Warnings: mass execution, pollution, desecration of corpses. Also if reading something depressing right now is a thing you need to not do right now, then I very strongly suggest that you not read this one.
Once upon a time, there lived a man who liked to walk to work. Every morning, he would pass an open pit mine full of convicted criminals doing hard labor, then a field full of farm hands, and finally a second pit full of badly injured and disfigured people. For a long time, he never noticed or commented on these things, except in passing. But one day, he had a thought, and he stopped to talk to one of the farm laborers about it.
“You know,” said the man, “everyone here hates that the criminals are made to work so close by. Some of them are murderers or child molesters. Don’t you think everyone would be happier if we could simply get rid of them?”
“I suppose so,” said the farm laborer. “But then who would work in the mine?”
“There are many farm hands in this area,” said the man, after thinking a moment. “Perhaps some of them could be paid to work in the mine.”
The farm laborer was incensed. “Only criminals work in the mine!” she said. “We are law-abiding citizens, and as good as anyone else! How dare you compare us to the people who do that work!”
The man bowed his head and apologized, and thought to himself that he would need to ask someone more desperate than a farm hand. When he passed by the pit, he got another idea. He looked over the edge of the pit and asked the people if they would be willing to work in the mine someone offered to pay them.
There was some discussion at the bottom of the pit, and even some outrage, but eventually someone called up and said, “Yes, we will work in the mine, if you give us the proper tools and offer us a ladder, so that we can climb up and be like anyone else.”
“Hm,” said the man. “I’d love to, but ladders cost money. How about I bring you a ladder, and for the price of one year of your wages working in the mine, you may use it.”
There was more angry discussion from the bottom of the pit, but at last they seemed to realize that they had no alternatives, save remaining in the pit. They agreed, if not enthusiastically.
That night, the man spoke to the owners of the mine. The owners agreed to the arrangement, and the next night, all the criminals were slaughtered. The third night, the man made a tall ladder out of the bones of the prisoners. When the ladder was finished, he carried it past the farm hands and towards the pit full of disfigured people. One of the farm hands noticed, and followed him toward the pit.
“Exactly what do you think you’re doing?” asked the farm hand.
“Well,” said the man, excitedly, “I’ve found that the people in this pit are very willing to work in the mine, since their own living conditions are so bad. So I spoke to the owners of the mine, who killed all the prisoners and let me turn their bones into a ladder. Now I can charge each of these people a years’ wages for the privilege of using my ladder and reaching the mine, where they will find employment. I expect to become fabulously wealthy.”
“That’s horrible!” exclaimed the farm hand. “These people aren’t criminals, any more than we are! You can’t make them work in a mine, and you can’t exploit them by charging them a year’s wages to use your ladder!”
“But they’ve agreed,” said the man, blinking.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” said the farm hand. “They’re so desperate they’ll say yes to anything, which means their consent doesn’t really count.”
“Fuck you!” screamed a voice from the bottom of the pit.
“Excuse me?” said the farm laborer, too startled to be impolite.
“I said fuck you!” screamed the voice, again. “Fuck you, and fuck the high horse you rode in on! We’ve been starving at the bottom of this fucking pit for years, and you never once thought to object to that! We’ve watched our elders die and raised our children in this pit, never knowing if they’d ever have the chance to walk in the sun and be treated like anyone else! And now, now that someone has found the only people in this world whose lives are more shitty than ours, and made a fucking ladder out of their fucking bones, you’re going to lecture us about the morality of selling ladders for too high a price? The fuck is wrong with you? Your first reaction should be, holy shit, someone killed a bunch of people and turned their bones into a fucking ladder! And your second reaction, when you’re good and through condemning turning people into ladders in about the strongest terms you can, should be something like, gee, maybe it’s time we fixed this fucking pit! And maybe, after the pit has been fucking fixed, and after people aren’t being fucking slaughtered and turned into fucking ladders, you can then worry about the fucking price of fucking climbing gear, but not a second before, you hear me?”
There was a moment of silence.
“Fuck you!” said the voice from the pit again, just for good measure.
There was another moment of silence, and then the man lowered his ladder into the pit. And the disfigured people climbed up the ladder, one by one, each of them forfeiting a year of wages as they did so. After a certain amount had climbed up, the man pulled the ladder back up, saying that he had enough people now to cover the work needed for the mine. And the people at the bottom of the pit screamed and cried and begged to be let up, but the man ignored them.
All the farm hands talked about how horrible it was, but none of them fixed the pit, and none of them took the ladder apart to cremate the remains of the prisoners. And for generations to come, the mine was worked by disfigured people from the pit. Whenever anyone died in an accident, or from disease, someone would lower the ladder and allow up exactly enough new workers to replace the ones who had died, then leave the others stranded in the pit.
Eventually, everyone forgot that it was supposed to be horrible. The ladder of bones and the mine run by disfigured people became as ordinary as the pit and the mine run by prisoners. But sometimes the farm hands still weakly objected to it, and sometimes a voice from the pit still screamed “fuck you”.
