Today’s prompt: “An ethical dilemma”
There’s a runaway trolley rushing down the tracks toward where five people are tied up. You are standing on a separate set of tracks to which the trolley could be diverted if I just pull this lever.
Of course I pull the lever. I’m saving five people, and we both know you have to die anyway.
Today’s prompt: “Staying at the Harvard Club”
To be a member of the Harvard Club of New York, you have to have a degree or honorary degree from Harvard, work as a tenured faculty member there, or serve on a board or committee of Harvard.
The Yale Club of New York City was much easier for you to get into. Some of their alumni who were members of Skull and Bones decided they needed a mascot of sorts.
Today’s prompt: “Describe an item of clothing you wear now that someday your son or daughter will want to own. What is it, and why will your child want to wear it in twenty years?”
Inexplicably, used shrouds are totally in vogue in the early 2040s.
Today’s prompt: “Describe a moment in which you were in physical pain.”
It’s not merely that the bear trap has broken the skin on your leg – it’s the fact that its massive springs are digging the thick metal teeth into your muscles. You begin to understand why animals will chew off their own legs to get out of these things.
Unlike most animal species, however, you have opposable thumbs. You set to work prying apart the trap’s jaws. You open it a few centimeters and are just moving your leg when the shifting movement makes you newly aware of the pain, sending shock waves wracking your entire body. Your left thumb slips. The trap closes on your already mangled calf, and you cry out.
Stupid. Stupid. Focus this time. You change your grip and force the trap apart, pushing this time rather than pulling. You cautiously remove your leg, then adjust your grip and let the trap snap back together harmlessly.
You consider taking off your shirt to use it as a makeshift bandage until you can get back to your car, back to civilization. But then you hear the baying. And you remember the farmhouse you saw near here. The farmhouse with the ominous bloodstains on the door frame. The farmhouse where you saw a large dog chewing what looked a lot like an adult human femur. And suddenly you’re positive that that bear trap wasn’t set for bears.
You start to move on a path away from the farmhouse and circuitously toward the road, but even with the most gingerly steps, sharp pains explode through your lower leg. All you can do is hobble, as the dog’s howls get closer, and then the footsteps, and then the sound of a shotgun being cocked.
Today’s prompt: “My grandfather’s girlfriend”
Your grandfather’s girlfriend is a fascinating little old lady. You could write a whole collection of stories about her. In fact, Helene Tursten wrote a collection of stories about a woman very much like her, called “An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good.”
The trouble with you is you are a threat to your grandfather’s girlfriend. You talk entirely too much about your debts. Your financial entanglements. All the things you would do if you only had money. And she’s not as helpless, nor as innocent, as she looks.
Today’s prompt: “You are Bill Gates, and you are trying to solve the world’s problems one at a time. What’s the first thing you are going to tackle? Why?”
Honestly, I’m not sure I could improve on one of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s biggest current priorities, which is fighting diseases that primarily affect people in developing countries. They’ve been combating COVID-19, particularly in Africa and South Asia, but I think the work they’ve done on other, lower-profile diseases is more interesting. Many of these diseases are eradicable if we only chose to invest in doing so. Malaria, for instance. According to the Gates Foundation website, cases have dropped by more than 40% worldwide since the early 2000s, thanks to a combination of mosquito nets, insecticides, drugs, and testing. And the fact that it’s been eliminated in European countries and the U.S. suggests that it’s possible to eradicate it. But it’s going to take investment to do so, especially since we’re starting to see drug-resistant strains, and whether it’s just an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing or good old systemic racism or both, few organizations are putting forth the investment. At least, a lot fewer than are investing in things like cancer research.
Besides malaria, there’s a whole class of diseases called Neglected Tropical Diseases. You might have heard of a handful of them – lymphatic filariasis, aka elephantiasis; leprosy; Human African Trypanosomiasis, aka sleeping sickness; hookworm; roundworm; and dracunculiasis, or Guinea worm disease. Let’s pause on the Guinea worm for a moment. You get the disease by drinking water that has teeny tiny crustaceans called copepods that eat guinea worm larvae. The copepods die in your digestive system, releasing the larvae. The larvae mate in your abdomen, and during the next year or thereabouts, the pregnant female worm grows to 2-3 feet in length, and, according to the CDC, is “as wide as a cooked spaghetti noodle.” And then. Then. They hatch their larvae. Through your skin. And they leave your body. Through your skin. Usually on your legs or feet. It’s incredibly painful and horrifying, and it can take weeks for the worm to fully emerge from your body, and if it breaks in the process, you can get an infection from any remaining worm pieces. Yikes. We would not stand for this in the developed world, and it is a crime that it still exists.
Other priorities include providing vaccines to developing nations, fighting HIV and polio, and assisting with agricultural development and financial services for those in need, but one other item worth highlighting is their water and sanitation projects. You might have heard of Bill Gates’ challenge to reinvent the toilet? Sanitation is still a massive problem in many parts of the world, and it results in needless deaths. More than 1,200 children age 5 and younger die per day due to waterborne diseases, according to the Gates Foundation site. One of those diseases is cholera. Cholera is pretty nasty. You get horrible diarrhea and become quickly dehydrated. It’s possible to die from it within hours. But again, it’s something that doesn’t get a lot of attention because cases of the disease are unheard of in the West. Well, almost unheard of. There’s you, after all.
[If you’re interested in helping out the Gates Foundation’s efforts, you can donate at https://www.gatesfoundation.org/philanthropypartners/donate.]
Today’s prompt: “Turn to the obituaries section of the newspaper, and choose one person to write about. Imagine a scene in that person’s life.”
It’s a beautiful day for skiing – the slopes covered with pure powder. You’re bundled up tight and enjoying the rush downhill. The only drawback is the blinding sun glaring off the snow. As if in answer to your unspoken prayer, a shadow draws across the sun, cutting off the glare and turning the day to perfection.
“Hey,” a man calls to you as you ride your three-speed English bicycle through a shadow to work at the pharmacy. “What kind of bike is that?”
You curl up next to the fire with your paperback copy of Misery, jazz wafting from a nearby radio. The shadow flickers across the floor as Annie hefts her axe.
You stand over the Beetle’s engine. The heat was oppressive; your shirt was sticking to your back. And then a shadow passed overhead. After changing out the oil and the spark plugs and giving the whole thing a once-over, you close the trunk, step back, and look first at the car, and then up at the cloudless sky.
The shadow caught up with you yesterday, when a steel girder dropped from a crane in a freak accident and crushed you as you passed by the construction site. Was it there, waiting for you your whole life? Who can say how fate designs its web?