joshuaayt said:
OP: My power? Immortality- whether by consciousness-transferrals to my reincarnated body, or ordinary lack of aging- is the power I've wanted since I first realised that death was inevitable, way back in Year 1.
We spend so much time being afraid of death that we forget the one, overwhelming benefit death offers every species: cutting short suffering. Obviously when we talk about immortality we're picturing always being young and healthy, not laying in a bed suffering from lung cancer forever and ever.
But it's a dangerous world out there, and any number of freak accidents could get you stuck somewhere, with no escape, for the rest of time.
Say an earthquake strikes the building that you're in, and it collapses while you're in the basement parking garage. You're pinned under a million tons of concrete and drywall. All you can do is wait for rescue. Only don't count on being rescued, because the people in charge of doing that tend to give up when shit gets too hard to dig through and they've pulled enough people out to say, "We tried."
The only hope you might have is that when they build on the newly vacant spot a decade later, they might discover you along with other dead bodies while moving the rubble. But if the city of Savannah is any indication, people find it easier to just build on top of all the corpses instead of moving them somewhere else.
OK, but really what are the odds you'll be caught in an earthquake (or any other disaster of that nature)? Well, if you live forever, the odds are pretty much 100 percent. Unless the world ends before it has a chance to happen. So now instead of getting trapped in a building, you have to worry about being the lone survivor of a nuclear war, or a giant meteor strike, or another Ice Age, or collision with another planet, or the sun dying.
Even if you make it out unscathed, you're now alone. You'll be forced to live out your life slowly going crazy like a less awesome Will Smith without any zombies to shoot. You won't even have the dog.
And that's assuming the Earth stays intact. A comet could come smashing into the planet like the Kool-Aid Man and send you hurtling through infinite space. Best case scenario is you only float through the void for a few decades before you crash on Mars. At that point you're basically passing the time until intelligent life evolves there. You're going to get really good at making sand castles.
Personally I'd like the ability to check the outcomes of choices beforehand, or at least a huge sign that pops up with a mental saying "DON'T DO THAT!" when I'm about to decide.
