As I type this, there’s the beginnings of a huge storm brewing outside, I’ve seen dogs and lawn furniture flying by, and there’s waves of rain and just a minute ago the power went out, so I’m tethered to my phone’s cell connection. But, hopefully this will be enough to crank out a refreshing edition of Autopian Automotive Would You Rather, because, as you may recall, I promised the Bishop’s kid I’d do these. So, in defiance of Hurricane Ian, let’s get on with it! Here’s your Would You Rather scenarios:
Scenario One: The Gnome King
You’ve been hearing all sorts of loud, strange noises from your crawlspace, and it’s gotten so bad, especially the sounds that resemble metal being ground into powder and a strange, late-night oontz oontz oontz rhythmic pulsating noise, that you need to do something.
You put on your filthiest Dickies coveralls and squirm under your house, only to find a thriving gnome village complete with, right under your bedroom, a well-equipped machine shop and an all-night dance club, filled with scantily-clad gnomes. Angrily, you scream at the gnome community, raking your arms around and trashing the place, until finally a large group of gnomes subdues you by swarming all over your face and in your nostrils.
After finally shutting you up, the King Gnome approaches you.
“We gnomes pay our debts,” he tells you, “and we know we have intruded upon your space. That is why I wish to offer you payment, a reward great enough that you will happily endure the sounds of our manufacturing (we make key blanks for all major hardware stores, you see) and our unstoppable, sweaty, intense nightlife scene.”
Trapped under your house and kinda impressed by the whole gnome setup down there, you agree. The King Gnome takes you to the main metalwork facility, and invites you to shove your face into the door. He then removes his pants, pulls off his underwear, and throws them into a cauldron of molten metal.
“I am ordering my artisans to create for a you a very special gift,” he says, still pantsless. “A key. A special key that, thanks to the incredible magical power of a Gnome King’s underpants, will let you open any car, and then use that key to teleport yourself to any place that car has been! Just imagine the location in your mind, and if the car has physically been there, poof, that’s where you’ll be!”
The Gnome King watched as two gnome workers poured the molten metal into a mold.
“The car will go there with you, of course,” he added. Then he paused, looked you in the eye, and continued.
“There is a restriction, though: if you pick a location in your mind that the car has never been, you will instead be teleported to that car’s point of origin. Say, Gothenberg, Sweden, for a Volvo PV544, or maybe Emden, Germany for an old VW, or Tokyo or Seoul or Turin or South Bend or Toledo or Detroit or wherever. You get it, right? And there’s no warning, so if you need to be somewhere specific, you should be sure!”
“Do we have a deal?” the King asked. You grunt, confusedly, which is enough for the king, who shoves the still warm key in your mouth.
“Great!” he bellows. “Now scram.” And with that you watch his tiny bare ass recede into the distance, turning back into the nightclub.
Scenario Two:
You’ve always wanted to be a racecar driver, but you never really felt you had the skills needed. The dream consumes your thoughts and dreams, to the point that it makes you susceptible to some really questionable influences, like that exciting new cult that just moved in down the street from you. You find yourself wandering over more and more, and before you know it you have a shaved head and are wearing matching track suits with about 60 other people, all devoted to The Leader.
The Leader singles you out, because you have what he calls “dangerous eyes” and he wants to mold you into something greater. He asks you what do you want from yourself, and you confide in him your desire to be a great racing driver.
He smiles, and places his finger in your nostril, one of the cult’s signature gestures, and he reveals to you an amazing secret: thanks to his years of spiritual training, he can transfer the driving skills from any living driver for as long as you need! It’s immediate and comprehensive: whatever action that driver would take, you would take.
You want to drive as well as Michael Schumacher or Lewis Hamilton? Done. Easy.
There is a catch, though: while you have those skills, the targeted person would lose them, as they’d be transferred to you via powerful ribbons of orgone energy. Also, the amount of time you borrowed those skills need to be repaid in full, so for every minute you had someone else’s skills, whatever skills or other mental abilities you had will be on loan for an equal amount of time.
Because the Orgone Neurological Energy Network is global, the skills borrowed from you could be anything and go to anyone anywhere: ability to speak your native language, walk, do math, interpersonal skills, swallowing, being able to not wet yourself, whatever. And while you know how long you’ll have skills borrowed, you won’t really know when they’ll be loaned out.
