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Displaying: 1-10 of 10 documents


1. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Kolby Granville

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2. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Sierra Simopoulos

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Should it be socially acceptable for generally healthy senior citizens who are a burden to society and their family to commit suicide? In this elder care ethics short story fiction, Benjamin is getting into his sixties and the government has put ratios on the pain medication they will subsidize for his aging body. His wife has already passed, and his daughter only comes to visit him every month or two, and often just to quickly drop off groceries. Benjamin’s pharmacy suggests he consider enrolled in a government program to end his life so as not to “be a burden to family or society.” They also suggest that he not talk to his daughter about what he is doing as it will only put her in the awkward situation of feeling guilty unless she tries to talk him out of it. In the end, Benjamin goes forward with the government program. He leaves a goodbye letter for his daughter, and the government plants a tree in his honor.

3. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Alyson Fortowsky

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Would you kill your best friend if you found out he raped someone? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, the narrator is a sophomore in college who spends time with her friend, a drug dealing college student named Nate, and his law school friend Jack. They all get together to drink, smoke pot, and have long philosophical debates. One night at a party the narrator wakes up to find Jack having sex with her. She waits until the party is over and tells Nate that Jack raped her. Nate comforts her, and supporters her, although she opts not to press charges, she tells Nate she wants Jack dead When Jack calls her to say he had a good time, and ask her out on a date, she refuses. The group grows apart until a year later, word gets back that Jack was at a party at Nate’s house when he drank to much and died of alcohol poisoning. Oddly, the police find nothing when questioning Nate because this is the one party where Nate, a drug dealer, doesn’t have drugs in the house. They never talk again, but the narrator wonders if Nate followed through and killed Jack. She hopes he did.

4. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Michael Zemel

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What does it mean to have freedom? How do you find the essence of a thing? Is it possible to ever free yourself from structure? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Alice has long ago left Wonderland and has resigned her days to staying in from the rain and studying her books. However, each night she has a nightmare of Everything coming to chase her. She falls back through the looking-glass into Wonderland and finds a very different world where things make sense. The Red Queen is angry because the playing cards are on strike and want more freedom. The Red Queen argues the playing cards have freedom, and are equal, because they all equally inferior to her and are free from having to make choices. She asks Alice to find and kill the Jabberwocky to restore nonsense to wonderland. After meeting Foster Wallace, and his mirror twin, she thinks she is ready. Alice fights the Jabberwocky by, literally, drawing her sword, and returns to her home with an understanding that the answer to structure is play.

5. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Joe Hoyle

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How would the world change if God implanted the simple phrase, “You have no enemies” into everyone living person on earth, simultaneously? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, an impossible thing happens, every living creature on earth, from people to the animals, simultaneously have a phrase from God implanted into their minds. Everyone hears it, and no one doubts it is from God. The phrase is “You have no enemies.” While the basic nature of people does not change, many other things do. Wars become less common; discrimination becomes almost non-existence. People are kinder to each other and, while they still disagree, they do so in a civil way. Atheism is non-existent overnight. The question is, if this really did happen, would this really be the result?

6. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Amber Kusmenko

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What are the problems of dating some older than yourself? How do you know if the differences are related to age, or something else? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Brady is dating her former college professor, Jeff. Jeff, unlike Brandy, has been out in the “real world” and worked for a living. Their relationship is just starting and Brandy is given a simple task, “buy shampoo for the weekend trip they, and Jeff’s friends, are going on.” This starts the ball rolling on Brandy’s insecurities about what kind of shampoo to buy? What do people with money buy? When she arrives to meet his friends, things don’t go much better as Brandy feels like an outsider and makes social mistakes because she is not accustomed to living in the out of college world. In the end, Jeff falls asleep on the couch and leaves Brandy to sleep on the floor, due to lack of space. Did he do this on purpose, or is Brandy simply reading too much into the entire experience?

7. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Nathan Ahlgrim

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Is sin inherent in choice? Is sin simply a social construct or a function of limited resources? In this work of philosophical short fiction, there are 89 species in the Galactic Confederation of Intelligences and earth, as a way to protect its culture from being overrun by outside influence, has shut itself off from them. However a Jesuit Priest has decided to lock himself away with a copy of Encyclopedia of Sentient Species to try and better understand other species and to determine if there are other species that lack the ability to sin. In this pursuit, he painstakingly goes through and finds examples of species without the sin of Wrath, another without the sin of Lust, and so on. He is, however, unable to find any species without the sin of Pride.

8. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4
Joanna Michal Hoyt

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How do societies shift away from being a nation of gods and omens to one of rules and law? Is this the natural evolution of civil society? In this work of philosophical short fiction, a woman traveling along the river comes across an older man, the “Lord Keeper” with a tied-up boy he is about to kill after three days. The boy, it seems, learned the secrets of the community as part of his duties to become the new “Lord Keeper.” The secret of the community is that, in times long past, the society decided to, literally, brick their stone god up to be kept away from the community and to, instead, become a nation of laws, rather than a nation of seeking god’s favor. However, the “Lord Keeper” is designated, each day, to visit the caged god. This is why the new, “Lord Keeper” was scheduled for death, he learned the secret of the community as part of his training and was planning to tell the community of the long forgotten god they had caged away.

9. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4

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10. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 3 > Issue: 4

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