The Audit

The subject exited the room, and the panel subtly relaxed into the backs of their chairs. They turned over loose pages in notebooks, and rattled out brief typewritten observations onto their laptops.

They were silent for a protracted moment, until the one on the Left intoned indifferently:

"The next subject is... Mr. Laramie Johns."

Pen scribbling on paper. Keys rattling on a keyboard. One by one, the three referred to a questionnaire that Mr. Johns had been required to supply. Age. Address. Education level. Medical history. Employment status. A life filled into empty fields.

"Let him in," the Left looked up at an attendant near the door, who exited—and in a moment, returned again with Mr. Johns behind.

Mr. Johns, Laramie, entered and quickly scanned the room. It may have been too small for a larger meeting, but seemed too small for the five of them, that afternoon. It was just himself, the door attendant, and the three: Left, Middle and Right.

"Have a seat, Mr. Johns," Left said, gesturing. He was the only one looking at Laramie. Laramie took the only seat available, a wooden chair opposite the long fold-out table behind which the three sat. 

Middle cleared their throat. Right frowned at their laptop screen, a white glare reflecting off lenses of their thick glasses, masking their eyes.

"Would you like some water?" Left asked. "This could be a while."

Laramie looked at the attendant. "If you please," he said. The attendant exited and, without delay, returned with a cold plastic bottle of water, condensation dripping.

Laramie opened it, sipped, and capped it again quickly. In the brief moment it took to do so, he turned back to the panel to see they all had set down their papers, their laptop, their pens, and were reclined in their chairs, looking at him studiously.

The Left smiled, more polite than joyous. "Happy birthday," they said. 

Laramie chuckled—it sounded like a subtle exhale out his nose. "Thank you," he said.

"Did you do anything special?" Left asked.

Some thought. Hesitation. Laramie's head bobbed back-and-forth in deliberation. "Not particularly," he said at last.

"Just a day like any other," the Left said—this time, the smile was more sincere and less polite.

"Pretty much," Laramie agreed.

"Had you been preparing for your Audit?"

A shrug. "I mean. Obviously I was aware it was coming."

"Were you looking forward to it?"

"In a way."

"In what way?" asked the Right.

Laramie looked at the Right one. He scratched his forehead. 

"Well," Laramie began. "I mean, I knew it was coming. Ever since... I don't even know. Since I was a kid. But then, it's like, 'okay, when you're forty, you go for your Audit,' which is the same as saying it'll be forever until it happens. And then when I turned twenty, I was like, 'okay, halfway to my Audit,' which was interesting. Like, okay, double this time I've been alive, and I'll be there. Then thirty. Thirty-five was weird, cuz then it felt really real. Like, five more years. That's crazy. Something that seemed like it was forever away is only five years away? Then every year since then, it's kind of been, you know, on my mind."

"Good. Good," the Left said, grinning. 

The Middle held up Laramie's questionnaire and said suddenly, "You chose not to provide a remark." The Middle's finger tapped the blank page, where line after line of empty space was afforded for the Auditee to provide an optional remark.

Laramie looked at the blank copy of his questionnaire and exhaled. "That's right. Was I supposed to—?"

"It's optional," said the Left. 

"Right. That's what I understood," said Laramie.

"You didn't have any remark?" probed the Middle, again.

"Uh, well," Laramie shifted in his seat, slightly. "I thought about it. I came to it and left it blank, thinking I'd come back to it after I finished the rest. But, uh. When I finished, I turned back to it and..." Laramie paused, then laughed suddenly. The three looked on, curiously.

"Sorry. I really thought about it, but I guess, when I thought about it, leaving it blank felt like it would say more than whatever I would make up to write there, instead."

The three continued staring at Laramie. Laramie looked at them, the laughter that had risen out of him unbidden now forgotten, as he averted his eyes upward, then aside. 

"Let's proceed," said the Left. "This will be recorded. You understand?"

Laramie shrugged. "Of course." 

The Left and the Middle turned through sheets of paper, while the Right turned their gaze back to their laptop on the table in front of them. Laramie sat upright, squaring his shoulders.

"If you learned beyond doubt that existence had no purpose," said the Left, "then what part of your life would be the hardest to justify?"

Laramie sat, his eyes drifted again, this time downward to the left corner of the room, near where the floor met the wall. They waited for his response.

"Uh, let's see. You mean, there was no god, or...?"

The Left shook their head so imperceptibly it would scarcely be noticed, "I just mean exactly this:" then, licking their lips, repeating verbatim: "If you learned beyond doubt that existence had no purpose, then what part of your life would be the hardest to justify?"

Laramie scratched his eyebrow. "Okay. I mean. I don't know... I don't really know how to answer that." 

"Take as much time as you need," said the Left. 

This was what he was here for. He knew it would be like this.

"Say it again?" Laramie asked, straining. 

Patiently: "If you learned beyond doubt that existence had no purpose, then what part of your life would be the hardest to justify?"

"Um, well. The pain, I guess." 

"Pain," the Right said aloud. "That's your answer?"

"Yeah, I guess so." 

"Care to elaborate?" asked the Left.

"Well. Just. If life had no purpose..." 

"Ah!" The Left interrupted. "Existence had no purpose..." 

"Okay. Well. Fine. If  'existence had no purpose,' then, yeah, I guess that any of the pain I ever felt would probably feel like the most... difficult to justify. Like, if it was for nothing, then, why the pain?" 

The Left and the Middle wrote as the Right typed. Before they were finished writing, the Left spoke up again:

"Would a purposeless universe make love less meaningful?"

Laramie sighed, his cheeks filling with air as he exhaled continuously through pursed lips, eyes wide, looking up.

"Well. I suppose, in a way, you maybe could argue that it would make love more meaningful."

"That's your answer?" The Right interjected. "More meaningful?"

"Well," Laramie said. "I don't know. I guess I'm just thinking out loud. Hold on. If life had no purpose..." 

"A purposeless universe," the Left corrected, again.

"Right, sorry. If there was, if the universe was purposeless, then, love would be even more important. It'd be all there really was..."

They looked at Laramie.

"Well, I don't know..." he stirred uncomfortably in his seat. "No, I don't know, hold on. Love would be important, I think. It would make it bearable. But less meaningful?" A brief pause. "No. It wouldn't make it 'less meaningful.'"

Writing. The Left, again: "Would it make love the only meaning that mattered?" 

Laramie bit his lip and answered, "I guess 'meaning' is tripping me up, here. Like, love would be important. But if the universe has no purpose, then, I guess it wouldn't have 'meaning.' So, no, love wouldn't be 'less meaningful,' but it also wouldn't 'matter'. Does that make sense?"

The Middle interjected there. "It doesn't have to make sense to us. This is your Audit." There was a finality to this statement, and yet, they said it with a calibrated force that suggested they were capable of repeating this reminder as often as was required.

"Right," Laramie said flatly.

"So," the Left resumed. "Love, 'not less meaningful,' 'but also wouldn't matter.'" 

Laramie watched the three of them write that down.

The Middle began, "If suffering produced no wisdom or redemption after death, then how much suffering can life contain before nonexistence becomes preferable?"

Laramie leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees and cradling his chin in his hand. "Repeat the question?"

With infinite patience: "If suffering produced no wisdom or redemption after death, then how much suffering can life contain before nonexistence becomes preferable?" 

Laramie was beginning an answer before the Middle had finished. "You know, anything I say, any answer, I might not feel exactly the same way tomorrow. Or a month from now. Or even by the time I walk out of here." 

The Right spoke up urgently. "Can we pause the recording here, briefly?" There was a loud 'click' in the room that surprised Laramie, and caused him to look around above his head, along the ceiling, to try and identify what had produced it. But the Right continued.

"You're suggesting that you don't have firm beliefs on any of the questions we've put to you thus far? You could change your mind about your answer at any time?"

Laramie was further taken aback by the abrasiveness of the question.

"I- I- I don't know..." Laramie stuttered, trying to think quickly and completely. The Panel exchanged sidelong glances. "I mean, I guess I could say—I entertain my answers, you know. Just to kind of see how they feel? Like trying on clothes in a clothing store, I guess. I put 'em on, and, see how they fit. But if I buy them and take them home, and try them on the next day, I might not like the fit as much. Does that make sense?"

"It doesn't have to make sense to us. This is your Audit," the Middle reminded him.

"Yeah, okay, I know. I guess I'm just saying—you know, I haven't spent a great deal of time thinking about these things. I mean, a little time, I guess, but, by myself. Not... really so much to other people. Out loud. So, I guess I can say confidently how I feel sitting here. But I may walk out and think about it more and think, no, that's not really what I think." 

The Right turned to the other two, "This is precedent for a later appeal." 

The Left shrugged, "Not if he approves a two-minds clause." 

The Right, to Laramie, "Would you admit, under oath, that your answers here with us today can be broadly interpreted as your attitudes as one-of-two-minds at time of Auditing?" 

Laramie shrugged, asking nobody, and anybody, "What does that mean?"

"It means you're fine with your answers, today, being your official Audit answers moving forward, regardless of how much you change your mind later," said the Left. 

Laramie felt exasperated by this. He looked at the panel.

"Alternatively, we'll dismiss and your Audit will be concluded," said the Middle, soberly, in response to Laramie's resigned look.

Laramie knew where a dismissed Audit led. 

"Fine," he said. "Two-minds whatever." 

"Record," the Left said, almost immediately, and the click was heard again. "Mr. Johns can you please state for the record that any inconsistencies in your attitudes or beliefs stemming from this moment onward are incidental and not at all connected with your attitudes or beliefs in response to the Audit questions posed to you before the panel today?"

Laramie looked at each of them in turn, then back to the Left. "Yes?" 

"Noted," said Left.

"Affirmed," said Right.

"Carried," Middle, who continued, "I'll ask again, Mr. Johns. If suffering produced no wisdom or redemption after death, then how much suffering can life contain before nonexistence becomes preferable?" 

"Can I just say that I actually don't believe that suffering produces no redemption after death..." Laramie began.

"That isn't the question, Mr. Johns," Middle replied.

"That's fine, I just thought it should be stated, if this is being recorded," Laramie said, looking up. "But, okay, if we're assuming it produced no..." 

"No wisdom or redemption after death..." 

"Right, right, what you said. Assuming that, which I don't, but, if we are, then I'd say that... if there really is no purpose for suffering then I guess I'd say that no suffering is preferable to... No, scratch that. Sorry. I'd say only as much suffering is worth bearing as there is... what's the opposite of suffering? Joy? Only as much suffering as there is joy would be allowable before... nonexistence..." 

The three wrote, haltingly, trying to capture the thrust of Laramie's idea. "If suffering produced no wisdom or redemption... then only as much suffering as there is joy would be what life could contain before... nonexistence becomes preferable," the Middle said out loud as they wrote. 

Then, lifting their pen, the Middle continued:

"If you could know the definitive answer to why anything exists, but the answer would destroy your desire to live, would you want to know?"

"No," was Laramie's immediate response. Then, "Wait." He thought. "Destroy my desire to live? Then no."

"No," the three said in response, writing Laramie's answer, as if relieved at how quickly they had received it. The Middle resumed:

"Is consciousness a gift if every conscious being must eventually experience loss and death?" 

"Yes," Laramie said. "I feel like the question presupposes that loss and death are inherently bad, but, I don't think that's necessarily the case. So. Yes, consciousness is a gift."

The Right spoke up next, asking, "If humanity disappeared tonight and no other beings ever knew we had existed, would anything of value have been lost?"

"Sorry, point of clarification for me. Do these questions stack?"