So, you could be doing something and then forget how to speak English for three hours, or stop being able to draw or dance or make love or swim or swallow a milkshake without coating your shirt or whatever.
So what’s it going to be? The magic teleportation key from the Gnome King, or the ability to borrow racing skills from the best drivers on Earth, via Orgone energy? Let’s vote on it!
Gnome pants key
Noam Chomsky
There’s a joke there somewhere.
“scantily-clad gnomes”
Thank god for the beards!
Jason has deeply underestimated the willingness – nay, enthusiasm – of his readers to have tiny, pants-less magical creatures living beneath their houses. He’s also overestimated our willingness to be indoctrinated in exchange for promises of automotive glory.
Which says something hopeful about Autopian-ity.
Gnome Key for me! I’d love a free trip to Italy or the UK by just thinking of a place that I know a given British or Italian car hasn’t been. Hell… it could even be a rusted out heap in a junkyard.
I’ll go to the local pick n pull with my suitcase, get transported to Europe with the heap, call a taxi and leave the heap there.
The gnome key is definitely the way to go. I can think of plenty of ways that ability would be useful and fun, and the noise could be mitigated (and won’t bother you at all if you’re across the world).
Maybe I missed it, but are there limits on the cult energy swap? Could you just rob Lewis Hamilton or whomever of their abilities for the remainder of your life? Seems like that would be a jerk move, to put it mildly, and what happens to cosmic energy debt if you die? Temporal rift? Indentured zombification?
Or does the cosmic rebalancing run concurrently and you’ll be a great driver who occasionally losses the ability to swim or climb trees or do chartered accounting
I ain’t wearing matching track suits … Gimme the bear-assed gnome king’s key.
I usually like to hunt out a cheat on these, but this time I’m instead thinking I might end up cursing the Gnome King from a Swedish gaol where I’m housed for somehow illegally -and with absolutely no paper trail -importing a 1970 Volvo 1800ES. OTOH, I guess I could just keep the magic key handy and hope the authorities only approach me while I’m in the car. Gotta admit that it would be fun to pop out of existence as the officer was sauntering up to my window
” I might end up cursing the Gnome King from a Swedish gaol where I’m housed for somehow illegally -and with absolutely no paper trail -importing a 1970 Volvo 1800ES. ”
Just find one in a junkyard, do the thing and after getting transported, walk away from it and claim that you have no knowledge of how it got there.
Then enjoy your European vacation.
And at the end of the vacation, find a vehicle built in a junkyard close to where you live and pull the same trick.
No more need to spend $$$$ on flying places and having to go through customs and security.
And also think of the possibilities of being able to go to another country and never have to go through customs or security!
That was exactly the cheat idea I was thinking of when I got caught up in the whole Swedish gaol scenario
I’ll take the gnome key; would make my commute so much quicker, and would mean I wouldn’t have to worry about fuel costs or my rail fare, making it a rather ecognomical option. Is a close one though; having the option of borrowing someone’s knowledge/skills would be really rather handy, and I feel I could handle forgetting skills & bits of knowledge for periods of time now and again; I mean, that just happens now and again anyway, regardless of orgone energy (that’s unless some tracksuited cultist has already been stealing my skills; in which case, I might as well nab some back). That said, how does it work if you’re borrowing a skill you already have? IE, I can walk, so if I borrow someone else’s ability to walk, I wouldn’t notice any difference, so what happens to my ability to walk while I’m using someone elses? do they get it, or does it just sit on a shelf somewhere? If you can just borrow people’s abilities at will, that sounds pretty open to abuse; for example, you could presumably just remove someone’s ability to breathe, at will, wherever they are, which would be a bit OP.
There isn’t enough upside to Option Two. Mad racecar driving skills aren’t something I ever particularly aspired to in the first place. But I do like to travel!
Gotta go with Gnomes.
Tbh I trust Gnomes inherently even though I shouldn’t.
Gnome powers and I’m staying the hell out of any Ladas I might happen across.
Can I carry passengers?
The magic key’s reusable, right? If so, I’d have it for sure. It would it allow me to commute and visit friends for free in my current car when I’m exhausted or just don’t want to deal with traffic. I can buy earplugs. It would’ve been even more practical when my folks lived ~480 miles away.
