Oof. Living that long with a constant craving for heroin? Kid you just genie cursed yourself
AKA There are worse fates than death.
You can quit the drug but you can never forget it. (been sober from stims for many years but the desire never fully goes away)
Former heroin user here. This is very true. I still have dreams about it every once in a while and it has been 15 years.
Plot twist, the grim reaper just said that to shut him up.
Plot twist #2, that’s not even the grim reaper, just some grandma in a hoodie to keep her head warm.
Plot twist #3, The Grim Reaper can’t tell humans apart from one another (too much meat and muscles on their stupid faces). He just keeps telling the same old story to all the “small ones” he meets.
Plot twist-twist-twist, the grim reaper is a heroin dealer
dies of old age at 32
He who is born to be hanged cannot be drowned.
“Try”
“Succeed at”
Wait…so then what happens if he just jumps off the empire state building top floor with a mirror in his hand?
True prophecies always eventually settle into a stable timeloop where the prophecy doesn’t change the outcome. If the prophecy can change the outcome, then it does, and that changes the prophecy, and the process repeats until it falls into a stable shape.
Therefore, in most cases such a prophecy cannot fall into the hands of someone who would try jumping off the Empire State - unless they’re destined to be miraculously saved. This boy was only able to hear the prophecy because he’s the kind of guy whose self destructive experiments won’t actually kill him. If he were capable of suicidal choices, he wouldn’t have heard that prophecy.
However, a complicating factor which invalidates what drag says can interfere: sometimes the stable timeloop stretches across two timelines. For example, in one timeline you hear you’re destined for old age, and you kill yourself trying something dumb. In the other timeline, you hear that you’re destined to kill yourself doing something dumb, so you decide to be careful and end up living to old age. Each timeline gives rise to the other. Each prophecy applies to the other timeline, invalidates itself, and makes the other prophecy true. However, a skilled oracle can tell when their prophecies are multi-timeline and will therefore always give single timeline prophecies.
So if you hear a prophecy that makes you want to go do dumb suicidal stuff, and you’re the kind of person who would actually do it, it means your oracle is an amateur and you shouldn’t trust them.
Of course, by listening to this advice, you’ve become someone who hopefully won’t trust amateur oracles, which means you can’t tell if your oracle is good anymore.
It would come down to one of the possible time travel mechanics.
Time travel to this moment.
There’s a whole anthology book about this written by a bunch of big and small names, the pdf is free https://machineofdeath.net/ebook
This collection is fantastic.
Mildly related - Ryan North’s recent contributions to Marvel Comics are full of delight. (Ryan North helped organize Machine Of Death).
Thank you for sharing, I’m enjoying reading it.
Untied shoes won’t kill him, but he didn’t say anything about serious injury.
Died peacefully of old age at 61, paraplegic for 50 years, and craving one last hit for 48 years. Somehow survived being homeless and indigent for 57 years.
That’s how his journey began. By combating addiction, he found true peace of mind and the meaning of life, earning a well deserved peaceful death. A touching comic indeed.
What a wholesome story!:-)
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