"'Stack'?" asked the Left.

"Like, to answer that question, am I also still assuming that the universe is meaningless, and that suffering produces no redemption and all that? Or is each question kind of 'housed' within itself?" 

The three exchanged a look. Left and Right turned to the Middle. 

"This is your Audit, Mr. Johns."

"Yeah, I know that. But my answer would depend whether or not I'm assuming that suffering is meaningless. Which I don't necessarily hold, outside of the conditions of the question as you asked it." 

The three looked at each other again. This time, they turned to the Left. 

"We'll ask again," said the Left, before the Right quickly repeated: "If humanity disappeared tonight and no other beings ever knew we had existed, would anything of value have been lost?"

Laramie sat back in his chair, smirking at the corner of his lips slightly, shaking his head. Tisk-tisk. 

"Okay, alright. As stated, I'm going to just assume the question doesn't stack on any of the others. I have to say that, for the recording, because as stated... I mean, dogs would remember us?"

The three stared at Laramie. It wasn't technically an answer to the question, so they waited. 

"Dogs would remember us. It's only people who disappeared. So. whether or not 'other beings' ever knew we existed, humanity would have left a mark. On life. Here. That might be discovered or remembered or whatever."

The Right leaned forward, angling their body slightly around the unfolded screen of their laptop. "That wasn't precisely the question."

"Repeat the question?"

"If humanity disappeared tonight and no other beings ever knew we had existed, would anything of value have been lost?"

Laramie repeated, to himself, "'Would anything of value have been lost?' Well. Yeah. Yes. The dogs would remember us, they'd miss us, but, they'd have their own communities I guess. They'd raise puppies in a new world without humans, and, something would carry over. Yes, something of value would have been lost."

The three wrote that down.

"Does life need to be witnessed, remembered or consequential to have mattered?" asked the Right.

Laramie smiled. "Is this like the tree falls in the middle of the forest question?"

"That wasn't the question we asked," said the Middle.

"Right, okay. It's kind of like that, though. I guess. In a way. Um, so... let's say that life ended, and was never witnessed, remembered or meant anything... what was it?"

"Witnessed, remembered or consequential to have mattered?" repeated the Right.

"Right. Life ended, never witnessed or remembered... would it still matter? To what? To whom? I mean, is it even possible to live a life without being witnessed by anything? But remembered... Life wouldn't be remembered." 

Laramie sat and looked down at his feet, thinking. The three waited patiently, sometimes looking at him, sometimes looking back at their notes. 

"You know, we kind of experience time chronologically, right? But that's just our experience of time. You could maybe also think that all of time happens simultaneously, or that the past is still available in some way, even if we can't directly experience it. So, I'm going to say it mattered. If time is eternal, which I guess I'm saying I think it is, then, yeah, I'm going to say it still mattered. Because that life is still accessible within time, even if it's stuck in the past, for us. Or for whenever this hypothetical question is taking place, I don't know."

They wrote, and the Right spoke up again. "If all your memories were replaced while your personality remained intact, would the resulting person still be you?"

Laramie considered this. "Just the memories?"

The Right answered, "If all your memories were replaced..." but Laramie interrupted, stopping them short.

"Right, okay, okay. I know. Um... I'm going to say yes. I think we're more than just the memories. Like, there's stuff in the body, right? Like in muscle tissue? That is unique to each person based on their experiences and what happens to them?"

The panelists looked at one another again, uncertain. 

"Scars! There's scar tissue. And, like, if you lost a finger, or an arm or a leg, and even if you don't remember what took that—this part of you that had memories replaced with something else will still need to deal with that missing arm or whatever. That's going to have an impact. I'm just going to say yes, it's still you." Then, after a brief pause, kicking his legs slightly, Laramie exclaimed. "Oh! And your personality! You still have your personality, right? Yeah, you're definitely still you. No question."

Nodding, the Right wrote that down before speaking again.

"If an exact duplicate of you possessed your memories and sincerely believed he was you, which of you would have the stronger claim?" 

"Which one came out of my mom?"

"Could you rephrase that in the form of an answer, and not a question, please?" 

"The one that came out of my mom." 

They wrote that down. 

"If your personality is primarily the result of genetics, conditioning and circumstance, what exactly deserves praise or blame?"

"What deserves blame?"

The Right cleared their throat, as if to repeat the question, but Laramie waved them off. 

"Nevermind. Um, I suppose... is it like a question of those three? Like, genetics, conditioning or..." 

"Circumstance." 

"Circumstance. Like which of those deserves blame?"

"You tell us, Mr. Johns."

"I mean. All of them. In a way. Depending on which might have been more of the reason why you acted a certain way or did a certain thing. Like, I guess it might depend on what it actually is. Like, I guess you could probably figure out, on a genetic level, what your DNA predispositions you to do—but conditioning and circumstance? I don't know how you could really litigate which of those has more sway in any given situation." 

They looked at him.

"All three? Is that an answer? All three."

They wrote that down. 

"Moving on," said the Left, as if some milestone in the Audit had been reached. "Are you more disturbed by the possibility that death is the end, or by the possibility that it is not?"

Laramie remembered his water bottle, opened it, and took a long drink from it as he listened to the question. "I guess that would depend on what things are like for me after I die, right?" He smiled as the panelists watched him. Laramie knew this wasn't what they were looking for, but it seemed they recognized that he wasn't offering it as an official reply to the question anyway. 

"So the question doesn't say what comes after death, so, I mean... I have my own thoughts about what that may be, but, I could be wrong, right? Anybody could be. So, I guess I'm not going to try and project what I think onto the question because that uncertainty is kind of the point of the question, if I'm getting that right? But, even still, the idea that anything comes after this suggests some order, right? Whether I'm a part of that order or not, it's still good to think that there is at least some order, right? So. Yeah, I'm going to say I'd be more disturbed that death is the end, than if it isn't. Even if it meant, like, hell or whatever. Or maybe not hell, but whatever the consequences or result I get might be, even if it is hell, or heaven or something in between. I guess I feel like I'll get what I deserve, and whether that's good for me or bad for me, it's still justice? And justice is an encouraging thought. Less disturbing than nothing, anyway."

They wrote that down for a long time.

"If immortality were an option, would refusing it be a form of suicide?"

Laramie shifted in his chair. "Um. No. I don't think so. Assuming immortality would be something unnatural, like a medicine or technology or something we don't naturally have. Then rejecting it would just be accepting natural death." Then, Laramie laughed. 

"What?" the Left asked. 

"I mean, it'd be fitting that the guy who turned down an immortality drug ends up being the first person to live forever, naturally." 

They started writing.

"But assuming immortality was natural, somehow, and you could choose to die, like immortality was the default setting, then yes, that would be suicide. I guess it depends on how it's administered."

They paused. "So," the Left began again, cautiously. "If immortality were an option, refusing it would be a form of suicide?"

Laramie looked at them. "No, for the sake of this question, I'm going to say no."

They wrote that down.

"Would you accept immortality if everyone you loved continued to die normally?"

"No." 

They waited. There didn't seem to be anything else to add, so the Middle asked the next question.

"If you could choose the date of your death but could never change it afterward, would you choose one?"

"No." 

"Is a peaceful death at eighty years old better than a violent death at thirty, if the younger person lived more meaningfully?"

Laramie shrugged. "I mean. I could see myself enjoying a peaceful death at eighty. I think that, if I'd been happy about what my life was like at thirty and if I had died then, that probably would have been okay too? I mean. I wouldn't have been thrilled about... whatever a violent death would be. But. I mean, all old people ever tell you is not to get old, so, I guess maybe we should listen to them? I'm going to say no. Not necessarily better."

"Would you want to know the last time you would ever see each person you love?"

"Jesus," Laramie said, shaking his head, daunted. "I mean..." he trailed off, staring into nothing. "The weird thing is, I don't know if I'd have done anything differently or said anything different than what I said to people the last time I saw them before they died. I've known a couple of people who died without me ever getting to really say goodbye, you know. And I've known people who died even when I got to say goodbye. I guess I don't really know, thinking about how I said goodbye to those people I didn't know were going to die, I don't really know if I'd have said anything different to them. Like, would I tell them what I really thought about them? Would that have made them feel good? I like to think that they already knew and, hopefully, already felt good about our friendship. And I wouldn't want to tell them this was going to be the last time if they didn't already know that information, too."

With a sigh, Laramie looked back at the Middle and concluded. "No. I don't think I'd want to know. I don't think it would change anything, except make me sad."

"Can the living morally wrong someone who is already dead?" asked the Right. "If violating a dead person’s final wishes would harm no living person, are the living nevertheless obliged to respect those wishes?"

Laramie paused. "Can you wrong someone who's dead? Yes. You can not do something they asked you to do, sure. Are the living obliged to respect those wishes? No. Just like how I don't have to do what you tell me when you're alive, I also don't have to do what you tell me once you're dead." 

"How long should grief be allowed to reorganize a person's life before it becomes a refusal to continue living?"

"People can grieve as long as they want to. There's no limit. I don't think any amount of grief means they aren't living. If they commit suicide out of grief, that would be a refusal to continue living."

"And if you could erase the pain of losing someone but doing so would weaken your memory of them, would you?"

Laramie shrugged, nonchalant. "I can't think of a single instance in my life where I'd want that. Maybe some people would, but, not me. I don't think that says much about my beliefs as it does about the kind of relationships I've had. Not all have been great. Some have been bad or even destructive. But I haven't gotten to the point that I'd want them erased to the point of losing their memory."

The Right looked back over at their colleagues, and then leaned forward. "I'll ask one more time. Just to be certain. If you could erase the pain of losing someone, but doing so would weaken your memory of them, would you?"

Laramie looked at the Right. He shrugged. Then, something occurred to him. "Oh, you mean, like the pain of someone I had a good relationship with? Oh." Making a face, looking aside momentarily. "I hadn't thought of that. I just kind of assumed you'd only do that for people you had a bad relationship with. Well, no, obviously not."

The Right wrote that down and looked back to the Left. 

"Moving on," said the Left. "If God exists, but is morally indifferent to human suffering, is God worthy of worship?"

Laramie looked up, instinctively, and repeated the question to himself. Then, repeating a second time: "Indifferent to human suffering? Worthy of anyone's worship or just mine?" 

The Left looked at him, silently conveying restraint. 

"Right, fine. I mean. If this god is indifferent to human suffering, he may not be worthy of my worship, but if this god created humans, then I'm not going to say he's not worthy of anyone's worship."

They looked at him. Laramie sighed. "Fine, fine. I mean. Okay, I got it. If he's indifferent to my suffering, then I'm indifferent to his worship. Like, he created me - so, I'll worship him. But if he doesn't care if I suffer, then I'm not going to care if I worship. Does that work?"

The panel exchanged more nervous glances, searching each other to see if they'd accept that as an answer. 

"Okay, I guess I could put it this way. Yes, worthy of worship. But for the record, or recording or whatever, I'm going to leave the sincerity and verve of that worship up for interpretation." 

Some nods among the panel, and they wrote that down.

"If God commanded something you considered unmistakably evil, would obedience constitute faith or cowardice?"

"I don't necessarily follow that obediently doing something evil would necessarily be 'cowardly'. I mean. Cowardice might be evil in some situations, but, I don't think obedience to do evil commanded by god would be 'cowardly'. What am I missing?"

The Left looked over at the Middle, who shook their head. So the Left responded, "If God commanded something you considered unmistakably evil," really emphasizing 'unmistakably.' "Would obedience constitute faith or cowardice?" 

"Oh. I guess you're suggesting that doing something evil because god commanded it would be cowardice for not resisting god?" 

