Chapter 2: The Wishing

I spent the next morning trying to figure out how to word my wishes. I knew what I wanted, but it was awfully complicated. I had always fantasized about being a super hero and that was what I wanted. But that one sentence rule had me worried. If I just wished for super powers who knew what I would end up with.

By lunch I had figured out how to get a complicated wish with only one sentence.

I sat down with a pad of paper and began outlining the powers I wanted. It took a while and I made several changes as I thought things through. My three wishes would be for physical super powers, mental super powers and immortality.

First, the physical powers: I would be strong enough to bench press 10 times my own body weight with all muscles throughout my body being proportionally strong and my bones, tendons and other related organs and parts being strong enough to take the stress. I would be as flexible and agile as any world-class gymnast. When someone was going to physically attack me, whether I was aware of it or not, (I have always liked Spiderman's Spider-sense) my thoughts and reactions would speed up to double the normal speed. My body would maintain the appearance and form of a man 6' 1" and 225 Lbs but my body fat would never exceed 6 - 8%.

Additionally, I would be immune to all forms of virus, bacteria, disease and toxin. In other words I would never get sick again. I would also be able to heal any injury 10 times as fast as normal and even be able to regenerate.

Second, the mental powers: I would be receptive to strong emotions such as fear or anger so I could quickly identify and pinpoint crimes in progress. I would be able to telepathically scan large groups looking for information buried in their minds. This way I would be able to ID the bad guys. I would be able to read minds individually as well. I would also be able to affect the thoughts of a person and actually change, either permanently or temporarily, their basic beliefs and, just in case I needed to protect my identity, I could also cause them to forget certain things. Last, I would have total recall so that I would never forget anything once I knew it. I figured with that one I might make a go of it as a bounty hunter.

Third, the immortality: This one took a while to settle on. My previous fantasies were pretty well handled by my first two wishes, but I couldn't see wasting the third. I finally decided that with all those things going for me why not ride it out as long as possible. The main problem with immortality as I saw it, was trying to hide the fact that I didn't age.

Then I figured it out that my body didn't have to actually be involved in my sticking around. Upon the death of my physical body, by whatever means, my essence, and/or my consciousness, and/or my spirit and/or my soul would be drawn to the nearest recently deceased adolescent body.

I would then be able to scan the body to see if the injuries could be handled by my healing abilities. If not, I could allow myself to be drawn to the next nearest, and so on, and so on until I found one I wanted to inhabit. I would then reanimate the body (since no one else was using it) enter it and begin the healing process. Once healthy it would be a simple matter to claim amnesia. I decided on an adolescent because I figured that living with parents and a family would make it easier to acclimate to the life I was stepping into. I thought that this would be a win - win situation, as I would continue my existence in this world and some family would not have to mourn the loss of a child.

I also included a Gone To Hell clause. A GTH plan is one war planners use as the final contingency - when all other plans are no longer feasible and everything has 'Gone To Hell.' Usually it was something drastic, risky, stupid and irreversible. It either worked or you were screwed. But then, if you weren't screwed you wouldn't be using it anyway.

In this case the clause allowed me to stop the immortality process in the event I ever grew tired of it. Upon the death of my physical body I could, by force of will just allow nature to take its course and whatever happened to everyone else at death would then happen to me. I initially did that in case the world ever ended. I didn't want to be stuck with my consciousness floating around forever with no living body to enter. But it also occurred to me that I might eventually be ready to just let go.

After finishing the description of immortality I then returned to the other two descriptions and added that the power would transfer to my new body with me. I also added that the size of 6' 1", 225 lbs, and low body fat would be a gradual change finishing at about the age of 23.

By the time I had gotten all that down I was way over on my lunchtime, but one of the things I liked about this job was the independence. I had to really hump to finish at a decent time and on the way home I thought of how much help telekinesis and the ability to project a sort of mental eye would be in my job so I decide to add them to my list of mental powers.