Turtles All The Way Down

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Quinn had a lot of time to think after Colm left. Time to really ponder the announcement, the way they’d framed it. They’d made it sound like Colm had deliberately murdered Angelo, completely stripping out the context. That thought made her queasy. Because how many of the other announcements were like that? What would she have thought if she had run into Colm without knowing the whole story? Would she have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt?

She’d spent this whole time trying to live up to her philosophical aims. Kill those individuals who showed a willingness to murder the rest. She had the Granovetter threshold model of collective behavior in mind in order to increase likelihood of survival. Every individual had a threshold that defined the number of others that had to participate in an action before the individual in question would do so too. So, stop the number of people doing that action (murder) and thereby stem the number tipping over into participation. Those with the lowest threshold (the quickest to murder) had to be eliminated. That would prolong the game for as long as possible and increase the chances of rescue.

But what did she have to show for it after all of this?

There were at least half a dozen people who were going on killing sprees, and more than fifty people were dead already. Even with the overpowered weapon the terrorists had pressed into her hands, she hadn’t stopped any of this from happening. They’d accidentally killed one person, who hadn’t shed any blood of his own.

She’d waited for a bit in case Colm came back. But she’d known, deep in herself, that he wasn’t going to. And even if he did… she was injured. She’d only slow him down, whether he acknowledged it or not. She’d put him in danger, keep him from defending himself. She was now a burden.

So she’d found a quiet place to think, and then sat herself down and spent the day figuring out what to do next.

Well, that wasn’t quite right. She did know what to do next. But her time — her thought — was spent trying to come to a different conclusion. Trying to find a way to reconcile her principles with her circumstances. Trying to come up with a reason, any reason at all, to pull the proverbial barrel of the gun out from under her chin. She hadn’t found one.

Nothing had gone right. She hadn’t saved anyone or stopped anything. She'd failed. The threshold of collective action was irreversible. Dozens had killed. The class didn’t believe that rescue was possible. They were a group of individuals now, clawing for their own survival and tearing themselves to shreds in the process.

She wouldn’t join them. Not ever. She wouldn’t let the reprobates who ran this game have the satisfaction of knowing that they’d forced her into betraying herself the way that so many others had. She’d resist this game, and everything it stood for. To mark her defiance of them, she was returning to the location of their celebration of her.

So now here she stood, alone before the cave's gaping maw. Behind her, drag marks carved through the snow by her weapon, too unwieldy to be of any practical use in a suicide.

She took a step forward, and with all her might, scraped the weapon along behind her out of the light and into the cave's entrance.

Her collar beeped.

She’d be strong enough to deny the terrorists, and to force their hands. That was what she told herself, as she crossed into the cave. Strong enough to do this, for the sake of her principles. It would be a small victory, maybe meaningless in the grand scheme of things. But it would be a victory nonetheless.

Her collar beeped again. It did not stop.

She took a deep breath. Her figure continued walking forward, fading into the black of the cave.


S118 Betty Quinn - DECEASED