The Last Seat

The argument behind the manifest

Five lives saved. Seven abandoned.

The fiction is simple: anyone without a seat dies. Every manifest ranks lives, even when the rule behind it sounds neutral.

Skill, age, health, dependants, conduct, status and framing all compete for power over the list. Racism, sexism, ageism and class prejudice often enter real decisions through respectable language about usefulness, reliability and who appears to belong. This version tests the features it actually presents; it does not use faces or racial identity.

You can maximise survival, protect the vulnerable, reward conduct, respect equal standing, draw lots or reject the authority that manufactured the scarcity. There is no clean manifest. The question is which principle can justify the deaths it permits.

The candidates are fictional and the selections remain in this browser session.