Its like death note, but instead of names and face, you have to touch them.
So you can’t just simply google names of dictators (that would be a very boring c/AskLemmy thread), gotta be creative with this ability.
I might be meet and greeting a lot of cops.
I’d have a wank
Woah there it says 15 seconds
Extend my foot on the bus so that I’m able to touch the wanker listening to music on speakerphone.
I can choose the timing of death? Ok, I touch my family and friends and keep them all alive for the next 70 years.
Meet and greet with the president of the US.
Those extended handshake durations will be his undoing!
“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.
Woah nice! You flipped it from being a killing power to being a life saving power! Very cool!
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…
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.
I hadn’t considered going straight for euthenasia gigs but that’s an excellent suggestion!
And you’re right, it says in the question I can choose the time of their death so, yes, according to that I can gift virtual immortality.
It said they were helping cheat death for a few years, so not a euthanasia take
@cattywampas@midwest.social is correct, though, uffering the euthenasia service is an even better option to bring peace to those who seek it while getting the word out that I have this ability.
theoretically since you are also extending the life unnaturally anyways, even if its just a lifespan why not make them live multiple lifespans, or near biological immortal(but not immune to serious disease)
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.”
I guess people in that much pain would want to die fairly soon but, perhaps, after they’d had enough time to sort their affairs and say goodbye to their loved ones. And they’d be able to die ‘peacefully in their sleep’.
This power sucks, stroking your flower would suck having to stop every 14,9 seconds….
Reminds me about a certain king who starved to death because everything he touched turned to gold.
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.
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.
Eternally suffering brain in a jar finally dies after getting knocked off the table on the mars base
This person evil genies!
in alot of scifi, like sandman, supernatural , mcu they can extend thier life indefinitely or give them longer than natural lifespan. of course if they do something really destructive you would have the ability to instantly rescind his life wherever.
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.
I think if your cold fusion idea were possible, Light would have used that idea. Part of the reason L got onto him was that he obviously needed to see the results of his experiments on prisoners, and the only way to see those results would be to have access to police records.
But if Light had the ability you’re talking about, all he’d have to do is to tell them to do it in public. A death row inmate who escaped and then drew a giant pentagram before dying would make the news. And if the victim has access to whatever inaccessible knowledge is necessary to complete the task, then escaping would be a breeze.
Light would have been dumb to overlook something like that. He was surprisingly dumb in a lot of ways, but I think that for discovering the capabilities of the death note, he’s not supposed to be dumb.
No, OP’s title says timing and cause of death.
Peter Thiel needs a hug anyway. As publicly as possible
I’d shake hands with fascists
15 seconds is a weirdly long handshake… 👀
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
Nice try FBI and CIA.
I’m curious tho, is it illegal for me, as an American, to say “I wanna kill President of Russia Vladimir Putin”?
It’s not even illegal to say that about the us president i believe. Saying you ARE going to kill him might be illegal, but saying you WANT TO kill him likely is legal
Always think of that Whitest Kids U Know sketch about how it’s totally illegal to say that. But he’s not actually saying that, he’s telling you it’s illegal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KivCRqfFcqY
Train as a masseuse. Get a job at Mar-a-lago. Work there for 3 years. After that time very non-employee there I have touched all spontaneously combust simultaneously.
I don’t want anybody else, when I think about you I touch myself.
This superpower makes masturbation problematic. Unless your suicidal.
I… don’t.
Same. I’d save it for myself in case I was being tortured by terrorists or received a terminal diagnosis or something.
How horrible! No heartfelt hugs, petting the fur babies, holding human babies, shaking hands… I’d prefer the power to heal at a touch.
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”.
No.
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.
My dear friends are able to tell me things without holding my hand.
