> ♻️ The following story stands alone and can be read without any knowledge of my prior works, although it is arguably a prequel to my other science fiction stories [Recycled](https://eleanorkonik.com/recycled/) %% ( [[2022-05-27 Recycled]] ) %% & [Can Androids Cope with Tiny Goats?](https://eleanorkonik.com/can-androids-cope-with-tiny-goats/) %% ( [[2022-04-22 Can Androids Cope with Tiny Goats]] ) %% I found my wayward empath at a playground just outside the funeral home, a faint smile on her pale lips. She'd always been small, but now she looked wasted, hollow. I worried the breeze would blow her away. The wooden picnic table was too small for my frame, but I sat down anyway, contorting the genetically engineered height of a Peacekeeper into something less threatening. "Eisha." She didn't so much as twitch at my presence, which didn't surprise me. Her sepia eyes clung to a tearstained teenaged girl kicking her feet into the dirt as she listlessly sat on the swing. She'd always been able to fugue deeper than any other empaths in the program. "Eisha!" Nothing. Reluctantly, I slapped her cheek. The sharp impact cut her link with the teenager and drew the attention of a nearby man in funeral black. He leapt up, brows heavy with outrage, but stumbled back when I shifted to expose the golden lion curled across my uniform. It wouldn't hold him back for long. Not after last week. Not with this many mourners overflowing into the streets. I had to get Eisha out of here before the riots started. Eisha refocused, eyes locking onto mine with dead intensity before betrayal sparked into fury. She banked it with a single, even breath. No other empath had enough control over their own apathy to induce it. I wished I'd never taught her the trick. "You can't hide every time something goes wrong. That's not what I trained you for." My voice turned pleading. "Damn it, we have work to do." A bitter cackle slashed out from between the placid cracks of ennui. "Jealous, Jack?" The hell of it was, I was, a little. When she linked with me, the force of her regard shined like the sun. I craved it almost as much as I missed her. Her sparking humor, the clever way she bartered in the markets, the brave smile she got before a jump into one of the Preserves. But I ignored the petty accusation because this wasn't about me. I'd still be sitting here if I hated her, because the technocracy needed her. This was about the program and what would happen if she didn't return. The wars we wouldn't avert. "Eisha." The talisman of her name was a futile habit, but I used it anyway. "When was the last time you ate? You're wasting away." "It'll be my funeral," she said with a twisted, saccharine smile. "Isn't that what you said when I tried to help Taki?" As a handler, I had plenty of practice suppressing guilt, but memories bubbled up anyway. Algorithms reporting a small town in the Andean Preserve as a potential revolt-point. The satisfaction of establishing Eisha as a caretaker for local orphans. For the first time, she'd loved using her gifts. Identifying emotionally damaged children, not rebels, had distracted her from her purpose. She blamed herself, though the analysts' reports had underestimated the violence bubbling under the local strand of rebel sentiment. The guns erupted earlier than expected. Hostages, a media standoff. Taki caught in the middle of a conflict no empath should have been present to feel. "I can't give you much longer," I told her. "Projections say the burial will turn riot." "I'm not going back, Jack. You can't force me." "I won't let you throw your life away to mourn one barbarian boy." I picked her up and carried her to the helicopter. She didn't resist. She never did anything again, no matter what we put in her IV. It was all such a waste. ## Afterword I wrote the first version of this story my senior year of college for a project called _Illuminating Ethics via Fantasy Fiction_ – at the time I was a philosophy major destined for law school, and my primary interest was to figure out how best to live a good life. The goal of the project was, perhaps unsurprisingly, to demonstrate that speculative fiction is a valuable method for boiling ethical conundrums down to their core component parts in order to make them easier to consider. I may have graduated, but I never really abandoned the project ;) The original version was much longer and, I think, less effective. I've been fiddling with it and tweaking it for a long time, but I started thinking about it again now that I'm reflecting on how the first quarter back to teaching in 3 years went for me. Wow, let me tell you how much I empathize with Eisha now, in ways I never would have even considered possible when I first wrote this story. This is the wrong place for a truly comprehensive explanation of all the things that are frustrating about my job, but the emotion of "I signed up to do something I thought was good, people didn't listen to me, and things went badly, so now the only ethical choice I can make is to try and take what joy I can from the moment... or completely give up and stop contributing to a system I no longer believe in" is, wow, past me was prophetic. It's ironic, in some ways, since I initially wrote this as sort of a critique of people like Eisha – it was meant as a criticism of utilitarianism, of the idea that happiness is all that matters. Eisha's empathic gifts were supposed to be a sort of extreme version of the lotus-eater, taking questions of drug abuse out of the equation when evaluating the consequentialist goal of increasing the happiness in the world. If an empath could just feel childlike joy all the time, parasitically experiencing other people's satisfaction and pleasure, and chose to waste away rather than contribute to the society that created in any other way... is that ethical? Is it ethical for me to waste years of education and abandon students who might benefit from my presence because the system has changed so much I no longer believe in it? I hope so.