"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" is a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin about a beautiful and bright city in which everyone is filled with happiness and joy constantly, at the price of a small boy, locked in a small closet, beaten, abused, living in his own excretia. Everyone in the city knows about this price, and most stay. But every once in a while, one of the inhabitants quietly packs up their belongings and leaves.

Being the angst-ridden cynic that I am, I at one point spewed forth a story that was an inversion of "Omelas".