part 1

Well, shit, he thought, now I’ve done it.

The sudden, unmistakable sound of breaking pottery is seldom a welcome or reassuring noise, even less so within the confines of the research lab of the Department of Middle Eastern Antiquities, and most acutely not the case after your elbow has unexpectedly persuaded a six-thousand year old, Obaid period, painted Sumerian bottle to seek a brief moment of freefall leading to a tragic contingence with the laboratory floor.

Before he even turned to look, his attempt to apportion and depreciate his guilt began.

It was an accident. This much was true. They shouldn’t have left it were it could get knocked off so easily. True as well, very true, clearly negligence to a degree difficult to understand. If I had pushed the damn dustmop in instead of backing in dragging it around the corner I would have seen it and this wouldn’t have happened. Once again, true, but he didn’t and he did and he didn’t and it did and there was no getting around the fact that whatever share of the responsibility lay elsewhere, he was the one who did knock it off. He came to the conclusion that he was partially responsible, but since he hadn’t intended to do it, it wasn’t really his fault. Thus unburdened, Rick turned to inspect the damage.

The fragments of the blue-painted vase, or bottle, or whatever it was, lay mostly as he’d anticipated, in five or six larger pieces amid many smaller shards. It must have contained some kind of very fine grey powder, some of which continued to float gently in a small cloud above the broken jar.

Now what?

Ironically, as custodian it fell to him to clean everything up. On the other hand, he’d been instructed never to handle any of the artifacts. With an error of commission already on the record, maybe it would be better to err on the side of caution. He decided that the safest thing to do . .

What the hell . .

Something was up. The little cloud of powder was not behaving as he had expected. Rather than gradually falling back to the floor, it began to swirl and expand as if it were smoke from a fire, slowly at first, rising, billowing, darkening. He prepared to move away, but even as it continued to thicken and grow it seemed to roll away from him toward the other side of the room.

It defied explanation. Its movement did not seem random and as it rose along the far wall its fluid form assumed a bilateral symmetry that fueled his mounting anxiety. Common sense suggested he run as far and as fast as he could, but he was riveted where he stood, suddenly spellbound before an event it was increasingly more obvious was of an order altogether different than anything he had ever experienced before.

After about twenty seconds the cloud had filled the opposite side of the room, swirling in symmetrical currents and pulsing in rhythms like a living thing. Heart pounding, senses keen and focused, he watched as two vortices formed opposite one another, spun into tight, synchronous spirals, and coalesced into translucent green eyes the size of footballs.

He stared, open mouthed. He saw no face, no features, not even eyelids, simply two slightly diagonal, almond shaped slits in the continuously swirling, charcoal grey cloud, and through these openings burned emerald furnaces, incandescent with a fury that knotted his stomach.

He was terrified, yet no impulse for self-preservation freed him from his fascination, his utter absorption in the impossible drama emerging before him.

The eyes, unblinking, regarded him malevolently. He stared in return, at once timid and defiant.

Then, something new:

WHAT IS YOUR DESIRE?

He was startled, not only by the words, but in the nature by which he experienced them. He didn’t so much as hear them as seem to hear them. There was more:

YOU NEED NOT FEAR ME. I SHALL NOT HARM YOU.

Who are you?

He was too surprised and frightened to actually say this, however his intention to was apparently all that was necessary to convey its content.

MY NAME SHALL REMAIN UNKNOWN TO YOU. KNOWLEDGE OF MY NAME YIELDS POWER OVER ME. WHAT IS YOUR DESIRE?

"My desire?" This he managed to articulate.

YOU HAVE RELEASED ME FROM MY LONG CONFINEMENT. I AM BOUND BY THE CONDITIONS OF MY INCARCERATION TO PROVIDE YOU ONCE, WITHIN MY POWER TO DO SO, WHATEVER YOU ASK OF ME.

"Once?"

ONCE.

"You're a genie, right? Aren't you supposed to grant me three wishes?"

I AM DJINN. ONE.

It waited.

His mind was still groping to assess the possibility this was not all a grotesque hallucination, that he might actually be standing eye to giant baleful eye with a mythical supernatural being, so he retreated momentarily from the question and its monumental implications to restore his bearings.

He set the dustmop handle against the lab table, leaned back against a high, round stool and looked around the room. It was poorly lit in the reduced, after hours glow but it was certainly the same museum research lab he was accustomed to cleaning five nights a week, absent its present pale viridian tint.

He considered the possibility that he was the butt of some practical joke, rejected it. He returned his attention to the green embers still trained on him.

“Do I have to take it?”

YOU DO NOT.

“I mean, I know how these things happen, no matter what I wish for, you’ll make sure something bad happens to me.”

YOU FEAR I WILL VIOLATE THE SPIRIT OF YOUR DESIRE, THAT THE CHANGES WROUGHT BY ITS GRANTING WILL BE ATTENDED BY CONSEQUENCES CAUSING PAIN OR GRIEF OR WORSE.

“Well, yeah, that’s it exactly.”

