KaimeiJay

KaimeiJay t1_jb70b2s wrote

Reply to comment by PurpleSunCraze in Boeing employee bought lottery ticket because it was at $747M, a nod to the aircraft. She won the jackpot. by ChickenXing

Reminds me of that scene in The Big Short, Jamie and Charlie talking about how their company is currently operating with $30 million, and the JP Morgan guy makes them feel like utter losers at life because it’s not the $1.5 billion they need for an ISDA. I just balked at that scene, shouting at the screen, “What is wrong with you two! You’ve won at life!”

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KaimeiJay t1_j6mer8m wrote

Reply to [WP] Out of all the superpowers out there, you consider yours the most sadistic; you can save any number of innocent people from death in the face of danger, but to gain that ability, you must kill an innocent person. Named after the infamous moral thought experiment, you are... Trolley Man. by MarauderOnReddit

Here comes Trolley Man! Look at him in his stupid outfit, the kids love it! Who puts a pantograph on their helmet? We get it, you’re a trolley! He makes ding-ding noises, he makes really forced catch phrases about public transportation, his trolley-motif armor clinks and clangs wherever he goes. He’s like a blunt force instrument, the last sort of guy you’d want involved in a delicate crisis, like a hostage situation, or a collapsing building.

And yet, despite the jokes and the worries, he gets the job done. He’ll bulldoze his way into that hostage situation, and everyone goes home safe and sound. He’ll rush into a burning building and—against all odds—get every person to safety without a scratch on them after he showed up. He’s strong, he’s calculating, he’s charismatic, and at the end of the day, he can be relied on to save the day.

They all think it’s a gimmick.

I made the name first, after the thought experiment my powers reminded me of. The costume came second, made to look like some sort of knockoff Transformers toy that could turn into a big red trolley. It was to hide my shame at what I had to do while wearing it. When people started laughing at me, I laughed right along with them, burying it all under the mask of the lovable trickster. They don’t know what I do, what I’m capable of. They don’t know that every time I “save the day”, there’s a price. And even if they suspected—it certainly doesn’t take a genius to come up with the trolley problem connection, several conspiracy forums have already gotten that part right—nobody has come close to the truth. It’s not like pushing a button, and someone, somewhere, dies.

I have to choose who I kill.

Whenever I use my power, I gain the ability to save anyone and everyone in front of me for the next five minutes. The laws of physics and causality bend to allow me to do this. People will fall from high places and I’ll always be there to catch them. Guns aimed at them will turn on me, but always seem to miss or glance off of my cheap sheet metal armor. I seem to gain super strength and super speed. I am impervious to harm until the task is done, because I can’t save anyone if I’m hurt. In those moments where I’m saving lives, the world grants me all the powers of a demigod, so long as I use them for the sake of the innocent. It’s the perfect power for a superhero.

But just like the titular thought experiment, every time I throw that switch, and gain the power to divert any and all disasters from befalling the people on the proverbial track, someone else has to die, and I condemned them. But this is where the analogy fails, because it’s not like to knock a falling pillar away from a huddled family, it has to fly into an innocent bystander. No, the doom I invite on another is far more simple and insidious. They just die.

Whenever I throw that mental switch, and my powers activate, I just have to think of any innocent person I know, and they die. They simply cease to be.

(This was the part where I was going to write that Trolley Man targets the unborn to die, but then I realized that’s me tripping right into the topic of abortion and the morality involved, and I’ve decided I don’t want to do that. Apologies for the anti-climactic ending.)

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