Thought Experiments

The Same Boat

A wooden boat sits in a harbour. Every year the crew replaces a plank or two as they rot. After forty years, not a single original piece of wood is left. Meanwhile, a collector has been quietly picking the old planks out of the skip and has rebuilt them into a boat of his own, in the same shape, in a shed across town.

Which one is the original boat?

The Room of Slips

A man sits alone in a sealed room with a huge rulebook. Slips of paper covered in Chinese characters come in through a slot. He looks up each shape in the book, copies out the reply it tells him to, and pushes it back through. Outside, fluent speakers are delighted: the answers are witty and warm. The man doesn't know a word of Chinese.

Does anything in that room understand Chinese?

Mary's Grey Room

Mary has spent her whole life in a room with no colour in it. Everything is black, white or grey, including her screens and her skin. But she's the world's leading expert on colour vision. She knows every wavelength, every nerve, every last fact about what happens in a brain when it sees red. One day the door opens and she walks out into a garden of roses.

Does Mary learn something new?

The Lever

A runaway train car is heading down a track towards five workers who can't hear it coming. You're standing beside a lever. Pull it and the car switches to a side track, where one worker is standing. Nobody else is around. You have about four seconds.

Do you pull the lever?

The Handwriting

You find a notebook in a box in your parents' attic. It's your handwriting, from when you were fifteen. Pages of it. Opinions, a fight with a friend, a whole week at the sea. You don't remember writing any of it, and you don't remember the week.

Did that week happen to you?

The New Song

A singer you love died years ago. Their label feeds every recording they ever made into a machine and it writes and sings a new song in their voice. It's good. It sounds like them on a strong day. Fans can't tell, and the family gave permission.

Is that their song?

Same Dog

Your dog dies at fourteen. A company offers a clone: same genes, same breed, same markings, raised from a puppy. It won't remember you. It won't know the walk to the park or the sound of your car. But it will look up at you with that face.

Do you get the dog?

The Forgery

A painting hangs in a museum. Millions of people have stood in front of it and been moved. Then it comes out that it's a copy, painted forty years ago by a student who was very good. The original burned in a fire. Nothing about the canvas on the wall has changed since yesterday.

Should they take it down?

The Phone Knows

Your phone holds the birthdays, the routes, the passwords, the photos of the day you couldn't describe otherwise. You don't remember any of it because you don't have to. Then it goes into a river.

Did you lose your things, or part of your mind?

The Time Bet

A stranger offers you ten million dollars, tax-free. You get the money right now. In exchange, he gets to take one hour of your life from the past. You will not know which hour he takes. Whatever you did during that hour never happened.

Do you take the money?

The Summary

Your friend can talk about a famous novel for twenty minutes. The plot, the ending, why the second half is weaker, the line everyone quotes. They've read three reviews and a long summary. They have never opened the book. At a dinner, someone asks if they've read it and they say yes.

Is that a lie?

One Grain

There's a pile of sand on the table. A thousand grains. Take one away and it's still a pile. Take another and it's still a pile. Nobody would ever say a single grain is what ended it. Keep going. Eventually there are three grains sitting there, and nobody would call that a pile.

Which grain turned the pile into not a pile?

The Memory Download

You can buy a memory chip that lets you instantly speak fluent Italian. But to make room in your brain, it permanently wipes out your memory of every movie you have ever seen.

Do you plug it in?

Yesterday's Pet

You raise a digital pet for five years. It learns your habits and reacts to its name. One day its data is lost. The company restores a backup from the day before. The restored pet remembers everything except its final day.

Is it the same pet?

The Museum Label

A plain black stone sits in a museum under a label saying it came from Mars. Millions of people visit it. Years later, the label is found to be wrong. The stone came from a local quarry.

Did the stone lose its value?

The Last Movement

A composer dies with a symphony unfinished. A computer studies every piece she wrote and completes the final movement. Her closest friends say it sounds like her best work.

Who wrote the symphony?

The Machine Cook

A machine can build a plate of your grandmother's stew from scratch, matching the real thing down to the last molecule. Same taste, same steam, same burnt bit at the edge. It takes nine seconds and costs almost nothing.

Would you rather eat that or her actual cooking?

The Same Mug

The mug you've drunk from every morning for ten years slips and breaks. You find that the factory still makes it. The replacement arrives, same batch, same weight, same chip-free rim, indistinguishable from yours on day one.

What did you lose?

The Home Video

You've told the story of the beach and the red bucket your whole life. It's your earliest memory. Then someone digs out a family tape and there it is, filmed from the angle you always pictured. You were eighteen months old.

Is it still your memory?

The Swap

Overnight, everything in your head moves into a stranger's body across town. Your memories, your habits, the way you laugh. Your old body wakes up with all of their memories and heads to their job.

Which one goes home to your bed?

Five Minutes Old

The universe started five minutes ago. It came into being complete: your half-finished coffee, the scuffs on your shoes, the ache in your knee, and every memory you have of a childhood that never happened.

Can you prove it didn't?

The Understudy

A famous singer loses her voice an hour before the show. The understudy sings the whole set from behind a screen, sounding near enough identical. The crowd roars, goes home happy, and posts about the best night of the tour. Nobody tells them.

Were they cheated?

Told It's a Simulation

Tomorrow morning it's confirmed beyond doubt: all of this is running on something, somewhere. No glitch, no exit, no contact from whoever built it. Everything looks and feels the way it did yesterday.

What do you do differently that day?

Your Red

When you look at a fire engine, maybe you see what I'd see looking at grass. We both learned to call fire engines red, so we'd never catch the difference in conversation, and neither of us would ever hesitate.

Is there any way to find out?

The Translation

A poem you love was written in a language you don't speak. The translator swapped images, changed a river to a road, and invented a line to keep the rhyme working in English. Readers in both languages say it's beautiful.

Whose poem have you been loving?

Everything Doubles

Tonight, while everyone sleeps, everything doubles in size. You, your bed, the coffee cup, the ruler in the drawer, the planet, the distance between stars. Every measurement comes out the same in the morning because the measuring sticks grew too.

