Hypothetically

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Another favor! Your habit of performing minor kindnesses (offering directions to a bowling alley, maybe) benefits yet another extra-dimensional sorcerer. Surprise! This time the sorcerer gives you a special stone that will change you in a very specific way.

The grateful sorcerer informs you that all you have to do is close you eyes and say “I wish that, for the rest of my life, I will never…” and then say a single thing you will never do, or never do again. It must be something you do with your mind: an emotion, an addiction, a thought, a memory, etc. You can’t say “… will never die of a heart attack” or “will never have less than a million dollars in my bank account” because those things aren’t habits, thoughts, feelings.

You mention, politely, that there is a long storytelling tradition in our world in which magical gifts such as this one always operate in such a way to harm the person using it in an unexpected way. The sorcerer laughs at this in a startled way, as though you’ve said something scandalous, then assures you that such a person would be an infamous criminal back home, and then assures you that there is nothing sneaky or underhanded about this gift. It will perform as described.

The sorcerer vanishes (to go bowling, I’m sure) leaving you with the stone. You have a chance to rid yourself, for the remainder of your life, of a particular mental quirk. Would you make the wish? What would the wish be?

5 thoughts on “Hypothetically

  1. LabRat001

    Hhhmmm I was going with forget peoples names but Eddie Y has got there first so . . .

    I wish that, for the rest of my life, I will never procrastinate.

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