, it poses the question: what is the right thing to do?

The premise is simple: a runaway trolley is barrelling towards five tied up people lying on the main track. You are standing beside the lever which will divert the trolley down a side track, saving the lives of the five. However, there is another person lying on the side track who will be killed instead if the lever is pulled. It is a choice between allowing five people to be killed, or choosing to kill one person who would otherwise have lived.

Having always been a proponent of the best outcome for the most people, this was not a difficult choice for me when I first encountered the problem. Kill one to save five.

There are variations on this problem that gave me pause. For example: what if the single person on the track was your family member, and the five people on the main track were all strangers? My cognitive processes refused to contemplate this distasteful line of thought, and rather than mull it over, I discarded the entire topic as redundant.

But as I watched the winged woman in the white coat raise a scalpel blade over my brother's wing, I noted that perhaps additional rumination on this subject might have been of benefit. Because my choices were both abhorrent: observe my brother as he was mutilated beyond recovery without anaesthetic, or kill four strangers and my grandfather.

This wasn't supposed to happen, I thought, reflecting on each of the choices that had led to this junction. Three days earlier, I'd been fervently convinced that I'd thought through every eventuality. As Pop, Talon and I had loaded my EMP device into the van outside our cabin in the woods, I'd nodded in satisfaction. "Good. This has a high probability of success."

"Nice to see you looking hopeful, Terrix," said Talon, smoothing his feathers after the heavy lifting.

"Hope has nothing to do with it," I replied. "It's a calculation."

"So, do you think this heap of junk will actually work?" Talon's nose scrunched as he looked over my device.

"I wasn't concerned with aesthetics. Speed and efficacy were the priority."

To the ignorant, the device looked like a collection of car parts and wires about the size of a small refrigerator. I'd followed plans from the dark web, tweaking and adding some of my own improvements. Pop and Talon had assisted with locating the components I'd required, and I'd built as fast as my fingers could fly, working through the night without sleep.

Talon slammed the doors of the van. "Has anyone thought about how we get this thing into the compound?"

"It's not going to the compound," I said.

"Then how do we knock out the power?" Talon's face pulled in a confused expression. "In all the movies, EMPs have to be super-close to the action, or plugged into the power grid or something."

"That's a common misconception, perpetuated by media. There's no such thing as an EMP that doesn't case significant damage."

"What? Then what in the good name of Bey is this thing if it's not an EMP?"

"It's a mid-sized microwave bomb."

"A bomb?" Talon shied away from the van. "Why didn't you tell me it was a bomb? I would have been a smoochy bit more careful if I'd realised we were toting an explosive device around, Terrix!"