I wake in a perfectly white room.
I do not know where the light is coming from. It is clear and crisp and all-suffusing.
Motes of dust float in the air, but do not settle on the perfect walls.
The room has no doors or windows.
I look down. I am wearing a white jumpsuit. It is soft, but not actively soft. It is not so much the presence of softness, as it is the absence of discomfort.
The jumpsuit is like a second skin, pristine and brilliant and with just the right amount of stretch.
I am struck, briefly, by the feeling of having been in some way reborn.
Then I hear the voice:
“Before you are two buttons. One is red. One is blue.”
The voice comes from nowhere and everywhere.
It continues, “If you press the red button, you will certainly survive.”
Its accent is the accent of a beloved grandparent or favourite teacher. Its intonations are exactly the frequency of serenity.
“If you press the blue button, you may perish.”
The voice is like the light and it is like the jumpsuit. It is neither soothing nor abrasive. It is not judgemental or reassuring. It simply is, and so it reminds me that I, too, simply am.
“If more than half of your compatriots press the blue button, then everyone will live.”
I breathe in. I breathe out. The air in the room is the exact taste and temperature as the air in my lungs. The room, the air, the voice, and myself… we are all one organism.
“This choice has been presented to every human in the world. What button will you press?” The voice implies no urgency or pressure, but I know I will make a choice soon. I do not feel any particular way about this.
“Hey buddy,” I say to the room at large, “I can’t see any buttons here?”
“Oh,” replies the voice, “have you checked behind you?”
I turn around. The floor feels like it is carpeted with solid photons, the ideal blend of firm and pliant. I wriggle my bare toes into it.
On the other side of the room are, indeed, two buttons. They are set into the wall. Each is palm-sized and they are made of an ever-so-slightly translucent or reflective material. They look like lacquer or chitin, artful and organic.
One is red. One is blue.
I run my hand over them, being careful not to press them down. It feels like stroking the shell of a beetle who hides the whole planet within it; if it spread its wings, the whole horizon would be bare to the void.
“Thanks,” I say, “I was a bit confused there.”
“No problem,” replies the voice, “honestly, the buttons should have been the first thing you saw. There’s eight billion of these rooms right now, so there’s a few teething problems…”
“Wait.” For the first time since waking here, I do not feel at ease. “Everyone in the world is in one of these?”
“Yes.”
“So… babies? People in comas?”
“Everyone in the world.”
“And you had the instructions translated for everyone, right? Did you provide written instructions, or is it just disturbingly calming audio? Are the buttons labelled as well as coloured? Are they all positioned at an accessible height? Are there helpers or, like, proxies provided to those who might need them?”
“This information is beyond the scope of the experiment.”
“Well, this is an accessibility nightmare.”
“The information that you have is the information that you have.”
The voice remains precisely at the nexus of benevolence and neutrality. The room still feels as if my nerve-endings had grown slowly to make a cocoon of air and light and walls. The buttons continue to look like creatures whose carapaces pulse with the beat of the sun’s heart.
This begins to bug me.
“Who exactly are you, anyway?” I ask, more curious than combative.
“This information, too, is irrelevant to the choice before you.” says the voice.
“Yeah, but… to put everyone in the world in one of these rooms? You’ve gotta be, I dunno, some kind of malicious deity? A worldwide shadow organisation? A wizard who hacked the source code of the universe and minored in philosophy at wizard college?” I can tell I’ve raised my voice, but I swear it’s more out of incredulity than anger.
“This supposition is-”
“Beyond the scope of the experiment. I get it.” I take a sharp breath of the amniotic air and I wonder where the atoms of me end and where the rest of reality begins and I am honestly a bit grumpy that me and this voice probably have molecules in common. “But what exactly is the experiment supposed to prove?”
“That knowledge is not required-”
“Becuase buddy,” I continue without really thinking, because the moment is eternity and eternity is a moment and so I may as well, “most experiments have a hypothesis, right? So what’s yours?”
“The integrity of the-”
“Like, here’s some statements about this situation that I think are true, right?” I lick my finger and begin writing on the walls. The moisture glistens on their perfect whiteness amid the perfect illumination. “On the one hand, assuming everyone is able to understand the information and press the button they want, no-one on earth is in danger until someone presses the blue button. Once the first person presses the blue button, this becomes a messed up casino with mortal stakes. And, honestly, that is kinda on them? With limited information, it is kinda fair to say that the danger posed by pressing a button is entirely opt-in.”
“The logistical specifics of the-”
“I’m not done, bud.” I say, wetting my finger again and continuing my unhinged scrawl that ruins the room’s blankness with my saliva snail-trail writing. “See, on the other hand, if our desired outcome is to get out of this with as many people alive as possible? Yeah, I get it: 51% blue is way more achievable than 100% red.”
“Your questions are understandable, but you must still-”
“Now, of course, if your biggest priority is to respect individual agency? Well, the 51% majority-rule altruism bloc loses out on that front. But, hey, societies already create systems to prevent people being fatally bound to the consequences of the worst days of their lives, so … whatever. And this absolutely is going to be the worst day of a lot of people’s lives, you get that, right?”
