“Many people believe that doing the right thing is easy and should be done no matter what.”
“To those people, I’d like to present a hypothetical scenario that will put that belief to the test.”
“Imagine you’re standing on a bridge above a train track. An oncoming locomotive is blazing down the rails and its breaks have failed.”
“On the tracks are five individuals, bound and gagged, awaiting their seemingly certain demise. However, there is a way to rescue them from their precarious position.”
“Standing on the other side of the bridge is a rather rotund gentleman looking over the railing, horrified at the sight. Should he be pushed onto the tracks, his body mass would be enough to cause the train to come to a stop.”
“Would you push the man off the bridge, staining your hands with blood but saving five lives? Or will you allow the iron horse to run over the entrapped souls, damning your conscience with the knowledge that you could’ve stopped it, but keeping your hands clean?”
“Most of those that were queried with this scenario said they’d allow the locomotive to massacre the imprisoned men. They didn’t desire to kill a complete stranger in order to save the lives of five other strangers.”
“Of course, there are hidden variables to this problem that people don’t take into account. What if the obese gentleman was the one who set up the whole thing? What if those five individuals were doctors, firefighters, or other important individuals that save lives on a daily basis?”
“What if all six of the souls involved were notorious killers and no matter what you did, you’d be letting at least one free to kill again?”
“”For people like Cayci Spires and Neville Sheldon, they don’t care about those variables. They only care about doing what feels morally correct in the moment.”
“In this case, they wholeheartedly believe that eliminating us in the upcoming table ladders and chairs match is the right course of action. They don’t realize how they’d be dirtying their hands in the process of getting rid of us.”
“They forget that I’m but one part of Johnathan Heartsford, a horrible, but innocent man that was dragged along for the ride. Killing me means killing him too, and taking innocent lives isn’t in their repertoire, is it?”
“And I know you want to take down Lee too, but in doing so, they’d be branded as murderers and evildoers. That’s exactly what they plan on ridding the world of in the first place, is it not?”
“You two seem…uncertain about going through with it now, don’t you?”
“You both are on a bridge with us on the other side. On the tracks are all the people you could save by killing us.”
“Will you push us over, tarnishing your reputation and becoming ruthless killers in the process?”
“Or will you let us go, damning all those people you could’ve saved to a grisly fate?”
“Knock Knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“The trolley, your worst nightmare.”