That’s leaving car-“borrowing” out of it entirely, but if it was a one-time-use deal I’d still take advantage of it with that car. For instance, I could buy or even apparently ‘borrow’ (would it be stuck at its destination if I couldn’t drive it back?) a basket-case barn-find English car that isn’t rotten out but hasn’t run since the Clinton administration, a train ticket to Scotland to visit my partner, and a one-way ticket home, if selling it back home worked out to be cheaper than flying both ways as I suspect. Shipping the car back would ruin the value proposition, so I’d probably start a re-importation business for Jaaaags.
Sorry, 280 miles. It’s late. 450 km though.
Give me the gnome key. I’m not a thief, so it’ll be my car. I can teleport to anywhere I’ve already driven once. New destination? Where’s the closest I’ve ever been to there? Back country exploration without risk of being stranded. Mostly just teleportation on almost every trip.
Words I thought I would never say. I’ll go with the pantless gnome.
The decision was easy (see name).
Also, Torch, get the hell out from under my house. This is the last time!
Dude, gnome machine shop in my crawlspace, YES PLEASE! Forget about the magic key.
One last thing- when I hear ‘great driver’ and ‘orgone energy’ I just immediately thought of that Australian driver you wrote about with the energy polarizer. Click on the below- but I hope you like pop up ads:
https://jalopnik.com/how-a-box-of-magic-crystals-brought-down-australias-mos-1822559023
I’m going teleportation. I mean, it’s amazing how most cars will live and die within a hundred miles or so of where they are purchased. Even one of those strange oval fake euro stickers on back that say stuff like ‘OBX’ doesn’t mean that the car has in fact been to the Outer Banks (or what will be left of them from the sound of what Jason is saying). Gotta go European car, like a reverse Tourist Delivery that Volvo still does (fly you to the factory, hotel stay, still save thousands on the car) and BMW used to do (since so many of their cars are assembled here). Plus you get the Euro car to drive there.
Question is- what are the Gnomes doing at your house while you are gone??
Ok, here for you means Europe. I was wondering why you wanted a flight to the Volvo factory near Charleston, SC. The food there is nice and the architecture but that’s about it. Plus the factory is half an hour from anything of interest and between it and historic Charleston is North Charleston, the kind of place people lock their doors as they drive through.
Travel, but no TSA, boarding etc? Count me Team Gnome.
Teleportation ftw! I love to drive to places for vacation, but I HATE to drive home. My wife can testify that, for decades, I’ve grumped about needing teleportation ability while driving home from trips. Even for relatively short trips – you drive to your friends’ house or visit the grandkids, and by the end of the day you’re tired and/or drunk and ready to head home. Poof! You’re back! And, oh rapturous joy, I’d never have to fly on a passenger jet again! Driving (and/or teleporting) everywhere I’d ever want to visit? Yes please.
Gnome Sweet Gnome! Along with a cheap and efficient transportation method, it sounds like an amazing way to discover new places, and you have transportation when you get there!
The key sounds like a fun way to travel to different countries. Just grab a passport, purchase a cheap piece of shit car of foreign manufacture like an old Fiat and be transported to Italy. To get back, just think of home.
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind a trip to Queensland to visit family I have not seen in decades.
Anyone got an old Holden laying around?
Brooks- you should look on some GTO or Chevy SS owner’s site and see what local cars exist.
a mercury capri or mitsubishi diamante would also do the job.
If you can handle the downside of the gnome village noise (and some money invested in soundproofing should go a long way) I’m not sure there’s any other problems with the gnome king’s proposition. After you’ve driven somewhere once you can return ad infinitum. You should be able to figure out where your vehicle was manufactured and can even take advantage of that. Trip to Europe? Japan? Save on airfare and have a car to drive while you’re there!
Back in the days when I flew an average of 100k miles per year this would have transformed my life.
What has any of this got to so with the January 6th hearings? Or monkeypox? And why won’t you let me vote?
I’m pretty sure it has everything to do will all of those things.
This is gonna sound weird, but I’ve been wanting the teleportation-to-a-previous-location ability for a long long while.
Also, as someone that just got through Ian and hasn’t had power for 48+ hours (and T.E.C.O. is giving a worst case scenario of Monday night, or 120+hrs,) good luck!