Here is the truth of Omelas:
It is never just one. Never just one whose misery buys the pleasure of Omelas.
There are dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. There are pits next to the palaces.
Some serve directly. They live in the pits and the slums and the outskirts and each day they travel to the palaces where they cook the meals and clean the rooms and wipe the baby butts and make the pleasures of Omelas possible.
And the Favored of Omelas see the painted-on smiles of those whose children would starve if they were fired, and imagine that they are happy in slavery.
Then there are those who serve as playthings for the Favored of Omelas: the mocked and bullied and abused, the school sluts and the fat girls, the trailer trash and the druggies, tormented without consequence and rounded up by the police to fill out the quotas they tell the world they don’t have.
Things thrown from passing cars, trucks swerved to spray water and make them jump, mockery shouted as they pass by.
What were you wearing? Don’t try to ruin a good boy’s life.
The Favored tell themselves that the Abused deserve it.
And that’s how they can take pleasure in Omelas.
But there are some among the Servants and the Playthings, some who aren’t so broken that getting their head shoved in a microwave and getting fucked in the ass isn’t just another day. Some of them walk away and some stay because they have nowhere to go but the basement of Omelas.
Their strong wounded hearts nurse a mighty rage, and a mighty curse, a curse that slowly eats at the foundations of Omelas.
And the Favored in their palaces mourn the downfall of Omelas and wonder how anyone could want something so perfect destroyed, and as they grow old and frightened, they forbid Omelas to change. All knowledge they disapprove is silenced. Newcomers are unwelcome. Any pleasure that is not theirs is forbidden. Any business that would bring newcomers or forbidden pleasure is stifled. Wealth ceases to flow.
Hope withers. More and more walk away. The Favored find they cannot live without the Wounded Hearts.
And Omelas doesn’t fall. It rots.