Flat stares, all across the panel.

"I mean. This is a hard one to answer without more specifics. Doing evil could include a lot of horrible things... and if the question is about my justification for carrying those out, faith or cowardice could both apply. Like, 'the only reason I'm doing this is because I'm afraid of what will happen to me if I don't,' would be one kind of response if there's something I really wouldn't want to do but felt I had to in order to avoid dire punishment—versus, 'the only reason I'm doing this is because I have faith that there's a good reason why they are asking me to do this,' would be like if I don't need to be... I guess coerced into doing the thing, so much."

Laramie scratched his head in agitation, then stretched. "Man, I really don't like this one," then, laughing, he asked, "Can I take a pass?"

The Middle said no, and Laramie laughed again. "I mean, the question is assuming that I'm doing whatever it is, right? It's not asking 'do I do it,' it's asking do I do it because I have faith or because I'm afraid, so, assuming that I'm doing it, I think at the end of the day it will come down to cowardice either way. If I'm understanding the question right. Because even if it's faith, like, 'I'm just doing this because I am assuming god has a good reason for commanding this,' all of that comes down to the authority god has to command me to do the evil thing. So, I don't love this question, but, yeah, I guess cowardice is probably my answer. But, for the record, I think there's some big 'ifs' in this question."

"Would you prefer a comforting religion that is false," asked the Left, "Or an unbearable truth that offers no transcendence?"

"Do you ask this question at everyone's Audit? I mean, some people would say no to both."

"That isn't the question," said the Middle.

"I know, but, like, some people are really going to twist themselves into knots trying to rationalize themselves around this question."

"We can't divulge what any other individuals' Audit process entails, what their justification process looks like, or reveal any answers they may or may not provide to any given question, real or imagined," said the Right.

"It just seems. Anyway. Um. The question again?"

"Would you prefer a comforting religion that is false, or an unbearable truth that offers no transcendence?"

Laramie pointed a finger at the Left. "You called one a religion and the other an unbearable truth."

They said nothing.

"Oh, okay. I see. Well that's a loaded question, isn't it? Here I was sticking up for the atheists but actually I gotta stick up for the zealots, now." 

The panel looked at their notes. 

"So religion is comforting but false, and truth is unbearable and... what was the last part?"

"Offers no transcendence," said the Left.

Laramie shook his head, smiling wryly. "Unbearable truth. No transcendence. How 'unbearable' are we talking? Like, would it kill me?"

The panel didn't respond.

"Do you want shit that smells worse than you can imagine, or do you never want to poop again for the rest of your life?" Laramie said, with a laugh.

The Right spoke up, "The panel asks the subject to respond to the question."

"What does 'is false' mean, in this context, anyway? Like, if it's comforting, there has to be something 'true' about it? Otherwise it wouldn't comfort? Even if it isn't real, if there wasn't something genuine about it, it wouldn't resonate. Surely?"

The panel stared at Laramie as he struggled through this question. He sighed heavily, again, in response.

"Sorry, I'll take the comforting religion here. I don't know what 'unbearable' means, and I'm also not confident I grasp the fullness of 'false' here, either. And also, the unbearable truth in this instance promises absolutely no transcendence, but is that to suggest that the false religion does somehow? I just don't get it. At least I'll be comfortable."

Noted.

The Middle's turn came next. "If religious belief makes someone kinder, braver and more generous, how much should its factual truth matter?"

"Factual truth," Laramie repeated. "This is what I was having problems with in the last question. 'Factual truth.' Like, facts aren't the only measure of truth."

The Middle, less patient, began to repeat the question, but Laramie shifted in his chair uncomfortably. 

"No, no. I'll get to it, I know. But seriously, like... what would be an example?" He looked away, annoyed, trying to come up with an adequate analogy. "It's like. Treating everyone like you would like to be treated. Is everyone you? No. That's factually wrong. Everyone is not you. You are you. But it's true that if you treat everyone like you treat yourself, then everyone will get along better. Like, it doesn't work all the way but you get what I mean? It isn't fact but if you act like it is, it makes it true."

The panel stared back, not uncaringly, but not caringly, either.

"Factual truth," Laramie repeated, agitated. "No, I honestly don't think 'factual truth' matters really all that much."

"How much should it matter, if religious belief makes someone..."

"Not at all," Laramie snapped back, crossing his legs and uncapping his water bottle, condensation now mostly wicked away. The panel wrote their notes, accordingly.

"If atheism made someone crueler and more nihilistic, would that count as evidence against atheism, or only against that person." 

"One person? Don't answer. I know. Uh, only against that person." Laramie set his plastic bottle back down on the floor, near the ring of water.

"Is surrendering the ego to something greater inherently noble, or does nobility depend entirely on what receives the surrender?"

"I would think that 'greater' doesn't always necessarily mean 'best'. I'd imagine the goal should be, if you're going to surrender your ego to something, that you'd want to do that to that which is 'best'. So, it would matter more what receives the surrender, because you could surrender to something great, and fail to surrender to something greater."

"What could a religious experience give you that a hallucination could not?" asked the Right.

"Honestly I don't think I really know enough about either to give a satisfying comparison between them, but, I know that's not something you can put down on your forms. So. I guess my instinct would tell me that a hallucination is probably going to give you a lot more, actually, than a religious experience could. And that's not necessarily a credit to the hallucination, because maybe you could do without some of the things that come with some hallucinations. So. Yeah in this case I don't think a religious experience will give you much that can't also be gained through hallucination, partly because a hallucination can become a religious experience. Probably. And maybe a religious experience can come with its share of hallucinations, too, so. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. But I think a hallucination is going to have more other stuff packed into it too, that may not necessarily come with a religious experience, whatever we're pretending that might entail."

The Left began to write that down, but the Right spoke up.

"So, your answer is, nothing?"

"If you say so."

The Right thought for a moment, and then wrote, before asking another question.

"If God never reveals themselves clearly, is disbelief a human failure or a divine failure of communication?"

"The question assumes that God doesn't reveal himself clearly?"

The panel watched Laramie. 

"Okay, yes, that's the assumption. I'm going to accept that as the premise to the question and say that if that's the case it is a divine failure of communication. But I'd argue that there's a mismatch between the hypothetical and what a believer might suggest is happening in real life, but, I assume you're not interested in that?"

The Right again, "Could you love a God who created Hell?"

Laramie looked away, pausing, and back at the Right. "The question assumes God created hell."

The panel said nothing.

"If God created hell, which isn't the same as saying that God did actually create hell, then in that case I'd say yes, you could." Then, as if emerging from a stupor, Laramie bolted upright suddenly, looking aghast. "What am I talking about? Of course someone could love God even if he created hell. People love things that are dangerous, or bad for them, or that they don't understand, or that hurt them, in real life, all the time. Yes. Of course you could."

The Left asked, "If every religion vanished tomorrow but human compassion remained, what indispensable thing would have been lost?"

"I guess what might have been lost would be humanity's ability to rediscover compassion if compassion were to someday vanish, as well? Like, I'm not sure you could get compassion back without it, if that ever went away, too."

The panel wrote that down, and then the Left one intoned again, "Moving on."

Laramie cleared his throat, relaxing in his chair subtly.

The Left resumed. "Is an emotionally truthful story still valuable when its factual premise is false?"

"Yes," Laramie said. "Again."

"When does humility about what you do not know become an excuse not to reach conclusions?" 

The panel watched Laramie, who thought about this for a second, before laughing.

"This one feels like a question you guys added in yourselves," Laramie said, still chuckling. "Do a lot of people try and get out of these questions by saying they don't know enough to answer?"

"We cannot divulge the answers of other subjects," said the Right in a way that felt deliberately truncated. 

"Yeah. I get it. Seriously, I feel like this one was made for me. What was it again? The full question?"

"When does humility about what you do not know become an excuse not to reach conclusions?"

Laramie teetered and tottered in his shoulders, weighing the question. "'Excuse' is the word that doesn't feel quite right to me, is all. More like 'strategy,' or 'technique' than 'excuse.' Oh well. It's fine. Yes."

The Left one scooted forward slightly. "It wasn't 'yes,' or 'no'. It's... well, it wasn't 'yes,' or 'no.'"

"So, how much... ?"

"No," said the Left. "When does humility about what you do not know..."

"Oh, 'when'! Okay. When does humility... uh, well, okay so when does it become an excuse? Maybe 'excuse' works, then. Well. It becomes an excuse when it leads to a full refusal to answer. Right? I mean, if you never reach a conclusion, and your reason why is because of your supposed humility from lack of knowledge, that's... what? That's abdication. You're abdicating, in that sense. Then, yeah, I can see how that would be an excuse. So, when would be when you actually refuse to answer and you're using your humility as a shield to say, 'I'm not qualified.'" 

The panel shifted uncomfortably. The Right nodded to the Left, who asked again.

"When does humility about what you do not know become an excuse not to reach conclusions?" 

Laramie shook his head. "I don't understand. My answer was no good?"

The Left looked over to the Right, who shook their head. "The panel asks the subject to answer the question, as stated."

"When? What? I don't understand why not. What do you want me to say? At twelve o'clock? At suppertime? When? What?"

The Left shrugged and looked back at the Right, who inched forward deliberately. "Your answer makes it sound as though humility is used as the excuse to not reach the conclusion. Not reaching the conclusion is already assumed in the premise of the question."

"Yeah. Okay."

The Right, taking a breath, tried again, saying, "It's... it's close to an acceptable answer. Your answer assumes the conclusion before the humility from lack of knowledge is established."

"Um. I don't know. So. Like, if somebody doesn't want to answer a question—like how I apparently don't want to answer this one—then humility, in this case, would be used as a way to sidestep around coming to a conclusion. So... when, I guess, that happens, would be when the person deliberately decides to mask their hesitancy behind humility? I really don't know what you're wanting me to say... I feel like it's clear. Is it not?"

The Right put a hand up. "That answered for me," and resumed typing. Then, aside to the Left, the Right said, "Continue."

"Was it the decision? You need them to decide?"

The Right looked up, then down, then up again. "It's your Audit, Mr. Johns." 

The Left deferred to the Middle. "It's you."

The Middle, long waiting their turn, asked, "Are there beliefs you protect from scrutiny because losing them would damage your identity?"

Laramie thought, and then opened his mouth to answer, before pausing. Smiling, he then answered simply: "Yes."

The Panel hesitated, and then with a near-simultaneous shrug of their shoulders, noted Laramie's answer. The Middle spoke up again.

"Which would trouble you more—discovering your enemies understand the world better than you do, or that they are morally better than you?"

"Wow," Laramie said. "Okay. I'd be more troubled to discover that my enemies are morally better than me. For sure. I guess partially because I assume my enemies understand the world better than I do." Thinking longer, as the panel writes his answer, he adds, "Actually I'm pretty sure they are my enemies because they understand the world better than I do. Anyway, don't put that last part," Laramie added, with a chuckle.

The panel wrote it down anyway, before the Middle asked another question.

"If a lie prevents social collapse, does the public have a right to the truth?"

"I mean. I think I'd probably say, yes. What do they say? 'Let justice be done though the heavens fall'? Something like that. Because like, society could maybe rebuild again even better, able to adopt and incorporate more of the truth into it, if it couldn't endure being confronted with the truth before. So. Yes, I'd say the public..." 

Laramie stopped.

"I don't actually know if they have a right to the truth. Maybe they deserve the truth. Maybe they should get the truth. But I don't actually know if they have a 'right' to the truth."

Laramie sat back and crossed his leg on his lap, looking toward the door without realizing it, and then turning away from the door once he became conscious of it.