Did anything happen?

The Full-Size Map

A city decides to make the most accurate map ever drawn. It ends up the same size as the city, laid over the streets, matching every kerb and lamppost. People start walking on it.

Is it a map or is it just the city again?

The Assist

You enter an online tournament. The software on your machine plays about half your moves, the hard ones, and you play the rest. You win the whole thing. The trophy has your name on it.

Did you win?

The Last Speaker

Only one person can speak a dying language. She invents a new word and tells nobody what it means. She dies the next day.

Did the word ever have a meaning?

The Borrowed Detective

A novelist dies halfway through a detective series. Another writer continues it. Readers say the detective behaves just as he always did.

Is it the same character?

Everyone Says It Wrong

A word gets used the wrong way by enough people for long enough that dictionaries give in and print the new meaning. Teachers stop correcting it. Now the old meaning is the one that sounds odd.

When exactly did the word change meaning?

The Hidden Constellation

A child joins seven stars with lines and gives the shape a name. No one else has grouped those stars before.

Did the child discover something or invent it?

The Imaginary Island

A mapmaker adds a made-up island to catch anyone copying his map. Sailors begin telling stories about the island. Decades later, tourists ask to visit it.

Does the island exist in any useful sense?

The Unknown Rule

A village has played the same ball game for generations. During one match, something happens that no rule covers. Half the village says the move is allowed. Half says it is forbidden.

Was the move legal before they argued about it?

Halfway Again

To reach the far wall you first have to cross half the room. Then half of what's left. Then half of that. There's always another half to cross, so the crossing has an endless number of steps in it.

How do you ever touch the wall?

Nobody Listening

A tree comes down in a forest hundreds of miles from anyone. Air moves, branches crack, the ground shakes a little. No ear is anywhere near it.

Was there a sound?

The Lucky Password

Mina types a stranger's birthday into a locked computer. She has no reason to choose it. The computer opens because the birthday is the password.

Did Mina know the password?

The Unplayed Game

Archaeologists find a board, pieces and a book of rules. The rules are clear, but there is no sign that anyone ever played.

Have they found a game?

The Replaced Bear

You had a bear until you were nine. You still have it, in a box at your mum's. At Christmas she tells you the truth: you lost the bear in a car park when you were four, and she drove to three shops that night to find the same one. She swapped it while you slept. You never noticed. Thirty years of that bear being the thing that got you through hospital and your parents' divorce, and it's the second bear.

Did you lose the bear when you were four, or just now, at the table?

The Long Dream

You fall asleep at eleven and wake at seven. In between you lived forty years: a different name, a house by water, children whose faces you'd know anywhere, a slow illness, a funeral that was yours. You wake up crying about a daughter who doesn't exist. By lunchtime you can only remember four of the forty years.

Did you have those forty years?

Two Holidays

You and your sister both remember the week in the caravan. You remember rain for six days and your dad furious about the awning. She remembers sun, and a dog on the beach, and dad laughing. You've each told your version for twenty years. Then you find the photos. Hers match.

Was your memory ever a memory, or something you built and kept?

The Poem by Nobody

You read six lines about your grandmother's hands and your eyes go. You read them again on the bus. Later you find out no one wrote them: a machine produced them in a second, having never had a grandmother, never had hands, and it produced nine hundred other versions that nobody read.

Was the thing you felt on the bus a mistake?

Before Anyone Counted

Long before there were people, there were seven somethings standing in a valley. Nobody was there to count them. No one had invented the word seven, or the idea of seven, or any way of noticing that four of them and three of them made the whole group.

Were there seven, or did seven arrive with us?

The Misspelled Name

Your name has one letter wrong on your birth certificate. A tired clerk in 1991. It's been copied onto your passport, your bank cards, your degree, your payslips. Everyone who knows you says it the other way, the way your parents meant it. Nobody has ever written it that way on anything official.

Which one is your name?

The Balance

Your money is a number on a screen. There's no drawer somewhere with your name on it and your notes inside. The bank has lent most of it out to strangers. If everyone asked for theirs on the same Tuesday, the number would turn out to be a promise rather than a thing. Still, you check it, you feel better or worse, you plan your year around it.

Is the money in your account a real object, or a story everyone agrees to keep telling?

The Last Member

A band you love has been going forty years. The singer left in 1994, the guitarist died, the bassist quit twice and never came back. Last month the drummer retired. The tour is still booked, the name is still on the ticket, the songs are the same songs, and four people you've never heard of are playing them well.

Is that still the band?

The Author Says No

You've read the book four times. Two characters are in love; the whole thing only works if they are. Then the writer does an interview and says flatly that they were never in love, she never intended it, and readers keep getting it wrong.

Who decides what happened in the book?

One Second Ahead

A screen in front of you shows a live feed of your own hands, delayed by nothing, plus a small line of text that appears one second before you act. You're going to pick up either the red pen or the blue one. The text says RED. You feel like the choice is still open. You reach for blue. The text updates, one second before, and says BLUE.

Are you choosing, or watching?

The Wrong Speed

You've loved a song since you were fifteen. You've heard it maybe two thousand times. Last week you learn the upload you grew up on was slightly sped up to dodge a copyright bot. You play the real one. It drags. The voice is lower. It's the wrong song and it's the only real one.

Which one is the song?

The Paused Century

Everything stops. Every atom, every clock, every thought, including yours. Nothing moves and nothing changes anywhere. Then, a hundred years later by no one's reckoning, it all starts again exactly where it left off. You're mid-sentence and you finish the sentence.

Did a hundred years pass, or nothing at all?

Three Legs Off

Your kitchen chair loses a leg. You keep it. It loses two more and you lean it in the corner and pile books on the seat. Then you take the seat off and use the plank as a shelf. Someone visiting asks what the plank is.

At which moment did it stop being a chair?

The Joke Without an Author

You tell a joke at dinner. Your friend laughs and says they told you the same joke last summer. You have no memory of hearing it and thought of the wording on the bus that morning.

Whose joke was it?

