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Did you ever fantasize about having three wishes? I have. And I've obviously given it way too much thought as you will find out if you keep reading.
The problem with the three wishes scenario in most stories, T.V. shows, and movies is that the wishes weren't well thought out or articulated. In a number of cases, the wish always comes back to bite the wisher in the ass. Unless of course, the wisher in this case, wished to be bitten in the ass. Then something else would have happened. But anyway, my point here is that I think I could make it work if I got a chance to explain exactly how I want my wish to work. And to whom (or what) I would be explaining this, I have no idea. That's not the point. Be it genie or monkey's paw, I think if I was able to lay out exactly how I wanted the wish to work, I could come out on top in the wish department. So my assumption in this little worthless exercise is that I get three wishes and I get to explain them exactly the way I want them before they get enacted. Or granted. Or whatever the hell it is that genies do.
One more thing. This excludes the wish for more wishes argument. Wishing for "an infinite amount of wishes", a 100 additional wishes, or even 3 more wishes, isn't in the spirit of the offer and I think would cause the genie or paw to slam my ass into a bottle or lamp and lose me somewhere hot and sandy for a 1000 or so years. And who wants that?
Wish Number 1: The Ability to Manipulate Time.
Notice that I said "manipulate". I don't just want the ability to go back in time, I want the ability to kind of "surf" the time stream. I have a number of conditions to this wish but first let me get this condition out of the way right now: I do not want the ability to go forward in time. I don't want to see what will happen to me. I don't want to see what will happen to my loved ones or my enemies. I don't want to see what happens to society, the human race, or even the planet. Nope, don't want it. Don't even want the temptation of it. So I'm stating this right now. I ONLY WANT TO GO BACK IN TIME. There. I think that's clear. No. Wait a minute. That sounds like I can go back in time, but can't return to my current time. Damn genie, you know what I mean. No future!
So, lets move on to what I DO want. First of all, I want to be able to slip back in time without it having an effect on my current existence. For example, if I want to go back to Dallas in September of 1963 for a few days to see if there really was another gunman on the grassy knoll, it would happen in an instant as far as my real "here and now" life is concerned. I could basically be typing this entry and then I could immediately spend three days watching JFK and Jackie O ride around in their Lincoln limo in glorious color (as opposed to grainy Zapruder). As soon as I was done watching the events unfold, I would come right back to sitting here typing this entry with no time passing and no visible effect to an outside observer. Sure, I might be a little mentally tired, but that should be the only effect that my time travel has on the current timestream. Unless I choose otherwise. But more on that later.
The second condition pertains to how I travel back in time. I would like to be able to choose whether I go back in time as an ethereal observer or to go back as an active participant. Remember how Scrooge and his three guiding spirits bounced around Ebenezer's past, present and future? No one could see them, they simply were able to observe. So if I wanted to be in a closed room and watch the Last Supper take place, I could watch the whole thing go down without anyone knowing I was there. This would assume that there was a Last Supper - something I would obviously be able to find out. Conversely, if I wanted to actually stop Lee Harvey in his assassination plot (and again, this assumes that it really was Lee Harvey behind the whole thing - also something I would be in a position to find out) I could assume any of my appearances from my personal past (hey, I control time, so why not?) and take an active role in the proceedings. So I would have an active mode and a observer mode.
How cool would it be to go back 2000 years to Jerusalem in observer mode and watch that Jesus thing go down. I'd really want to know what the heck was going on with that. I know a great number of people believe in that without having to see it, but what can I say? I'd really like to see for myself. Or to find out what happened to Amelia Earhardt? To actually see what happened on the Titanic? None of that Jack and Rose crap, I'm sure. I want to see how the hell they got those big ass slabs out to make Stonehenge. I want to see the first Thanksgiving. I want to watch Harry Houdini kick some water tank's ass. I want to watch Rosa Parks keep her seat. I want to see that pesky Loch Ness Monster make an appearance. I want to see those flying monkeys kidnap Dorothy, Toto, Scar.... Oh, wait a minute. Forget that last one.
And think how cool it would be to go back in time in active mode and take part in past events. I would love to break up that whole Kennedy assassination. Just appear behind Oswald in the Book Depository and bump his arm just as he was going to fire. Whoops! Sorry, Lee Harvey. Hey, what are you doing up here anyway? What's with the gun? Oh, and another thing about this wish. At the moment that any bodily harm would occur to me, I snap back to my present existence. Kind of like a safety switch. So even if I suddenly get bitten in half by a pterodactyl (shut up), the instant before I die, I spring back into my current me. I mean, Oswald was thought of as a pretty fast shot. I don't want him whipping that rifle around and blowing me away before I know what's going on. With that "safety switch" in place, I could go back to some pretty dangerous situations and still know I'm going to get back. Sure I'd have to steal some clothes and take out the earrings (or I could really get shot in some times and places) but I could scramble to fit in for a little while. For those of you worried about the language problem, come back tomorrow for wish number two.
The reason I would like to be able to go back in time in an active mode is to be able to see what changes would take place if I made changes to the timestream. I want to treat my personal time travel like a computer game. Which means that I want to be able to go back in time and change things and then fast forward to what would be the equivalent of my current time to see the results. Using the Kennedy example, if I stopped the assassination, I want to be able to fast forward to 1970, 1980, 1990 whatever, and see what the domino effect changes would be. Because you know that all the President would be different. Kennedy being alive might have meant Nixon may have never been elected which means .... blah blah blah. Would the U.S. have gone through depression. Would we have stepped in and taken over the Middle East so there would have been no energy crisis? Would we have been wiped out by any number of irate countries? Instead of Ronald Reagan, would Vincent Price have become president (and how cool would THAT have been. Welcome to the White House on Haunted Hill...)?
And staying true to the "computer game" analogy, I want to be able to fast forward or rewind or even stop time so that I can move through it at will. So that if I changed history by killing Hitler, I could come forward to 2001 to see what the changes would be. Who knows what would happen to Mel Brooks? And conversely if I wanted to find out where bin Laden is right now, I could rewind in time until he was last seen in public and then fast forward back to the present to see where he really is right now. Hey, then I could actually give that information to the government. Of course, that information would probably get me arrested, so maybe not.
In active mode, I could get a job at NASA and "discover" that the O-Rings on the Challenger Space Shuttle were defective. I could push John Wilkes Booth down the stairs at Ford's Theater. I could talk to Albert Einstein. I could try to make out with Cleopatra. Hell, I could board one of those Boston flights on September 11th with a duffle bag full of box cutters and give two to every passenger on board.
Setting aside the historical aspect of this wish, I could use active mode to see what would have happened in my life had I done things differently. Imagine if you could go through high-school knowing what you know now. Having the confidence that you have now. Knowing that the a-holes that bothered you would be in jail or working the drive-thru in a few years. Knowing not to have that nasty haircut or not to make those particular, unfortunate, fashion choices. Knowing not to care what every one else thought and that every crisis wasn't the end of the world. I would have a friggin' field day.
I think I covered everything in this wish. Stay tuned for wishes two and three.
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