After Dinner Conversation Magazine: After Dinner Conversation Magazine, #36

By Richard Pettigrew, Galen T. Pickett, Caitlin McKoy and 4 more

Delight in intriguing, thought-provoking conversations about ethics, philosophy, and social issues! After Dinner Conversation is a monthly literary magazine publishing short fiction. Each issue features both established writers and up-and-coming authors who contribute fascinating philosophical insights on controversial topics like marriage equality, assisted suicide, the meaning of death, animal rights and defining your "purpose." It's time to go deep in search of truth! If you love reading imaginative short stories on hot topics that make your brain think deeply but also have you laughing out loud... then this magazine is for you!

 

"After Dinner Conversation" Magazine - June 2023

• To Light A Flame: A higher species is tasked with reviewing every possible timeline and placing each human's consciousness in their happiest version.
• Ding, Ding, Ding!: Simulated evil and good AI personalities are run through tests to determine if they are safe for humanity's future.
• Hard Metal: A courthouse security guard is put in charge of escorting the grief-stricken mother in a murder case.
• The After: A repentant veteran attempts to apologize to the family for causing their child's death. 
• The Hanging Man: Patrons ignore a dead homeless man hanging in the corner of a posh art gallery opening.
• Teddy And Roosevelt: Two misfit boys strike up an unlikely friendship in the shadow of President Roosevelt.
• People Used To Die Every Day: A young man is caught in a lie to his partner; he has been illegally "sleeping" at night.

 

After Dinner Conversation believes humanity is improved by ethics and morals grounded in philosophical truth. Philosophical truth is discovered through intentional reflection and respectful debate. In order to facilitate that process, we have created a growing series of short stories across genres, a monthly magazine, and two podcasts. These accessible examples of abstract ethical and philosophical ideas are intended to draw out deeper discussions with friends, family, and students.

 

★★★ If you enjoy this story, subscribe via our website to "After Dinner Conversation Magazine" and get this, and other, similar ethical and philosophical short stories delivered straight to your inbox every month. (Just search "After Dinner Conversation Magazine")★★★

• Language: English
• Publisher: After Dinner Conversation
• Release date: Jun 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223380207

Book preview

After Dinner Conversation Magazine – June 2023

This magazine publishes fictional stories that explore ethical and philosophical questions in an informal manner. The purpose of these stories is to generate thoughtful discussion in an open and easily accessible manner.

Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The magazine is published monthly in print and electronic format.

All rights reserved. After Dinner Conversation Magazine is published by After Dinner Conversation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States of America. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher. Abstracts and brief quotations may be used without permission for citations, critical articles, or reviews. Contact the publisher at [e-mail].

ISSN# 2693-8359      Vol. 4, No. 6  

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Copyright © 2023 After Dinner Conversation

Editor in Chief: Kolby Granville

Story Editor: R.K.H. Ndong

Acquisitions Editor: Stephen Repsys

Cover Design: Shawn Winchester

Design, layout, and discussion questions by After Dinner Conversation.

https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com

After Dinner Conversation believes humanity is improved by ethics and morals grounded in philosophical truth and that philosophical truth is discovered through intentional reflection and respectful debate. In order to facilitate that process, we have created a growing series of short stories across genres, a monthly magazine, and two podcasts. These accessible examples of abstract ethical and philosophical ideas are intended to draw out deeper discussions with friends, family, and students.

Table Of Contents

From the Editor

To Light a Flame

Ding, Ding, Ding!

Hard Metal

The After

The Hanging Man

Teddy And Roosevelt

People Used to Die Every Day

Author Information

Additional Information

* * *

From the Editor

IF YOU FIND THESE STORIES intimidating to digest, just know I do this for a living, and I’m having the same struggles. Take a deep breath, use a highlighter, and read slow.

I believe great writing that expands your mind is 10 percent smarter than you currently are. These stories might be 15 percent smarter than me, but I love them all the same.

