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What if humans spied on another planet and mutilated livestock/probed random local aliens? What if satellites would shoot lasers at anyone using improper language? What if life's only meaning was "Please keep off the grass"? What if memes were actually symbiotic/parasitic life forms using us as hosts? What if you would die if you slept in the same bed twice? What if all shakespearean plays were true, down to the ghosts and spirits and faeries? What if someone invented a machine that could flawlessly alter the memory of a willing subject? What if all languages had an anthromorphic personification? What if everyone was actuall the anthromorphic personification of some obscure concept, and just didn't realize it? What if everyone had to write a novel by their 25th birthday, or they would be executed by the Secretary of Literary Criticism? What if the greek religion was right? What if aliens came, and the effects of their visit were similar to european visitors/colonists to the new world? What if God smote Bill Gates? What if Madonna's "Material Girl" was the natioal anthem? What if the world was taken over by communists? What if you could go below subzero? What if government officials had to be poets or artists? Or vice versa? What if the weather was determined by a majority vote? Would there be political groups for certain types of weather? [Citizens for a White Christmas, for example] What if ouija boards could accurately predict the stock market, and this was a publically known fact? What if someone actually developed a self-aware intelligent life pattern? What if, instead of being run on a computer, it was done on a really huge board with tiny stones, continually updated by diligent monks or something? What if time travelers could only visit the past on the condition that their memories of the future were to be erased? What if one could take a pill to make one more creative? What if it had some side effects, like, say, aphasia? What if not voting was a crime punishable by a year in prison? What if everyone had two bodies, and had to/could split their attention/concentraion between them? What if people could swap or sell and buy bodies? What if subliminal messages were allowed in advertising, and addictive substances allowed in food/drink products? What if murder was legal, or at least not illegal? Would wills include stipends to spend cash to hire an assasin to take out whoever killed them if they were murdered? Would this lower the crime rate? What if it was possible to raise the dead? What if it required another life to be sacrificed to do so? What if it rained all the time? What if the creatures of the night learned for their mistakes? What if you could buy time, at a penny per second? What if nobody ever forgot anything? What if nobody ever died of old age? What if the government provided the basic necessities of life, and everything else (utilities, transportation, justice, etc) was privatized? What if calculators and any machine that could do so were outlawed? What if people had genetic memory? What if people had an instinctive knowledge of all mathematics at calculus or lower levels? What if LaMarkian evolution was true? What if someone woke up one day and was instantly famous, for no reason other than being famous? What if two identical twins independantly decided to pull the exact same prank on eachother? What if you could get a full college education from a pill? What if there was a place just like college, but without the classes? What if the political and religious situations of the USA were switched? What if someone discovered, locked in the attic, the Deed to the United States of America in it's entirety? What if God abdicated? What if everyone on earth was granted omniscience for five seconds? What if people had no legal identities as individuals, only as groups? What if vampiric rodents secretly controlled the media? What if a computer was created that could instantly prove or disprove any mathematical theory? What if anything spoken in a dead language became true? What if snow was dead clouds, and blizzards the result of inter-cloud warfare? What if there was a pill that could instantly relieve boredom? What if there was a riddle that, if solved, revealed another riddle, which revealed another, etc, etc? What if AI were real, and had rights? Would there be limits on creating them? What about age restrictions on voting? What if there was a book which contained every true statement, arranged alphabetically? What if the hedgehogs and foxes had a war? [Sorry about the Sandman reference... Hedgehogs are the people who know one big thing, and foxes know a lot of little things] What if there someone was born who, due to various mystical dealybobs [planetary alignments work], was owed one irrefusable favor by everyone? What if a mathematical forumula, with certain symbols misdrawn so as to actually make it an occult spell, bestowed superpowers on a room full of bored college students? What if there was a secret group of expert manipulators, who were playing a vast game with society? What would the goal be? What if there Earth was an infinitely long plane, instead of being flat? What is saving the world was a professional occuptation? What if all teachers were secretly diabolists? What if there were three of each anthromorphic personification [like Death, say] instead of just one? What if the seasons were places, instead of times? What if not all the seasons had been "discovered"? What if Europe never existed? What if college students secretly ruled the world? What if everyone spoke a different language? What if Soft Places [another Sandman reference, basically a little hole in reality] were more prelevant? What if songs were alive, sentient, and actively sought out popularity, and avoided obscurity? Or vice versa? What if there was a prophecy about a future prophet, who made prophecies about future prophecies, which were about future prophecies, etc? What if the economy was based on stories, instead of gold or silver? What if you got tired of these hypotheticals? |