I’ve previously written about my prompt of choosing between a Time Machine and a Teleportation device on Hinge. Since getting back on the apps two days ago, I’ve updated the prompt into a poll, with the third option now being “a billion euros”.

I didn’t really think much about it. I just wanted a third option, and a common ice-breaker question is what would you do if you had a million dollars?

“But a million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?”

Someone responded to that prompt today by selecting “a billion euros,” and when I asked why, she said it’s because she can share a that with the people she loves.

It never even occurred to me until then that that’s the only option that can be distributed and have people benefit in parallel.

Because a time machine doesn’t actually exit. And either does a teleportation device. So when we think of those things, we think of them in the context of whatever pop-culture we’re most familiar with that they’re in. And time-travel and teleportation rules are different depending on who’s writing about them.

But a billion dollars is money, and money exists in the here and now.

That’s another thing I realised today. That while time-machine is about regret (past) and teleportation is about anxiety (future), only the billion euros is grounded in the here and now (present).

Choosing a billion dollars is acknowledging the reality we currently live in.