"They should get the truth. It would be right for them to receive the truth. But I honestly can't say that I think they have a right to it. Does that matter for your answer?"

"This is your Audit, Mr. Johns..." 

"No. No, they don't have a right to the truth," Laramie said, feeling a little sad. Then, a little bolder, he added, "But they should take the truth, all the same. If they can manage it."

They wrote it down. 

The Right sat up, asking, "Is truth still morally preferable when telling it predictably destroys an innocent person?"

"Destroys an innocent person?" Laramie repeated. "'Innocent person'?" He said again, making a face. "Look, I mean, I can say that I think the truth is morally preferable even if it destroys an... allegedly innocent person. I can also think that the person, whether innocent or not, should do whatever they possibly can to not be steamrolled, and that they should just... fight tooth and nail to keep from being destroyed however they can. But, you know, yeah, if someone is going to get flattened on an anvil, it'd better be truth that flattens them. Better than being destroyed by a lie, and who knows how many people in history have been destroyed by lies?"

"So, yes?"

"Yes."

"If everyone remembers an event differently from you," the Right asks again, "How much confidence should you retain in your own memory?"

"Sorry, I just fall to pieces at questions like these. Like, there are going to be some times when you should have enormous confidence in your own memories. There are times when you should have no confidence in your own memory. It depends on how well you remember it, and how important it is that you get the event right. Its... totally conditional."

"Mr. Johns." 

"Put 'medium confidence'."

They wrote down 'medium confidence'. 

"Do people possess a right to believe false things that give their lives meaning?"

"Yes, that's a right I think people do have," Laramie said. "Before, the question was something like, do they have a right to the truth, and it's like—no? Because apparently they don't have access to the truth, so, they have to make an appeal for it. And on what basis can they say they have a right to it? Like, definitionally, it wasn't theirs. They had to ask for it, it was being withheld from them, so, no, that's not their right. They should have the truth, but it wasn't a right. But this is different. Their belief is their own. Nobody gives them that belief. Yes, that's their right. Makes absolutely no difference if they are right or wrong."

"Okay," said the Left. "Is intellectual consistency actually virtuous if reality itself is inconsistent?" 

"No," Laramie said. "intellectual consistency is not virtuous. I can probably be convinced otherwise, but my feeling is that there's... hardly nothing about intellect that's inherently virtuous, by itself."

The Left, nodding and writing, asks, "What conviction of yours would be most humiliating to discover was based on ignorance?"

Laramie rolled his eyes. "'Humiliating?'" He thought, then laughed. "I don't know. I guess if there was something I was keeping myself from doing that would give me pleasure, but I'm not doing it because I think it's wrong... like, doing drugs, or having sex with as many women as possible, or getting drunk or giving in to hedonism... like, if me not doing those things turned out to be ignorance, and I could actually be doing those things without consequence or reprisal, then yes, that'd be... humiliating in the sense that it would reveal my naivety. Not even really humiliating, it would be—like, a lot of missed opportunities, I guess, but that would be a little embarrassing."

Laramie looked up and got the sense that the Right found this humorous. They seemed to be covering their lips with their hand, eyes on their laptop screen. 

"Is that funny?"

"It's your Audit, Mr. Johns," the Right one replied.

"Back on track here, and moving on... the next question is, how much individuality should a person surrender for a genuinely harmonious society?"

Laramie was a little distracted by the Right's reaction to his previous answer. He tried to figure out what might have been funny about it.

"Repeat the question, please?"

"How much individuality should a person surrender for a genuinely harmonious society?"

Laramie balked, then, patronizingly, added: "Someone should surrender exactly one individuality for a genuinely harmonious society."

The Middle asked, "Is that your sincere answer?"

"The question is ridiculous," Laramie barked. The panel looked at one another. "Like, how are we measuring individuality? And what's the individuality-to-harmony ratio, exactly? Like, is a pound of individuality equal to one less starving child in society? I don't really understand the specifics of the..."

"It isn't the panel's role to interpret the questions for you, Mr. Johns," said the Right one, not concealing their agitation.

The Left interjected, "Measure individuality and societal harmony however you wish, Mr. Johns, all that really matters is whether or not you take the abstraction, or whatever conversion method you employ, seriously..."

"How many questions are left here?"

"I did warn you at the top, Mr. Johns, that this would take some time." 

"Like, are we just getting started, are we halfway there, are we almost done?"

"You've responded to forty questions."

Laramie paused. "Seriously?"

The Left one looked at their notes again. "Yes," they said. "Forty. This is number forty-one."

"Happy birthday, Mr. Johns," said the Right one, hiding a smirk behind their hand again. 

"So how many more are there?"

"We're not at liberty to disclose to you the entire number of all questions, Mr. Johns," said the Middle. 

Laramie scratched his forehead, looking down at the ground, shaking his head. "I'm going to ask a ridiculous question," 

"No, we can't, Mr. Johns," said the Right.

"But can we just adjourn for..."

"The panel would have Mr. Johns answer the question," said the Right, raising their voice, but not having the question in front of them to restate. "Would the panel please re-read the question for Mr. Johns' response?"

"And if I just call it here, what, that would be... that would be not good for me, right?"

"Refusal to complete the Audit would have an impact, Mr. Johns," said the Left. 

"What was the question?"

"How much individuality should a person surrender..."

"I don't know. It's stupid to get mad over such a stupid question. Someone should give up only as much individuality as they can bear if they know it's going to help someone else. Do you have to have me say exactly how much that is?"

Laramie was still looking at the ground, but he heard the Middle one say to the others, "He should say how much he would surrender." 

"I mean. I don't know. I always wanted to be like everybody else, anyway. I don't really care that much. So, whatever, if it helps somebody, fine, take it all, I don't care." 

"Is that really your answer, Mr. Johns?"

"I don't know. Can we come back to this question?"

"I'm afraid not," said the Left.

"Like, I don't need to be such a big individual. I really don't know how to quantify this in a way that you're looking for. Can I just say... personally, I'd give up a meal so that someone who was hungry could eat?" 

Silence. The panel considered, and wrote it down.

"Your question," the Left said to the Middle.

"Would you accept less freedom if doing so substantially reduced loneliness, poverty and violence?"

"The way you say it, the way the question is asked: yes." 

"And is the isolated individual more human than the fully integrated member of a collective?"

"Nnnnnnno." Laramie drew out the 'n' as he considered, before adding the 'o' when he had decided.

"And," said the Middle as they looked at their next question. "Is... If your private choices cumulatively harm society, at what point do they cease to be your private business?"

"Uh. When? Well. I guess at the point society is able to convince me that my choices are harming them. But, you know, I'm going to resist that until it's made crystal clear to me how..."

The Middle turned to the Right, who spoke up, asking, "Does society owe you the freedom to become a worse person?"

"Uh, I'm going to say, 'no', not 'owed'. I mean, I think society should grant you the freedom to become a worse person, if that's honestly really what you want, at least until like the question before starts to become an issue and society has to convince you why you owe damages for the harm you're causing. But it's that 'rights' question again. I don't know that someone has that right, but it should be afforded as far as society can tolerate, until it becomes unbearable."

"Noted. Next—would you rather be misunderstood as an individual, or understood only as a representative of your race, sex, class, religion or generation?"

Laramie thought about this, uncrossing his legs and then crossing them the other way, unconscious that his arms were crossed over his chest.

"How about misunderstood as an individual, and as a representative of my race, sex, class, religion or generation?"

"That's... not a choice."

"I'd rather be misunderstood as an individual." 

Laramie seemed content to leave it at that. The Right one, however, invited a follow up.

"I would probably resent any understanding I'd gain if it was only by virtue of it being applied through the lens of my group representation."

The Right one nodded as they wrote that down. "If eliminating extreme poverty required placing permanent limits on personal wealth, would those limits constitute justice or coercion?" 

"'Permanent limits?' Coercion. Once those limits are in place there's never any guarantee they'll be lifted, or changed." Shaking his head, he added, "I really don't think that's justice, anyway."

The Left one resumed their stance again, at the table, for their turn. They were more animated and expressive in their reading of the questions than the Middle or the Right ones were.

"Which is more dangerous. A society that demands conformity? Or one that cannot agree on any shared reality?"

Laramie sat with that question for a long moment. So long, in fact, that the Left one asked it again, without being asked to.

"I got it. I'm just trying to define for myself who they would be 'dangerous to.'"

"However you interpret it is satisfactory for the purposes of the panel."

"Yeah. Well. I mean, all this is is just a gut feeling, right? But I feel like the society demanding conformity would be dangerous to other societies, and I feel like the society that cannot agree on a shared reality would be dangerous to itself."

"I'm afraid the panel is not permitted to accept conditional responses, or multiple answers based on hypothetical recontextualization of the question in split modalities," said the Middle, feeling most at ease when they were forced to enforce the rules.

"I know. I'm just trying to work it out."

"Take your time," said the Right, meaning it.

Laramie put his legs down, arched his back over the back of the wooden chair and stretched, moaning in agony and elation. When his body relaxed again, he said, "The society that demands conformity. I just don't know what the limiting principle would be. Like, how much conformity would be enough? How deep would the demand go? But a society that doesn't have any shared reality would be bad enough, for sure."

"So, conformity, then?"

"Yeah."

"Got it. Is belonging worth anything if membership requires you to suppress a true part of yourself?"

"Sure. I mean, belonging isn't nothing. Belonging is great. People would just need to work out whether or not it's worth what you're suppressing."

"That'll do. And, if total social unity were possible only through the disappearance of individual identity, would unity be another word for extinction?"

"No. Extinction has a literal definition and assimilation isn't equal to extinction. Not even close. It would have to be a somewhat poetic interpretation of the word 'extinction,' like, the extinction of individuality; but that's not extinction of a species. Not unless we evolved biologically to make individualism impossible, anatomically... and I don't even know what that would look like. I don't know, just put 'no.'"

"No. And with that, we're moving on again," the Left said, turning to the Middle. "Take it away."

"Are you morally responsible for preventable suffering you could alleviate but choose not to?" asked the Middle.

"Yes, but, only if you're fully aware of the choice you're making. Sometimes I feel like people get blame for 'butterfly effect' suffering that they are told is distantly related to choices they are supposedly making. You litter on one side of the planet, and cause a sewage cave-in on the other."

"Is that a yes, or no?"

Laramie groaned. "Yes."

"Yes. And then. How much comfort are you willing to surrender to improve the life of someone you will never meet?"

"I will give up one comfort." 

"Mr. Johns."

"What was my answer to the last question that came up like this? What was that?"

The panel shifted in their chairs, looking over notes and scrolling up documents. 

"Can I get you to read back what my answer was?"

"Mr. Johns. It isn't the panel's role to verify your consistency across multiple questions."

Laramie leaned forward in his chair, biting his lip.

"To repeat, how much comfort are you willing to surrender to improve the life of someone you will never meet?"

"We'd arrive at an answer a lot sooner if you were to ask me what specific things I would give up to help someone I'll never meet."

"That isn't the question, Mr. Johns." 

"I'd give up..." Then, arriving at some answer within him that felt satisfying to him, Laramie continued with more confidence. "I'd give up ten percent of my comfort to help someone I'll never meet."

The panel was satisfied. 

"Is refusing to make a choice morally different from choosing the outcome your refusal predictably produces?"

"Do I understand this right? Like, if I refuse to choose to save a hamster from being strangled to death, resulting in that hamster getting strangled, is that morally different than choosing the hamster to be strangled?"

"That wasn't the question, Mr. Johns. The panel can't authorize the employment of that analogy in response to the question that was posed."

