PulpLit.net

No wait, I've got it, I've got it...

When you're a member of my generation and you reach a certain age, you will at some point find yourself locked in a car for six hours and forced to play a game that goes something along the lines of:

"Like, if you could have a superpower what would it be? You can like pick anything."

It is inevitable. No one will actually want to play this game, and yet, like engaging in long, wincing comparisons of personal injury stories, after a brief collective groan, you will be unable to stop yourselves.

This one guy even wrote a whole book about it, and the book is really good.

But that's not my point. My point is, I know what I need. One superpower to rule them all. The one to appease my anxious nature and work in tandem with my compulsion to be early. (For there is no denying I am already a superhero: the one named Set Ahead. Unable to be late for anything, I pull all those around me into my orbit or leave them behind, for better or lonelier.)

Today I speak not of the power I have, but the power I want:

Able to make people call simply by thinking about them.

I doubt if I am alone in desiring this power.

What would the hero posessing this ability be named? The Prom Queen? The Closer? El Relaxo? No matter. The power would have limitless applications in personal and business communication and the person able to effect it would reign among the upper echelons of the powerful. Used for evil, or applied for good in an overreaching manner, the power could have effects as disastrous as the manipulation of events during time travel. One can assume that as the power grew stronger, the hero would be able not only to will others to use the phone, but also to make the phone ring on its own.

The young hero might waste her powers on prank calls, making people run to the phone for no reason at all. The learning hero, not yet in control of her power might cause calls to happen ahead of their time, forcing decisions for the worse or causing people to make calls without knowing why.

"Hey... so, what's up?" [she snickers to herself]
"Uhm, I don't know... er... bye?"

But with practice and patience (very difficult to acquire. Patience runs against the very nature of Set Ahead, as does the overall spirit of the new power as a whole) the hero could learn to harness her new power to save time and anxiety.

Now,

1... 2... 3... RING!
1... 2... 3... RING!
1... 2... 3... RING!