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101. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 6

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102. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5
Kolby Granville

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103. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5
donalee Moulton

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What does it mean, or show, when something happens that is absolutely unexplainable? In this work of philosophical fiction, the narrator has a simple problem, her house plants are getting mysteriously watered. Her husband and daughter swear it’s not them. A home camera shows nobody is secretly watering the plants. After tearing apart the pots, it’s clear there isn’t a contraption or trick to water the plants automatically. In desperation, the narrator tries a tool to remove ghosts from the house. Nothing works. Finally, in her frustration, to end the mystery, she takes the plants to the town dump to rid herself of her confusion. The next day she noticed someone has started cleaning the fridge…

104. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5
Jan McCleery

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How would society change if easy/inexpensive technology were created to remove a fertilized embryo from the mother and grow the baby in an incubator? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, technology is created that allows women to easily, and at almost no cost, have a fertilized embryo from the mother, and have the child grown and born via an incubator. This has significant advantages for the woman, but also for society as it allows women to easily transition from an unwanted pregnancy back to their own life while the government grows, and adopts out, their unwanted child. Given that, in the society in the story, abortion, and contraception are illegal, this new technology gives rise to a boom in unwanted babies awaiting adoption. In response, the government creates a “Draft.” The draft requires all men to register and, if randomly selected, accept an unwanted child and raise it as their own, by penalty of law. When a man with six “draft babies” commits suicide, his politician father (now in his 70’s) finds himself their new caregiver.

105. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5
Keith “Doc” Raymond

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Does basic income encourage laziness? What obligations does a country that willingly accepts a refugee has to the person they accept? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Sbongo is an African refugee who escaped to Turkey and was granted asylum in Germany. His life immediately improves as Germany offers him “basic income,” more money than he has ever received in his life. Initially, he spends his days walking the streets, enjoying a simple life. However, over time, he becomes jealous of the wealth of those around him. First, he gets a job at a Kebob store and loses his basic income stipend. Later, he is fired and ends up homeless. After hitting rock bottom he gets into a job training program, gets a job doing street maintenance, and starts to feel the pride of the money he earned.

106. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5
Lea Pounds

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Could you sentence your own murderer to an eternity in hell? Would you ever be willing to accept his apology and repentance? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Alli was brutally murdered in an alley by a relapsed drug addict she once showed kindness to. Twenty-five years later he is put to death for her murder and ends up in Abeyance, the place people say when they have unfinished business. Alli is waiting for him and, under the rules of the afterlife, Alli is able to decide where Josh will spend eternity. When Josh sees Alli he explains that he spent his life repenting of her murder, is truly sorry for the pain he caused, and found God. Furthermore, he was on drugs at the time, and starved for affection due to a truly horrible childhood of physical and sexual abuse. After hearing all this, Alli must still decide his fate.

107. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5
Julia Edinger

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What causes a person to cheat on their spouse? How do you know if someone is truly repentant for their actions, or if they are only repentant because they were caught? In this philosophical short story fiction, Jacob is in a stable, if unexciting marriage to Dina, the mother of their two children. However, Jacob is also having an affair with the younger Sasha, the neighborhood barista. Jacob feels some guilt for his actions but heads off to meet and have sex, with Sasha on her break. After intercourse she opens his phone and finds out, for the first time, he is married. Sasha tells Jacob he must tell his wife of his infidelity by 4pm, or she will call herself. Jacob rushes home, a truly penitent man, ready to confess his wrongdoing, and beg for forgiveness. However, moments before confessing to his wife, he sees on the news that Sasha has been killed in a car accident.

108. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5
Bryan Starchman

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What is fair and equitable justice? Is the point of justice to deter crime, to punish those that commit a crime, or to educate criminals so they can integrate successfully back into society? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, the country has chosen to adopt the “Law Of Vindication.” If a drunk driver hits and kills someone with their car, their punishment is to be hit and killed with a car. The same reciprocal punishments exist for all serious crimes. Furthermore, it is a crime to not assist the government, when necessary, in providing reciprocal punishment. The parents of a murdered child MUST murder the child of their killer. In this story, the narrator is in an unhappy marriage and decides his best chance of getting away with killing his wife is to kill his neighbor’s wife and wait for the law of retribution to require that his wife be killed as punishment. Of course, things don’t go quite as planned, and the law is interpreted differently than he expects.

109. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5
Kate Choi

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Should you abandon your dream to pursue where your true talents lie? Is a lifetime following your dream to be a painter a successful life if it turns out you simply don’t have an eye for art? Where do our dreams come from? When should they be abandoned? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, a young boy is in the government waiting room waiting to be assigned a new “dream.” He strikes up a conversation with other people in the waiting room. Some of them are anxious to get new dreams implanted into their brain as they have not found success. Others don’t want to let go of the failed dream they were originally assigned because they believe, in their heart of hearts, it is what they were born to do. The government is indifferent to the desires of the people. Society has needs, people have innate talents, and the government, as far as they are concerned, should focus on getting people to follow the dreams they are good at, as well as the dreams that are most needed by society. This story was the winner of the Fall 2020 After Dinner Conversation Writing Competition.

110. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5

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111. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 5

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112. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 4
Kolby Granville

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113. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 4
Erik Fatemi

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How does our own perspective limit our ability to understand the different perspectives of others, and what can we do to minimize our own bias? In this work of historical ethical fiction, Timothy the builder, the most important carpenter in the community, has gotten word of a talented upstart who seems perfectly content to stay poor while producing exquisite wood work. Timothy visits the carpenter on several occasions, first to hire him (he refuses) then to threaten to put him out of business. In each case Timothy is unable believe the reasons the carpenter gives for being disinterested in playing the competing businesses game. Even after Timothy’s loyal assistant leaves him for the carpenter, he is still unable to overcome his own bias and see the alternative perspective.

114. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 4
Edward Daschle

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What makes one belief true, and another absurdly false? What does it mean to “be a man” or “be a woman” when biology is changeable? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, two couples have gotten together for a night of drinks. The conversation turns to reincarnation, fortune tellers, the 1980’s AIDS epidemic, and soulmates. Eventually, Jaime, who was born a woman, but transitioned to become a man, reveals to the group she is going to have a baby, “as a man.” The issue comes to a head when Mike, a gay man, questions how Jaime can have a baby yet identify as a man and questions what it even means to be a man, or a woman, if not by the ability to have children.

115. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 4
Shannon Frost Greenstein

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What do you tell a sick child dealing with the Epicurean “problem of evil?” In this work of philosophical short story fiction, a mother takes her child to Sunday church. Her child is sick and his hair is slowly falling out. She reassures him God still wants him to come to church (even without hair), but a mean-spirited parishioner tells the boy, “Boys who wear hats in church go to hell.” The boy comes home and asks his mother how God can be both all powerful, all knowing, and all good, and yet he can still be sick. Furthermore, he tells his mother, he doesn’t want to go to church again.

116. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 4
C.S. Griffel

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Should a baby being born into exceptional suffering be terminated so as to prevent its suffering? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Keery is a midwife in training. As part of her training she learns the midwives’ secret, at the moment a child is born, the midwife can see the child’s future. Keery also learns from her mentor when that future involves a life of extreme suffering, the midwife will often kill the newborn baby and tell the mother it was stillborn. Keery oversees her first birth, sees the future suffering of the child, but refuses to kill it. Later, at another birth, she sees the future suffering the newborn causes others as an adult, and decides the humane thing is to kill it.

117. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 4
Ilan Herman

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If you had the ability to try and improve humanity by playing God, would you do it? Do you have an ethical obligation to do it? In this philosophical short story fiction, Jack is abducted by the Zoomarians, an alien race who seeded earthlings. However, the Zoomarians have come to believe humans are going astray; that they are too violent, too selfish, and too destructive to their environment. Accordingly, they have kidnapped Jack in an effort to have Jack play god by projecting his voice into the minds of various humans about to do wrong. It is the Zoomarians’ hope that, over time, Jack will be able to move humanity onto a more noble path. Jack initially declines the offer, but changes his mind and settles into a long life of trying to save humanity, one person as a time.

118. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 4
Daniel James Peterson

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Are our choices in life, and throughout all time, predetermined, or is there the ability to make different, and better, choices with additional information? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, an older disfigured man has a horrible life. He is brought into a government facility because they have discovered that he met his older self when he was younger, thus establishing that he must now be sent back in time to take part in the action he has already experienced as his younger self. The old man lies to the agency and decides, while back in time, he will try to warn his childhood self away from the errors of his life. While talking to his childhood self the narrator makes realizations about the younger version of himself and the differences between memory and truth.

119. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 4
Shani Naylor

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At what point in a date do you owe the other party the duty to inform them you are engaged? Is marriage an exercise in love, or practicality? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, the law school student narrator working at a summer factory job decides to set up her shy female friend, Susie, with her boyfriend’s shy brother, Barry. They go on a double date and everything seems to be going fine. Only later does the narrator and her boyfriend find out that Barry is engaged to a mail-order bride from Southeast Asia that will be arriving shortly. The shy Barry, it turns out, wanted to “practice” going on a date before his new wife arrived. The law student narrator is embarrassed, and struggles with the moral duty both she, and Barry, owe to Susie.

120. After Dinner Conversation: Volume > 4 > Issue: 4

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