Isaac's still fleshing out the details, but looks like Santa will have some serious work to do this year. Isaac intends to ask him for the powers of a given super hero, to be determined. I pointed out that this would be a tall order for Santa, but Isaac scornfully replied: "No it's not! It's just a PILL!"
Just a pill that will give you the powers of, say, Aquaman. Isaac spent a long time honing The Plan. We would have to work on The Plan quite a lot. For instance, think about it, Aquaman can only be outside the water for one hour. So .. hello… logistics! First off, Isaac's room will have to be transformed into a huge aquarium, requiring tons of sea water, other sea life (non-dangerous at first, moving on to dangerous as Isaac hones his telepathic skills), and some sort of entry/exit process for the non-gilled members of the family. This will require steel beams to reinforce the floor of our 175-year-old log cabin– sturdy as it is. Soon, Isaac had branched The Plan out to include sort of a spawning system with a tank in the living room (holding trout or salmon), and a waterfall coming down the stairs, which they would swim up against to the upstairs hall. Isaac gestured to the carpet. "All this will have to be replaced with coral," he explained. We discussed the idea of having an estuary between the top of the stairs and Isaac's door, where the sea water and fresh could mingle. "There's going to be a LOT of dead trout," Isaac warned. "They die and then the babies eat their decaying matter." I pointed out that this might smell a little bit bad in the living room, but Isaac was dismissive of my concerns. "Nah– we'll have a lid on it."
Then there was the school problem– with 20 minutes transportation time each way, that would leave Isaac only twenty minutes of his one land hour at school each day. Although this idea appealed to him, I felt that he needed a way to be in school a full day– I suggested sort of a reverse scuba tank, full of sea water, that he could carry on his back. "Why don't you do something like the mudskipper?" I asked. "They just have pouches of water they carry over their gills!" Isaac retorted. "Exactly," I said. "Why not do something like that?"
No– he wanted a flexible rubber bubble that he could effectively live in. It would have to be clear, and it would have to be flexible enough to go through doors and such. He could run in it like a hamster in one of those hamster balls, or swim as it would of course be filled with water. Also, the car would have to be refitted– maybe with some sort of water-filled dome on top?
I worked through a lot of the details with him, adding the little bit of fine print that we wouldn't actually start the modifications until AFTER Santa delivers the pill and the powers are bestowed. This minor caveat gave me all the cover I needed to work through the Plan with him without fear of anything actually happening. (Cue images of coming upstairs to find that he's flooding his bedroom to get started..)
Now, just when I thought we had a good working blue print of the modifications, he's started to waffle on which superhero he should choose. For a couple days there he was pretty keen on becoming the Red Tornado. All we would have to do then would be to create a "tornado habitat" in his room. Line it with something like whatever they put inside wind tunnels? At the moment, though, he's considering the pros and cons of shapeshifting powers. I said, "You mean like Beast Boy?" He said, "But Beast Boy can only change into animals." Hm. Not good enough. "You mean like Kevin?" (Kevin on Ben 10 can turn into rock, metal or wood, if he touches these things.) "No… that's not that helpful." So. We're going to need a superhero whose powers Santa can condense into a pill, and who can change into pretty much anything. (Odo from Deep Space 9?) And then, and only then, we'll make an environment to suit that creature.