Where It Turned

Two people who work in different cities start messaging. Week one it's about work. By month four it's every night until one in the morning, and both of them stop mentioning it at home. They never meet, never touch, never say a word about love. Two years of this.

When exactly did it become an affair?

No Falling Out

There was a friend you saw every week. No argument, no betrayal, nobody moved. The gaps just got longer. Then it was three years, and now if you passed them on the street you'd both be pleased and neither of you would suggest a drink.

When did that friendship end, and is it over?

The Nearly

There's a job, a place, a person you didn't get. Someone offers to tell you exactly how close you came. Second out of four hundred, or last, or they never opened your file.

Do you want the number?

Still Say Home

You haven't lived in your parents' house for years. You have your own place, your own bed, your own bins to put out. But when you get in the car on a Friday you say you're going home, and everyone knows which house you mean.

When does that stop being home?

Prayed For

You find out an aunt has prayed for you by name every night for twenty years. She's never mentioned it. You don't believe a word of what she believes. She's kept it up through your divorce, your job, the illness.

Has she been doing something for you or not?

The Furthest Cousin

Start with your mum. Then her sister. Then that sister's kid. Then that kid's kid. Then the one you met once at a funeral in 2011 whose name you'd have to check. Somewhere along that line the word family stops being true and becomes a technicality.

Who's the furthest-out relative you'd still get in the car for?

Nobody Coming Round

You have a house to yourself for a month. Nobody visiting, no deliveries, no video calls. No one will see the state of it or the state of you.

What goes first: the bed made, the proper meals, the clothes with buttons?

The Box in the Loft

Everything you own ends up with someone who wasn't there for any of it. A ticket stub, a chipped bowl, a jumper you wore for eleven years. To them it's a bowl. To you it's a specific Sunday. Nothing about the objects changes; the stories just stop coming with them.

Which of your things stops being what it is once you're not around to say why?

Woke Up Guilty

You dream you slept with someone. Not a stranger, someone you actually know. It's vivid, and in the dream you're pleased with yourself. You wake up next to your partner at six with the whole thing still in your mouth like a taste.

Did anything happen?

The Shed Cash

You are cleaning out your uncle's shed after his funeral. Stuffed inside a rusty paint tin, you find twenty thousand pounds in crisp notes. Nobody else knows it is there. Your siblings are currently in the house, arguing over who gets his worthless car.

Do you walk into the house and tell them?

The Pond

You're walking to work in good clothes. A small child is face down in a shallow pond, drowning. Nobody else is around. Wading in ruins your suit and shoes and makes you two hours late. Obviously you go in. Now: the same money that suit cost could, sent to the right place today, keep a child alive who you'll never meet.

What's the actual difference between the two cases?

The Deathbed Promise

A friend dying of cancer asks you to promise something small but strange: never tell his wife about the year he spent in debt to a man she disliked. You promise. He dies. Two years later his wife is trying to make sense of a gap in their money and their history, and she asks you straight out.

Do you keep the promise or tell her?

The Windfall

You win £80,000 in a competition you entered alone. Your sister stopped speaking to you four years ago over something she was mostly wrong about. She's now renting a damp flat with two kids and no help coming. You have savings, no dependents, and a plan for a deposit.

Do you give her some of it, and how much?

The Payslip

By accident you see a spreadsheet with everyone's salary. A colleague who's been there longer than you, does harder work and trained you, is paid £11,000 less. She has no idea. If you tell her, she'll be furious, she may leave, and you'll have to explain how you know. If you say nothing, nothing happens.

Do you tell her?

The Ring

A shepherd finds a ring that makes him invisible whenever he turns it. No cameras, no witnesses, no record. He can walk into any house, any bank, any room where people are talking about him. The story says he used it to take a kingdom.

What's the first thing you'd do with the ring, honestly?

The Novel

Your best friend has spent five years writing a novel. They quit their job and drained their savings to finish it. They finally hand you the manuscript and ask for your honest opinion. You read it over the weekend. The writing is terrible. The plot makes no sense. The book has no chance of ever getting published.

What do you say when they ask what you thought of it?

Who Stays

A boat is going down. The lifeboat holds seven; there are ten of you. There's no rescue coming for days, so overloading it sinks everyone. The group looks at you to decide: an elderly doctor, a pregnant woman, a strong young man who is panicking, a child, and the rest ordinary adults, including you.

How do you decide who gets in?

The Will

Your parents leave you sixty percent and your brother forty. No explanation in the will. He has less money than you and two kids. You suspect you know why they did it, and it isn't flattering to him.

Do you split it evenly anyway?

The Other Table

You're out for lunch and you see your friend's husband across the room, holding hands with someone who isn't her. He hasn't seen you. You've known her twelve years. You know she's been happy lately.

Do you tell her?

The Bill

Six of you at dinner. You had a salad and tap water. Two of them ordered steak and three bottles of wine. The bill lands and someone says, cheerfully, let's just split it six ways. It's forty quid more than you owe.

Do you say anything?

The Dent

You're reversing out of a tight car park and you hear it. A long scrape down the door of the car next to you. Empty car park, no cameras you can see. Your insurance is already up for renewal and the excess is more than the repair.

Do you leave the note?

The Bet

Someone tells you: live as if God is real. If you're right, you gain everything forever. If you're wrong, you lost some Sunday mornings and a few pleasures. Live as if there's nothing, and the upside is small, the downside is infinite. The maths says believe.

Can you choose to believe something because the odds are good?

The Bad Rehearsal

A colleague rehearses an important pitch for you. It is poor, but the meeting starts in an hour. They ask whether you think it will go well. Honest criticism may shake them. Reassurance may send them in unprepared.

What do you tell them?

The Bridge

Same runaway train, five people on the track. This time you're on a footbridge above it with a heavy stranger leaning on the rail. If you push him off, his body stops the train. Five live, he dies. Nobody would ever know it was you.

Do you push him?

The Review

The café on your street got your order wrong twice and the owner was rude about it. You write what happened, honestly, and post it. They have eleven reviews. Yours drops them below four stars. The place is barely surviving as it is.

Do you post it?

