By the knob

“Well… as the saying goes: Time's expensive,” the doctor chuckles, “as long as you're wearing it and it is ‘off’, it will eat your magical energy. I've set it at a little higher than the level that you were using in your transformation, and will be upping that periodically: Think of it as exercise, because it pretty much is, except you're also charging a battery. It can store a decent amount of power… at your current rate, you could probably fill it up in a month. The dial on the side controls how much power it burns while active, and in turn how much it compresses time.” He takes a breath, “Time dilation starts at ten to one and goes up to ten thousand to one; each click is a factor of ten… but the power cost isn't linear. You should be able to maintain a ten to one ratio full time if you like, but a full charge at ten thousand to one will last only a few seconds of real time.” He pauses, “Still… ten to one will easily carry the day against almost anyone who isn't powered and let you throw things at ballistic velocities, while at ten thousand to one ‘a few seconds of real time’ is a day or two of subjective time… and you'll be throwing things at meteorite impact speeds.”

You consider that, “So ‘don't miss’. I'll remember that. Umm… how do I turn it on?”

“There’s a couple of ways,” The ring chuckles, “first, it's peeking a little into the future a tiny amount… sort of. There are ways to fool it, but for the most part if anything would injure you, it will turn itself on at full power just before the injury would otherwise occur… assuming it has any power left, but if you had it turned off, there should be at least some. I put something like that on basically all of the training gear I make, to keep students safe.”

“So if the world suddenly freezes, I should look around for trouble,” you nod, “got it.”

“Second, you can just turn the knob.” The ring chuckles, “There's a ‘one' setting that's essentially turning it off entirely, which is how it was stored.”

He did say you should be able to handle ten to one constantly… you turn the little knob on the side a single click, and feel the tension change.

“Just like that,” your therapist confirms, “and my inclusion brings me to the third option: Once you have a good handle on your magic, you can simply feed it magic directly to turn it on… as can I in a pinch, although this one has the resulting energy flow through you, which has the mind mixing complication, so it is not a good idea for me to run it for normal use.”

You consider that watch on your wrist, “And this is designed for me to learn how to do this on my own?”

“Yes,” Doc chuckles, “In less than a year, you won't need it at all, and we can switch you to just using one of the anti-aging rings.”

“Anti aging?” You tilt your head, “You can solve old age? Everyone wants that. Why aren't you selling them?”

The ring takes a while to answer that, “Each takes me about an hour to make, and the drain is low enough that the general populace could make use of them. Give me a year, I could teach a couple people how to make them. Scaling is an option. But…” he pauses, “...I don't want to start the immortality wars early. There's a whole mess of problems with letting everyone live forever. Like…” he considers, “...you're familiar with the hunger problem in many African nations?”

Who isn't? “Yes.”

“Do you know where it came from?” He asks. That gives you pause, and the doctor continues, “It came from well-intentioned missionaries introducing modern - for the time - medicine and bringing the infant mortality rate down from around eighty or ninety percent to more like five or ten percent. Before the missionaries got involved, everyone would have like ten kids because that was the only way a tribe wouldn't die out. Having tons of kids was deeply ingrained in the culture. The missionaries didn't change that, so the population exploded beyond what the infrastructure could support - and due to various reasons that boil down to cultural aspects, nobody built the necessary infrastructure. Result: Massive numbers of starving kids.”

That doesn't seem right… “People learn, we'll sort it out.”

“The missionaries were in full swing in the eighteen fifties,” the Ring bluntly informs you, “The starving kids problem is well over a hundred years old. Lots of people have spent considerable effort trying to fix it directly. It only works when people want it badly enough to abandon the cultural elements that are killing them.”

“Too many kids?” You consider.

“That's just the surface,” the ring sighs, “with enough work, the area could absolutely support ten times the current population, no problem… but when a big plantation owner will have his men move his fence a few hundred extra yards and the only people who care enough to try and do anything about it are the people who's land he just casually stole because he's paying off the local warlords… then the stability needed to build the kind of infrastructure needed to keep everyone alive simply doesn't exist. Sure, there's some places where they've mostly solved it, but there's still a lot of the exact same problem.”

“Okay…” this really doesn't sound right, “...but how's that related to handing out immortality?”

“How do I put this…” he considers, “...okay, so, you want to retire comfortably, right?”

“Eventually, yeah,” you respond.

“That's a problem:” the ring responds, “A society of immortals can't let anyone retire.”

You frown, “Why not?”

“In order for you to have oatmeal for breakfast, someone has to cook it, which means someone had to bring it, which means someone had to harvest it, which means someone had to grow it… and many other steps in line.” The ring takes a breath, “No matter what anyone does with finance or law, the basic truth that someone has to do work for someone to have breakfast applies.”

“Robotics have come a long way…” you consider.

“Theoretically technology could work around that…” he admits, “...but it's not there yet: Someone still has to build, direct, maintain, and supply the robots: The truth remains.”

You nod, and the dragon continues, “Now, when people retire, they stop doing that work. If everyone is inmortal and people are permitted to retire once they've worked enough, you get a progressively larger percentage of the population that doesn't work anymore - at some point, you have more load on the working population than they can support, and you get the African starvation problem.” He takes a breath, “even if people stop retiring… you get a wealth distribution problem. Those skilled at accumulating wealth slowly get all of it. They become defacto dictators and…” he pauses, “...and I don't want to start that war early. The original was bad enough.”

“Wait…” you consider, “...you're a time traveler?”