Wish List
Naturally, around this time, wish lists are made. Here's mine.
1. To have the super power that woman in The 4400 has to take a super realistic mental holiday that lasts as long as she wants while only seconds pass in real life.
2. To be able to fly on my own power, not in a machine of any kind.
3. To be able to teleport any distance.
4. To age very slowly and have a long life expectancy and be really healthy.
5. To live happily ever after with my one true love.
So generally, I'm running on a fantasy/sci-fi theme here. What? Like if someone could give you anything you could possibly want and you'd ask for something mundane like money? Really? And what currency, pray tell, considering how everything seems to be crashing left, right and center? How about, to always have the material things I want? Isn't that what money does for you? You gotta refine the wish, can't just say something like, to always have what I want because then you'll start having love-sick morons hanging around who might shoot you or something cos they got jealous.
If you're completely baffled at why I put that strange super power as number one, well, that sort of lumps in four and five together. And it fits in so nicely with real life, without being real life. On that mental holiday, you can do what you want, go where you like, have all the time in the world to just relax, after a stressful day. Imagine, after each day of work, you could just go on a vacation that lasts for weeks, even years if you like. Suddenly work isn't so bad after all.
And see, if your super powers were something more real-life based, it could end up being nothing more than a parlour trick you can't make money off of, or something that would really complicate your life, with government agencies hunting you down to work for them or to kill you off. That quiet little power would let me go on with my life and be the most well-adjusted person ever. I like it.
The books always go on about how eternal life has the cons of the people you love growing old and dying around you. That mental vacay power lets you bring people in with you, so you and your partner can have all that time together, but you won't have to leave without each other. I mean, I guess you could always wish for eternal life for the both of you, but what if you got sick of each other after, say, the first 50 years of so? Makes it kinda tricky to move on.
About number two. Well. I've always wanted to fly. Some of my best and most frustrating dreams are of me flying, but I can't go beyond a certain height. And I always have wings in them. I'm sure it means something to those dream analysing people out there, but I've not bothered to figure out what it means, since I dream so often and I can't remember most of it anyway.
The truth is, far out as this sounds, I've always believed in magic. And I believe that we can't really touch it because we're too far removed from it. It was probably around a really long time ago before we got all industrial and technological. I believe it still exists, just beyond our reach, and that there are others out there who believe in it too.
Carl Jung posited the idea of a Collective Unconscious, kinda like this giant server shared by the whole of humanity that consists of everything we've ever imagined and thought about. Some things, which enough of us believe in, manifest themselves all over, which is why ancient civilisations share certain myths without any way of communicating, like dragons and angels.
I know it sounds crazy, but it may be coming back. The 4400, Heroes, god knows how many superhero comics and novels. All these super powers are really just another sort of magic. A much more limited sort, but still, magic. One of the games I used to play was called Shadowrun, where one day normal human society as we know it was transformed and magic re-exerted itself. Maybe that might happen. I can only wish.
