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  After Dinner Conversation, Volume 37

  David Whitaker

  Published by After Dinner Conversation, 2020.

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  Copyright © 2020 by David Whitaker

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations em- bodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organiza- tions, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact :

  [email protected]

  http://www.afterdinnerconversation.com

  Book design, cover design, and discussion questions by After Dinner Conversation

  First Edition: May 2020

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Choose

  About the Author

  Choose

  After Dinner Conversation Series

  “WAKE UP.”

  The words shuffled through the darkness of her mind, tugging at her.

  “Wake up.” Firm, persistent.

  A trickle of light invaded her senses, growing into a blinding glare as her eyelids fluttered.

  “Where... Where am I?” Myrah asked groggily, her eyes scanning the dull expanse of concrete that filled her field of vision. She tried to lift her hand, shield her eyes, but her wrist moved barely a centimetre. Glancing down she noticed the restraints pinning her in place; loops of metal around her arms, ankles, and pelvis. Trying to lift her head she felt another pressed across her throat.

  “What the hell is this?” she growled making no attempt to conceal her anger, wrenching her arm and kicking out with her feet. The restraints rattled though held fast, her efforts futile.

  “Subject conscious, elevate and note commencement.”

  There was a sudden jolt and Myrah felt the world around her shift, her body levered into an upright position. In front of her a man stood waiting. His appearance was nondescript, his clothing bland and unremarkable, his face neither handsome nor hideous; his most noteworthy feature was simply how overwhelmingly plain he was.

  “What is this?” she repeated with a snarl, looking past him, searching for an exit, though finding nothing but more of the same dull concrete. “What have you done to me?”

  “Question one,” the man announced with indifference, ignoring her queries. “A trolley is running out of control down a track. In its path are five people who will not see it nor hear its approach, but will surely be killed by its impact. You are unable to notify them of the danger, though you can flip a switch and divert the trolley onto a separate track. This will however put a separate, sixth person, in the trolley’s path, who will also neither see nor hear its approach and will surely be killed. Do you flip the switch?”

  Myrah stared at him, her blood boiling. “What the hell is this?” she yelled.

  Her questioner gazed back at her. “Question one; do you require clarification? Do you flip the switch?”

  Straining at her bonds she tried to free herself again. Other than her confinement she still felt strong and healthy, no signs of injury or violation. Her captor was odd, but he didn’t seem particularly malicious. If she could free herself, she wagered she stood a fair chance of overpowering him and making her escape.

  “Question one,” the man repeated, seemingly ignoring her efforts, “gun to your head, do you flip the switch?”

  “Screw you!” Myrah snarled, wrenching her arms, attempting to slip her hands through her cuffs.

  A cold edge of metal was pressed against her temple.

  “Question one, gun to your head, do you flip the switch?”

  Hardly daring to move, Myrah slowly turned her gaze and found herself staring sidelong up the barrel of a very real, very menacing, pistol.

  “Shit,” she whispered, heart leaping into her throat. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Question one,” the man repeated, his finger hovering over the trigger, “do you flip the switch?”

  “Please,” she tried, trying desperately to keep a lid on her terror. “Just take it easy. Breathe. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Her words weren’t for him, and she barely recognised her own voice. Fear was nibbling away at her vocal cords, robbing them of her usual strength and confidence.

  “Question one, do you flip the switch?” her captor asked again. Despite the gun in his hand, her life at his immediate disposal, he still sounded indifferent, almost bored.

  Myrah swallowed. “Yes, alright? Yes, I flip it. Please, are you happy? Please let me go.”

  The barrel of the gun lifted from her temple like a weight from her chest and she sucked in a terrified lungful of air.

  Seemingly satisfied, the man turned his attention to the wall directly in front of her, the pistol dangling almost forgotten by his side.

  A flickering of light blossomed across the bland concrete. At first it seemed a simple projection, but then it took on depth, expanding like a particularly vivid hologram, replacing the wall entirely.

  Myrah watched bewildered as the scene focused.

  Men laboured on a desert track, sweat coating their brows, heat radiating in waves from scorching dirt and rock. Arms glistened as they wielded their tools, clothes damp and clinging.

  Stretching back along the track, a ripple of movement; a trolley, approaching fast and wild. Speeding down the rails, a huge, unstoppable mass, it dwarfed the men labouring before it.

  The trolley was almost upon them when a switch in the foreground, a detail Myrah hadn’t noticed with her gaze drawn to the men, flipped.

  The scene’s viewpoint veered abruptly sideways, the new perspective revealing a secondary track, the trolley thundering down new rails, its lethal mass diverted from the initial group of men.

  A solitary labourer crouching on the tracks lifted his head quizzically, his attention drawn by something Myrah couldn’t quite pinpoint; a change in air pressure perhaps? A vibration in the rails?