YOU HAVE HEARD LEGENDS TO THIS EFFECT. THESE LEGENDS HAVE ANCIENT ORIGINS IN TRUTH. CIRCUMSTANCES NO LONGER WARRANT REPRISAL.

“I uh, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

MY KIND CAME TO THIS PLANE MILLENNIA AGO SEEKING EXPERIENCE OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD. WE FOUND COMMUNICATION WITH MEN AND OFFERED TO SHARE KNOWLEDGE. SOME MEN USED THIS KNOWLEDGE TO ENSLAVE US. THE PRICE OF OUR LIBERATION WAS TO PROVIDE MATERIAL OBJECTS OF THEIR DESIRES. WE FOUND OUR REVENGE IN THIS VERY MANIFESTATION. YOU ARE BLAMELESS. I HAVE NO NEED TO BE VENGEFUL.

“OK. That sounds good. I just don’t know. I can still pass on it, right?”

YOU MAY DECLINE.

“If I change my mind can I do it later?”

YOU MAY ACCEPT OR DECLINE. YOU MAY NOT DEFER.

“How much time do I have?”

I WILL REMAIN UNTIL YOU DECIDE.

“What if I need a long time to make up my mind?”

I WILL REMAIN UNTIL YOU DECIDE.

“Isn’t that a deferral?”

I WILL REMAIN UNTIL YOU DECIDE.

Rick failed to see the distinction but the genie, the . . djinn, was clearly the expert in the matter.

“And if I decide to make a wish, you won’t make it turn out to be some kind of disaster?”

YOU DID NOT CONFINE ME, NOR DID YOU RELEASE ME BY DESIGN. YOU ARE DESERVING NEITHER OF REWARD NOR RETRIBUTION. YET BY YOUR HAND MY LONG INTERNMENT IS AT AN END. I AM COMPELLED ONCE TO DO YOUR BIDDING. I WILL SERVE YOU IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR INTENT.

“How long have you been stuck inside that bottle?”

MORE THAN SIX THOUSAND YEARS.

“Jesus H Christ! Six thousand . . . wait a minute, how do you know how to speak English?”

MY CONFINEMENT PREVENTED MY INTERACTION WITH THE WORLDS. YET THE WALLS OF MY CONTAINER ARE INSUBSTANTIAL AND ITS PROXIMITY TO HUMAN EVENTS LEFT ME A LIMITED BUT USEFUL PERCEPTION OF THEM.

“You’re saying you could see through the bottle?”

THIS IS ANALOGOUS TO MY EXPERIENCE.

"Wow. Weren’t you buried though?” He indicated other objects in the lab. “Wasn’t this stuff dug out of the ground someplace?”

I HAVE BEEN BURIED ALL BUT TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF MY CONFINEMENT.

“Could you see anything then?”

NOTHING.

“I can’t imagine that was any fun.”

IT WAS A HELL I CANNOT DESCRIBE.

“Like being buried alive?”

IT WAS A HELL I CANNOT DESCRIBE.

He didn’t really want to spend any time considering this, being buried alive for four thousand years was a concept he had no desire to appreciate. It was too horrible an idea to be a regular fixture in his head.

“OK. I need to think about this. It’s is a big decision.”

AS YOU WISH.

As I wish? “I suppose I can’t wish for more wishes.”

IT IS NOT PERMITTED.

“Just checking. Can I ask you for advice?”

IT IS PERMITTED.

“OK, what’s your advice?”

YOUR WEIGHT IN GEMS WOULD PROVIDE WEALTH AND POWER FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY FOR MANY GENERATIONS.

He shook his head. “That’s the last thing I expected you to say. Isn’t it kind of selfish? Shouldn’t I wish for world peace or something?”

I CAN MOVE CERTAIN OBJECTS IN SPACE AND TIME. I CANNOT CHANGE THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE OR THE HEARTS OF MEN.

“Got it. Where would you get ‘em? The . . minerals I mean?”

FOR YOU, FROM DEEP IN THE EARTH’S CRUST.

“You mean you take them from different places for different people?”

FOR HE WHO CONFINED ME, THEY WOULD COME FROM THE PERSONAL COLLECTIONS OF A DOZEN WARLORDS.

“I get the picture. You’re sure you’re not going to do that kind of thing to me?”

I HAVE NO NEED TO BE VENGEFUL.

“Good. I still need to think about this, it’s a big responsibility. I know it sounds dumb, but I’d like to try to have this help somebody else too.”

YOU WILL FIND WEALTH AND POWER PROVIDE MANY OPPORTUNITIES TO AID OTHERS, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO DO SO.

“I suppose. That might be the simplest way. It would give me time to think about the best way to do it. I’m just afraid if I was that rich, I’d turn into an asshole. Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t talk that way to a genie.”

I AM DJINN. WORDS DO NOT OFFEND ME.

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t feel right somehow. But let me back up here a minute. Did I hear you say you could send things back in time?”

I CAN.

“Could you send me back in time?”

I CAN.

“Could you make me young again?”

I CAN.

