Considering everybody knew where to meet and how to get there, Liliana didn't offer the several minute's grace she had last week, starting her lecture at nine am exactly. People were welcome to continue to help themselves to breakfast, of course - there were mini-omelettes in bacon cups, vegetarian mini-omelettes, mini quiche bites, hashbrown bites, and a variety of breakfast crostinis available for the hungry, courtesy of Ignis, as Liliana certainly didn't cook - but she was going to continue lecturing while they did.

"So, today, we have our first ethical dilemma," Liliana said. "It's taken from the short story Those Who Walk Away From Omelas. This story opens upon Omelas, a wonderful society where there is no hunger, no violence, no kings, no gods, no masters. They are not a simple people, they have advanced technologies, they've cured common diseases, they have art and literature and science, and are sophisticated as any of us. But, more than anything else, they are happy. Comfortable. All children are loved and wanted, all consenting relationships are celebrated, every person is cherished, living not a life of pointless luxury, but joyful abundance. Scarcity does not exist here.

"However..." Because there was always a however, wasn't there? Which was, in fact, one of the themes of the short story, but that was an analysis for a different class. "...In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks in the boards, secondhand from a cobwebbed window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room a couple of mops, with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads, stand near a rusty bucket. The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is.

"The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room, a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect...It sits hunched in the corner farthest from the bucket and the two mops. It is afraid of the mops. It finds them horrible. It shuts its eyes, but it knows the mops are still standing there; and the door is locked; and nobody will come. The door is always locked; and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes--the child has no understanding of time or interval--sometimes the door rattles terribly and opens, and a person, or several people, are there. One of them may come in and kick the child to make it stand up. The others never come close, but peer in at it with frightened, disgusted eyes. The food bowl and the water jug are hastily filled, the door is locked; the eyes disappear. The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes
speaks. "I will be good, " it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They never answer. The child used to scream for help at night, and cry a good deal, but now it only makes a kind of whining, "eh-haa, eh-haa," and it speaks less and less often. It is so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.

"They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery." There was more, but Liliana skipped over several paragraphs, finishing up with the crux of the matter. "If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed."

With that, she set her copy of the short story aside. "Most citizens return to their homes after learning about the child, and their happiness, their abundance, has a new weight to it. Everything they have, everything they build, every song sung or book written or picture drawn owes its existence to the suffering of that child. That knowledge sits with them for all of their life, making them mindful of their blessings, making them a better people, because they have seen the cost of all of it and they know they are not paying it.

"But then, there are others. Those who cannot reconcile their lives and that child's suffering. And so, they leave. Most don't even pack anything, walking out of Omelas, over its well-paved roads, beyond its well-tilled fields, with nothing more than the clothing on their backs. Where do they go? Who knows. 'Each alone, they go west or north, towards the mountains. They go on. They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back.' Nobody knows what lies in those mountains - they go in ignorance, they go alone, and whatever fate they meet is a question that will never be answered."

The end of her lecture, she sat back and looked at the class. "So, today's ethical dilemma is a simple question: go or stay? Do you stay and participate in mindful happiness, or are you one of the ones who walks away? Answer that and prepare to defend your choice--but. Remember my rules. You are answering for this exact scenario only. You cannot stay and work to free the child, or tear the city down brick by brick. if you leave, you do not get to return with an army, or declare you're going to one of the surrounding towns. "Go forth, alone and into darkness, or stay and participate in society. Those are your only two options."

[Hey, head's up! Under the cut is part of the text of TWWAFO, specifically extreme neglect and abuse of a child. Be safe!]