If you think the questions I wrote are asking the wrong questions, I encourage you to ask your own, post them online, and tag us. Candidly, I struggled to succinctly encapsulate the fundamental truths each was begging to be asked.

What does it mean to be conscious? Does it matter? How can you create a test to determine if emerging AI will protect humanity when AI is the very tool used to create the test? Is vigilante justice ever appropriate in a civil and just society? If we are the result of our life experiences, can anyone ever be evil? Can anyone ever be culpable? Read slow, use a highlighter.

In lighter news, after 3+ years running the magazine from all over the world, I’m returning to Arizona to get some plants and, probably, a dog. Sometimes symbolism and truth overlap. This shouldn’t directly change the magazine, but it does mean it may change in subtle ways. We are, these stories remind me, the product of our experiences.

Kolby Granville – Editor

To Light a Flame

Richard Pettigrew

THE PEREGRINE FALCON bobs her head once, looks from side to side, and takes off from the sandstone gargoyle where she’s been perching. The neck of the carved statue cracks and falls toward the ground.

First, it falls in Abbas’s world, where Lori is standing thirty meters beneath it. It connects with her head two seconds later and kills her instantly. Abbas, who is standing just a meter behind her, screams, looks up, and then drops to a crouch by her side, hoping in vain he might help this stranger who was just moments ago queuing in front of him to buy her train ticket. He feels faint at the sight of all the blood.

Ten seconds later, the gargoyle falls in Lori’s world. By that time, the queue at the foot of the building has moved forward by a meter. Now Abbas is standing directly beneath the plummeting stone, and it kills him instantly instead. Lori turns around, gasps, and pulls out her phone to call an ambulance.

Lori’s world is not Abbas’s world, and Abbas’s world is not Lori’s. Both are real, but they are separate, overlapping nowhere. There is an Abbas in Lori’s world, but he isn’t conscious there; and there is a Lori in Abbas’s world, but she isn’t conscious there. And there are other worlds where neither is conscious. In some of them, others are conscious; in some of them, nothing is. There are many, many such other worlds. Different ones play out different possibilities, different ways things could go, different futures that might unfold depending on the outcomes of each of the myriad chance events that populate them—which way a tossed coin lands, which number comes up from the roll of a die; which route this person takes to work, which train carriage that person chooses to ride in; whether this iceberg calves from its glacier this second or the next, whether that bumblebee lands on that foxglove or the dandelion below it. In fact, whatever way things might be, there’s a world where things are that way.

I’VE REVIEWED THE EPISODE of the falling gargoyle ten times in the two days since I assigned Abbas to his world and Lori to hers. I think it’s because it’s the first time in my year of doing this job that I’ve been called upon to account for one of my decisions. The process is strange because there are no sanctions they can bring against me, and in any case, the decision I made is irrevocable. Whatever they think of what I say, Abbas’s consciousness will remain attached to him in the world I chose for it, and Lori’s will remain attached to her in the world I picked for her. They say the disciplinary process is valuable all the same since it will make me think about how I come to my decisions here.

I think their censure probably rankles more because I told Chakris about it, and she said I’m in the wrong. She’s new. She arrived two days ago, while I’ve been here for nearly a year. I thought she might find it encouraging to know that even old hands like me get called to account occasionally. But I read her wrong. She doesn’t need my patronizing encouragement. She’s already filed a motion for major change with the Senate.

This isn’t as uncommon as you might think. Quite often, someone joins fresh out of the academy, and a couple of days later they conclude that all the worries that nagged at them during their training were well-founded. They assign their first few thousand consciousnesses, and suddenly they want to change what we’ve been doing here for two million years. Mostly, they offer only minor amendments to our guidelines, but every so often, someone files a motion for major change. These are reported in the hourly newsletter, and we all vote on whether to hold a debate on them. Over ten million such motions have been filed since time began—three alone in the year I’ve