Chapter Nineteen

Min-Seo

 

She sat quietly on her bed. She had heard everything. She hadn't meant to. She laughed a little to herself. It seemed like everything important in her life was heard through closed doors. She'd been looking for Ashlee, wanting to ask her a question. And she'd stopped when she'd heard voices through the bedroom door, and then once she understood what was going on and how important it was, she'd decided to wait a moment to knock so as not to interrupt. And then she'd heard everything.

Her initial response had been one of relief. Finally, she could help with something. Finally, there was a role she could play. Because she wanted to. She wanted to be a part of this, wanted to make up for all the times she hadn't spoken up, all the times she had kept silent, thinking it none of her business to do anything.

But then the reality of what she'd heard had sunk in. Could she be complicit in the killing of another? How could she assuage her guilt by becoming guilty of something potentially worse?

And now she didn't know what to do. She didn't know what the right decision was. So she did what she always did when she was confused and needed to think: she flicked on the television. The voices, the background noise, somehow made it easier for her to think. It dulled the questions, the justifications, in her head, until only the important things rose to the surface.

The TV was tuned to the news station, as most TVs were these days. And she watched blankly as the anchors discussed something, the red tape of headlines running under their faces. Wyoming was announcing secession. Not unexpected. The state had always had a revolutionary streak running through it. It was only unexpected in the sense that Wyoming hadn't bitten the bullet before California. A big state, lots of land, lots of territory. Small population, though, so perhaps not as important as it could be.

And then she realized this was going to keep happening. States would keep seceding. They had to because what the government was doing was wrong. Everyone knew it. Everyone knew the military couldn't run the country. No one wanted that. And she could sit and watch TV and wait for state after state to leave the union, wait for the battles and the killing to begin. Or she could actually do something.

Sacrifice the life of one man to save many. A philosophical problem. She remembered sitting in a lecture once in university. The lecturer had been attempting to explain the “trolley problem.” The essential problem was that there was a runaway trolley on tracks, and it was rapidly approaching a branch line. On the main track the runaway trolley is heading toward five people tied to the line, five who would surely be killed. However, there was the option of flicking a switch to detour the trolley down the branch line. On the branch line there was only one man tied to the track, who would surely be killed. The question was: do you flick the switch or not?

The problem was not a complex one. But depending on the philosopher, the answer differed. Min-Seo remembered thinking that it was a ridiculous problem. The answer seemed so obvious to her. Five families without a father versus one family without a breadwinner? Five lives versus one? She didn't see the complexity. And yet now, right here, she had the exact same problem in front of her. The answer didn't seem as simple when the people on the tracks were real.

But she could help. If that was what she decided to do, she knew she could. She needed to be sure, though, that these people were trustworthy. She'd been burned too many times. No, this was going to require some real thought. She turned her attention back to the TV screen.