  She watched as he shut off his tool, silencing it, and turned his head. She saw the instant he registered the danger, the moment his eyes widened in terrified surprise, before the trolley slammed into him.

  Her scream was visceral, tearing its way out of her body as she watched the savagery of the scene unfold before her, the detail far too real to plausibly be fake; blood spitting into the air in a mixture of mist and rain; flesh and bone cartwheeling in a macabre dance across dirt and soil; chunks of muscle, sinew, and tendon, flapping and churning their way under the grinding wheels of the trolley.

  “Shit!” she yelled, closing her eyes seconds too late, the images already burning themselves into her memory. “Aaaargh! Shit! Shit!”

  She felt the bile rising in her stomach and was unable to hold it back, the taste of acid coating her tongue and teeth as it dripped down her chin and chest.

  “Why? What the hell? Why did you do that?” she coughed between retches, choking on tears.

  The man said nothing, though when she finally had nothing left in her stomach she felt a cloth dabbing at her mouth.

  Jerking her head she glared at him, his hand hovering inches from her face, his stained handkerchief dangling in his fingertips. “What are you doing? Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me!”

  Her captor studied her a second, then shrugged and withdrew, his dirtied handkerchief hanging limp beside one leg, his gun against the other.

  “Question one; review. Do you regret your decis
ion? Would you like to amend it?”

  Myrah stared at him, revulsion and incredulity fighting for dominance. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she spat. “You think I wanted to see that? You think I wanted you to show it to me?”

  “Do you regret your decision? Would you like to retake the question and amend your answer?”

  “Would you kill five more people if I did?” she yelled.

  The man tilted his head slightly to one side. “Failing to flip the switch would result in the deaths of five men, of course,” he replied, as if this was stating the obvious. “This was stipulated in the question.”

  “Then no! I don’t regret it and I don’t want to amend my answer, you sick bastard!”

  Her questioner nodded, apparently unconcerned with her choice. “Very well. Question two,” he said. “A ship has sunk whilst at sea. You have gathered all 30 survivors in a lifeboat, whose recommended capacity is 17. If you do not act soon the lifeboat too will sink, inevitably killing everyone on board. Do you allow this to happen, or do you throw 13 survivors overboard so as to allow the possibility of rescue to those that remain?”

  Myrah shivered against her restraints, anger vibrating through her veins. “Why?” she growled. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Question two. Do you require clarification?” the man replied, simply gazing back at her.

  “I don’t want to play your game!” Myrah yelled, throwing herself forward against her restraints, bucking once more against her bonds.

  Her captor waited patiently, watching till she tired. “Gun to your head,” he said, his words slow and deliberate, a finger tapping at the pistol by his side. “Do you throw 13 survivors overboard?”

  “Screw you!” Myrah snapped, spitting at him, her saliva splashing against his chest.

  The man tilted his head and gazed at the mark of her rebellion, then merely lifted his handkerchief and dabbed it away, utterly unconcerned. “No response,” he murmured. “Is that your answer?”

  “Bite me! That’s my answer, you freak!”

  Nodding, he turned to face the wall.

  Myrah blinked. She’d expected to feel the cold caress of the gun again, and when it hadn’t come it had thrown her off balance.

  Her disorientation grew as the forward wall writhed murky grey and black, the scene flickering to life.

  She stared as a boat slowly emerged within the darkness.

  The sea was chaos; a storm battered the waves to mist and mountains, spray exploding undistinguishable amidst the rain. In the furious grip of the water, the tiny craft was feeble and pathetic.

  A crowd of miserable faces huddled together, smothered in fear as they frantically bailed out water. It was soon clear their efforts wouldn’t be enough. The lifeboat was coming more perilously close to submerging by the second.

  “No,” Myrah whispered. “No, no, no.”

  Her captor ignored her, watching as the storm swelled, waves churning around the struggling vessel.

  “Stop it. Please, don’t do this!”

  “It cannot be stopped,” he said simply. “What will happen, will happen. The only choice to make is the one presented to you. Do you regret your decision? Would you like to amend it?”

  “Is that what you want?” she begged. “I didn’t even answer, but you want me to change it?”

  “I want nothing. The choice is yours to make. If you are satisfied with your answer we will merely move on and let it play out as you have decided. There is no right or wrong.”

  “Then what is the point?” Myrah asked, watery eyes flicking back and forth between him and the turbulent scene playing out before her.

  The boat tipped ominously, the faces of its passengers rigid with fear and despair. Rain fell in sheets across its bow, waves crashed over the sides, and the water level rose ever higher.

  “Do it,” she whispered.

  “Do what?” the man asked, his untroubled eyes remaining on the craft. “Amend your answer?”

  “Yes,” she moaned. “Amend it.”

  “Very well.”

  The change was immediate, the expressions of the boat’s passengers transforming in an instant as desperation overwhelmed fear. Hands which had been cupped, frantically throwing water overboard, curled into fists and flew free.

