I think removing it was a fine call. It is a nice paragraph, of course, but as you said, the entire thing is nicely written. And the next paragraph:
God would prevent it from ever actually happening, of course. At the very least, he’d visit some shade of gloom in Khan’s heart. But in the mathematical answer to the question “What if?”, there is no God in the axioms.
If I were adding in the torture paragraph, it’d probably actually replace the “shade of gloom” paragraph. I think they end up closely stacked against each other—if you’re saving the three lines from “gloom” then the slight length of “torture” isn’t too bad. Then it’s just “which is more powerful,” which I’m still mulling over.
I think removing it was a fine call. It is a nice paragraph, of course, but as you said, the entire thing is nicely written. And the next paragraph:
conveys the same idea well enough.
If I were adding in the torture paragraph, it’d probably actually replace the “shade of gloom” paragraph. I think they end up closely stacked against each other—if you’re saving the three lines from “gloom” then the slight length of “torture” isn’t too bad. Then it’s just “which is more powerful,” which I’m still mulling over.