#22 - final moments

One morning, while out and about running errands, you begin experiencing a host of weird sensations. Your forearms go momentarily numb. An intermittent tingling runs between your ankles and knees. The inside of your stomach occasionally feels ticklish. These events are evenly spaced out over a few hours, but by noon you are concerned enough to do a websearch.

To your horror, you find a respected medical site detailing your symptoms to the letter. Your condition is gravely serious, and the article states that when one's ears and nose suddenly go cold, an individual has only ten minutes to live.

Moments later, your ears and nose instantly feel as cold as ice.

Despite your best efforts, you are unable to find any mention of the cause or nature of this ailment, whether it be genetic, something you ingested, or whatever else. The condition appears extremely rare and almost nothing about it is yet understood. All you know is that you have less than ten minutes to live.

What do you do with the time you have left?

#21 - entrance music

You notice one day that you're hearing music in your head. You aren't wearing headphones, and the sound isn't coming from a nearby radio or loudspeaker of any sort. The songs that are playing are mix of popular music and instrumental scores that seem to correspond with events of your day, almost as if your life now has a soundtrack.

You pay close attention to this new phenomenon during the next few days. Nobody else can hear the music, though it seems that sometimes others are left with the general impression of the song that is playing.

As weeks go by and you get used to the constant music, you find that you are often times able to queue specific songs just by thinking about it. You can even set up songs for later, though whatever is controlling the soundtrack takes care of the fading and the actual starting moment of your "requested" song (so that everything blends rather seamlessly).

A month later, you are set to give a keynote address at a relatively large convention. As you have spent a good amount of time preparing your presentation, you feel it would be a good opportunity to queue up a song for your entrance. What song would you choose to accompany your post-introduction walk to the lectern?

#20 - street naming

Your town plans to create a new side street between a grouping of several large, abandoned lots. Once the street has been completed, the remaining land will be converted to smaller lots where additional homes will be built.

The city has decided to take nominations for the name of the new street. Every citizen has been invited to submit one suggestion, which should include the proposed name followed by a generic designation (lane, avenue, boulevard, etc). The city council will then select ten of these entries and a town-wide vote will be held to name the street, though the city reserves the right to select the official suffix.

The new street will be located near the edge of the town in a relatively quiet area. What should the street be called?

#19 - robotic uprising

You work at a large, thriving robotics lab. Your current project involves miniature diagnositc devices, small robots that can be inserted into a patient's body to check for disease or monitor a wide range of bodily functions. Your research is going well and your hope is that thousands of lives will be positively impacted by these robots if their design and use can be successfully implemented.

One night you have a very strange, disturbing dream. You are given a vision of the future, decades from today, in which robots have become self-aware and have naturally enslaved the human race.

You awake with an oppressive sense of dread, one that does not lift even days later. For reasons unexplained, you are certain that this future is likely (even unavoidable) if events continue uninterrupted, and that your current work is a pivotal factor. In your dream, the tiny diagnostic robots were instrumental in the robotic uprising, for they were able to gather precise and exhaustive information on human biology and its weaknesses.

You could easily think of ways to sabotage your project to prevent this scenario from coming to pass, but you would at the same time be setting back medical science and any other advances that could come about as a result of your work. You are wary of bringing up the topic of robotic self-awareness to others, sensing that it could damage your credibility, but your fears persist. What action, if any, do you take?

#18 - the red planet

The time has come for the first manned mission to Mars. The trip is being headed up by NASA and will be made up of a crew of eight. You have been extended an invitation to join the mission as a "civilian astronaut". Beyond rudimentary tasks on the spacecraft, your main charge would be to record and document the goings-on of the mission.

So, a seat on the trip is yours if you want it, though the following items should be considered...

- You would need to participate in a rigorous five-month training program beforehand.
- Each leg of the trip will take six months.
- The hope is that the crew will stay on the surface of Mars exploring, running tests, and setting up the foundation of a colony for a total of around four to five months.

You are being given a rare opportunity, but taking all of these things into account (in addition to a relatively short debriefing period), it will require an extremely focused commitment of about two years. Once in transit, you will generally be able to communicate with the folks back on Earth via video conference once a week. Besides the isolation and cramped quarters, by accepting a spot you would be assuming the risks inherent to space travel and a trip to a distant planet.

Do you join the mission?

#17 - hostage buddy

You win a contest sponsored by your local newspaper to attend a very well known annual awards ceremony. The trip is all inclusive, though you are unable to bring a guest along. The day of the show soon arrives. Surrounded by media and celebrities, you are thoroughly enjoying your evening as an audience member when, just before one of the awards is announced, a gang of masked gunmen enter the auditorium, taking the entire crowd hostage.

The exact aims of these terrorists are unclear, but they do announce (after the initial tumult dies down) that their intentions are to harm no one. However, to make their task of captive management easier, they plan to handcuff audience members together into pairs.

In a strange gesture of goodwill, the terrorists offer to select some number of audience members at random and allow them to decide who their "hostage buddy" will be. Inexplicably, you are the first person chosen. You can select any other individual in the room to be handcuffed to for the duration of this hostage situation. Who do you choose? (You may want to indicate the specific awards show you'd prefer to be attending if you feel it is pertinent to your answer.)

#16 - sensory perception

You are invited to spend an afternoon in the high-tech labs of your local university. After a light lunch and extensive tour, you duck out to use the restroom as your group is being escorted out of the labs. Now alone, you find yourself lost in the hallways and unable to find the nearest exit.

A bit concerned, you try one of the doors, hoping that a window might give you a clue as to your whereabouts. However, the first door you try opens to a windowless, soundproofed chamber. As you turn to leave, you notice an intriguing compartment located on the far wall of the room that contains a chair and some interesting-looking gadgetry. You walk over and sit down.

Once inside, you close the compartment door in a feeble attempt to stay under cover. There is indeed a lot of scientific equipment in the space, but the main purpose of the cell seems to lie in a set of five dials, arranged vertically, each labeled with one of the five senses. At present, all of the dials are set to "50" and you assume that 0 and 100 are the limits. A big red button is mounted underneath the lowest dial.

Curious, you shift the SIGHT dial up to 60 and hit the red button. Almost immediately, you notice that the objects around you have come into sharper focus. You also see that the other four dials have all now dipped below 50, presumably to compensate for the movement of the first dial.

You reset the dials to 50 and then design a quick test. You move the TOUCH dial to 35, the TASTE dial to 65, and hit the red button again. Reaching for a stick of gum in your pocket, your hands feel more than a little numb, but as you begin to chew, you are overwhelmed by the increased intensity of the gum's flavor. You leave the compartment briefly, and though your limbs feel strangely vacant, your gum retains its strength. You sit back down, reset the dials, and hit the button, pondering your situation as you continue to chomp your now dull wad of gum.

It seems that you have the opportunity to enhance some combination of your five senses, though not without sacrificing the strength of at least one other sense. The numbers on the dial must collectively add up to 250. You have no idea whether or not your choice would be a permanent one, though it seems clear that the effects of this device are not limited to its chamber.

You sense that you've overstayed your welcome in the room and ought to make good your escape. But you are tempted to reallocate some of your sensory levels before you leave. The obvious risk is that should you make an unwise choice, there is no guarantee that you would be able to again gain access to this lab. What do you do?