  Anarchy erupted from stem to stern, people wrestling with one another as they struggled beneath the relentless assault of the storm.

  It felt like minutes, but could only have been seconds, before the first flailing body hit the icy water; a young boy, easily overpowered by his adult assailant, sucked away and quickly lost beneath the murky waves.

  A second soon followed, and then a third, the bodies tumbling over the side, crude weapons slammed into fingers that refused to let go, figures swept away into the darkness.

  When the thirteenth hit the waves with a feeble splash, the remaining survivors finally returned to bailing water.

  As the craft began to rally the scene’s perspective slipped beneath the waves, following instead the final victim. It tracked him in the churning depths, watching as he thrashed. Pumping legs, searching arms, furious strokes... but an inevitable trickle of escaping bubbles, a stilling of limbs, and then a mere silhouette drifting lifeless in the murk like a broken doll, surrounded by a dozen others.

  As before the details were far too convincing, much too real to conceivably be faked.

  Myrah lowered her head, tears cascading down her cheeks.

  “Question two; review,” her captor said. “Do you regret your decision? Would you like to amend it?”

  “No,” she whispered, her heart heavy, her conscience weighing on her like a robe of chain. “Why are you doing this? How?”

  “Question two; variation,” his reply came, her questioner apparently content ignoring her. “A ship sinks leaving 30 survivors. However, the lifeboat’s capacity is only 13. To retain buoyancy 17 passengers must be sacrificed. Do you throw them overboard?”

  Myrah didn’t even raise her head. “I do. You don’t need to show me.”

  The man nodded, though the scene updated anyway. A new ship, a new group of misfortunates struggling to survive.

  Glancing up she watched just long enough to note that the people were indeed new, that she wasn’t witnessing a mere reimagining of events. The players she’d watched die were truly gone. They had not somehow returned for a repeat performance upon the stage.

  Turning away she closed her eyes and tried to block out the horrific imagery that filled her head. Her ears betrayed her however, and she couldn’t help but listen to the howling of the wind, the fury of the struggle, the cries of the combatants, and the splashes of those bested in the fight.

  The fall of her tears echoed the tumble of the bodies beneath the waves.

  When the scene came to an end and the terrible sounds finally died out she simply hung there, the flames of her will to fight thoroughly doused.

  “Question three,” her captor droned. “Two kingdoms are poised to erupt into war, the course of which will kill many of the populations on both sides. War can be avoided through marriage of a princess from one kingdom to the prince of the other. The marriage will be loveless. Should the marriage be forced?”

  “Yes,” Myrah shuddered, her eyes still closed, her head bowed.

  She didn’t see the scenario flicker into being, didn’t watch the fates of the people shift and twist in front of her, but she heard the wedding bells and listened to the dry and sterile conversation of two people trapped together by circumstance.

  “Question three; review. Do you regret your decision? Would you like to amend it?”

  “No.”

  “Question three; variance. The prince has a 50% chance of beating the princess. Should the marriage be forced?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, detesting her answer, but knowing that if she responded any other way she’d be forced to listen to the sounds of erupting battle, the clash of man against man, and the screams of the fallen. Instead she listened to a woman, her
tone timid and fearful, as she discussed trivialities with a man across what sounded like a large and dreary hall.

  “Question three; variance. The prince has a 100% chance of beating the princess. Should the marriage be forced?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, wishing she could cover her ears as the sound of weeping staggered forth. A moment later it was interrupted by a noise vaguely similar to that of a sack of grain dropping to a floor, over and over. As time passed it twisted and morphed, till in the end it sounded more like a wet towel slapping against a rock. Throughout it all she heard the shrieks, the gasps, and the pleadings.

  “Question three; variance,” her questioner stated without emotion. “The princess is a child. Should the marriage be forced?”

  Myrah sagged in her bonds, her spirit failing her. “Yes.”

  A child’s high-pitched voice crept toward her ears, the tone wavering as it tried to remain firm and hide a fear and anxiety that clearly consumed its owner...

  “QUESTION EIGHT THOUSAND seven hundred and thirty-four,” the man said, steady and indifferent as he’d been at the outset. “A man is considering killing his wife, on account of her violent behaviour toward him. However, whilst the wife is aggressive to her spouse she is the sole supporter of a younger sibling who will likely starve without the assistance she provides. Should the crime be prevented?”

  “Yes,” Mryah gasped, her voice breaking.

  The scene rolled forth, a troubled marriage of pain and misery displayed within, interrupted from time to time by the warbling voice of a young girl.

  “Question eight thousand seven hundred and thirty-four; review. Do you regret your decision?”

  “No.”

  “Question eight thousand seven hundred and thirty-four; variance. The man witnesses his wife accidentally consume poison. If he does nothing she will merely die by her own misfortune, the same as would have transpired were he not there to observe the mistake. Should he provide her with the antidote?”

  “Yes.” The scene unfolded, raw and aching.