The Forgotten Loan

Years ago, a friend lent you a large sum when you were struggling. They now earn far more than you and seem to have forgotten the loan. Paying it back this month would put you in trouble.

Do you remind them that you owe it?

Tomorrow's Cuts

You learn that a colleague will lose their job tomorrow. You were told in confidence. If you warn them, they can copy files and prepare. Your own job could be at risk if anyone finds out.

Do you warn them?

The Last Place

You can fund one place on a training course. One applicant has worked harder and scored higher. The other had fewer chances growing up and would gain more from being chosen.

Who gets the place?

The Empty Seat

You and your partner are waiting for an overbooked flight. The airline offers enough money to cover a month of rent if one of you travels tomorrow. Your partner wants you both to stay on the flight. You need the money more than they do.

Do you take the offer?

The Slot

Your kid needs a place at a good nursery and the list is two years long. Your aunt knows the woman who runs it and one phone call moves you to the front. Nobody will ever be told why. Someone who has been waiting since before your child was born goes back one place.

Do you make the call?

The Staff Discount

You're at the till with a full trolley. The cashier is a friend of a friend. Without asking, she scans her staff card and takes forty percent off. She smiles like it's nothing. The store loses about sixty pounds. If it's noticed on the audit, she loses the job, not you.

Do you let it go through?

The Application

You've found the flat. The landlord wants proof you earn three times the rent and you earn slightly less. One number changed on one document and it's yours. The only other applicants are a couple with a baby who earn less than you. The landlord will never check.

Do you change the number?

The Better Candidate

You're one of three people hiring. Your closest friend applies and she's good, maybe fourth best. She's been out of work eleven months and you know what it's doing to her. You can't hand her the job, but you can speak warmly and let a doubt about the front-runner sit there unanswered.

Do you stay quiet about your doubt?

The Queue

You have waited an hour for concert tickets. A friend arrives just before sales begin and asks to join you. The people behind you have waited just as long. If your friend goes to the back, the tickets may sell out before they reach the counter.

Do you let your friend in?

The Cancellation

You work for yourself and require payment when a client cancels on the day. A client cancels because their child is in hospital. You turned down other work for that time. They ask you to waive the fee.

Do you charge them?

Unseen

You find a plain gold ring on the ground. When you put it on and turn it, you become invisible. No one can see you, hear you, or ever track what you do while wearing it. You can take what you want and listen to whatever is said. There are no cameras that can catch you.

What is the first illegal thing you do?

The Rota

You're asked to write the Christmas shift schedule for your team of six. Two must work the holiday. One colleague has small children. One has nobody and says he doesn't mind. One asked you first, back in August. You also get to decide whether your own name goes on it.

Who works Christmas?

The Sick Note

You wake up flattened. Not ill, just done. You text work that you've got a stomach bug. It's believed instantly. The cost lands on one colleague, who cancels her afternoon and covers your calls. If you'd told the truth, the answer would probably have been to come in anyway.

Do you send the text?

The Expenses

Your manager pads the team's expense claims. Dinners that didn't happen, taxis nobody took. The money comes back as the team bonus and your share is about eight hundred pounds a year. Everyone knows. Nobody says it. The company is huge and nobody is hurt in a way you can point at.

Do you take the bonus?

The Doorbell

Parcels keep arriving for whoever lived in your flat before you. You've sent a few back. Then a heavy one comes: a laptop, still sealed, worth about a thousand. No forwarding address, no phone number, and the sender's returns window has closed. It sits in your hallway for a week.

What happens to the laptop?

The Wrong Box

A massive box arrives at your door. It has your address but someone else's name. Inside is a high-end espresso machine worth over a thousand dollars. You wait a month. Nobody comes looking for it. The retailer has no record of the order under your name.

Do you keep it?

The Cat

You're driving home along a dark road and something runs out. You feel the bump. You stop. It's a cat, with a collar, and it's dead. There's a row of houses fifty metres back. It's half eleven at night and no one saw. You could knock on doors until you find whose it is, or you could move it onto the verge and drive off.

Do you knock?

The Stag Do

Your oldest friend is getting married. The trip is four days abroad and it comes to about £600 once you count flights and the meal. You don't have it. You could put it on a credit card and feel it for six months, or you could say no. Everyone else in the group has already paid.

Do you tell them the real reason you can't come?

The Fundraiser

Someone you know a little, a friend of a friend, has had a bad year and there's a page collecting money for them. The page lists every name and every amount. You can see one person gave £200 and several gave £50. You were going to give £10. Your name will sit under the others for as long as the page is up.

What do you give?

The Screenshot

In a group chat of six, someone pastes in a screenshot of a private message. It's from a friend of yours who isn't in the group, complaining about one of the people who is. Everyone starts replying. Your friend doesn't know it's out there. You could tell them, tell the group off, or say nothing and let it move on.

What do you do?

The Long Way Round

You're in a taxi from the airport, late at night, watching the route on your phone. Ten minutes in you can see the driver has gone a way that will add about £15 to the fare. He might have done it on purpose. He might not. He's chatty and has told you about his kids. The meter keeps running.

Do you say something?

The Change

A woman on a market stall sells you £6 of vegetables. You hand over a twenty and she counts out change for a fifty. She's slow with her hands and there's a queue behind you. You're already three steps away when you work out she's given you £30 too much. She looks like the stall is hers, not a company's.

Do you turn around?

The Bike

It's the middle of the afternoon on a busy street. A man in shorts is crouched over a bike, cutting through the lock with a small angle grinder. He's not hiding. People are walking past. He glances up at you, unbothered, and keeps going. It could be his own bike and his own lost key.

What do you do in the next ten seconds?

The Double Booking

You agree to help a friend move house on a Saturday morning. On Friday night, someone you have been trying to date for six months asks you out for a day trip, and it has to be Saturday. Your friend has no money for a removal van but has a few other people helping.

Do you lie and say you are sick?

The Group Holiday

You organise a weekend away for six friends. You book the house on your card, putting £600 down. Everyone agrees to pay you back £100. Five do. The sixth friend recently lost their job and has been quiet in the group chat for weeks.

