jake-richmond:

I usually don’t pay attention to stuff like this, but this set of choices caught my eye. Here’s why:

The first option is the obvious choice. Each of the other three options has value, but their value largely depends on the quantity of goods you receive. How much free gas do you get? Just enough for reasonable personal use? All you can use? Or all you want? If it’s all you want then you’ve cornered the gas market for 3 years (assuming you can store and distribute it). Same with Marijuana and Jordans. But really, each of these is only a  good choice if you’re getting a LOT of free pot, shoes or gas. If it’s just what you can personally use… well, thats nice, but it’s not worth giving up the first option. 

Because the first option isn’t about sex. Sex is just a perk. It’s about time travel.

Check out the wording. “Sex with whoever you want”. Thats nice, and for a lot of people that would be the selling point. The real treasure is the second part. “Whenever you want, for life”.  The wording is important here. The wording allows you to pick a person at any time in history and have sex with them, in their time period. “Whenever” is the key word. This is a time travel device, powered by sex. Want to travel to 1977 and see the premier of Star Wars (chosen as a random example)? Select someone  who was alive in 1977 you can tolerate having sex with and designate that you’d like to have sex with them IN 1977. You’ll be transported to 1977 for the act of sex, and since there’s no suggestion that anything happens afterward presumably you’ll be left in 1977 until you decide to time travel via sex again. It’s also worth noting that because you are choosing a  specific person at a specific time this is both a mechanic for time travel and spacial travel. Depending on how time travel actually works you may also now have a device for creating and traveling between multiple timelines.

It goes without saying that a reliable means of time travel is by far more valuable then free shoes or pot, or even 3 years of total control of all gasoline. The sex is also a nice perk I guess.

And if time travel works sideways as well as backward and forward in time, theoretically, one could take the approach that all fictional universes are simply alternate timelines that are sideways in time, as it were, and find ways to make the “for life” clause mean functionally forever, if you were so inclined.

Or just go visit every fictional universe you’re interested in, and all you have to do to get it is have sex with a character you’re reasonably sure you won’t throw out of bed before the terms of the time travel mechanism are fulfilled.

(Which raises the question of how the mechanism defines sex, because there’s a really broad range of potential definitions, and it would be useful to know what the mechanism uses to define sex and thus fulfillment of the terms. Also, timeframe after designating that this is the person and time that you have to actually manage that fulfillment.)