When you live forever, like I have, the question of morality pops up with annoying regularity. It is hard to live a moral life, when those around you are little more than fireflies, gone almost overnight. And some of the Eternals have embraced that viewpoint, ruling worlds and solar systems as tyrants. However, while you may be hard to kill, overthrowing a tyrant is oddly easy, especially given enough time. One thing we did in the Eternals, during our meetings, was to argue about morality. My favourite argument was the Vetinari Question.

This is based off a story about the ruler of a city who had arranged things so that everyone was just a bit better off with him as the ruler than they would be with anyone else as the ruler. So, no one wanted to kill him. However, what if he deserved to die?

The set up to this question is to imagine a gang leader, who eventually, through killing all opponents, comes to rule the underworld of a city. In doing so, there are many innocent casaulties. Some of these are a boys family. The boy then joins a gang to be safe, finding in them a new family. This gang is then also killed by the gang leader as he seized control of the city.

Now, at this stage, everyone would agree that it would be right to kill the gang leader, and that the boy would be in the right to do so, through loss and through stopping an evil. Ignoring the ideas of law and order, which for the purposes of this Question are irrelevant, few would blame the boy for killing him.

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However, what if time passes? What if, after seizing control of the underworld, the gang leader then goes on to gain control of the city as a whole? Then, instead of becoming a tyrant, he makes life better for everyone. Funds schools, aids the poor, improves the economy. Would he deserve to die? Is it still ok for the boy to kill him?

But that is not the final question. During this time, the boy has constantly sought to kill the gang leader. He has become an assasin, gaining experience and skills through killing many people, the innocence of which was never brought into it. So, does this boy, who has become a man steeped in evil and death, still have the right to kill the gang leader, who has become the ruler of the city? Would he be right to do so?

At this point, the argument becomes that of conflicting moral viewpoints. Does doing good make up for doing bad? And can you justify doing bad to help you do good?

However, that is still not the final question. The final question is thus; assuming all of what has been said before, imagine now if the gang leader turned city ruler had arranged things in order to make it so that if he died, then the good he had done would be undone. With his death, the city would return to the state it was before he took control, with the poor oppressed and gangs constantly fighting.

So, now, the boy, who became an assasin is planning his last mission. He will kill the man who destroyed his life, leading him to where he is now. He sneaks into his mansion in the dead of night, approaches the bed of the man who killed everyone he had ever loved, raises his weapon and...

And freeze!

This is the question. This is not about the morality of the men's actions. This is about what would you do if you were the man. Would you kill him? Why and why not?