"I just want to be sure I understand the crux of the question."

The Middle restated again, slower. Laramie grunted in annoyance. 

"I'm just going to say no to this one. Sorry! I mean yes. Yes, they're morally different. Like, I need to be able to say that a choice being presented to me is beneath my standard of dignity to entertain, especially if there's no difference in outcome between engaging with the choice, or not engaging with the choice. Again, if I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like it doesn't fundamentally matter whether I choose or not, because the outcome will be the same. As such, the choice appears to be a facade, and a rather morbid one that I don't even want to dignify with a response."

"Mr. Johns, the record will show that you were the one who applied the 'morbid facade', as you put it, to the question, not the panel. But your answer will be recorded as 'yes'."

The Right leaned over and whispered in the Middle's ear. 

"Mr. Johns' 'yes' answer will be redacted," said the Middle. "Mr. Johns, you seem to have an inadequate interpretation of the question, so I'll ask again. Is refusing to make a choice morally different from choosing the outcome your refusal predictably produces?"

"Right. But you won't tell me where I'm getting mixed up?"

"I can repeat the question if you need, Mr. Johns," said the Middle.

"Can I affect the outcome? Can I save the hamster from being strangled?"

"There is no hamster in this question, Mr. Johns."

"Can you use the question in a sentence?"

"Mr. Johns. Are you refusing to answer the question?"

"You don't have, like, an alternate way of phrasing the question? You're just going to brute-force your phrasing without any compromise?"

The Middle shuffled a few pages, and looked at the Right one. Then the Left one. They whispered, and began passing a sheet of paper between them, writing and scratching out words, until finally, the Middle one asked:

"If you could prevent an outcome, but knowingly refuse to decide whether to prevent it, is that refusal morally different from actively choosing that outcome?"

"So I could save the hamster, but the question is whether the refusal to prevent it, or choosing for it to be strangled, are different."

"Mr. Johns, again, there is no hamster in the original or amended draft of the question."

"They are different. Yes, there is a difference. It's very small, but by refusing to make the choice, there's still a little room left that allows for outside forces to play a part. Granted, apparently, they lead to the same end, but there's at least an allowance for something else to step in and intervene that wouldn't be present if I'm just asserting my will to that choice."

"Noted." The Middle sat back, glad to have it no longer be their turn. The Right assumed their questioning posture.

"Does intent matter when the consequences of an action were foreseeable?"

"Yes, intent matters. It might not change anything, but in the mind of the individual it does matter, and that rationale can have consequences for whatever the next choice might be."

The Right one took a breath and asked another. "If a cruel person performs more good than a kind person, which is morally superior?"

"I would question the definition of attributing cruelty to someone who has done more good than a kind person. That'd be like me asking if a blue lollipop is more red because it's redder than a red lollipop." 

"No, Mr. Johns. I'd like to..." the Right one collected themselves. "The panel would like to address what has now appeared to be a series of deliberate misinterpretations of the questions to justify hostility in the Audit procedure."

"Deliberate misinterpretations?"

"We have more questions to get through, Mr. Johns, and mischaracterizing or altering the context of the questions as they are posed to answer ancillary or unrelated questions isn't the intended purpose of..."

"Well, look, frankly there should be some approved, alternate phrasing of questions, because on more than a couple of these questions, the nuance has resulted in some drastically different interpretations of questions and, therefore, very different answers!"

"Mr. Johns, are you going on record as deliberately refusing to answer this panel's questions for your Audit?"

"No! I will not. Just ask the question again and I'll see if I can work it out this time."

"Mr. Johns, this panel will restate the question as many times as required so long as you intend to actually and faithfully answer the actual questions as they are phrased."

"Then do that and I will."

The Right one took a breath, and said again: "If a cruel person performs more good than a kind person, which is morally superior?"

"I'm going to talk out loud about my answer, is that okay?" 

"So long as you actually answer the real question we've asked and not invent tertiary questions..."

"I won't. I won't. So, I'm just trying to wrap my head around how a person can be objectively labeled as cruel compared to a good person, if that cruel person has done more good than the kind person has. Okay? That's all I'm having trouble with." 

"It is recognized that the subject is having trouble with the question."

Laramie sighed, stifled a belch, and drank the last of his bottle of water. "May I have another bottle of water, please?"

"Of course," said the Left one, looking at the attendant by the door. "Please?" The attendant quickly procured another bottle as Laramie continued.

"The only way I can figure it is if the cruel person has done more cruel things than good things, but has done so many things that even their good things outnumber the good things done by the kind person, who has done more good things but fewer things overall." 

The panel watched Laramie as he reasoned his way to an answer that felt suitable for him. The attendant returned with another cool water bottle. Laramie said thank you, and opened it, taking a sip.

"So the question was if the cruel guy was better because he did more good than the kind guy?"

"If a cruel person performs more good than a kind person, which is morally superior?" 

"The cruel person is more compromised than the kind person, if I understand the attribution correctly," said Laramie, taking a second sip before capping the second bottle, placing it down on the floor at his side, beside the empty one. "At a minimum, I think no. Not based on the information you've shared with me. They could be even. He could even be superior, but that would depend on how good the good things he's done is, compared to the good that the kind person has done. Does that work? No?"

"No," said the Right one, but it seemed this wasn't a direct response to Laramie, as it was confirming what his own answer to the question was. Right wrote it down.

"Do you owe forgiveness to someone who has changed but can never repair what they did?"

"Owe forgiveness? No. I don't really thing forgiveness can be owed. It has to be given. Right?"

"I don't know, Mr. Johns."

"No. Forgiveness is not owed. That's what makes it so nice when you get it."

"No, again," said the Right one. "Thank you."

The Left picked up where the Right left off. "Can revenge be morally legitimate even when it produces no deterrence, restitution or rehabilitation?"

Laramie thought. "Have you considered like, a projector, or something? So that I can see the questions, as you read them?" 

"I can read it again, Mr. Johns."

"Please."

After some thought, Laramie said, "I don't think so. I'm willing to entertain that revenge can be morally legitimate in theory, but the outcome of that revenge would need to bring about some remedy or redemptive benefit. Deterrence. Restitution. Rehabilitation. Something positive. As stated, the revenge seems to just be for its own sake. Satisfying. Maybe even just. But morally legitimate? That's a little overstated based on what I can tell."

The Left one nodded and wrote that down. "If justice and mercy cannot both be served, which should prevail?"

"Oh man. Here's another one. Honestly, mercy is just one of those things. It's, like, kind of the impossible gold standard that sounds good, in theory, but..." he trailed off. "It's like, the judge carries out justice. The jury carries out justice. The executioner carries out justice. None of them, really, are qualified to apply mercy. Only the victim, really, is in a position where they can be merciful. So, justice, I think, is the universal baseline. We need justice, just in order to be the kind of society where the innocent are protected and that criminals are deterred. Mercy is like... rare, and only in the hands of a select few who might be able to authorize it. So, I guess, I'd have to say that justice should prevail. But hopefully, there's an opportunity for mercy to at least be considered before it's ruled out."

"Okay," said the Left one. "Is it worse to exploit someone knowingly or to benefit from exploitation while deliberately avoiding knowledge of it?"

"Well, deliberately avoiding knowledge of it... does seem to kind of suggest that there's some knowledge of exploitation happening at some level, right?" 

No response from the panel.

"Right," said Laramie. "I'm actually going to say that benefiting from exploitation while deliberately avoiding knowledge of it would actually be worse, because it seems like this individual does have some level of knowledge, but wants plausible deniability. Someone who is actually facing their exploitation might be shamed from their acknowledgement of it, and curb their own attitude, or at least have some level of honesty with themselves about what they're taking part in. The latter seems to want to exist in a state of blissful ignorance, but their own level of ignorance is highly suspect. Worse to benefit while avoiding knowledge."

"Yes, very good," said the Left one. One more from me on this, what harm committed by someone you love would finally make loyalty immoral?"

Laramie rubbed his face, exhausted. "I feel like I've got to do so much interpretation with these. Are the questions getting harder or am I making them harder?"

"We can't provide real time analysis on any consistency, or lack thereof, the panel has observed throughout the course of your Audit, Mr. Johns," said the Middle.

"Not that it would do me much good. I mean. Deliberate and malicious harm that someone I love is causing would immediately make me question what I owe to them in terms of loyalty. I mean, if they broke a just law, and I am aware that they broke it, and they refuse to turn themselves in—I then need to do my part or I'm complicit."

"So your response is, 'the breaking of a just law'?"

"Yes," said Laramie. "I think that's right."

"Nice. Moving on now."

The Middle started, "If you could remove all suffering from humanity, but doing so would also eliminate ambition, courage and sacrifice, would you?"

"No, I would not."

"You'd retain suffering?" 

"I can always tell when you guys want me to elaborate. Do I have to?"

"You've answered. That's adequate for the purposes of the Audit."

"In that case, I really don't think suffering is the worst thing in the world. But eliminating good virtues like ambition, courage and sacrifice, that would be a real crime. Especially sacrifice. Not really ambition so much, though, I guess it has its place."

"Answered," said the Middle one. "This follows hard upon what you just said. Can suffering be beneficial?"

"Beneficial? That's not really the term I would apply to it. No, I wouldn't say suffering is beneficial. Necessary? Maybe. Even 'useful,' I think, is a closer word for it than 'beneficial'. Beneficial sounds too... underhanded, in a way, I guess."

"When does resilience become cooperation with abuse?"

Laramie squinted, as if pained, and repeated, "When does resilience become cooperation with abuse?"

"That's the question," said the Middle. 

"Who writes these?"

The panel looked at each other, then turned back to Laramie. "Mr. Johns."

"No, I'll answer. But I'll be fucked if I know what that's supposed to mean," then, thinking briefly, shaking his head all the while. "No, I can't see it. I can't see how resilience can become cooperation with abuse. Maybe it's a semantics problem, because, to me, when I think of resilience, I almost think of resistance to abuse. You're resolved to withstand abuse. That's resilience, to me. I mean, I don't have a dictionary right here, right this second, but I just wouldn't use that word to describe cooperation with abuse. At that point, resilience would turn into something else. It would become... collusion? Not resilience. Can I say it doesn't? Is that an acceptable answer? Never?"

"Yes, it's acceptable," said the Middle, and flipped over another page. Turning to the Right, they said, "To you."

The Right one spoke quickly. "Do people need adversity, or have we romanticized our inability to prevent it?"

"Well, if we're incapable of preventing it, then yes, I think we need it." 

The Right hesitated. They looked up, affording Laramie a brief view of their eyes peeking upward, out of the reflection of the laptop monitor in their lenses. 

"Does that answer the question?" they were asking themselves. The other two looked at the Right one, pens in hand. 

"I actually don't think it's an either-or thing. I think, people need adversity, so we have romanticized it, because of our inability to prevent it. We can't prevent adversity, so we romanticized it, and to some extent, need it."

The Right one sighed, then wrote down Laramie's answer. The other two followed suit, as the Right one asked another.

"If medication or technology could make you permanently content without changing your circumstances, would that happiness be authentic?"

"Oh," said Laramie. "That's interesting. Maybe? Permanently content? Well..." smiling, he began to laugh. "You and I really lock horns on some of these, don't we?" 

The Right one didn't answer, but issued a steady, closed-mouth hum of agreement. 

"No, I don't think so. First, I don't think that any 'permanent' emotion or attitude would be an authentic existence for any human person, even if it is contentment. Next, yeah, if it's being artificially contrived from outside, and not something we're earning through our own biology somehow, then I'm inclined to think it's artificial. What word did you use?"

