forgiveness : prohibited ? execution

Reia took a pencil and wrote one single word: “Yes.” She stood up, took the sheet in her hand, and moved toward the very front of the hall to hand it to the teacher, when she suddenly realized there was nowhere in the hall to submit her answer sheet, nor any teacher to accept it.

“Where am I supposed to hand in the answer?” she asked herself.

Something flickered above her head. It was the timer for the test.

“Maybe I need to submit the answer at the end?” she thought. “Okay, I’ll go back to my seat.”

Meanwhile, out of the corner of his eye, David tried to spy on what was written on Aram’s sheet.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Aram shouted, and, grabbing his sheet, turned the other way. “What, did you decide to copy off me?” Aram grinned.

“What? Me? Why on earth would I?” David shouted, as if nothing had happened. “I was trying to get Ksyu’s attention.”

At that moment, Ksyu turned to David with a smile.

“Hello, ahahaha,” David said awkwardly.

Ksyu waved at him.

“Yeah, yeah, of course…” Aram said. “Do you really think I’ll believe you?”

“That’s your problem,” David said. “And please don’t bother me; there’s actually a test going on. They could kick us out over this.”

“Speaking of getting kicked out, where’s the teacher? Has there been no one here this whole time?”

“Yeah,” Zen said. “And it’s strange. There really aren’t any teachers.”

The students, noticing that no one was watching the exam, began to talk more loudly and even to sit next to one another.

“Why don’t we solve this riddle together?” Aram suggested.

The others looked at each other and nodded all at once.

“Reia seems to already know the answer,” Ksyu noted. “She tried to turn in her paper right away.”

“What’s so hard about this?” Reia asked. “They told us to be ourselves. I believe terrorists should never be excused. And considering how many innocent people they’re ready to kill in cold blood, I don’t have the slightest desire to treat them humanely. If beating one person will save hundreds of innocent lives, then I’m ready to do it myself.”

“It’s hard to disagree with you,” said one of the students.

“I’d probably agree with Reia too,” David added. “But I don’t think the numbers are what matter. It doesn’t matter how many people die, one or many. You can’t weigh the interests of several people against the interests of one.”

“What do you mean?” Reia interrupted him. “Why can’t you? Why can’t you sacrifice one to save thousands?”

“And what if the person they decide to sacrifice is your loved one? Your partner, or your child? What would you say then?” Aram joined the argument.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I meant. Each person is a separate life, a separate destiny, tied to a huge number of other destinies. The victim’s relatives won’t be glad of his or her death, even if it saves a great many people,” David added. He hesitated a little, since he hadn’t expected Aram to support his idea. “Of course, there are different cases and different people. Some will understand that the one who died was a real hero. But no one has the right to take a person’s life, even to save all of mankind. A person has to make that choice for himself.”

“I agree,” Reia said, after a pause. “I was wrong.”

“I remember now!” Ksyu said suddenly. “There was a thought experiment like this in one of my books. It was called the Trolley Problem.”

“The Trolley Problem?” Reia asked. “What’s that?”

“Like I said, it’s a thought experiment. Imagine a heavy, runaway trolley rolling along the rails toward a switch that you can throw. On one of the tracks the trolley can take, there are five people tied down by a mad philosopher. On the other track, only one person is tied. What do you do? Do you throw the switch so that one person dies and five are saved?”

“After everything you’ve said, I don’t know how to answer anymore,” Reia whispered. She looked up and saw the timer. “But we have a problem here. Time is running out. And it seems to me we’ve strayed a little from our task.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Ksyu agreed.

“And so,” Reia continued. “Our main point is that we’re facing a criminal - a terrorist. Which means everything we’ve discussed here doesn’t apply in this situation. So my answer stays the same for now. A terrorist can be tortured.”

“But what if,” Zen said, “what if in the end he gives us false information?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Reia replied.

“But somehow the intelligence services do get at the truth.” Ksyu started pacing around the tables. “And I’m sure that such, let’s call them, sessions don’t always take place over a cup of green strawberry tea and cookies.”

“Yes, but if you beat him too long, until he’s worn down by pain, he’ll be ready to tell you anything. And it obviously won’t be the truth,” Zen said. “And since we clearly understand that he’s a bad person who chose to commit such a crime, he’ll be ready for anything, as long as his plan succeeds. He’ll lie to the police just to be left alone, even for a short while, and then hundreds of people will die.”

“What are we to do, then? What’s the correct answer to this question?” David wondered.

All this time Aram had been sitting off to one side, rereading the text of the task with a gloomy look.

“Wait,” insight suddenly struck Aram. “But who said this man is a terrorist?”

“What?” Reia was surprised. “What do you mean? It says right here: Before you sits a man, tied to a chair, who has been caught by the intelligence service. It is believed that he has planted…”

Reia suddenly stopped reading.

“It is believed,” all the students said together.

“Which means there’s a possibility that the man caught by intelligence is completely innocent,” Aram continued. “And we’d be harming an ordinary man who has nothing to do with the terrorists.”

“And besides the fact that we’d be beating him for nothing, he, worn down by pain, would decide to simply invent a place where a bomb is planted that doesn’t exist, and send the police down the wrong path. That way, the experts would waste their already precious time searching for a nonexistent bomb, and would have no chance to save people from death,” David added.

“The time!” Reia suddenly shouted.

There was a minute left on the clock. Everyone quickly began filling out their answer sheets.

When there were only ten seconds left, the holographic timer suddenly turned into a bomb.

3… 2… 1… 0.

Everyone expected the bomb to explode, but instead its fuse simply went out, and it dropped to the floor.

“Dear students!” said William, who had appeared in the gym out of nowhere. “Congratulations! You’ve completed another test. Now exactly half of the tasks are left, and you’re free to relax.”

“Relax? After we’ve been kept here for ten hours or more?” Aram said, displeased.

“Stop grumbling,” Reia said. “Until you suffer, you’ll never achieve anything in life. I’m sure everything happening here is not for nothing. It’s more of a gift for the future from the director than a test or a torture.”

“Maybe. Maybe you’re right,” Aram replied. “I wonder what the next test is?”