The Trolley Problem

“How much do you have?” you ask. It really doesn’t matter; you’ve already decided to let them board. You know full well that the city is more expensive than tourists realize, so it’s easy to understand how they might not have budgeted enough to have a trolley fare left over at the end of the day, especially if they weren’t expecting to be riding one.

“Enough for three,” she says, and that seals the deal in your mind. There’s a gray area when it comes to foals anyway; certainly if they’re small enough to be carried they don’t get charged, and while only two are being currently carried, a third could be if her hooves got tired.

“Welcome aboard,” It’s a slow night anyway; the trolley isn’t all that full, and if you’re considering the overall economics of it, it’s better to get three fares for six passengers rather than no fares for no passengers.

They all clamber aboard and the mare dumps out her bit purse into the fare box. Her foals trot off to seats and when you look back to make sure that everypony’s secure, you see that most of them are looking out the window, as you’d expect. One of them, however, is watching you intently as you advance the throttle and ring the bell.

•••

“So what made you decide that you wanted to be a trolley operator?”

“Oh, well, you’ll think it’s silly,” your trainee says. “Back when I was just a foal, we were visiting Manehattan and I thought that the trolleys were the most amazing thing and I really wanted to ride one but we didn’t have the bits, so Mom said that we couldn’t . . . but then we had to, ‘cause we were running late, we would have missed our train, and the trolley operator let us board even though we didn’t have enough.”

“Huh.”

He looks down at his hooves. “It’s weird, I know.”

“Not so weird,” you tell him. You reach back and flick off a circuit breaker.