"Authentic."

"Inauthentic. Yeah."

"Would you choose a painful truth about yourself over a false self-image that made you kinder and happier?"

"A painful truth, or a false self-image that made me kinder and happier. I think I know which one you three would prefer I pick."

The Right one smiled behind a cupped hand at their mouth, but the Left and Middle ones did not.

"I mean. I would love to be kinder and happier. Right? Who wouldn't? It'd be tempting. I feel like this isn't really the kind of answer I would really know unless it was seriously put to me, because, I can sit here and know that whatever I tell you isn't going to make me kinder or happier, really, or reveal any painful truth. So from that perspective it's very easy for me to say, sure, I'll take the painful truth, because I'm a stoic believer in truth or whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. Sorry. But at the same time, that's actually more helpful. Right? A painful truth can take you farther than a lie could, as long as it doesn't crush you. As long as it isn't... what did you say, earlier? What was the word to the earlier question?"

Shrugs all around the table.

"Unbearable truth? Something like that. I don't think I would be able to accept an 'unbearable truth,' because, by definition, it can't be borne. But a hard truth? I could make that work. I like to think I would still pick the hard truth. As much as I might like to be happier. Kinder. Maybe I would still end up happier and kinder, still, it just might take longer with the hard truth. But at least it would be honest. As long as it's not unbearable."

The Right scratched their neck, and typed something on their keyboard with the fingers of one hand. After a brief pause, Left picked up the thread, as if momentarily forgetting it was their turn.

"Is an unexamined but joyful life inferior to a deeply examined and miserable one?"

Frowning, Laramie responded with certainty, "No. Not at all. An unexamined but joyful life sounds wonderful. I think it's interesting that the question seems to infer that's somehow less desirable?"

Then, after hearing them type his answer, Laramie added, "Assuming all else is equal."

The Left spoke again, asking, "If your greatest creative ability depended on your deepest wound, would you heal the wound knowing the ability might disappear?"

"Creative ability? Deepest wound? Uh. Yes, I think yes. I think, isn't creativity just the attempts at healing the wound? Isn't that where it comes from? In fact, I could see that the problem creative people would have is that, sometimes, all that creativity actually works and heals the wound. Then, they find they aren't as creative anymore. What's really sick about creative people are the ones who open new wounds, or keep the wound purposefully from healing up, just so that they can still be creative. But by then, their entire identity and maybe even success, is dependent on the wound. Maybe they don't even want to be healed. How sick is that? Yes. I would want the wound to disappear even if it ended creativity."

"Alright then," the Left said, non-commitally. "Are there forms of suffering you secretly regard as proof that you are more perceptive than happier people?"

Wincing again, scrunching up his face as he strained to understand the words from the Left's mouth, Laramie stuttered the question back: "Forms of... suffering that is proof... I'm happier than people?"

The Left repeated the question again, slower. Laramie repeated it back again until he got it right.

"Uh. Loneliness. That'd be the only thing that comes to mind. For me. I think. God, this feels like a riddle. Like there's an answer there in the riddle somewhere and I have to reduce what the answer couldn't possibly be until only one thing is left. Yeah. Loneliness feels right to me. I feel like I do suffer from it. Check. I always have to try and disguise my loneliness, so it is somewhat secret. Check. Even if I'm not particularly shy about admitting it... And do I think it's proof that I'm more perceptive than happier people? Well I think happier people are less lonely than me. I don't think that's an absolute. Less lonely people can still be happier than me, but, I still think the trend to happiness is less loneliness, so, check. And is it proof I'm more perceptive? Yes. I mean, I think loneliness affords a perspective and... introspection I guess that is just a natural outgrowth of loneliness. I don't think outgoing or extroverted people develop that muscle that lonely people do in the same way. It's not enviable, but, yes, I do think it gets at a level of perception I have that happier people don't. Good?"

The Left scrawled on the page in front of them and looked to the Middle, who cleared their throat noisily before proceeding.

"If pain does not automatically confer wisdom, what distinguishes meaningful suffering from mere damage?"

Laramie seemed to grasp the question adequately enough to not need to parrot the wording back and forth until he felt confident enough to respond.

"Well, attitude, I guess. Attitude would be what I would think, here. I mean, you would need to have an attitude of wanting, actually wanting to learn something from the suffering you've endured, in order to extract any wisdom from it. And I say that fully acknowledging that there may not be any objective wisdom to be gained from suffering. Like, maybe some pain and suffering is actually purposeless. Maybe. But maybe there's a huge opportunity for wisdom, there. If for no other reason than maybe you might hope to get smart enough from the experience to not do whatever you did to cause the suffering, again! That would reduce your future suffering and that would be wise, right? So. But that comes down to an attitudinal choice of actually wanting to learn something and not, just, accepting it blindly, or holding that you're powerless against suffering, and can do nothing but just hang on to life by your fingernails as suffering is administered upon you. So."

The Middle took a breath and wrote that down, flipping over another page. The Middle looked back, briefly, at the Left.

"Move on," said the Left. 

"Would you accept an unjust law that produced better outcomes than a just law?" asked the Middle.

Laramie looked down at the floor shaking his head. "You just ask these sweeping hypothetical questions that completely... that just absolutely step over all of these details that would make a question like that... I mean, one little variable could turn a question like that from a resounding 'yes' into an absolutely screamed 'no'..." 

"The question is the question, Mr. Johns," said the Middle, unhelpfully.

"Uh, yeah," said Laramie, before looking at the Right and turning his glance upward, resuming quickly. "Look, I... okay, is there an unjust law I'd accept if it produced better outcomes than a just law?" He took a deep breath and said, at last, "Yes, I think so? Like, I don't want to say yes, but, here's kind of where my thinking goes, there. That, if it produces a better result. Your words. Better result. An objectively better result than the just law produced? Then I think that means that the quote-unquote unjust law is actually revealing something real that the quote-unquote just law isn't. I mean. Judge the tree by the fruit, right? If the unjust law is making an objectively better result, then, I think you'd need to look at that and ask yourself some hard questions about what 'just' really means in this matter. Maybe our calibration of justice is wrong, and the unjust law is revealing that to us? We'd better listen, if that's the case. But, the huge caveat here, of course, would be that it would need to be pretty clear that it is, in fact, objectively true that the unjust law is actually producing a better result, and not just, like, some authoritarian justification to seize power or whatever. You know?"

"It does not matter. If that's your answer, that's what we'll put," said the Middle.

Laramie shrugged apathetically back at the Middle. "Yeah that's my answer," which he said in return, breathlessly, as if it was all one word.

"Is democracy still morally legitimate when most voters are uninformed, manipulated or indifferent?"

Laramie thought, eyes up. "Uh. Yes. I mean, if that's actually the case—and I'm not arguing against it, I'm just accepting it as the premise of the question—if that's actually the case then it seems like uninformed, manipulated or indifferent actually is democracy, and not actually contradictory to democracy. So, it becomes the functional definition of democracy, whether or not that's the actual Oxford English definition. Which, I don't actually know the fully accurate definition of. Do you do that? Can I ask you to define words?"

"No," said the Middle, wary that this would open up a can of worms.

"We might," said the Left. 

"Really?" asked Laramie, excitedly, joining the Middle as they both looked to the Left. "What's the definition of democracy, then? Like the actual definition?"

"We need to be cautious about setting precedent..." said the Middle.

The reflection in the Right's glasses changed as a different window on their screen was brought up to view. "Should I read this?"

"I think so," said the Left. "It seems like a genuine interest to answer the question and not evasive..." 

"Democracy," said the Right. "Rule by the people, especially as a form of government, such as a form of government where the people elect representatives who propose and approve laws and administer the government on their behalf. A form of government where the people vote directly on laws and government decisions. A government under the direct or representative rule of the people of its jurisdiction. A state with a democratic system of government. Belief in political freedom and equality; the 'spirit of democracy.'" The Right then looked up, and around the room.

Laramie opened his mouth, thinking, and then spoke. "Doesn't sound like there's anything there that really contradicts... what was it? Uninformed? Manipulated?"

"Or indifferent," added the Middle, who secretly liked the rigor of the discussion.

"Yeah, I mean maybe that last part. The belief in political freedom and equality part, if those things need to be fully preserved definitionally through being... adequately informed and engaged and uninfluenced. But it's like one of those double-edged swords things, right? Like, 'who are you to tell me I can't be uninformed? Being uninformed is my right! This is a democracy!'" Laramie laughed. 

Wanting to be sure the Audit was still proceeding, the Middle insisted: "So your answer is yes?"

"Is it? No, I don't think democracy is illegitimate if it..."

"No," said the Middle. "The question was: Is democracy still morally legitimate when most..."

"Oh. Yeah, okay, I get it. It's the same either way. I just. Yes. Democracy is still morally legitimate. It just..." he laughed. "It just sucks." He laughed again.

The Right was next. 

"Should every adult have an equal political voice even when some understand the issues far better than others?" 

"Should?" Laramie balked. "Should is... kind of a different register than what you guys have really asked, so far. You haven't really asked me 'should' with many of these. Have you?"

"It isn't the panel's role to explain the questions..." droned the Middle.

"Right, yes. Uh, so, 'should'. Should every adult have a voice even when some understand things better than others?" 

"Should every adult have an equal political voice even when some understand the issues..." repeated the Right.

"Uh-huh. Well. 'Should' is a big question, here. Every adult? What about... people in a coma?"

The panel was silent. 

"The question is 'every adult'. What about prison convicts? The real nasty ones who have committed unspeakable acts? Should they be given an equal political voice?"

The panel remained silent.

"I mean, I don't even really have to get into whether or not totally capable adults should or shouldn't have an equal political voice here, because it's obvious that not every single adult should have an equal say. Some obviously shouldn't. I'm totally fine with saying that people in a persistent vegetative state, and people who are convicted rapists, shouldn't have a political say. This is an easy no, actually."

"No," said the Right one. "If censorship could reliably prevent widespread violence, would opposing it become moral vanity?"

"I mean, you're making a claim there that widespread violence is less desirable than censorship. The question seems loaded with that assumption. And, I don't know, like, this may not be popular but can a case be made that some widespread violence is acceptable? That humans just will always have a pervasive natural tendency toward some widespread violence, and mitigating it shouldn't come at the cost of censorship?"

The Right blinked quickly. "Are you asking us, Mr. Johns?"

"No, I know that wouldn't do any good," Laramie said, smirking a little. "Look, I mean, I know there's going to be the knee-jerk reaction to that that I'm fine with widespread violence, or jump to some conclusion that I deserve to have widespread violence enacted upon me because I said it was preferable to censorship, but that's not really what I'm saying." 

"The record for the Audit requires a definitive yes or no response on the question, Mr. Johns," said the Right.

"Mr. Johns recognizes that," Laramie said, still smirking. "I'm just trying to parse out... I'm getting to 'no,' because, honestly I think free speech is actually worth a little widespread violence. I mean. You can contort that into me being some kind of monster if you want, but, I mean compared to any other time in history, we live in a society that has largely solved for widespread violence problems, I'd say. Widespread violence happens, but I don't think that's the issue. Censorship, I think, is a bigger problem. So, yeah, fully acknowledging that this could be twisted and contorted, but given how the question is asked, I'd say—what? No, opposing censorship isn't bad even if it prevents widespread violence?"

"If censorship could reliably prevent widespread violence, would opposing it become moral vanity?" the Right clarified, monotone.

"No," said Laramie, resolutely.

"Noted," said Right. "Which poses the greater threat: concentrated government power or concentrated private wealth?"

