Don't Rub Strange Rings...

Don't Rub Strange Rings...
Posted to %afda by Bucko on 4^th December 1999

While blathering insanely, Screwtape scrawled:
>Bucko schrieb:
>>While blathering insanely, Screwtape scrawled:
>>
>>>I've pretty much got nothing in my pocketses, except this one ring.
>>
>>Don't rub it!
>
>Why? What will happen if I do?
>
>/me starts rubbing it..

What? You haven't heard the new commandment?

Thou shalt not rub suspicious rings

Aaargh! Too late!

(Whizzz! Pop! "Your wish is my command")

Didn't you know that all genie related wishes misfire and end up making someone suffer?

Think of it like this... a genie can make anything appear out of thin air, but this can't be right, because the total energy in the universe (including mass) is constant. Since he'd need to pretty be betteries, unless Dr. Who had something to do with this ring (or fractals), that means he must be drawing the energy with which to create matter out of matter itself, and there isn't that much matter in the thin air it came out of.

For convenience of transportation, the aforesaid ring is not incredibly dense, therefore the matter can't have come from there, which leads me to beleive that the genie is not in fact using any kind of energy source to create these objects - he is merely obtaining the matter from elsewhere - so if you ask for a gold coin, someone will suddleny find themselves lacking one coin. Chances are the genie is lazy and will just teleport the coin rather than decompiling it's molecules and re-arranging them into a matallic lattice at the other end.

Thus, the coin that you gain will be the exact same coin as the one that left this other persons ownership. Gold is a pretty scarce resource, and thus very very valuble. Due to this value, the owner in question wll be a little annoyed about missing their coin. Now based on the fact the the genie grants a sum total of just 3 wishes, you will almost certainly ask for more than one coin, which means a lot of missing money. The missing money wil be filed in a report, and the police will be looking for the missing coins, of which you have an exact copy in your possesion. These coins will be taken to their owners and you will be taken to prison.

Lets take a different sort of wish: the removal of some object. Again, based on the lack of effort reminiscent of the tyical genie, the wall, person, object of monster will find itself somewhere else, and with something as huge as a wall, probably somewhere close to save using energy in perceiving somewhere distant. Therefore, some unfortunate person/tortoise/fish is going to be very surprised at a wall landing on its head. More likely, the wall will land next to someone, and thus they will possibly recognise it (especially if it's the wall of the rison that you're trying to get out of using the thing that got you into it) and probably tell a) the media (who will certainly know where it's from) and b) the owner when the media find out.

Now, if you want to move a wall, the chances are that you are doing it to help you get out of a place without being recognised -and of course you will be. Removal of a person who is annoying you will have a similar effect - they will end up somewhere where they will be spotted, and the people with them will remove your ring to use for their own ends. Again, a lose only situation.

Another wish is conceivable - teleportation. Now this, we have assumed, the genie will be able to do, but beware - genies are not inherently good at math, and may therefore under compensate for, over compensate for, or maybe forget about the fact that the earth is curved - thus you explode due to the increase in desity of the object you end up in, or more likely, fall to your death. Also, bear in mind that if you want to teleport into a populated area, you may end up in a wall, or a person, and this will cause not also (unless it's in a dark alley).

The final wish is to change something about yourself. Looks, I wouldn't even trust a plastic surgeon to - let alone a genie who has the surgical precision of a misguided torpedo - and you will probably end up too far in the wrong direction. Note also, that if you have grown up ugly, you will be used to this fact, and thus be unable to cope with people being attracted to you. Change in personality is a possiblity, and may possibly be pulled off right, but if current theories are correct, and memories are stored according to and based on your opinions of what happened, the new personality traits may change your perspective such that you remember being a banana, or just forget all your major memories, thus there would be no point in this because you'd forget you it was who you wanted to look beutiful for.

So, the moral is: Don't rub strange rings.

Was that a good enough explanation?