Another story about morality, and a story about the will to live. Wolfe’s short stories are rarely this straightforward, even on their surface. An imagining of a social-psychological study along the lines of the Stanford prison experiment, this story takes the form of an exit interview from one of the participants. We don’t hear the interviewer’s questions, only the horrifyingly matter-of-fact responses. A very disquieting story.

First published in The Ides of Tomorrow: Original Science Fiction Tales of Horror, Little, Brown, 1976. Collected in Endangered Species, Tor, 1989