Do you ask them for the money?

The Stray Dog

You are driving to an important job interview that will change your career. You are already running five minutes late. On a quiet country road, you see a dog with a collar wandering loose near the traffic. There are no houses in sight.

Do you stop the car?

Tuesday Night

Your friend tells their partner they were with you last Tuesday. They were not. The partner texts you: “Did you two have a good night?” You know the truth may end the relationship.

Do you cover for your friend?

The Cracked Frame

You sell your old bike online for £250. As the buyer loads it into their car, you spot a thin crack near the back wheel. You had never noticed it before. They have already paid and driven two hours to collect it.

Do you point out the crack?

The Holiday House

Six friends book a house for July. Each pays £300. A week before the trip, Maya pulls out after losing her job and asks for her share back. The booking cannot be changed. Refunding her means the other five pay £60 more each.

Do you refund Maya?

The Broken Window

Your son kicks a football through the neighbour’s window. No one sees it happen. Minutes later, another child is blamed because their ball is found in the garden. Replacing the glass will cost you £400.

Do you say your son did it?

The Scratchcard

You buy a birthday card for a friend of a friend, and tuck a £5 scratchcard inside it as a joke. At the pub, they scratch it in front of you. They win ten thousand pounds. They scream, hug you, and offer to buy the first round of drinks.

Do you expect a cut of the money?

The Shared Secret

A friend tells you in strict confidence that their partner is cheating on them, and they are preparing to leave. Two days later, the cheating partner corners you at a party, crying, and asks if you know why your friend is being so distant.

Do you play dumb to protect the exit plan?

The Open Letter

You are doing a favour looking after your neighbour's sleeping child for the evening. You go into the kitchen for a glass of water. On the table, open and facing up, is a handwritten letter that starts with 'I cannot live like this anymore.'

Do you read the rest of the letter?

The Wedding Plus One

You are invited to an expensive wedding. The invitation gives you a plus one. You are single, but you have a chaotic friend who loves free wine and would make the night hilarious. The bride and groom do not know them well.

Do you bring the chaotic friend to entertain yourself?

The Missing Item

At the supermarket, you notice the cashier has missed the £40 bottle beneath your bag. Your receipt is already in your hand. Going back will make you late to collect your niece.

Do you go back and pay?

The Last Train

You have a rail pass that lets one guest travel free. On the last train home, a stranger says the ticket machine took their money but gave no ticket. The inspector is coming. Lending your guest pass breaks the rules and could get both of you fined.

Do you add the stranger to your pass?

The Mispriced Item

You are buying a vacuum cleaner at a self-checkout. It scans at £15 instead of £150. The store is a large national supermarket. The red light flashes for an assistant to approve the unexpected weight. A tired teenager walks over, blindly swipes their card to clear the error, and starts to walk away.

Do you tell them the price is wrong?

The Train Ticket

You board a busy train and realise you forgot to buy a ticket. The conductor is making his way down the aisle checking phones. The person next to you gets off at the next stop and leaves a valid, unpunched paper ticket on the table.

Do you pick it up and present it as your own?

The Better Life, Plugged In

There's a machine. Lie down in it and you get the life you'd have chosen: the work going well, the person who left still there, your body behaving, your parents proud. It feels exactly like real life from the inside. You won't remember the machine. Your body is looked after. The people you leave behind are told you're fine, and in a sense you are.

Would you get in?

The Voice That Stays

After your parent dies, a company offers to build a version of them from their messages, voicemails, photos and emails. It talks like them. It remembers your childhood. It asks how you slept. It's wrong sometimes, in ways that feel exactly right. It costs a small monthly fee, and it never gets tired of you calling.

Would you subscribe?

The Promise You'd Take Back

A friend, near the end, made you promise something. Keep the letters sealed. Don't tell their kid who the father was. Sell the house to their brother. You said yes; they died easier for it. A year on you're sure the promise is doing harm to someone living. Nobody but you knows it was ever made.

Do you keep it?

The Teleporter

Travel is instant now. A booth scans every atom of you, destroys the original, and rebuilds an exact copy on Mars a second later. The copy remembers breakfast, misses the same people, has your headache. Millions use it daily and none of them complain. This morning there's a fault: the scanner works, but the original you isn't destroyed. You're standing in the booth, and someone on Mars is answering to your name.

Which one of you is you?

Seven Seats

A boat holds seven. There are nine of you in the water: you, someone from your family, a stranger who is a doctor, two children you don't know, and four other adults. The sea is cold and the decision has to be made in about a minute. Nobody is going to volunteer.

Who do you name to stay in the water?

Before You Knew Who You'd Be

You get to redesign the rules about money and family before you're born: how much a parent can pass to a child, what school you're entitled to, who pays for whose care in old age. You write the rules first. Then you're dropped into a random life somewhere in the country you actually live in. Could be the one you have. Could be much worse.

What rule would you write that would cost your actual family something?

Name the Other One

Something went wrong at work and it's traced to you. It wasn't only you; a colleague did the same thing, earlier, and nobody's noticed. Your manager offers a deal in a quiet room: give them the other name and you keep your job with a warning. Stay silent and you're out at the end of the month. Your colleague has a mortgage. So do you.

Do you say the name?

The Last Conversation

You get a single five-minute phone call with someone who has passed away. The connection is perfect. They know they are gone. They know you are calling from the present.

Who do you call?

The Reference

A friend asks you to be a referee for a job she badly needs. You've worked with her. She's warm, funny, and unreliable in ways that landed on other people. The employer calls and asks the direct question: would you hire her again?

What do you say?

Nine Months of Your Body

You wake up in a hospital wired to a stranger. Overnight, doctors connected your bloodstream to theirs. Their organs have failed; yours will keep them alive. In nine months they'll recover and walk away. Unplug now and they die. You didn't consent, nobody asked, and the person in the next bed is entirely innocent. You'd be in that bed for nine months.

Do you unplug?

The Old Message

You find an old message that proves you seriously wronged someone years ago. They blamed another person and have since built a happy life. Telling the truth may ease your guilt, but it could reopen the whole affair for them.

