u/Matinee_Lightning

**The Setup**

You are trapped inside a standard, fully stocked Costco. The electricity never goes out. You have access to every pallet of food, the bakery, the food court kitchen, the walk-in freezers, the electronics department, clothing, mattresses, and tools. You can rearrange the layout however you like.

The catch? The store will **never** restock, you can never leave, and you aren’t alone.

**The Roommate**

There is one other person in the Costco with you.

* **The Profile:** They are physically identical to you (you are both able-bodied) with an average personality and temperament.

* **The Twist:** They do not *need* food or water to survive, but they are eternally, ravenously hungry and thirsty.

* **The Behavior:** They will constantly attempt to sneak, hoard, and eat through your finite supply.

* **The Constraint:** You cannot kill them or cause them serious physical harm. You can try to trap or confine them, but they are highly clever at escaping and will eventually break out of whatever you build.

**The Payouts**

* **1 Month:** $10,000

* **6 Months:** $100,000

* **1 Year:** The total cash value of all undamaged merchandise left in the store (Minimum $100,000 guaranteed).

* **5 Years:** Your own private island, complete with a staff of 500 paid for by Costco to do any job you require.

* **10 Years:** $10 Million, the private island, and a one-time permanent body modification to look exactly how you want (Mystique-style).

How long are you staying, and how are you handling your roommate?

​A wealthy, eccentric billionaire buys out a major boxing promotion and sets up a bizarre geopolitical exhibition match. Your country's current head of state/government has been legally mandated to fight undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in exactly 30 days.

​The rules of the contract are absolute:

​The Match: A standard 12-round professional boxing match. Usyk is not holding back. He will actively look for a knockout from the opening bell.

​The Authority: For the next month, the leader is your absolute puppet for training. They must follow your exact diet, sleep schedule, and training regimen. No excuses, no diplomatic duties.

​The Stakes (Victory): If your leader somehow wins, you are officially appointed as their Chief Supreme Advisor. They are legally bound to obey every policy, law, or executive order you dictate for the rest of their term.

​The Stakes (Defeat): If your leader is knocked out, disqualified, or loses on points, you personally face an automatic, non-negotiable 1% increase on your income tax rate every year for the rest of your life.

You have a magic app on your phone that works only once. It allows you to upload a video up to 30 seconds long, and within the next 24 hours everyone on the planet will have seen it at least once. It pops up on any media platform they open, it's played on television, digital billboards, you name it. Even people out in wilderness or locked up without technology will see it, perhaps as a dream or hallucination.

What do you post?

A genie grants you 3 wishes, with the typical rules in place. Of course, you can't wish for more wishes. But you figured out a way to get around this:

Wish 1: Starting tomorrow, I enter a personal Groundhog Day loop. Each day follows the premise of the movie. I wake up at the same time, the world resets, and only I retain memory. The loop repeats indefinitely until I choose to end it.

Wishes 2 and 3 can be made the next day, but the Groundhog Day reset restores them when you wake up. You can live as long as you want in that recurring day, making 2 wishes a day.

How long would you stay in that day making temporary wishes? Do you think this is a legal loophole for genie magic, or would the genie refuse the wish?

You are presented with an opportunity to erase yourself from a specific period in your past.

This period must be defined by a clear start date and end date.

The universe will be reconfigured as though you were absent and did not exist during this deleted era.

Any influence you exerted on the world during that time will be nullified, and similarly, any impact the world had on you will be undone, with the sole exception of your memories. You have the option to also erase these memories, if you so choose.

Upon making your decision, you will be returned to the present day, though the world around you may have undergone significant alterations.

You receive a spreadsheet file containing every purchase you ever made in your life. It has the date, time, price, and description of purchase. You are told that you may return as many of these purchases as you wish, for a full refund into your current bank account. If you no longer possess the purchase, you still get refunded but the catch applies.

​The Catch: When you refund a purchase, you don't just lose the object, you lose the memory and personal growth associated with the period of time that purchase represented.

For example, if you refund the dinner where you met your partner, you retain no memory of that night. While you are still together in the present, the "foundation" of the relationship in your mind becomes a blank space, creating a permanent emotional disconnect.

If you refund a laptop you used to learn coding, or a car you used to commute to a pivotal job, the neural pathways formed during those hours of use are wiped. You keep the money, but you lose the professional competency.

​

Refunding past meals or life-saving medical expenses results in a "physical debt." Your body reverts to the nutritional or health state it would be in had those purchases never occurred, potentially inducing immediate illness or physical exhaustion.

Every purchase is a plot point. If you refund too many "frivolous" purchases from your youth to pay off a modern debt, you wake up as a person who has technically lived 35 years but possesses the life experience and wisdom of a teenager.

Mind reading is pretty simple. You can hear what people around you are thinking, and you can use this power however you want.

The Maroon 5 rule needs a bit more explaining. You can hear songs played or recorded by the actual band Maroon 5, covers of their studio songs by other artists, or if you can somehow pull it off, any song at all performed by the actual band Maroon 5. Any other music playing can be heard by others, but not you. You cannot hear the music in their mind either (unless it's Maroon 5).

Would you accept the power at this cost? How would you use the power, and how would you deal with the limited selection of music?