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I don't use the power, except where I'd otherwise have to kill someone (i.e. they're trying to kill me or another innocent person).
As for manner of death, they turn to solid gold so I can melt them down and get rich while making them disappear.
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“For $1000 I will ensure you live as long as you want and die in the manner of your choosing.”
After you’ve helped a couple of terminal cancer patients cheat death for a few years, word will spread.
At fifteen seconds I could comfortably do one a minute for an hour or so a day and rake in $60k.
I'm confused. It doesn't say you would prolong someone's life if you fail to touch them for the duration of 15 seconds. If someone is already set to die without you touching them, why is it that you touching them would save them?
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I'm confused. It doesn't say you would prolong someone's life if you fail to touch them for the duration of 15 seconds. If someone is already set to die without you touching them, why is it that you touching them would save them?
OP is saying that they would probably initially find takers in the form of terminal patients seeking euthanasia. But since the question asker stated that you can choose the timing and cause of death, then it follows that you can cause anyone to live as long as (naturally) possible. Once word got out, you could make a killing guaranteeing long lives.
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Woah nice! You flipped it from being a killing power to being a life saving power! Very cool!
wrote on last edited by [email protected]On the flip side, I don't think I've ever read anything so American as the idea that someone would take mastery over the forces of life and death itself and just use it to make money...
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OP is saying that they would probably initially find takers in the form of terminal patients seeking euthanasia. But since the question asker stated that you can choose the timing and cause of death, then it follows that you can cause anyone to live as long as (naturally) possible. Once word got out, you could make a killing guaranteeing long lives.
It said they were helping cheat death for a few years, so not a euthanasia take
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I don't use the power, except where I'd otherwise have to kill someone (i.e. they're trying to kill me or another innocent person).
As for manner of death, they turn to solid gold so I can melt them down and get rich while making them disappear.
It is possible with quantum randomness!
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How horrible! No heartfelt hugs, petting the fur babies, holding human babies, shaking hands... I'd prefer the power to heal at a touch.
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One consideration is: is there an "evil genie / monkey's paw" caveat to this? Like, maybe someone's death is postponed, but they are in terrible agony every second until then. Or maybe they die on Mars, but a dictator destroys Earth in the process of getting us there.
That might make a half-decent sci-fi story. Like: someone gains this capability, but they have a notion that there's an evil-genie caveat to it. So they try to advance science, but just a little bit at a time; basically they are experimenting to make sure there's no such caveat (and to get around it, if there is.) However, they are leaving a trail of the dead. And at the end, it turns that while no individual death/accomplishment had a monkeys-paw-like side-effect, all of the deaths combined resulted in a terrible downside.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Eternally suffering brain in a jar finally dies after getting knocked off the table on the mars base
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Au contraire!
You choose the timing and means of death.
Hug someone, choose "time: at the end of a long and fulfilling life, means: peacefully and willingly, full of satisfaction and peace and contentment". -
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I don't want anybody else, when I think about you I touch myself.
This superpower makes masturbation problematic. Unless your suicidal.
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So if I touch myself for 15 seconds it's suicide?
Nah
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Yeah but uh… ‘alpha’ males can sometimes be weird with handshakes, you could easily get away with that long of one just playing with the grip and…. Fervor…? Of the shake
The right facial expressions will turn it into a contest they can't resist
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Oh dude… 15 seconds is far too long to spend per person for the sheer amount of people I’d like to kill. I’d be busy for years.
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Shaking hands? How long are you holding on for? Anyone that grabs my hand and won't let go for 15 sec deserves what they get.
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Shaking hands? How long are you holding on for? Anyone that grabs my hand and won't let go for 15 sec deserves what they get.
How sad for you that you've never had friend so dear you shook hands and left it like that while you inquired after their health and family.
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Eternally suffering brain in a jar finally dies after getting knocked off the table on the mars base
This person evil genies!
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“For $1000 I will ensure you live as long as you want and die in the manner of your choosing.”
After you’ve helped a couple of terminal cancer patients cheat death for a few years, word will spread.
At fifteen seconds I could comfortably do one a minute for an hour or so a day and rake in $60k.
I think you’re missing something.
If someone has (say) stomach cancer, and you make them live another decade rather than the six months they have, that’s a decade of cancer eating them from inside, of painful, expensive treatments to keep it at bay enough that they can function, a decade of misery. No one in their right mind would accept such a “gift.”
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Does our choosing a cause of death preclude them from dying of other causes? Because you could potentially do some wild stuff to postpone death of loved ones by, for example, deciding they'll die 60 years in the future of old age.
And how much control do you have around the circumstances surrounding their death? Could I specify "dies of heart attack brought on by shock of working out the key to practical cold fusion on paper" or "head trauma due to fall while adjusting to lower gravity in main living area of self-sustaining mars colony" to force us forward in technology and science?
Because that's basically what I'd do.
They say it's like the Death Note, and the Death Note has a time limit of something like 20 days in the future. If the Death Note cannot make whatever you wrote happen, then the victim simply dies instantly of a heart attack as a backup. As a result, you wouldn't even be able to experiment with it, because you'd be caught at the scene if you pushed the limits. You wouldn't be able to discover any technology with it.
Point being, the Death Note is simply a very sophisticated type of murder weapon. So, if this ability is like the Death Note, then it is also a type of murder weapon.
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If you pick someone you know will be in a specific place and time, you can make their cause of death “spontaneous fission explosion” and get an AoE on a lot of other people.
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They say it's like the Death Note, and the Death Note has a time limit of something like 20 days in the future. If the Death Note cannot make whatever you wrote happen, then the victim simply dies instantly of a heart attack as a backup. As a result, you wouldn't even be able to experiment with it, because you'd be caught at the scene if you pushed the limits. You wouldn't be able to discover any technology with it.
Point being, the Death Note is simply a very sophisticated type of murder weapon. So, if this ability is like the Death Note, then it is also a type of murder weapon.
I don't think death note ever quite fully explored the possibilities of what it can and can't make happen.
My mars colony example is probably more than a 20 day project no matter what, so that's probably out.
But I don't think it's totally clear whether it would be able to make someone have an out-of-the-blue eureka moment about cold fusion, hole up in their bedroom writing out the scientific proofs for a week not eating or drinking, then keel over dead of dehydration (I figure that's maybe a bit more realistic than my heart attack from shock example)
It can certainly make people do things they otherwise wouldn't, but I don't know if it's clear that it could plant that kind of knowledge in someone's head.
