God Mode

Most envy is petty and boring. The neighbor’s car, someone else’s girlfriend, whatever—the gap between wanting and having is just life, and spending energy on it is a waste. I can observe all of it from a calm, almost philosophical distance. Almost always. There’s one category that breaks me completely and I see no reason to be ashamed of it.

I want superpowers. Specifically, I want to stop time.

Flying seems like the obvious pick, but I’ve thought it through and I don’t think it holds up. You’d spend most of it cold, and the novelty of crapping on people from great heights—however appealing in principle—probably wears off in the second week. Seeing through walls has more sustained utility: for starters, I’d finally resolve whether my neighbor’s sex sounds are genuinely what they appear to be, or whether she and her boyfriend are quietly murdering cats in there. I’ve been wondering for months. The sounds are ambiguous.

But stopping time is God mode. Everything else is a specialization. Time is total.

With the clock frozen around me I would do so many petty, useless, perfect things. Take every game I wanted from every store I passed. Cheat on every exam I ever failed. Wander into the offices of every pompous official I’ve ever been forced to tolerate and leave something on their desk they’ll never be able to explain—Merkel’s desk has been on my list for years. And photographs. Nude photographs of strangers, on the street, taken in complete frozen silence. Not to do anything with them—just for the insane private fact of the thing, the secret knowledge of it. You couldn’t stop me. You’d never even know.

The question is what you’d pick. I’ve been thinking about it since I was nine and I still think time is the only real answer. The rest of the powers just give you one thing. Time gives you everything, repeatedly, at whatever speed you want.