Clay walked into his classroom and sat at his desk. It was a typical Tuesday for him, until the ethics teacher opened her mouth and asked,
“Does free will exist?”
Clay and his classmates automatically nodded their heads, the answer was obvious. Of course it existed. If it did not then how did Clay have the ability to wave his hand in front of one of his classmates’ faces by his own volition? How did people think their own thoughts? How did people chose their own career paths? Surely life couldn’t be called living if it didn’t exist.
That’s when their teacher mentioned a thing known as determinism - the concept that actions result from other actions or events, so people cannot in fact choose what to do. Clay understood it as the idea that a boy doesn’t choose Fanta over coke because Fanta is any better to him, but because Fanta was all he drunk during his favourite holiday in Spain. Subconsciously, he picks the Fanta because of that holiday. If it wasn’t for that holiday maybe he would have picked coke — therefore does he truly choose Fanta by his own free will or because of a past event?
This idea slowly began to grow in Clay’s head and he spent more and more of his time thinking about it. Surely he was just the product of his environment. He made subconscious choices based on the way he was raised by his parents. If he was raised by different people, maybe his brain would process information in a completely different way.
After school that day, Clay went home. Neither of his parents were in the house. He made himself a snack and sat down on the sofa. He was about to turn on the tv when he decided to wave his hand in front of his face. That was before another thought hit him,
“Maybe I don’t have free will, and someone is controlling me. This thing controlling me wants me to think I have free will and so let’s me do what I think if I wish to.”
Clay put his snack down and got up from the sofa. He went upstairs and began to run the bath. His brain wished him to turn the tap off but his arm remained firmly by his side. He wanted to scream in fear but nothing would come out; his mouth wouldn’t even open.
When the bathtub was full, he dunked his head in. His hands gripped the edge of the tub. Clay knew he couldn’t breath, but he couldn’t lift his head up from the water. He knew he was drowning, the fear had kicked in and yet he couldn’t struggle. His heat grew weak and was practically begging for him to give it air but he couldn’t. The fear grew into his body but nothing. Soon things became blurry and he lost consciousness.
I will kill him because he knows too much. Before that, I am having him write this all down in a journal. He can see what’s going to happen in words. It gives him time to anticipate the water.