Laramie stifled another smirk. "Those two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive..."

The Right said, "They need to be for your answer, in the context of this question." 

Laramie shrugged. "Okay." He leaned forward in his chair, pressing his fingertips together in-between his knees. "Which is the greater threat? Government power or private wealth? I mean. For me. Government power is going to be the bigger risk. In history, government power can squash private wealth. I'm not going to pretend that private wealth doesn't pose real risks, or that properly executed government power doesn't have its benefits. It's especially complicated because the two can go hand-in-hand, but, I guess on the private wealth side, that could just turn into feudalism? Obviously that's not a fairy tale, either, but in the other direction with government overreach, you've got some pretty horrific and... potentially never-ending oppressive struggle. Yeah, I'm going with government power..." Laramie said, looking at the panel, and suddenly feeling a pang of suspicion that he tried desperately to control once it occurred to him.

The panel, however, didn't seem to notice, or care, and wrote his answer down, before the Left resumed.

"Is equality desirable when achieving it requires preventing exceptional people from exercising exceptional ability?"

Laramie sat upright, aware of his posture. He swallowed hard and frowned. "I don't think we should be in the business of preventing exceptional people from being exceptional. I think we should do everything we can to encourage exceptional people to do what they do best. As much as we can. I mean, obviously here I'm thinking musicians, artists, engineers. Mathematicians. Uh. Who else? I'm not including, like, psychopaths into the bucket of 'exceptional people'. I think we should limit the abilities of exceptional psychopaths. But truly 'exceptional' people? In the most positive interpretation of what that means? No, I don't think we should limit them for any, I think, misguided attempts at equality. Really, everyone benefits from the work of exceptional people, so, more power to them."

"Are hierarchies inherently oppressive, or does oppression begin only when movement within them becomes impossible?"

"Inherently oppressive. Life is inherently oppressive. Life makes demands on you as soon as you're born. You don't need hierarchies if you're looking for oppression. And is some level of oppression required? Or optimal? Just to be built up firmly enough to be able to meet the demands and challenges of nature? Or are we just redefining what oppression really means if it really only just expresses an inability to operate within a group?" A slight pause. "Yes, hierarchies are inherently oppressive, and yes, a real inoperable form of oppression begin when you're stifled within the context of a social system. I just... I feel like I'm falling short of the required answer you need here, because you've structured the question as a 'this-or-that' premise."

The panel looked at one another. The Right spoke up, "You are correct, there needs to be an ideological choice present within the context of the question, as it is expressed, for the answer to be valid."

Laramie leaned back again in the chair. "I'm going to say that they are inherently oppressive. Yes. But there is also an important distinction to be made between an oppression with utility and is still operable, and oppression that is an impediment to social movement."

The Left shrugged and looked back at the panel, then back to Laramie. "This is another non-answer, Mr. Johns," said the Right.

Laramie rubbed his nose and said, "Then for the purposes of the question I'm recalibrating my interpretation of what constitutes a hierarchy of utility to say make clearer contrast with the hierarchy that oppresses social status." 

The panel watched, waiting. Right before the Right one was about to speak up, Laramie continued, "Oppression is when movement becomes impossible, then."

"Noted," said the Right, typing. 

The Left positioned themselves forward in their chair, to ask, "If your political opponent gained permanent power, which principle would you regret allowing them to possess?"

"What principle would I regret allowing them to possess? I'd regret their principle for opposing my political perspective..."

Laramie smiled dourly but the panel didn't recognize it as humorous. The Left looked at the Middle, as if to ask if the answer qualified.

"No, no," said Laramie. "I don't really know what the question means by 'principle.' Do you mean an ideology they hold that I oppose, and yet also is popular enough to endear them to a voting demographic?" 

The Left, exhaling sharply, shook their head and looked past the Middle to the Right, appealing.

"Fine, fine," said Laramie. "I have to figure it for myself." He folded his fingers together and put them on his knee, thinking. "If my interpretation is correct, it really just exposes a principle I agree with, and which places this... political opponent on the opposite side of. Censorship has already come up, once. I think that's a reasonable starting place. So, yes, if the opponent in question favors censorship, then that would be a principle I regret them possessing. Censorship. Final answer."

The Left looked at their colleagues again, and then tentatively offered, "I don't think it's acceptable, Mr. Johns..." 

Laramie sighed dramatically. "If I understand correctly," offered the Left, obviously feeling his way toward the contradiction on shaky feet, "Your selection of 'censorship' felt somewhat arbitrary? The question says, 'which principle would you most regret?'" 

Laramie scratched his head as he quickly began to dwell on the wrinkle of the question in frustration, but was distracted by the Middle, who spoke up suddenly.

"Negative," the Middle said. "The question wasn't 'most regret'..." 

The Left, looking a little stunned, turned back to the question.

"The question says, 'which principle would you regret allowing them to possess...'" offered the Right.

Quick to pivot, the Left began to urgently reverse themselves, "My apologies," they said. "I misread... er, misunderstood the question, Mr. Johns..." 

Laramie became relieved, but was distracted again from pursuing his relief too far when the Middle interjected again, "Hold on," the Middle said. "The question says 'allowing them to possess.'" 

A pause in the panel. Laramie held his breath wondering how they may rule.

"Does the answerer 'allow' for the opponent to possess the principle of 'censorship'?" 

The panel deliberated in silence, staring at their documents. One by one they turned back to Laramie. He almost didn't want to answer, preferring they sort it out themselves whether or not what he already gave was adequate, but they were resolutely silent.

Finally, out of a desire to quell the awkwardness, Laramie resumed. "I think the actual freedom of speech actually, ironically, becomes the principle I'd regret my opponent possessing," Laramie started. "Because they were able to freely express their favor for censorship... and winning political power as a result of that principle. So, that'd be a bummer."

The panel looked at one another, and then wrote that down.

The Middle one was next. 

"What freedom would you deny others because you believe their use of it would be too dangerous?"

Laramie thought for a moment. "The freedom to kill someone. Murder. Yep, I'd deny someone the ability to murder because yes, I think it's too dangerous."

The Middle accepted, writing it down, before proceeding. "Is social order worth preserving when the order itself depends on injustice?" 

Laramie rubbed the tear duct of his left eye softly. "Sorry. It depends. I know you don't like that. How much social order we talking?" 

"Mr. Johns..." 

"How much injustice is needed? I mean, how much order could there really be if injustice is needed to keep it established? I guess that doesn't necessarily follow, but, I mean a lot of order for a lot of injustice? A little order for a little injustice? A little order could go a long way..." 

"Mr. Johns, it is your Audit. You are the one who needs to answer the questions." 

"It has been said."

"Many times," the Middle added.

"I guess I just have to fill in the blanks, myself. Is 'any' social order worth preserving if it depends on 'any' injustice." 

"That is not the question," reminded the Right. "You can't add verbiage to the question."

"I can think it, though. To get myself to an answer I can feel okay, with?"

"The panel can't control what you think, Mr. Johns," said the Left.

"You can't control what I say out loud, either."

"But the panel does not have to accept what you say as record," clarified the Right.

"The panel's role is to ask the questions and facilitate a space for a response," added the Middle.

"But you can't add to the question overtly," said the Right.

"Just covertly," clarified Laramie.

"The panel cannot interpret the questions for the Auditee," said the Middle.

"Right," Laramie said, rolling his eyes before shutting them and thinking, eyes closed. "Okay. Here's what I think. Worth preserving? No. I'm going to say that order isn't worth preserving if it depends on injustice. That assumes that something else needs to be compelled to try and tear down that order, in response to injustice, which itself suggests that the injustice is great enough to warrant the effort needed to tear it down. If that's the case, then, no, not worth preserving. I would just hope that there's a plan to replace it with something better, and it doesn't end up creating a vacuum where even worse injustice is leveraged to fill the void."

"No," clarified the Middle, writing it down, before continuing. 

"If an..." a pause, looking to the Left. 

"Moving on," announced the Left, and the Middle continued.

"If an artificial intelligence convincingly experiences fear, what evidence justifies refusing to believe it?"

Laramie was motionless for a full beat after the question. The transition between registers of questioning was palpable.

"Sorry," said Laramie, shutting one eye and shivering slightly. "Just. Wasn't expecting..."

"Would you like me to repeat the question?" asked the Middle.

"Uh, sure," said Laramie, not at all sure that it would help.

"If an artificial intelligence convincingly expresses fear, what evidence justifies refusing to believe it?"

"Evidence?" Laramie asked, sneering.

"Evidence," repeated the Middle.

"What evidence exists?" Laramie asked, disgusted, but seemingly asking just himself. "I mean, again, the question seems to suggest that evidence is needed to justify refusing to believe it. I..." trailing off, Laramie looked around the room vacantly. "I don't think evidence is needed to refuse to believe anything. Like, you could refuse to believe anything! It doesn't matter if there's evidence. That's within your capacity to reject. Like, you don't have to have a good reason. I'm not going to require everyone to have a reason I agree with just to believe or not believe a thing. I can think you're wrong, but nobody needs me to show my work to believe you're wrong about that. You know?" 

Laramie was getting heated, and animated, in his chair—but he remained seated. 

"So the question asking me what evidence is necessary, I just, I get irritated because an answer is going to assume I demand 'any'. So, for the purposes of the question I'm just going to lower that standard as low as I can possibly identify, because I know what you're going to say. 'You have to answer the question,' and not invent any other justification within the wording itself..."

More frustration. More erratic hand gestures. 

"So! What evidence justifies... refusing to believe AI? How about mere evidence that it's AI? If there's evidence that it's artificial intelligence, can that be evidence enough to warrant you don't need to believe it?" 

Looks around the panel, nodding. "Yes, it's suitable."

"Then that. And, it would work the other way, too. If there's evidence that you're a living thing, that's evidence enough that I don't have to believe you, either!" 

"Unnecessary, but noted," remarked the Middle, who turned to the Right.

"Good," said the Right. "If technology transforms your life, does it matter whether the technology understood what it did to achieve that?"

"Technology understanding what it did?" Laramie asked, still with inflated annoyance. "No, it doesn't."

"Okay," said the Right, ignoring the agitation. "If artificial intelligence becomes better than humans at art, companionship and moral reasoning, what distinct value will humanity retain?"

"The value of doing those things badly," Laramie answered, flatly, matter-of-factly.

The Right moistened their lips with their tongue, and typed. "Okay. Would you allow an algorithm that knows you better than you know yourself to choose your career, partner and place of residence?"

"No," Laramie said. "I mean. Why does it have to go straight to that? Why is that the instinct, here? Can't it just recommend where I work? Can it just offer a suggestion and I can consider it or tell it to fuck off or whatever? But that I'm going to just allow it to make that choice for me is absurd."

"Okay," said the Right, quickly. "Yes, that answers it."

Laramie turned to the Left, who asked, "If a digital copy of your mind continued after your biological death, would you consider yourself alive?"

"No," he said. "Doesn't even matter if it's accurate in any sense." Laramie smiled. "In a way I'm glad that some of these are apparently getting easier."

The Left didn't comment, but proceeded apace, asking, "If technology could remove grief, jealousy, anger and despair from the human brain, would refusing modification become selfish?"

"No," Laramie said again quickly. "The question seems to be supposing, again, that grief, jealousy, anger and despair are... need to be removed. That's the stuff of life. That is life. That, and their opposites, too. Keeping them isn't selfish, they preserve humanity. Without them, you'd be totally compromised."

"There it is, then. And," continued the Left, "Do creators deserve control over what becomes of their work after releasing it into the world?"

