Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
A new year and a chance to start over fresh. Make your resolutions on how to be a better you. I know many times this has become the moment to set forth on a new diet. Try to get some of those unwanted pounds off, get into better shape, and maybe eat a little better.
As I’m walking or avoiding the snack foods or any various desserts that may cross my path, I can’t help but wonder how technology and science have failed us. And I’m not even talking about the mystical, magical Diet Pill that actually works and just melts away the excess weight… no. I mean, there have to be some other ways for this to work out. There have to be some ways that science fiction might actually predict science and make all our resolutions thing of the past.
So here are a couple of ideas for how this might work… the Easy Button way to get into shape:
Is it impossible to create a machine that allows someone to temporarily gain control of our bodies? Whether our minds just go into a blissful state or maybe it is a true mind swap. The overweight or out of shape person swaps out of their bodies for maybe an hour a day to allow our trainers the time to whip those same bodies into shape (for a nice fee of course). Of course, an hour a day would show some level of improvement, but if you are really serious, then might I suggest our month-long vacation plan? While you get to live it up with a perfect body, our trainers will take your flabby form and put it through all sorts of exercises. These trainers are used to eating right, living right, and will do for your body what you could only dream about. In the meantime, you will be taken to a resort where for those same days you get to live the way you’ve always wanted, in a specimen of a body.
At the end of the month, you swap minds back, and now you get to have that Hollywood/movie star physique for once in your life… and if you manage to slip up, well, we can always do it again next year!
It’s a win-win!
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
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Though, thinking about it, swapping minds is probably a dangerous idea since you would never be sure what someone might do with your face, your fingerprints. You’d effectively be living a different life for that time so there is no end to the trouble your body might get into. Would you need to put a freeze on your accounts? What happens if they die in your body? What happens if you die in theirs? Hmmm… this may take a little more thought.
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Ok, what about this idea:
Matter cannot be destroyed only transferred, right? What if that was applied to all of those with a little extra weight to give? Say I could give someone a pound of my fat for a fee. It could even be set up on an official exchange where you might get paid a hundred dollars to take a pound from someone. Now you have people who are trainers, who again are used to keeping a low fat percentage and allow them to make a little more money. In fact, technically anyone could suddenly make a few extra bucks if they were willing to exercise and do the dieting for you. You pay your money, they get the weight, and your resolution is a little easier to achieve?
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Of course, I could see that one allowing for crazy excesses. I could see people getting into debt and the only way they can pay things off is through taking the weight which would/could mess their own systems up beyond anything they might normally be able to adjust to. I mean, it’s one thing to maybe put on a few pounds in a week, maybe 5-10 pounds in a month. But what if you had to take 20-30 pounds in a matter of minutes. The shock alone…
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Or maybe, just maybe, I could take another walk around the neighborhood…
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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.
He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!
Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.
His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.
He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com