The Trolley Problem
Rouge had decided that a shopping day at the mall was in order. Furthermore, she had also decided that is was necessary for Shadow and Omega to accompany her.
"Why are we here?" Omega inquired.
"Well someone needs to carry all this stuff I just bought." Rouge answered.
"I was not designed for this."
"I'm only here so we can get soft pretzels." Shadow said. "Now come on, it's lunchtime already."
No sooner had they settled themselves in the food court than a female owl approached them.
"Excuse me, would you like to answer a survey in exchange for a dollar?"
"What kind of survey?" Shadow asked.
"There's only one question. You just have to give your honest answer and explain your reasoning. Then I write down your answer and give you a dollar."
"Alright, let's make this quick."
The owl turned to Rouge. "Okay, you're on the side of this trolley track, and you see an out of control trolley coming. There are five workers on the track. In a matter of seconds, they will be killed. But standing next to you is this really fat guy. You can push him on onto the track and his body will stop the trolley, but he will die. What would you do?"
Rouge thought for a moment. "I would let the five people on the track die. It's their fault for not seeing the thing coming."
The owl scribbled down her answer.
Omega answered next. "Easy. Push the fat guy onto the track. Watching his fat body explode into a bloody mess would be awesome!"
The owl looked a bit disturbed but wrote down the answer anyway. "Okaaaay. And you? Would you let the five people die or kill the fat guy?"
Shadow confidently said, "Neither."
"But… that's not possible. You have to pick one or the other."
"No, I don't. I would choose to throw myself in front of the trolley."
"But that's not a choice!"
"You said I was going to be on the side of this trolley track. And if I'm there, then I can do it."
"Well, sure I guess so. But your body isn't big enough to stop the trolley, so those five people would still die."
"True. But in the end, that doesn't matter. What matters is that I did everything I could to save them without throwing my morals out the window."
The owl stared for several moments before writing down his answer.
"So are we done? Can we have our money now?"
"Yes, thank you." She handed them each a dollar.
The three of them left, leaving the owl alone to think.