One fine afternoon, you find yourself walking along the railroad tracks. Ahead, a train is barreling down the tracks, straight in the direction of three frolicking children, oblivious to the approaching danger. If you do not intervene, the youths will surely perish. At your side is a lever that, if pulled, will divert the train in another direction. On this alternate set of tracks, however, there is a fat man sleeping, who could be crushed in the place of the three innocent tots. As an ethical actor, do you choose to pull the lever or to…..Wait, are your shoes untied?
Upon closer inspection, that is indeed the case. Your left shoe is in the process of coming loose, though the right is already completely untied. If you were to correct the rightmost lace first, you would surely address the more urgent problem, though meanwhile the left could come completely undone. This is a real pickle. Assuming that you possess no more than two hands, but no fewer than zero, which shoe do you tie first?
You decide to search for some advice online. After you access your phone’s internet browser, you receive a popup ad for a quiz entitled, “Which Harry Potter character are you?” Figuring that it would be faster to simply obey the popup rather than to bypass it, you take the quiz. You get Dobby, but you are totally a Tonks, and you know it. Do you settle with your results, or try again until your phone validates your true identity?
After two more tries, you put your phone away, satisfied. In the distance, you hear someone scream, “Sally, look out!” Oh right, there’s that whole train thing to deal with. You’re the only one who can either save those kids/not kill that man, but hey, that’s what you get when you hang out near the railroad tracks. Bor-ring! What are you doing over here, anyway? Shit, are you drunk?
Oh yeah, you’re totally wasted. Sweet. Though now that you think about it, you notice that your buzz is coming down a little bit. A nap would really hit the spot, but you’re definitely down to party later on. Should you head back into town and get a jager bomb, or head back into town and get two jager bombs?
As you give yourself a mental high-five, an eruption of screams and weeping interrupts your happy thoughts. There’s all these random people standing by the railroad tracks, and for some reason there’s blood everywhere. Weird. This is totally not your scene, so you decide to head back to your place and enjoy the rest of your day off.
Hey, was today an off day, or were you supposed to go into work. Psssssh. Who cares? You’re glad you took some me time. You can always repair those emergency train brakes tomorrow.
The Danopticon 