Watched the
Eureka finale today(It's one of my favorite sci-fi shows)(We recorded
it to watch later so we didn't watch it at the same time as many people) it was such a good show. It's a pity its gone. The worst part
is it was actually making money and they still canceled it. Though it
wasn't a large amount of money apparently. Read up more on the
cancellation reasons here if your interested:
http://screenrant.com/eureka-canceled-series-finale-ending-aco-127496/
Anyway enjoy the
flash fiction!
James The Modern Genie
As a genie I've
granted many wishes in my lifetime and will keep granting them over
the rest of it. (Immortality has its ups and downs). My name is
James. Expecting a more mystical name? Tough. Believe it or not
genies can have everyday names too. And if your thinking “Shouldn't
a genie have an Arabic name?” you should know genies are spirits
from all around the world. (Not all grant wishes though it is my job,
stereotypically enough.) I'm actually a French genie, though my
mother is Australian and my father is Mexican. Though really that was
because I was born in France while my mother and father were
traveling there. I grew up until I was around 12 in Britain then we
moved to United States deep south. From this I have a very....interesting
blend of accents as both my mother and father have very thick
accents.
The purpose of
wish granting genies is to teach humans a lesson. We pretty much lie
and pretend that we've been discovered by people once “every
thousand years” and they think they're special and nobody would
believe them if they told anybody. When really we're discovered a lot
to teach people lessons. Sometimes we make sure we have about half of
the people we meet think its a dream as if too many people know then
there could be people catching on. Though many big reality altering
wishes that are actually out of our powers(like them getting
immortality or causing world war three or something or murdering
someone) we actually just make them hallucinate and make them think
its happening. Eh, even with magic we can't do everything and it
would be way to risky, what if it couldn't be undone by another
genie. Though if a little girl wishes for a puppy then she gets it
because hey! It's a puppy!
Though I bet you've
seen the movies, they do two wishes learn their lesson, and use their
last wish to reverse it all. That's pretty much how it always
happens. And of course we're very good at screwing people over. Wish
for immortality? Boom! They never die, but hey! They age become,
diseased skeletons of themselves or wind up at the bottom of a ditch
and use their last wish to set things back before. Think saying never
grow old will work. Eh, your going to die at 20(Of course I give them
the option to wish out of it yada yada, the entire point is a
lesson.) Mostly the immortality gig is that while their confident in
their immortality they waste life more than they would normally and
they learn to live life to their fullest when they become mortal. The
reason we make immortality a hallucination wish where they think its
happening is that its very risky(people would catch on) its out of a
lot of genies power, and when the person is hallucinating I can make
time fast forward in their head.
Yeah, even
though we say we've been discovered only once in a thousand years or
something we actually grant wishes all the time(We being the type of
genie I am, remember there are genies of many types) my record for
the amount of wishes I've granted in a single day is 60. 3 per person
means I visited twenty humans in one day and granted their
wishes and taught them lessons. (Though sometimes we do grant more or
less than 3 wishes, but that wasn't one of those days. Sometimes we
decide beforehand. But there was this one gal who just wouldn't get
the lesson, I had to keep giving her wishes until she got it. I went
up to twenty-five with her believe it or not.)
Though people
like that are not the most annoying part of the job. The most
annoying part is the paperwork. Especially since my office is at that
point where we transitioning to electronic records where we write
down all the stuff plus enter it on the computer(*gasp* genies use
computers? We use technology too? What a shock!) But we don't use all
the other nice gadgets. Now if your thinking why we don't we use our
magic and wish powers to get all the stuff, genies can't wish for
themselves, its sort of a balance of the universe thing so we don't
take everything over. We have to grant for others and not for our
benefit. (“We” once again being the type of genie I am)
So to give a
perfect glimpse into the modern genie world here's what some of my
wish paperwork looks like:
Your Name:
Your Magical
Identification Number:
Filing Date:
Human Name:
Human's Soul
Number:
Human Gender:
Human
Height(kg):
Human
Weight(cm):
Human Spirit
Animal:
Human Favorite
Color:
Human
Description:____________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Wish Details:
Below first put
the EXACT phrasing of the wish by the human then summarize the events
of the wish.
Then write a
brief summary of the events of how you grant the wish under grant
summary. At the end of wish list be sure to fill out the “Lesson
Taught” section. Also with every wish you must get a complete grant
detail document for the wish and fill it out and attach it to this
document.
Wish #1:
“____________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________”
Grant Summary:
----
And this pretty
much continues with the next two wishes then gives me elaborate
instructions on strange papers I have to file if I grant more than
three wishes. With the paper work and some of the stupid lessons I've
had to teach, (I had to teach a six year old not to cheat at video
games with my wishes) being a WISH GRANTING genie can be pretty
annoying. So yeah, even being a wish granting spirit has the ups and
downs.
P.S. The reason
I'm emphasizing the wish granting thing as not being for all genies
is because my cousin works with humans as a sort of guardian angel
kinda role and he is tired of this stereotype that some of you have
and really he wanted me to point it out. It's my job to be stereotyped that way so actually it doesn't bother me that much. Sorry if I gave the wrong impression, but I promised him I would talk about it a lot.
This work is
copyright Langdon Kennedy you may share this(email it, print it, post
it on your own website, broadcast it etc.) work unaltered as long as
you credit me as the author and share a link to this blog with it and
it is not for profit. If you have any questions and/or are unclear of
these conditions email me at llkenne1@asu.edu
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