good at math, feels bad.
Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of them several armed men in uniform. A heavy man in a sweat-stained khaki shirt turns out to be the captain in charge and, after a good deal of questioning of Jim which establishes that he got there by accident while on a botanical expedition, explains that the Indians are a random group of inhabitants who, after recent acts of protest against the government, are just about to be killed to remind other possible protestors of the advantages of not protesting. However, since Jim in an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guest’s privilege of killing one of the Indians himself.
If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occasion, the other Indians will be let off. Of course, if Jim refuses, then there is no special occasion, and Pedro here will do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and kill them all. Jim, with some desperate recollection of schoolboy fiction, wonders whether if he got hold of a gun, he could hold the captain, Pedro and the rest of the soldiers to threat, but it is quite clear from the set-up that nothing of that kind is going to work: any attempt at that sort of thing will mean that all the Indians will be killed, and himself. The men against the wall, and the other villagers, understand the situation, and are obviously begging him to accept. What should he do?
Futility Closet: A Good Deed
The closest TV Trope I can find for this is the Cold Equation:
A spaceship has been damaged and is Almost Out Of Oxygen (or food or fuel). But then someone calculates that if they had one less crewmember, they just might make it back safely…
As a quick overview, the people in question don’t deserve to die, nevertheless it seems that their fate is certain, if you choose not to cooperate. However, if you play along and fire the shot, you net one life, even if it means committing murder en route. Which means the answer is simple – you save a life by accepting, so that’s what you should do – but that’s just the beginning of the implications.
The terrible thing is, it doesn’t even matter if you confer with the prisoners, because all of them but one will die anyway, and the captain hasn’t even offered you the chance to pick the survivor – for that matter, you don’t get to pick your target either. There’s no way to make this a better situation, is there?
Emotional torment, is what a situation like this is. It’s something to throw at a character in a story, not a person in real life. I don’t even like thinking about it.