fandomhigh | Ethics [Thursday, September 9, 2nd period]

"As you might remember from the syllabus I handed out last week," Anakin said as he leaned against his desk, "today's topic is lying. In Fandom, where multiple timelines meet and mingle, lying can be a terribly complex subject."

He gazed around the room. "We have students here from different centuries who by stepping foot onto the island learn immediately about electricity, electronics and reality television. Depending on societies they arrive from, they could learn about guns--or even the very concept of war--and change their worlds irrevocably."

Anakin began pacing. "Sometimes the situation is even more specific. Several years ago, a student arrived here who I knew--but I knew him as a Jedi Master I'd met when I was a small child. I also knew that his death, at least in my timeline, had been a violent one. A teacher I had used to say that the future is constantly in motion, but my experience with multiple timelines seems to show that certain large, galaxy changing events tend to stay constant. Did I have an obligation to tell this student about his future? Or do I respect his timeline and his ability to make his own decisions?"

He sat back down. "The questions today are these: if you have knowledge of the future, what parts would you lie about--even through omission--from someone further behind in the timeline? And if you met someone from your future, would you want to know anything about what you might face someday? Would you respect them for not telling you everything? Or even anything?"

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The last conversation she had with Clyde Bruckman flashed through Scully's mind.

All right then. How do I die?

That's just it. You don't.

Scully shivered, and looked down at her desk, troubled. "Again, it's so uncertain..." She thought of Rosalind's dilemma, then said slowly, "If there's a chance that my life is in danger, or the lives of other people, then yes, I'd thank someone for telling me that. I don't believe that there's things we're not meant to know. The laws of time would seem to indicate that if the future is inevitable, it can't be changed in any event." She was remembering the other case they'd had, with the time traveler (possibly?) who'd so desperately tried to prevent the future from coming true... and might have succeeded in killing two people, but hadn't succeeded in his goal to prevent time travel.

"There's always a chance your life is in danger," Anakin said flatly, "it's the price of living. And if the death is inevitable, what's served by knowing about it?" Unless you're Drake and come up with a list of things to get done beforehand, but Anakin felt most people didn't greet death with that much style.

"We can't know death is inevitable. I think." Not even when you're fatally shot, bleeding to death, and then... you look away, and Death takes the man who should have died during the Spanish Influenza epidemic, standing next to you. "If it is, though, the purpose would be--" Scully thought of lying in a hospital bed. Weaker and weaker. Days to live. Sometimes you didn't need magic or time travel to know what your future was supposed to be.

"To fight to the end. Or to say good-bye. Or just to know you did everything you could." Scully looked at the professor, fingers knotted together. "To not know, when you could have known... that's not a choice I'd wish on anyone. If they truly don't want to know, I wouldn't tell them. I'd always give them the choice. It's their future. Personally I would always want to know. And if they didn't tell me, when I asked... I hope it would be because they're trying to preserve the space-time continuum, not to spare me pain."

"But you just said that the future is inevitable and cannot be changed," Anakin pointed out. "So that would mean that this hypothetical death can also not be changed."

He gazed out at nothing. "And it might not be to spare you pain. It might be sparing the teller pain."

"If it is. Honestly, I... get confused about it. I don't think anyone mortal can know what's inevitable for sure." Scully was quiet. Too much strangeness for her to be sure about that any more. "I'd still want to know." She thought of Mulder, always trying to protect her. Or just going into denial, being avoidant, trying to escape consequences. "Maybe. Pain is the point though, isn't it? We're supposed to learn from it. It's part of life. Maybe you can change yourself, if you can't change the future." She paused, and apologetically added, "C.S. Lewis. Although he had some severe doubts about that."

Ethics [Thursday, September 9, 2nd period]

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