*2 dudes with briefcases meet at a dock surrounded by goons. Its dark, foggy, a light mist is starting to clear the fog, could start raining soon.*
"you got the money?"
"yeah, show me the goods first."
*holds up phone*
"whaddya think I'm stupid? Open the briefcase"
*hands porn briefcase to goon to hold, the locks open and he lifts the lid*
*other guy steps forward, sees tits*
"alright thats good, thats good... wait"
*he's flipping through some more pages*
"Woah woah woah you said there were gifs printed out like a flipbook, this is a goddamn Sears catalog!"
"Hey it worked for us back in the day"
*one side raises guns, the other side quickly raises theirs*
"'Back in the day'? Ill fuckin give you back in the day, imma bleed you out so death has to load real slow like a porn page on dial up"
*tension*
*distant sirens*
"Aah fuck which one o'yous sold us out?!"
*gunfire and chaos breaks out, the porn case gets knocked over and into the line of fire, bodies fall and blood mixes with the rain across the lingerie ads. A grizzled half shaved detective walks through the scene as uniforms clear the area. He steps on an ad for sky blue brassiers, now damp and half purple from the blood. He lights a cigarette as he watches the current warp and disfigure the page*
"Huh. The same copy was in the dealership my dad worked at."
*a uniform runs up*
"All dead or escaped, detective. Looks like there were only a couple good printouts and the rest were these catalogs"
*the detective is silent, still eyeing the brassiere of a model that must be in her 50s by now. He wonders if she can still lean back with such optimism*
"Detective?"
"Huh? Oh, nothing. Get the printouts, nobody's coming back for these catalogs, let the rain have em."
*the uniform nods and runs off barking orders as the detective flicks his cigarette and walks away. The butt of the cigarette lands on the butt of another model showing the fall lineup of beige satin underwear. It sizzles just the way these catalogs used to... back in the day.*
"Okay, so imagine a magic button."
"I'm imagining the button."
"If you press the button—"
"What color is it?"
"It's the only button. It doesn't matter what color it is."
"Nah, I ain't falling for that again. Last time there was a red button and a blue button—"
"That's a different thought experiment."
"—and I tried to be a nice guy and pick blue so I could save everybody, but it turns out ya'll a bunch of selfish motherfuckers and I died."
"It wasn't buttons. It was pills."
"Don't care. I'm out for me this time. What color is the button?"
"Ugh, fine. It's red."
"I press the button."
"You don't even know what it does yet!"
"And I pull the trolley lever."
"There's no lever!"
"Bias for Action."
"Just listen: there's a button that lets you save 10^100 shrimp, but it kills one random person. Would you press it?"
"What flavor are the shrimp?
"Flavor?"
"Yeah, you know: garlic, Old Bay, Korean BBQ."
"You're saving the shrimp, not eating them!"
"Saving them for what?"
"For nothing. They get to live their lives."
"What? Just doin' shrimp stuff?"
"Yeah."
"How long do shrimp live?"
"Uh, it depends on the species? 1-2 years?"
"And then what happens?"
"They die."
"That seems like a waste."
"How is that a waste? They got to live full lives."
"Weren't you just telling me last week that bees live in perpetual agony and we should commit insect omnicide to free from the suffering of the flesh?"
"Yeah, but that was last week. This week I read a new Snubstack post with a math equation in it and believe something totally different."
"Uh huh."
"It's called updating your priors."
"Okay, well here's my updated prior: I press the button, let the shrimp live for a year, and then I eat them."
"What?"
"All of them."
"You can't eat 10^100 shrimp."
"I freeze the leftovers."
"You would need a freezer bigger than the universe!"
"Really?"
"Yes! 10^100 is more than all the atoms in the observable universe!"
"Okay, then I have a freezer bigger than the universe."
"You can't just—"
"No, wait. Three freezers. One for each flavor."
"You can't just make up three freezers!"
"Why not?"
"It's a hypothetical!"
"Yeah I hypothetically have three big ass freezers."
"The point—"
"If you get to throw out a big ass number of shrimp, I get to have some big ass freezers. Maytag freezers."
"The point of the hypothetical—"
"I've always been a Maytag Man."
"The point of the hypothetical is to interrogate our moral intuitions!"
"Yeah well the only thing I want to interrogate right now is a Red Lobster menu."
"I don't think you're engaging with this in good faith."
"Wait, I got a new hypothetical. A counterfactual even."
"Oh really."
"You know what I would've done differently if I knew you were gonna hit me with this mouthwatering supper-time supposition?"
"What?"
"I would've had breakfast this morning."
"Fuck you."
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