You know what I realized? I haven’t done an Automotive Would You Rather since before my heart exploded! No wonder that happened! Clearly, I’m not doing these nearly enough, so let’s solve that. This week I have a pair of scenarios that both seem to involve foreign objects being lodged inside you, so let’s not spend too much time scrutinizing that, how about? No one will be happy. Let’s just get into it! It’ll be fun! Right? Right?
SCENARIO ONE: The Curse Of Hearing
You’re at the junkyard one weekend afternoon, desperately trying to pull the two-stroke, three-cylinder DKW-style engine out of an old Wartburg Knight you managed to find, improbably wedged between two Oldsmobile Delta 88s. You’re pretty sure the engine will be ideal for the engine-swap project you have in mind, where you’ll stuff it into that old Bentley Arnage you have killing grass on your lawn. The engine is pretty small, for an engine, so you’re pretty sure you can get it out on your own.
You’ve got all the bolts out and this thing should just lift out; you’ve wrapped your arms around it, bear-hug-style, and are heaving and pulling as hard as you can. You’ve already peed yourself from the strain, so you’re well past the point of no return. This engine is coming out!
You give one last good heave, your body ejects a pencil-girthed column of urine out of your pant leg that spatters noisily in the dirt, and then it’s free, the force of your efforts flinging you backwards, where you land, in front of the car, with a heavy thwock. Seconds later you hear a whistling then feel a sharp pain in your ear as one of the spark plugs, launched free by your Herculean efforts to remove the engine, comes shooting down out of the sky and lodges firmly in your ear.
You’re a bit dazed but unhurt; you try to remove the spark plug from your ear but it refuses to budge. It’s in there for good, it seems. As you try to make sense of this, you start to pace, down the aisle of the junkyard, and as you do, you hear a low, calm voice in your ear; it’s telling you what is wrong with every car in the junkyard!
As you walk past each car, a litany of the issues that brought it there are whispered into your ear. You touch the plug, and it pauses, but as soon as you let go, it starts again. You hold a water pump in front of your face, and you hear how much longer the bearings have to go, and what caused the initial failure. You roll a tire into your field of view, and the amount of good remaining miles is whispered. Hold a halogen headlamp bulb, you hear how many hours it has left.
It’s amazing. This spark plug will diagnose any car or part you pause to look at! You’ll never be baffled by a car problem ever again!
As you’re marveling at this, a pair of people walk by. As you gaze at them, the plug starts to tell you what they’re thinking about you when they see you, but, from the sound of it, it’s just the negative things. Alarmed, you run out of the yard and into the street – as you scan around at the various people, you hear every fleeting mean thought or callow criticism they have of you. It gets to be a lot, so you clamp your hand over the spark plug, silencing it, for a while at least.
So, now you have the ability to know what’s wrong with every car or car part you encounter and also have the ability to know what’s wrong with you, at least according to the randos you happen to see.
This is a real monkey’s paw situation here! Is it worth it?
SCENARIO TWO: The Magic Kidney Stones Of That Denny’s In Arizona
You’re on a cross-country road trip with some friends, having the absolute best time. While passing through Tempe, Arizona, you and your pals stop at a Denny’s for a quick meal and bathroom break. When ordering, the waiter mentions that – and this is pretty unusual – they just made a complete Moons Over My Hammy, one of the best he’s ever seen, but they can’t sell it because it was made by an employee who just that moment quit in a huff because she was caught practicing witchcraft, which goes against Denny’s strict no-witchcraft or magick policies.
The waiter doesn’t want to throw it away, because, really, it’s the best he’s ever seen, and it just seems a shame. Would any of you want it, he asks?
Well, the Moons Over My Hammy is your go-to Denny’s meal, and you’re kinda broke, so you say yes! You get the still-hot sandwich, and, damn, the guy was right, it’s the best you ever tasted.
Afterwards, you’re all in the car on the highway, happy and a bit sleepy, and it’s your turn to drive. You’re doing fine, but the warm car and the hypnotic lines of the road conspire to lull you too sleep, causing you to flop forward onto the dash, weight on the gas pedal, launching you and your friends smack into a large billboard pylon on the side of the road.
You feel the initial impact, you hear the screams of your friends and the sickly boom of impact, the rattle of broken glass and then – all of a sudden – you’re all back in the Denny’s parking lot, safe and sound.
Of course, everyone is freaked out. You go to the nearest hospital, but everyone is fine. The car doesn’t even have a scratch! But you, you aren’t exactly as you were before. Lodged in your stomach, worked into the very walls of your gastrointestinal tract, is a bezoar. According to the MRI scan that found it, it’s got trace amounts of ham molecules on it, suggesting it got into your body via the witch’s Moons Over My Hammy.
Normally these are hard lumps of indigestible yuck found in goat stomachs, imbued with magical properties. But this one is in you, and it seems to teleport you and the car you happen to be in, with everyone and everything inside it, to the parking lot of that Tempe, Arizona Denny’s should you ever crash that car. I mean, that’s the theory; panicked, confused, you rush out to the car in the hospital parking lot and smack it at 60 mph into the side of the building.
You then find yourself, just fine, in the Denny’s parking lot.
It seems you can’t be killed in a car wreck, because you’ll just end up back at that Denny’s parking lot. You and anyone with you, if you’re driving. Your friends, once they realize this, insist you drive for the rest of the trip. They start to make TikToks about it, and it’s fun at first, driving the car off cliffs and ending up back at the Denny’s. But then it starts to go viral, and soon Secret Service agents find you while you’re at the Grand Canyon, telling you that you are now a national asset and need to serve your country. They don’t have you come with them then, but they do let you know they’re watching.
Things are getting weird, but you can’t die in any car crash! And, if you need to go to Tempe, it’s free and instant! But is it worth it?
So, what will it be? A spark plug in your ear that tells you useful car diagnoses and mean-spirited jabs from everyone, or a lump in your stomach that whisks you to an Arizona Denny’s if you crash a car? Here’s the poll!
I already assume all of the people around me think I’m a whackjob, so I’m not sure how much of a downside the spark plug would have.
I know people like that spark plug. Fuck ’em.
There is no way in hell I want to be able to hear the stray thoughts of others. I’ve already seen social media.
Option 2. Then I would move to Tempe and save time and money on return flights when I travel. Unless the car I crash is transported to Tempe as well. It would eventually be hard to explain why so many Ladas or South American VWs were showing up at Denny’s.
Counterpoint: great way to import those cars, as long as everyone’s cool about the weirdness.
Title? Well no, but it is still registered on Turo in Latvia!
“Look, officer, if you’ll just be cool about the lack of papers, I won’t have to peel out of here and crash.”
Y’know, Jason, if we really want to know which is better in these, you’re going to need to direct the Autopian’s Science Division and Magic Division to work together to grant some of these powers to people for a good comparison.