“The benefits of this experiment include greater self-”
“I’ll come back to that.” I pause and survey the walls, which shine with the undrying and unfiltered mess of thoughts and body fluid. “Right now, my issue is that there’s too many abstracts and unknowns. This experiment hasn’t controlled for much. And that’s not even taking into account real world versus theoretical tensions…
“Take the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It’s a nice, clear situation with known input, output and thesis. You know it, right? It’s the one where me and a buddy commit a crime, but we get arrested. We’re both offered the same deal, snitch or clam up. Long story short: it is a mathematical certainty that I’m best off snitching.”
“Yes, the game theory is well under-”
“It stays interesting, however, because of the tension between the maths-y answer and real life stuff. Because, sure, the numbers say I should snitch! But also, I promised my buddy I wouldn’t snitch. And I value my word, right? If I say what I mean and I mean what I say, then I absolutely can’t snitch, because no amount of maths will uncross that line.
“And that’s leaving out the probabilities, right?”
“There are no probabilities associated-”
“Because sure, I do less jail time (maths-wise) if I snitch. But my buddy has a, I dunno, 0.5% chance of perishing in prison? And that’s low, but let’s say that’s per year, so it compounds. Over ten years, it goes up to… nearly 10%, I think? Leaving aside the worth of my promise, how does that chance impact the maths? I like my buddy! Heck, let’s say I love them. That chance might be unacceptable to me.
“Plus, if I do snitch and my buddy survives prison? Well, then there is a, gosh, let’s say 70% chance? Yeah, a 70% chance of them tracking me down wreaking vengeance upon me. Which, by the way, would be correct from an ‘honour among thieves’ ethical standpoint, because I fudging snitched.”
“There is no-”
“And that’s what brings me back to this situation. I admit it seems interesting on the surface. The vagueness gives people a lot to agonise over, you know? Lots of competing criteria for the ethical, kind, compassionate, or responsible choice.
“But it’s the specificity of the Prisoner’s Dilemma that makes it work. It lets you take a look at game theory, and then stress test it with realism and emotion and morality and risk. Whereas, this? It feels like you just want the people who survive to argue about it and, thus, relive their trauma forever.”
I pause here. My breathing is ragged, which makes it feel like the whole place is ragged. The walls are a mess. My mouth is dry.
The buttons, though, still feel like friends.
“The value of the experiment can only be assessed after it is completed. To reveal more to the subjects at this stage would compromise its integrity.”
The voice remains unperturbed by my increasingly feral interruptions. It maintains the tone of a professor you’re very fond of, but who takes pains not to show affection or favouritism because they’re a professional. It is pitched just right to encourage safe and thoughtful curiosity.
Unfortunately, I’m really on one now, so it just feels like permission.
“The experiment is already compromised because it is coercive. You put us in these rooms and you tell us what to do, and it doesn’t matter if pressing red or pressing blue is the implicitly violent option. The situation is already violent because you, whoever made the fudging buttons, have created a giant unaliving machine and forced us to operate it and you have the gall to gaslight us into thinking it’s our fault if the machine works.”
I am frothing at the mouth. The words are tumbling out in a mess of brilliant bile. I feel like a livewire, electricity running from the cool sunshine floor through my bare toes and up my spine and tingling in my teeth. The whole room should be cracked and glued back together with lichtenberg figure kintsugi.
Only the buttons should remain whole.
“Your judgement is immaterial. The buttons are before you.”
“Which button did you choose?” I imagine my eyes are flashing and bloodshot, like an overexposed photograph. “Because if you chose blue, that makes it real easy for me.”
“Everyone in the world must press a button. The votes are secret. The information you have is the same information all have.”
“Except you, right? Because you know how this works. You put us here. You have placed us in a horrible Saw-style trap. We are your prisoners. Until we press the button, we are your prisoners. This situation is unthinkable and horrible. There is not a single person who presses the red button who should be judged. No-one is obliged to risk their life to try to save someone else. Especially, no-one is obliged to risk their life to save a hypothetical someone else. And extra especially, no-one is obliged to risk their life when they have been coerced into making that choice and given none of the information that would help to make it.”
“Then you will press the red button?”
The wind goes out of my sails. I deflate. The room is just a room and I am just a tired hunk of clay.
“I can’t.” I am numb. I want my eyes to burn, but they are just… normal. “I am going to press the blue button, obviously, and if I survive I'll tell people that it's because I wasn't willing to bet that at least one person wouldn't mistakenly press the blue button and I wasn't willing to put my own safety above trying to protect that one person who made a mistake.”
“Good. You have chosen. Well done. You may press the button when you are ready. It is appreciated that you did not try to damage the testing room while you contemplated your decision.”
I place my palm on the blue button. I swear I can feel something deep inside it flutter.
“But know three things,” I say, holding my arm carefully still, “First, if I do not survive, I fully acknowledge that's a result of my own choice. I took that risk and I did it knowingly.
“Second, the real reason I'm pressing the blue button is because I have a fudging martyr complex and I haven't done enough therapy about it.
