You rescue the proverbial genie, and he grants you a boon. But he’s a fairly limited genie, and you must choose from among the following boons. Which one would you choose? Which ones would you not even consider?
(There are, of course, a few qualifications, provisos and quid pro quos. In particular, whatever boon you are granted, you will never be able to use it for profit in any way. It will benefit you only in the straightforward fashion, no matter what. You will not be able to demonstrate it and win Randi’s $1M. You will not be able to have it tested in a lab, opening up new frontiers of science. If you demonstrate it for other people, they will believe you, and know that you have that capability, but will somehow, magically, just find nothing remarkable about that, will refuse to believe it should be publicized or written up, yada yada yada. They will not pay you money to exercise your talent. Don’t fight the hypothetical.)
So, you may have one of the following:
(1) You cease aging for 15 years, after which aging “turns back on” (but without any sudden rapid aging to make up for lost time)
(2) You can shapeshift into any human form. If you want to be tall and blonde and white and female and pretty, you can do so. You can maintain your new level of fitness/beauty with zero effort. Each change takes a week or so. You can not disguise yourself as existing people, and people you already know will somehow always know that it’s you, and not be surprsied. (This will not cure diseases, but will grant whatever health benefits being “fit” normally grants, assuming you choose to be “fit”. This will not save you from starvation if you get stuck without food. This will not restore missing limbs, cure paralysis, cure blindness, etc. The only “cosmetic” factor you can not change is age… if you’re 60, you can be one of those 60-year-olds who looks INCREDIBLE for their age, but you can’t appear to be 20.)
(3) You will have perfect health until the day you die. No colds. No headaches. No diseases. No dementia. If you would have died of natural causes at age 88 before making this wish you’ll still die at 88, but you’ll be incredibly healthy until the end. If you would have died at age 50 before making this wish, of horribly painful cancer after three years or misery, you will still die at age 50, but of a sudden, painless, heart attack. (This will not fully protect you from, say, a car crash, or being shot, although you will be supernaturally resistant to infection, which will certainly increase your survivability.)
(4) You will never be the victim of property crime or violent crime
(5) You speak and read all human languages perfectly (although can use this skill only for your own benefit… no benefitting humanity by writing dictionaries for thousands of now-obsolete languages, etc.)
(6) Once a month, you can instantaneously travel anywhere on earth. While there, you will have documentation showing you travelled there legally and normally (but if you travel to Afghanistan, you might still get kidnapped or whatever). You can take up to 4 people total, but doing so reduces how often you can travel (so 6 trips a year with one other, etc.) Both directions of travel require a few hours notice, and can’t be done if you’re in trouble, so you can’t use this as a “get out of emergency free” card. If you travel somewhere and then get put in jail, you can’t return until you’re out of jail (just as if you’d travelled there a “normal” way).
(7) You can access a tiny pocket universe which contains a room where you can comfortably spend the night, have a shower, eat some breakfast, etc. Think of it as basically a clean but very barebones motel 6. This lets you, for instance, hike around the wilderness without having to carry a tent and food. Or travel around a foreign country without having to worry about hotels and hostels. You can NOT live there full time, nor can you spend more than 12 hours there out of any 24 hour period. You can access it up to 60 times a year. It is stocked (and restocked) with bandaids, towels, granola bars, etc, but has no internet access, no TV, and you can’t store things there for later retrieval. It can fit up to four people, but is uncomfortable with more than two.
(8) You have lifetime subscriptions to every streaming service, entertainment service, media outlet, etc, that exists or ever will exist. You will have free access to every book that can be read on a Kindle, every TV show or movie that is on Netflix or Hulu or HBOGo, etc. Also, they will always appear/stream/whatever with perfect clarity even when there is no non-magical internet access. Also you have full access to all informational websites one would normally have to subscribe to (ie, newyorktimes.com), and all music streaming services. You will be able to access this on any device, but also just inside your brain if you want, in a fashion that is fully satisfying.
(9) You have a magical personal chef who will make you an absolutely perfect version of any food you want for any meal, ever, for you and up to three others. Ingredients are free. (Note that meat you eat still somehow came from an actual cow, so you can’t get around being a vegan, but you can always specify the source/quality of the ingredients, so it can have been an incredibly happy cow.)
(10) Your final option is to receive a single lump sum of US dollars. How much would it have to be to beat out all of the above options? (If you take this option, you CAN use the money for anything, including giving it all to charity… the only-benefit-yourself restrictions don’t apply.)