Here at Ask Erik, we've spent a lot of time reading books and comics, watching movies, and browsing through the Internet in the hopes of finding the answers to life's biggest mysteries. Is there life after death? How can science and religion coexist peacefully? Why is everything raspberry flavored always blue? Having instead amassed a vault of useless knowledge stored in his head, Erik instead tackles your questions and tries to find the answers you care about (or a reasonable facsimile).
This episode might be short, but it's sweet.
To Erik: If you had three wishes, what would you wish for?
I actually worked this out at one point. Let's see if I can remember it off the top of my head.
1) I wish for all wishes granted to me to be as through I, having full knowledge of all possible consequences due to wording, meaning, hidden definition, or intent of the granter of the wish I am invoking, would have worded when making the wish to get the ultimate ideal result without fear of twists, proverbial curveballs, or Twilight Zone-esque hidden results that would turn the wish into a negative experience, and that if the only result of any wish I make would be a massively negative result, that the wish would be nullified as though it had never been wished, providing essentially an instant "take back," and providing me a basic knowledge of why said wish would be a bad idea.
2) I wish to have a self-imposed variable amount of talent of any skill or natural ability I choose, whether mystical, physical, mental, or otherwise, allowing me to choose at any given time what my level of ability would be, and that the laws of the universe would adapt to allow whatever skill or ability I choose to have in such a way that it would not endanger my life or any unintended targets of said skill or ability upon use of the skill or ability, even if it would not normally function due to the current laws of our universe.
3) I wish that all debts, liens, loans, payments due, liabilities, commitments, mortgages, reckonings, responsibilities, invoices, manifests, price tags, obligations, and claims upon anything I am in possession of or will be in possession of one day or are invariably linked to my personage would be made completely optional based on my decision.
See, the first lets me not get hosed by the typical genie "ironic twist" to the wish. The second...well, lets me do anything from fix a VCR to cast spells like Harry Potter, and the last means that the genie, demon, or whatever other source of magic won't get to claim my soul afterwards.
But provided I had a genie imposing strict limitations on what I could wish for, I guess I could come up with some low key wishes. Plus, I'll admit these are rather selfish, when in fact my wishes would probably be for family members and friends to help them in some way.
1) I wish I could, upon deciding that I wanted the ability to at any given time, replace my own singing ability, voice, and/or musical talent/skill with any other individual I could think of.
See, I've never had a good singing voice, and while it's not important and I probably wouldn't (necessarily) try to go out and win America's Got Talent afterward, it'd be nice to be able to sing like some of my musical heroes.
2) I wish I could fly in such a way that I would require nothing more than thought to lift and control my- y'know what, I wish I could fly like Superman, complete with compensations in place to keep me from getting injured due to speed, wind resistance, or any other factor that might cause myself or others I'm flying with harm either directly or indirectly.
I just always wanted to fly. Forget the car, forget airplanes, I'll just fly myself anywhere I want to go. ...though I'd probably have to re-learn how to use a compass. Or just keep my phone well-charged for GPS.
3) I wish for the ability to restore anything I touched to its ideal shape and functionality, but only when I choose to use the ability and on a level I choose, having both meanings of level of repair and alteration and also whether it be at a micro level or a macro level, allowing repair of anything from a broken rock to a large complex machine, and allowing a painless healing of any people I touched in this way.
...yeah, this would probably mostly be used to help other people, but man, wouldn't that be a sweet power? Car's broken? Boom, fixed. Got the flu? Boom, you're fixed (and possibly better!).
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