Exordia

by Seth Dickinson

My issues are too fucked up and badass for any mere human therapist. Would you send Batman to therapy? No, you would not, because then he could not punch crime.

“What the fuck do you know about dating, dude?” Anna protests. “I’ll assassinate whoever I want.” “I know everything. I’ve seen the romantic comedies.”

“The universe is not a simulation,” Ssrin says. “Actually, it goes to great pains not to be.”

Nothing in this world is permanent except for the sky, the mountains, and America betraying the Kurds.”

“You do not compromise under threat! Ever! Because if they have enough power to make an unanswerable threat, they have enough power to break the deal and do it anyway!”

“People dropping bombs always have some higher reason. Stopping communism. Securing Asian co-prosperity. Defeating Japan. Destroying Kurdish terrorists. But the bombs never seem to hit that reason. They just hit a bunch of mothers and kids.”

He imagines Clayton as the kind of American you see on the news, explaining why it is okay for lots of people to die as long as they’re not Americans.

“You can keep working on theory after we save the planet—” “It’s more important that I figure this out.”

Actually, it’s better than checkmate. What kind of stupid game doesn’t let you kill the king?”

We missed.” “You missed with a nuke?” “We’re still figuring things out!

That’s the problem with utilitarians. You abandon inviolable moral principles like the sanctity of life, you make the numbers big enough, and suddenly they’re eager to turn themselves into mass murderers. You don’t even have to give them a push. Ask them if they’d torture a child in order to increase the global development index by one percent and they will shout “YES” before you even get past “child.” They want to be self-consistent more than they want to be good.

In Erik’s opinion, only weasels play trolley games. Heroes jump down there and start pulling people off the tracks. Heroes pass laws regulating better trolley brakes. That’s how you make a society.