The Vestibule

Free will. These two words are known for their ability to strike awe - or terror - into a wide variety of people: philosophers, neuroscientists, theologians, psychologists, and workers in the field of artificial intelligence.

Even if we can't define it, or agree on what it is, we certainly know what it feels like. The effort of making a difficult decision. The attempt to rise above the easy, obvious response, the one that seems almost predetermined or pre-programmed.

Vestibule is a short, haunting story, and it's about free will, even if it's deliberately kept vague.

To explore this theme in a popular medium is difficult, which is why those who attempt it often explore the possibility of breaking away from a seemingly predetermined course, only to end on a resigned note of "we could change, but that'd be too hard. Maybe next time."

Pearl Jam's Sleight of Hand. Agatha Christie's Absent in the Spring. Adam Cadre's Shrapnel.

On the other hand, in Vestibule, if you play your cards right, you can "break free" - but the authors are fully aware that it's not easy.

The plot is deliberately minimal. You are a young person, of indeterminate gender, on a train journey to meet your "significant other", with whom you've been maintaining a long-distance relationship. In the course of your journey, you get to meet two other people - a man and a woman - who both have difficult decisions of their own to make. You ought to be happy at the approaching reunion - but you aren't. Do you want to commit to him (or her?) Are you willing to give up the comfort of your long-distance, on-off relationship for something more intimate - something that could be more fulfilling, but also more painful?

And when you do get the chance to make a choice, it's not clear what that choice is.

And even if you do make it of your own free will, how much of it was free? How much was due to the influence of the two people you'd met, or the stories you'd heard from them?

We'll never know. But we're left with a haunting little interlude that makes us, no matter how comfortable we are with our lives, look at ourselves a little more closely and carefully.

Free will is still an unsolved mystery. And perhaps it should stay that way.

Highly recommended.