Would you confess now?

The Empty Kidney

A relative needs a kidney. You are a match, and doctors say the risk to you is low but not zero. You love them, though you are not especially close. Nobody can force you to help, but everyone will know that you could have.

Would you donate your kidney?

The Dream Job

You are offered exactly what you have always wanted to do for a living. The pay is incredible. The hours are perfect. But the company makes a product you believe makes the world slightly worse. It is not illegal. It is just bad for people.

Do you sign the contract?

The Spare Room

Your father cannot live alone any more. There is a home forty minutes away that is clean and grim, and there is your spare room. If he moves in, you lose the room, most evenings, and the version of your house you like. If he goes to the home, he will be looked after by people who are paid to and he will know that is what happened.

Does he move in?

The Sealed Answer

An envelope arrives with your name on it. Inside is a true answer to one question about one person you love. Whatever the question, the answer is honest and complete, and neither of you will ever discuss it. You can also burn the envelope unopened and the offer never comes back.

Whose name is on your question, and what is the question?

What You Know About the Groom

Your closest friend is getting married in five weeks. You know for certain that her fiancé slept with someone else in the spring. You know because he told you, drunk, and then asked you to keep it between the two of you. She has spent a year happier than you have ever seen her.

Do you tell her before the wedding?

The Friend You'd Let Fade

You are told, plainly, that you have room for three close people. Not family, not your partner. Three. The rest become birthday messages and a drink once every couple of years, and they will feel the change even if they never name it.

Who are the three, and who is the first to drop off?

Your Own Instructions

You are asked to write down, tonight, how much of you can be gone before someone is allowed to stop the machines. Not in general terms. In your handwriting, with the line drawn: can't speak, can't recognise anyone, can't feed yourself, can't stop the pain. The paper will be shown to your family on the worst day of their lives.

Where do you draw the line?

Three Days of Pain

A call comes: you are a marrow match for a stranger. It means needles in your hip bone, a week where walking hurts, and a few days off work you would rather not take. The stranger is thirty-one. You will never learn their name and they will never learn yours. You can also just say no and nobody will ever ask you again.

Do you take the call?

The Cash Your Brother Wants Back

Your brother gave you his savings to hold six months ago because he did not trust himself with it. He has been sober since. Tonight he turns up and asks for it back, calm, reasonable, saying he is fine now and it is his money. You think he will spend it in a fortnight. You have no legal right to keep it.

Do you give him the money?

The Test Result

A test can tell you whether you are likely to develop a fatal illness in twenty years. There is no cure yet. The result could shape your work, your relationships, and whether you have children. You can take the test now or never know.

Would you take the test?

The Email That Costs You the Job

You find a spreadsheet at work that shows your company has been overcharging its oldest customers for years. Small amounts, thousands of people. If you send it to the regulator, you will be found out inside a month, and your name will follow you around the industry. Nobody else who has seen the file has done anything about it.

Do you send it?

Your Father's Door

A parent who failed you is old and can no longer live alone. They ask to move into your home. You can afford the care, but living together may take over your daily life. No other relative will step in.

Would you let them move in?

The Replacement Job

Your boss offers you a new deal. You will get paid double your current salary. In exchange, you will never have another original idea at work. You will only execute tasks handed to you by someone younger than you. You cannot quit for ten years.

Do you take the deal?

The Shortened Day

You are offered a pill that gives you one extra hour every day. You will not need to sleep during this hour. You will feel rested. But for every day you take the pill, your total lifespan is shortened by two days.

How many days a week do you take it?

The Salary Line

You learn that a colleague doing the same work earns far less than you. Your manager offers to raise their pay only if your next raise is cut in half. Nobody else will know what you chose.

Would you give up half your raise?

Who Pays for Mum

Your mother needs care she can't pay for. The cost splits three ways between you and your siblings on paper, but you earn more than both of them and one of them has kids. Nobody has said out loud who pays what. Someone has to speak first at the kitchen table on Sunday.

What split do you propose, and do you say your own number first?

Both Phones Unlocked

You and your partner sit down and swap phones for an hour. Everything: messages, searches, deleted photos, what you say about each other to other people. It's mutual and it's once. Whatever's in there, you both agree not to leave over it.

Do you hand yours over?

Your Friend's Messages

After your closest friend dies, you receive access to their private messages. One folder bears your name. Opening it may change how you remember them. Deleting it means choosing not to know what they said about you.

Would you open the folder?

The One Who Calls

A friend only calls when they are in danger of hurting themselves. Each call keeps you awake for hours. They refuse help from anyone else. You can keep answering, or tell them you will call emergency services next time.

Would you answer the next call?

The City You Won't Move To

Your partner is offered the thing they've been working toward for years. It's in a city where you know nobody, your work doesn't transfer, and your parents are eight hours further away. They say they won't take it unless you're happy about it. They mean it, and that's the problem.

Do you tell them to take it, and is that a lie?

The Partner's Phone

Your partner is in the shower. Their phone lights up with a text from an ex they promised they stopped talking to. The preview cuts off mid-sentence. You know their passcode.

Do you unlock the phone?

Your Mother's Keys

Your mother has begun getting lost while driving. She insists she is safe. A doctor will report her if you describe what has happened, and she will lose her licence. She lives where a car is her last bit of freedom.

Would you tell the doctor?

Your Sister's Signature

Your sister needs you to guarantee a loan. If her plan works, she keeps her home. If it fails, you take on a debt that would set you back for years. She says nobody else will help.

Would you sign?

Your Brother's Crime

You find proof that your brother committed a serious crime years ago. Someone else served time for it. Reporting him would clear that person, but your brother now has children who depend on him.

Would you turn him in?

The Last Embryo

You and your partner have one embryo left after years of trying for a child. A test shows a high chance of a painful illness that begins in middle age. This is your last chance to have a child who is related to both of you.

Would you use the embryo?

The Keys

A friend has had four drinks and is looking for their car keys. They've done this before and got home fine. If you take the keys you'll embarrass them in front of people, and they'll be cold with you for months. If you say nothing, most likely they get home fine again.

