This one was fun to listen to, and having Mur (a well-known MMO addict) read the story gave it a nice touch of irony, above and beyond the fact that she just did a great job with it.
The ending, though ...
<shiver>
In the end, this one gave me a feeling very similar to that of "Just Do It" -- it's basically a story about a selfish bastard imposing his will on another human being and getting away with it. Mind control stories can often be humorous, entertaining or even arousing, but they usually make me feel like I need a shower.
The power of the Wand of Reification is just about the biggest temptation that could exist in the universe. I would normally say that I don't care about having power, in the sense of political power or economic power or military power. The types of power commonly available in our world are primarily destructive, and they double as a set of shackles for the person who bears them. This sort of power, though -- the power to quite literally change the world to your liking -- this would be truly seductive. One reason the ending is so unsettling is because there
is a part of me that would want to change things, to make them "better" -- and because the story shows us that one person's wish fulfillment is another person's nightmare. "Lena" might be happy most of the time and soon forget about the incident with the ruined truck, but the truest part of herself will still be trapped inside, screaming. I shudder to think that my own actions with such a Wand might end up doing the same thing to someone, and it makes me glad that I'll never be faced with that choice.
The idea of quantum mechanics as, essentially, the "pixelization" or "granularity" of a simulated universe at fine scales is one that I've heard before, and I do find it to be a fun thought experiment. (Dr. Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford, has gotten some headlines for seriously proposing the "
our universe is a simulation" idea.) My mother, a long-time Star Trek fan, once referred to the Bible verse that says that "in Him we live, and move, and have our being" and said that we must be on God's holodeck.

Yes, it's a program with its own (mostly) internally consistent rules and subroutines, but he could always change the parameters, or even turn it
off...Oh, and as for why he has the armory full of wands: My guess is that he uses two of the wishes from each wand to make changes, then keeps the last wish in reserve "just in case." That would be consistent with the in-story comments about his reluctance to use up magic items, while also accounting for the fact that he obviously
has been making changes with each iteration of Meg's "quest."