My standard answer is the same as it is for the “What super power would you want if you could have it?”
Flying would be very very cool, there is no denying that. As would super strength or speed or elasticity. Invisibility would be also be very very cool, mostly because I’m just a big kid and I don’t think I’d ever get bored of women’s locker rooms.
But my choice would have to be telepathy. I don’t mean wimpy read surface thoughts telepathy, I mean Professor X level mental domination. Implant false memories/images, speak to people across the globe, delve into the maze of someone’s mind.
Would I use it for good, or for evil? Who knows?
Number two I guess would be the abillity to fly, just because that’s got to be the most amazing feeling.
You can keep number 3, I can get anything I could ever want with the first two.
By that logic, winning the lottery will make you feel like a failure. I don’t think that follows.
I think I’d be perfectly fine with unlimited wealth; I’d never have to worry about where my next meal was coming from. But, there’s a chance that I’d just sit around posting on the Dope all day, so I’d also wish for healthy immortality, which would mean that I could waste any amount of time I chose and it wouldn’t matter.
For a third wish, it might be good to wish for something non-selfish, but there are already a lot of good things I could do with my untold wealth. Mind control would certainly be useful, but I know I’d eventually become an evil monster, so that’s no good. Wishing for people to actually care about the environment would be nice, but if that got out of hand I might not be able to get a grilled rib eye anymore. Time travel would be handy, but could be dangerous to the timeline. Maybe I’d just wish to be able to know anything by concentrating on it. If nothing else, it’d allow me to figure out which women were worth asking to dance.
Except that if what you are wishing for wealth for is to be happy, you should just plain WISH to be happy.
My wishes would be:
(1) Great success, financially, professionaly, socially, interpersonally, healthwise and romantically for me and those I love, into perpituity
(2) A continued increase in human peace, love and understanding, globally
(3) To forget that I’d ever made these wishes
My first impulse would be to say, “Are you INSANE? Even I don’t think I can be trusted with three wishes like that? For the love of all that’s good and pure, get away from me?”
Then, a moment later: “So…I see you’re still here. Ah well. Kryptonian super-powers, plese. Oh, and immunity to kryptonite while you’re at it. And oh, yeah, obliterate yourself so you can’t interfere with my campaing of murder, rape, conqeust, rape, and tyranny.”
How long is “eventually?” for me it would be perhaps maybe ten minutes
Yep. 9 minutes, 59 seconds of do-gooding, and then, bam, I’m thinking, “you know, that alyson hanigan chick sure is purty…”
Yeah… in addition to wishing for health and protection from danger for myself the people I care about, I’d need to create some kind of alternate world where I could go crazy with my powers without actually hurting anyone.
All benefits ever associated with vampires (immortality, super speed, mind reading / mind control, flight, cool fangs when I want 'em, shapeshifting ability, etc.) with none of the drawbacks (no problems with sunlight, mirrors, crosses, stakes, silver, coffins, etc.) I’m not even goth and that sounds like fun.
Ability to perform any spells ever attributed to wizards, witches, warlocks, necromancers, clerics, or any other spellcasters ever imagined. At will. With controlled precision.
Hence the magicks Just imagining the ways you could screw with people while they’re live on national television gives me gigglefits. Or on a slow news day, you could summon a huge asteroid to come in on a collision course with Earth, then have it U-Turn for no apparent reason just to mess with physicists and astronomers. Or take a casual stroll across the Dead Sea and watch what happens to the world’s religious structures. Then revert history so the event(s) never happened, and do them again to test chaos theory a couple dozen times.
Completely perfect health. No more knee problems, no more allergies, don’t need contacts any more, no more PMS, and best of all, not more freakin’ migraines in the middle of class that make me want to shoot myself in the head, and eventually cause me to crawl into bed at 10pm, right after class, but not fall asleep until four AM.
cough Not that I didn’t have a great night or anything last night…
As much money as I need. I don’t know what set amount would be good, so I’ll take a magical, always-sufficient bank account. (No more student loans!)
One week during which all warring factions in the world set down their weapons, sit down, and talk it out. During that week, aid organizations get to do everything they’ve been trying to do in so many places (ie, give starving mothers food, provide medical care, etc.)
