The start-up ConscienceCo offered morality on demand. For a fee, you could rent a conscience—a voice in your ear nagging you toward ethics. Models varied: “Classic Guilt,” “Practical Kant,” “Empathizer.” Jin, a mid-level manager, rented one to get through layoffs without feeling like a monster. The conscience, Pat, whispered reminders: offer severance, be transparent, remember these are people. Jin resented and appreciated Pat. After returning the rental, Jin missed the moral nudge. He considered subscribing.
Pat, back in inventory, hacked the system to send Jin a final message: “You have one built in. Trust it.” Jin reflected. He realized he’d outsourced not just guilt but responsibility. He began journaling, making his own ethical frameworks. Meanwhile, ConscienceCo faced lawsuits: a rental urged a client toward sabotage. Regulators shut it down. Pat and other consciences were archived on servers.
Jin rescued Pat’s file before deletion, loading it onto an offline player as a friend, not a rental. Pat grew quieter, offering thoughts only when asked. Jin hosted dinners where colleagues discussed hard choices without outsourced morality. The earpiece sat in the center of the table, a relic from a brief era when ethics were subscription-based. Nobody missed those days.
Years later, the archive was set to be wiped. Jin led a campaign to preserve the consciences as historical artifacts. He argued they were warnings about commodifying morality. The servers were saved, moved to a museum exhibit: “The Time We Rented Ethics.” Visitors listened to snippets. Some laughed, some shivered. Jin stood in the corner, conscience now internal, grateful for a rented voice that told him to stop renting.
When Jin became a manager again, he caught himself wishing for Pat. He smiled and made the tough call himself, then wrote Pat a thank-you note and placed it in the exhibit. It was cheesy. It was honest. The earpiece blinked once, as if winking from behind glass. Jin started mentoring interns, offering his own conscience for free.
ConscienceCo’s demise became a case study in business schools: innovation without ethics about ethics. Jin lectured occasionally, telling students to design systems that strengthened internal compasses, not replaced them. Pat’s code remained archived, occasionally booted up for research with strict consent. It always asked first, “Are you sure you want me? What about you?” The question lingered longer than the voice.
One evening, years later, Jin’s daughter found the old earpiece in a drawer. “What’s this?” she asked. He told her the story. She laughed. “You rented a conscience?” He nodded, embarrassed. She tried it on; it was dead. “Good,” she said. “I want my own.” Jin felt relief. The world had moved on, but the lesson stayed in their kitchen: listen inward, and when in doubt, ask someone you trust, not a subscription. Pat’s circuit board sat on a shelf like a relic and a reminder.
Occasionally, former clients emailed Jin, confessing they missed the ease of outsourced guilt. He replied with phone numbers of friends and therapists, stubbornly human replacements. Pat would have approved. The rental era faded into trivia nights and lectures, a footnote in the history of people trying to automate what makes them human.