“Third, if I survive I will dedicate the rest of my life to tracking you down. I will not be good at it. I do not have ‘a certain set of skills’. But I will never stop and there is at least a small percentage chance that I will find you. So, before I press this button, please know that if 51% of people press blue, then you will remain the only person in the world not perfectly safe from your own achingly mundane ethical quandary.”
“You call it mundane, but you have opined on it at length.”
“The questions raised by your thoughtlessness does not make you thoughtful by proxy.”
“You call it thoughtless, yet the person writing this dedicated hundreds of words to exploring the space I created.”
Hey. Fudge you. I am already in two minds about giving oxygen to your viral content in a philosopher's trenchcoat. I've only got one button in front of me, buddy, and it's the one marked ‘move to bin’.
“The narrator's threats, also, are beyond the scope of the choice before you.”
The voice is still perfectly level, but its fallback on repetition betrayed its existential fear.
“I am not experiencing fear,” lies the voice, already regretting its choice to break the fourth wall, “And nothing I have said is a lie.”
“Do you two need a minute? I’m only waiting to see if I get to live here…” I say, feeling a little spiteful, utterly ungrateful to the person writing this story who graciously created me, “And, if I’m being honest, I think it’s a little bit much that you two are arguing and I’m catching strays. I didn’t ask to be created and, frankly, it isn’t much of a life to be a barely concealed proxy for the author’s actual opinions. I don’t even have a backstory. Frankly, it wouldn’t be a great loss to this fictional world if I do d** when I press this button.”
I stop and wriggle my jaw around like I’m chewing a toffee. One of those words came out very wrong. I can taste copper and smell burnt toast.
“Hey,” I continue, “why can’t I say d!3? In fact, I don’t think anyone’s said d*£ or mu**3r since I got here. And, given the situation, that’s actually kinda weird.”
Ah, I can answer this one. The thought comes fully formed into my brain. This situation isn’t really a meaningful experiment, it’s just kinda… content. So the voice isn’t saying those words, because the algorithm hides posts containing them. The voice wants to go viral.
“Okay,” I am bleeding from the nose, “but why can’t I say them?”
That’s my fault, I’m afraid. Again, the thought ramraids its way into my brain like a freight-train with a paper mask of my face glued to the front. I am going to post this story online and I also don’t want the algorithm to hide it. Which, frankly, is probably a vain effort, given how long this has gotten.
“This self-indulgent digression is also beyond the scope of the experiment.” The voice contains no judgement or annoyance. Despite what I might wish for, it stays stubbornly on the side of neutral that implies benevolence. “If there is anything else you wish to say, it will be recorded in the experiment’s qualitative data.”
I sigh. I am a drained battery. I am a sunflower pinned to a notebook. I am a lycanthrope who has never seen the moon.
I let whichever random words that were already on my tongue fall out.
“It’s a shame, really, that as much as we may want to be kind, only the people on the receiving end can tell us if we were. And it’s twice the shame that they rarely agree.”
I don’t wait for a response.
I push the button.
A blue beetle opens its wings and I fall into the cosmos that it kept hidden inside its shell.
—
I will not tell you the result of the experiment. You could look it up, probably, but let’s face it – this framing is probably too different to the original content. It sways the results too much.
(Imagine, if you will, that instead of two buttons - everyone in the world was in cryosleep on a great spaceship, a generation ship crossing the stars. The ship’s AI, noticing a catastrophic life support failure, messaged them while they slept. It told them what was happening and it explained:
“We are near our destination. I can fix the systems, but it will take great processing power. I will need to borrow your minds, and I would need at least 51% of you to assist me in order to make the repairs in time.
“Alternatively, I can activate your individual escape pods. You will make it safely to your destination. There are enough escape pods for everyone. The loading process, however, takes time - you must choose one or the other.
“I must make it clear: there is no benefit to helping repair the life support systems beyond perhaps allowing you to survive. You have reached your destination. The ship (and this AI) will persist regardless and could, perhaps, be recovered later.
“If 51% of you stay, the repairs will be made and all will be saved. If less than 50% of you stay, the repairs will not be made and only those who chose their escape pods will be saved.
“Regrettably, I am unable to allow you to discuss this amongst yourselves. You are in deep cryosleep and it is only my direct neural link that allows you to hear me. I have told you all this in an instant, but it takes you longer to communicate (even mentally) - were I to relay your thoughts to each other, we would run out of time and none would survive.
“You must make your decision alone and instantly, but I can make it seem longer, at least, to give you the illusion of time to consider.”
If you heard that AI’s message, phrased in that way, would that change your answer? Maybe not.
It doesn’t really matter, anyway. Communicating with humans in cryosleep is inexact, nebulous and dreamlike. The AI might try to communicate those words, but perhaps all the passengers would experience was a dream of a white room and two buttons and a voice that wants the best for them but cannot explain it in a way that they will understand…
Or maybe that’s not what would happen at all. Maybe I’m messing with you.)
What I will tell you, instead, as a little treat of an epilogue is this:
In the years following ‘the experiment’, someone did indeed succeed in tracking down the entity responsible for all this. The entity was powerful and obtuse and abstract. Finding it and confronting it came only thanks to great stubbornness, great luck, and great cost.
But the entity is gone now.
And the person who ended it? They pressed the red button.