"Deserve? That's a strong word," said Laramie. "Deserve, no. Can they get it? Can they somehow manage to keep control? I mean, that's a separate question. Sure, if they can manage it. But do they deserve it? I mean..." Laramie sat back, momentarily allowing a counter-thought to prevail.

"Deserve, though?" he asked himself. "Deserve doesn't necessarily mean that they get it. It's like... what does it matter if they deserve it, if they can't get it? I deserve a billion dollars. It means nothing if I can't actually achieve that for myself. You can say it, but that doesn't actually establish that the outcome happens..." Laramie thought silently.

"No, you don't deserve it. Especially not if saying yes assumes that it needs to be guaranteed, at all, that they actually get it, but I don't know that it does or that it could. So, no, either way."

The Left exhaled abruptly, wrote that down, and nodded briefly to the Middle.

"If surveillance eliminated most violent crime," the Middle began, "How much privacy would you surrender?"

Laramie thought silently for a moment. "I'm just going to assume that the question in—infers that I could possibly have literally no privacy whatsoever, meaning all my innermost thoughts would be laid bare to... surveillance. I mean, it's the degree question again. What degree of privacy for what degree of crime? And, speaking of absolutes, what was the first part again?"

The Middle replied, "If surveillance eliminated most violent crime..." 

Laramie stopped him. "'Most' violent crime. Not even all of it. So in theory we're suggesting up to all possible privacy for not even all violent crime. And, like, here's my thing. Once you give that up, would you ever get it back? Like, is there ever a chance? You say, 'sure, take my privacy for... 18 months, and in that time, there should be—most violent crime should go away. Which..." Laramie laughed. "I didn't even realize! Is that 'most of the violent crime,' or just 'the most violent of crimes'? 'Most violent crime' is a... well, it's a little vague."

The Middle didn't say anything but just stared stoically at Laramie as he deliberated.

Laramie laughed at the Middle's stare, but then settled into silent reflection again. "Look, and it isn't as though there isn't already no surveillance now. I don't have total privacy, even now. So am I suggesting we go back to an amount that predates where we are now? And... even civilization itself, forming into towns and villages or whatever back when it was beginning, is a forfeiture of some privacy already, right? You're not living off the grid, totally by yourself, in the wilderness. You're allowing some infringement of proximity privacy so that... together, you know, you all have some protection against the worst things that can happen. I'm not saying I'd be a mountain man or anything."

The Middle continued to stare. 

"I just don't know how I can quantify that for your question," Laramie said. "You've asked it in a way that defies an elegant, easy to..." then, remembering. "Oh yeah, that's right. Ten percent," Laramie said, smiling again. "I'd... surrender ten percent of my privacy." 

The Middle looked down at the page in front of them. "Ten percent," they said. "Who... sorry. Would a perfectly attentive artificial companion be preferable to an imperfect human who can misunderstand and abandon you?"

"No," said Laramie. "In fact, misunderstanding and potentially abandoning me if I'm not myself careful and attentive should be my first signal that I'm falling into error. That I'm making serious mistakes. By living with an imperfect human who can reject me if I'm not behaving appropriately, I'm... kind of allowing myself to recognize mistakes I'm making before they affect or damage even more people. If this... weird companion you're asking me about accepts me unconditionally then who knows what kind of twisted perverse monster I might become."

The Middle snorted, and wrote that down.

"Alright," they said. "At what point does using technology to improve the human condition become replacing humanity with something else?"

"I..." Laramie trailed off. "That feels a little... sinister. I don't know. Maybe I'm just... projecting onto the question, but, it would seem to me it's only replacing humanity once it actually starts... doing that. I mean, like if it's... stopping humans from doing a thing, so that it can do it itself, then that would be replacing. Anything up to that point would be delegation. Assignment. And sure, maybe you could delegate it out to the point that something does end up becoming fully replaced, but, presumably it could be re-adopted by humanity again as long as it's assigned. Properly. So that accessibility... holding onto that accessibility to the task... as long as that's preserved, to me, I don't think that's 'replacement,' in the way in which it... in the way in which I'm interpreting that."

Laramie stopped there, abruptly, and seemed to look across the panel to see if that answer would be accepted. It was. 

"Moving on," said the Left. The Right started. 

"If no one ever saw your work, would it remain worthwhile?"

Nodding, Laramie said, "Yes. I'm assuming I am not included in that 'no one,' question, so, I'm seeing the work. That makes it worthwhile to me. Maybe it could be more worthwhile if someone else saw it, too, but, that doesn't mean it's worthless." Then, more definitively, "Yes."

"And," said the Right. "Do you share your thoughts with others in order to understand yourself, or to obtain evidence that you exist in other people's mind?"

Laramie thought about that then laughed "Again, with this either-or thing. Like, why does it have to be just one of those two things?!" 

The Right, dispassionately, replied, "It has to be one of these two things, if that is the question."

"Say it again?" Laramie said, half annoyed. The Right repeated it.

"'Exist in other people's mind,'" Laramie repeated after the Right had said it back. "I mean, isn't that just another way of saying, do I share my thoughts to understand myself, or for others to understand me? Like, the bizarre phrasing around existing in other people's mind is... interesting but unnecessary?" 

"The question is phrased how the question is phrased, Mr. Johns," said the Middle.

"Could the question be phrased how the question is not phrased?" Laramie asked, condescendingly.

"Mr. Johns," said the Right. 

"Sorry," Laramie said, not insincerely, and recognizing he was being needlessly petty. "Okay, sorry, let me take this seriously. I mean, I have thought about this but I didn't stop at just two distinctions; my understanding of myself, others' understanding of me, and a hypothetical third position which is the reality of who I am that's actually objectively true but not fully recognized in the conception of me by myself or by others," Laramie said, looking at the panel, and noting that nobody was writing it down. 

"Anyway," he continued, pausing, and then throwing up his hands. "I share to understand myself," he said at last. "At the end of the day, that's all I can ever really hope for. It's all I have a right to! There's that word again. 'Right.' Nobody can take my knowledge of me away from me, so, that's all I have. I don't have a right to any kind of confirmation of who others perceive me to be. So, that's my answer."

They wrote it down.

The Right asked another, "If others interpret you in ways you believe are wrong, would that indicate their failure, or yours?"

Laramie shrugged. "I mean, the question is flawed because it assumes that as a 'failure'. That's a feature, not a bug." He inhaled through his nostrils, deeply. "But for the sake of your question, assuming it 'has' to be a 'failure', and assuming that blame 'has' to be ascribed to someone, it really has to start with me. I'll..." pausing. "I'll leave it at that."

Laramie exhaled hard. The exertion was catching up with him, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose.

As his eyes were closed, the Left began. "Is humor sometimes the way of reaching the truth, or a way of escaping emotional consequences of having reached it?"

"Reached it?" Laramie asked, without opening his eyes, still rubbing his nose. "Reached... humor?"

The Left stumbled slightly. "No," they said. "Is humor... sometimes the way of reaching the truth, or a way of escaping emotional consequences of having reached 'it'"? 

"'It?'" Laramie repeated, stopping his rubbing.

"Yes," said the Left, resolved not to explain the question beyond Laramie's ability to interpret.

"Oh!" Laramie exclaimed. "Truth. So, is humor the way to reach truth or escaping... consequences of reaching truth? Um..." His voice trailed off into a steady hum.

They watched him.

"It's the either-or thing again. I mean, it could be both. It could so easily be both, it's weird that you insist it has to be one or the other in the context of the question, but, whatever. I can't... It's definitely a way of reaching truth." Shaking his head. "It's also definitely a way of escaping emotional consequences..." He laughed. "I don't know how you want me to decide this."

They said nothing and watched him. He finally opened his eyes and regarded them, tiredly.

"I'm going to go with escaping the consequences, because humor isn't really the only way of arriving at the truth. But I'm getting so tired of answering these now, I really don't know if that holds up. It could probably be argued the other way, too."

"Does presenting yourself as ambivalent protect you from being held accountable for your actual beliefs?" 

Laramie laughed. "No!" he said. "I tried being ambivalent at the start of this Audit and it hasn't prevented me from being accountable for my beliefs at all!" 

The panel did all laugh, then. They marked that down.

"Okay," said the Left, resuming order. "If sincerity can be manipulative, what distinguishes honest vulnerability from an attempt to control another person's response?"

"I don't know," said Laramie. "Intent, I guess. Like, if you're intending to manipulate someone, using your genuine vulnerability to get something, that keeps it from being totally honest, in my mind."

The Left nodded and wrote, then asked, "If sincerity... oh! Scratch that. It's you," they said, turning to the Middle.

"Thank you," said the Middle. "Would you rather create one enduring work that misrepresents you, or thousands of forgotten works that represent you perfectly?"

"Forgotten," Laramie said. He left it at that. 

"Okay. If ego surrender is desirable, why attach your identity to authorship at all?"

"Uh, is ego surrender desirable?" Laramie asked. 

"For the purposes of the question, Mr. Johns, it appears so," the Middle replied, somewhat more definitively than they might have under optimal conditions.

"Well, okay," said Laramie, animatedly. "I guess if ego surrender is desirable, then," he continued, "Uh... I guess putting your identity to authorship would be... ironic?" He looked at the panel. "I don't know. It's a really weird question."

The panel looked at each other, and the Right nodded. They marked it down.

"What belief have you expressed in this Audit that you would be most reluctant to defend without comedy, qualification or irony?"

Laramie looked at them, a little angrily. "You know... I objected to the premise... or at least the specific phrasing... of a lot of these questions."

"It has been noted," said the Middle. 

Laramie put his hands out, pleadingly, indignantly. "So... those ones?"

"Uh," said the Middle. "The question was... what 'belief' have you expressed..." 

"Oh. So just one?"

They looked at him. Their silence was their response.

Laramie grunted. "I can't exactly remember them all. It seems... odd that you'd ask me this now, instead of, like... earlier, or after each one or group or whatever."

"Mr. Johns."

"Yes?"

The Middle sighed, fatigued. There was no strength to it. But that little concession was enough good faith, Laramie felt, that he could muster some kind of answer.

"I don't know. The god questions you asked earlier all felt really loaded. I feel like... I feel like someone looking at those might come to some off-base conclusions about my belief in god based on the way I had to answer those questions, given your rules and limitations."

"That will work," said the Middle.

The Right asked, "What would have to happen before you admitted that everything was not fine, and what would that admission require you to do?"

Laramie blinked. "What would have to happen before I admitted that everything was not fine?"

"And what would that admission require you to do?"

Laramie felt oddly stunned. "Everything... what would have to happen before... admitting that everything was not fine..."

The panel watched him. Laramie's eyes drifted around the room, falling vacantly to the wall near the door, and then dropping steadily downward to the floor. 

The Right asked again.

"What would have to happen before you admitted that everything was not fine?" They allowed the question to hang there. 

Then, "What would that admission require you to do?"

Laramie slowly lifted his head to look at the panel. The Left. The Middle. The Right. 

What would have to happen before you admitted that everything was not fine, and what would that require you to do?

Laramie, looking struck—sat there for a long time. The panel didn't push. The panel didn't insist. But the Right one did ask every minute or so. Not a threat, but not permitting the question to dissolve in Laramie's silence.

Eventually, they watched as Laramie stood up, tiredly, and drifted toward the door. The attendant opened the door, and allowed him to exit, without answering.

Exhaling, the panel subtly relaxed into the backs of their chairs. 

They turned over loose pages in notebooks. The Right one rattled out a brief typewritten observation onto their laptop.

They were silent for a protracted moment, until the one on the Left intoned to the attendant near the door:

"The next subject is... "