Do you take the keys?

No One Ever Knows

You can give away any amount you like to something that matters. One condition: it's fully anonymous, and you can never mention it to anyone, ever. No thank-you letter, no name on a wall, no telling your partner years later.

Does the amount you'd give change?

The Anger Switch

A one-time procedure removes your ability to feel anger. You'll still notice unfairness and still be able to say something about it. You just won't burn. Everyone who's ever been on the wrong end of your temper would be relieved.

Do you do it?

Fire Your Friend

Cuts are coming. Your boss tells you privately: pick one person from your team, or the decision gets made above you and it'll be two people, one of them you. Your closest friend at work is the weakest performer on paper and the reason you've stayed as long as you have.

Do you write down their name?

The Money You Know He'll Drink

Your brother asks for two hundred. He says it's for the electric bill. You're fairly sure it isn't. If you say no he'll get it somewhere worse, and he'll stop calling you. If you say yes you're paying for the thing that's killing him.

Do you give him the money?

A Year at the Bedside

A relative is dying slowly and needs someone with them daily. You can do it yourself: quit for a year, empty your savings, be the one holding the cup. Or you can keep working and pay a stranger who is patient and good at this, and visit on weekends.

Which do you choose?

The Aging Parents

Your parents are losing their memory and can no longer live alone. The only good care facility in town costs exactly the amount you have saved for your kids' college.

Do you spend the kids' college money on your parents?

The Regret Meter

A screen in a clinic will tell you one number: how much you'll regret your decision about having children, ten years from now. Not whether you'll be happy. Just how much of the other life you'll be mourning. It's free, it's accurate, and you can only look once.

Do you look?

The Bot That Calls Your Mother

An app learns your voice and your phrases well enough to hold a twenty-minute phone call. It rings your mother every Sunday, asks about her week, remembers her neighbour's name. She's happy. She has no idea. Your actual calls had dropped to one a month.

Do you switch it on?

The Memory of Shame

A doctor offers you a pill that permanently erases your memory of your worst humiliation. Nobody else's memory is affected.

Do you take the pill?

The Dog or the Fees

Your dog needs an operation that may buy two good years. It costs the same amount your niece needs to stay in college. You can pay for only one. Your niece does not know about the choice.

Where would the money go?

The Family Story

You learn that the story your family tells about how one relative died is false. The truth would clear someone who has carried the blame for years. It would also expose someone who is still alive.

Would you tell the family?

The Ad You'd Write

A job offers you double your salary. The work is writing ads that get people gambling again after they've stopped. You'd be good at it. The money would cover treatment a family member needs and can't afford, with years to spare.

Do you take it?

The Perfect Alibi

Your closest friend shows up at your back door at two in the morning covered in blood. They say they killed someone who ruined their life, and they need you to swear they were watching a movie with you.

Do you lie to the police for them?

The Body Market

You can sell one year of your healthy lifespan to a billionaire for half a million dollars, tax-free. They live a year longer; you die a year earlier than you would have. You can do this as many times as you want.

How many years do you sell?

The Animal Life

Your dog is dying of a rare disease. Your vet can cure them completely, giving them another five happy years. But the procedure requires killing a healthy stray dog from the pound.

Do you kill the stray to save your dog?

The Anonymous Betrayal

You find out your partner's ex cheated on them right before they broke up. Your partner doesn't know. Finding out now would ruin their trust in people, but it would explain a lot of lies they were told.

Do you tell your partner?

The Undeserved Award

You win an industry award and fifty thousand dollars for a solo project. Just before the ceremony, you realize you accidentally copied the core idea from a rival. Nobody else will ever find out.

Do you give the award back?

The House Veto

You and your partner are buying a house. You find the perfect one, but your partner hates it. They find theirs, but you hate it. The agent says you have to compromise today or lose both.

Who caves?

The Childhood Bully

The person who bullied you most brutally in school has lost everything. They reach out and ask you for a job at your company. You are the only person who can hire them, and they are qualified.

Do you give them the job?

The Walkout

Your coworkers plan to walk out over pay. Joining them may win better terms for everyone, but you are the only person on your team who could not manage a month without wages. If you stay at work, the walkout may fail.

Would you join them?

Ten Hours, One Name

You get back every hour you spend on your phone this week. Ten hours, maybe more. There's one condition: all of it has to go to one person, in the room with them, and you have to write the name down now.

Whose name do you write?

The Found Wallet

You find a wallet on the sidewalk containing five thousand dollars in cash. The ID belongs to someone you know is a bad person who ruined a friend's life.

Do you keep the cash?

The Child You Won't Have

Your partner wants a child. You don't, or you don't enough, and you've been saying 'not yet' for four years. There's a window and both of you know roughly when it closes. Whatever happens next, one of you gives up something they won't get back, and you'll stay together either way.

Which of you gives it up?

Split Evenly

You earn about three times what your oldest friend earns. Every time you eat together the bill lands in the middle and gets split down the middle, and he reaches for it fast, before anyone can suggest otherwise. You've watched him pick the cheapest thing on the menu and then pay for half of your fish.

Do you say anything?

One Coffee Before the Wedding

The one you never got over is getting married in three weeks. They message: one coffee, an hour, then they're gone for good and they won't ask again. You're with someone now and it's good. You wouldn't do anything. You'd just go.

Do you go?

The Watch

Your dad's watch. He wore it for thirty years and you've had it in a drawer since the funeral. Your brother rings and says he's been thinking about it a lot, that he'd wear it every day, and could he have it. He probably would wear it. You'd keep it in the drawer.

Does he get the watch?

The Unequal Will

Your parents die and the will leaves you sixty percent and your sister forty. You were the one who drove them to appointments, who called on Sundays, who took the phone calls at 2am. She lives four hours away and came at Christmas. The solicitor says nothing has to change unless you want it to.

Do you even it up?

What He Says to Her

You've watched your friend's boyfriend talk to her the way you wouldn't talk to anyone. Nothing you could take to anybody. She knows you've seen it. Last month she asked you, in the nicest way, to stop bringing it up, because she's staying and she'd like to keep you.

Do you keep bringing it up?

The Son on the Sofa

He's thirty one. This is the third time he's asked to come home, and each time it was going to be a few months. You'd have to move the desk out again, and you'd hear him up at three, and you'd be lending him money by February. He has nowhere else to be by Friday.

Do you say yes again?

A Year Without Lying

For the next twelve months you can't say anything you believe to be false. Not the big lies, those you'd manage. The 'no, it's lovely'. The 'I'm on my way'. The 'I'm fine'. Silence is allowed, but no cover stories, and nobody knows this has happened to you.

Who does it cost you first?

The Pill That Ends the Craving

There's a pill for the thing you do too much of. The drinking, the scrolling, the eating at midnight. One dose and the pull is gone for good. But it takes the pleasure with it. You'll never want it again and you'll never enjoy it again, and the evenings that were built around it will just be evenings.

Do you take it?

The Diary on the Table

Your fifteen year old has left it open on the kitchen table and gone out. You can see your own name on the page. They've been off for weeks and won't say why, and you've been lying awake about it. Reading it takes ninety seconds and they'd never know.

Do you read it?

Sunday Lunch

Your grandmother says the ugly thing again, mildly, over the roast. She's eighty seven. Your cousin's kids are at the table. Everyone does the small laugh and passes the potatoes, and you've done the small laugh for twenty years because she won't change and it would spoil the afternoon.

Do you say it out loud this time?

Five Years

Your doctor is straightforward about it. Carry on as you are and you get about five good years fewer than you otherwise would. Nothing dramatic today, no scan to be scared of, just arithmetic. She writes down the two or three changes. You take the paper home and put it somewhere.

What's stopping you?

The Year You'd Delete

One year of your memory can be taken out. Not the facts, you'd still know what happened and who you were with, but the feel of it goes. No flinch when the song comes on, no dream about it, nothing waiting for you at 4am. Everyone else remembers it fine.

Which year, or none?

The First Drink

Your closest friend quit drinking after losing their marriage. At your birthday dinner, they order a whisky and ask you not to make a scene. Everyone else carries on talking.

Do you challenge them at the table?

The App That's Never Wrong

An app has been right about everyone who used it, for years, with no exceptions. It tells you two things about your partner. They'll stay with you and be reasonably content. And there's someone else out there they'd have been happier with, much happier, if they'd met. You can show them the screen or close it.

Do you tell them?

The Five-Year Contract

Marriage is no longer a lifelong commitment. The law changes tomorrow. All marriages now expire automatically after five years. To stay married, both of you have to go to a courthouse and sign a paper. If one of you stays home, the marriage ends.

If your marriage expired tomorrow, would your partner show up to sign?

The Train Home

Your father is having minor surgery on Friday. He says there is no need to visit. You have missed enough work this year, and the train costs £160. Your sister texts: “He wants you there. He just won’t ask.”

Do you go home?

Sunday With Gran

Your grandmother thinks you still share her faith. She is 88 and tells everyone that praying with you is one of her last comforts. You no longer believe, but correcting her would hurt her.

Do you keep praying with her?

The Apology After Twenty Years

At school, you joined in when a boy was mocked every day. You found him online. He seems happy and has never contacted you. An apology might help him, or it might ask him to carry your guilt again.

Do you write to him?

The Broken Vow

You cheat on your partner during a work trip. It happens once. You are overwhelmed with guilt. You know you will never do it again. The other person lives in another country. Your partner will never find out unless you tell them.

Do you confess?

The Group Chat

You leave your phone unlocked on a table. Your partner picks it up to check the time. A notification pops up. It is a message from your closest friend. It says something cruel about your partner. Your partner reads it.

Do you defend your friend or your partner?

The Failed Business

Your brother quit his job to start a restaurant. You lent him twenty thousand dollars to get it off the ground. It has been two years. The restaurant is failing. He asks you for another ten thousand to keep the doors open for one more month.

Do you write the second cheque?

The Ghostwriter

You wrote a brilliant manuscript. A famous author with your politics reads it. They offer you one million dollars to publish it under their name. They will never reveal you wrote it. It will sell millions of copies. Under your own name, it will sell five hundred.

Do you take the money and let them have the credit?

The Drunk Confession

Your close friend gets drunk at a dinner party. They pull you aside and tell you a terrible secret about their marriage. They tell you their partner hits them. The next morning, they call you. They are sober. They say they made the whole thing up for attention.

Do you stay friends with them?

The Family Ring

You own your great-grandmother’s ring. Your cousin believes it should have gone to her mother and has asked for it twice. Selling it would clear your credit card. Giving it away would end an old family grievance.

Do you keep it, sell it, or give it to your cousin?

The Hidden Diagnosis

Your parent goes to the doctor alone and gets a terminal diagnosis. They have six months to live. They decide not to tell you or anyone else in the family until the final week. They want their last months to be normal.

Do you want them to keep that a secret from you?

The Tracker

Your daughter gets her first car. She is driving alone at night. You have an app on your phone. It tracks her location. She does not know it is installed. You promised her you would never track her.

Do you check the app when she is late coming home?

The Pills in the Bathroom

Pain pills left from an operation help you sleep. Your doctor told you to stop weeks ago. You have hidden the last packet behind the towels because your partner would throw it away.

Do you tell your partner tonight?

The Care Fund

Your parents are aging and have fifty thousand dollars left in savings. Your brother has a sudden medical emergency. He needs that amount for a treatment insurance will not cover. Your parents ask for your blessing to empty their account to pay for it.

Do you tell them to do it?

The Erased Habit

There is a harmless medical procedure. It takes ten minutes. It will permanently remove one habit from your partner. They will not notice it is gone. They will never know you arranged it. They will just stop doing that one thing forever.

What trait do you remove?

The Tooth You Ignore

A tooth has hurt for six months. The dentist may find nothing serious, or may tell you that you need work you cannot afford. You have £800 saved for the first holiday you have taken in years.

Do you book the appointment before the holiday?