“OK, how about this. Could you make me my fifteen-year-old self again? You know, send me back so I could live my life over again?

I CAN.

“Really. We may be onto something here. Let me think about this.”

YOU YEARN TO CHANGE YOUR PAST.

“Well, sure. I don’t know if it would be a good idea, but I know that if I could, I’d sure as hell do a better job than I did the first time. Although I’d have to know then what I know now or else I’d do everything the same, right? Could you do that? Have me know everything I know now when I’m fifteen? Kind of like put this brain or this mind in my fifteen year old body?”

I CAN.

“Wow. This is really something. I’m tempted but I just can’t believe it would work out the way I’d want it to. So, do you know anything about my life? You have these magical powers, do you know what it’s been like for me?”

YOU ARE A CONDUIT TO DIRECT KNOWLEDGE OF THESE EVENTS. AS YOU THINK OR SPEAK OF THEM THEY GENERATE TIME COMPRESSED DIRECT EXPERIENCES IN MY AWARENESS.

“Like you were there when it happened?”

A SUBSTANTIVE APPROXIMATION.

“Amazing.”

WHAT DO YOU SEEK TO CHANGE?

“Shit, everything. Well, not everything, but just about. First of all, I’d like to go to college. I had to work in high school if I wanted to have a car and stuff, and I never did any homeword. I got terrible grades so I went to work in a factory. But I took some classes later in jail and found out that if I just take the time to study, I do pretty well, especially in math. Maybe I could be an engineer or something.

“And I’d play baseball. I was a pitcher In high school, but I quit that too. There was the job of course, but it was coaches that ruined it for me. They were such assholes I told them to stuff it. They called me a quitter and a loser but I only quit because they made sure it wasn’t any fun anymore. I think I could have been pretty good. I love the game, I play league fast-pitch and nobody around here can hit me. If I had stayed with it and gotten good coaching maybe I could have played in college, maybe the majors, I don’t know. I’d like to go back and find out.”

He paused, thinking hard.

YOUR SON.

“Yeah. That would be the tough one.”

The Djinn waited.

Rick thought about the boy at home with a sitter, probably asleep by now.

“Look, the problem is my ex, you know, my ex-wife?” He took a deep breath. “I knew her in high school but just had one date with her. Well, it wasn’t really a date. I ran into her one night at some burger place. We did it in my Mustang parked in a field. She was this other guy’s girlfriend at the time, which should have given me a clue right then what she was like but I just thought I was a special case because I was so irresistible.

“Then I ran into her a few years later. I went to a bar to meet a different girl I’d just met and Kat, Katherine, was working there as a cocktail waitress. We got to talking while I waited and seemed to have some chemistry. I was making pretty good money at the factory and she wanted to have a little girl and needed a father. To make a long story short, I turned out to be the guy.

The problem was, I had to go to work early so I was never around the bar late at night to see what she was up to. Then after the baby was born, I stayed home in the evenings and stopped going down there altogether.

“It got worse and worse. First of all, she didn’t have a little girl, she had a little boy. She said she loved him but I knew she was disappointed. Then the factory shut down and moved all the jobs to Mexico and Honduras and I was fucked, sorry. I started working temp jobs and she kept cocktailing. She didn’t stay at one place very long but she could always find work and she always made more money than I did. She got resentful and started staying away more and more.

“One night she didn’t come home. I didn’t call the cops because it wasn’t the first time she’d done it and I figured she’d show up later. I wasn’t happy about it but I didn’t think anything out of the ordinary was going on. I stayed home the next day and the cops came and arrested me that afternoon, took my son.

“It turns out she'd been serving up more than drinks down at work. We were having sex every day but she was getting laid a lot more than I was. I didn't really find out how bad it was until much later. I guess she was doing somebody every night, sometimes more than one. No shit, she'd do 'em for fun, do 'em for money. She lost a job once for blowing a guy in the bathroom. Who knows how many times she did things like that and didn’t get caught. She was doing this shit and giving everyone else some story about how much of a bastard I was, I didn’t love her, there was no sex, she loved me but wasn’t in love with me, crap like that. I had no clue any of this was going on because I was always home taking care of my son.

But after I lost my job it got really twisted. She started telling them I beat her, beat my son. Anytime she would get a bruise or a scratch she would tell everybody at work I did it to her. Then one night she pissed some guy off and he worked her over. She was afraid of what he'd do if she fingered him so she went to a friend’s house and told her I'd done it. Her friend called the cops and when they asked her what happened she told them I beat her up and threatened my son.

“I did eighteen months of a three year sentence and while I was in jail she wiped me out. Took everything I had and got full physical custody with no visitation.

“When I got paroled I found out she’d left my son with one of the girls she worked with, just dumped him to run off to California with some guy. Said she’d be back in a week but it had already been a couple months. I don’t know what else he’d been through, but he was a wreck, four years old. I wanted to kill her.

“I brought him here, changed my name, lied about my life, all that. If she wanted, she could go to the cops and they could find us easy, but I think she’s glad to be rid of both of us.”

He paused again. The eyes did not respond, steady, unblinking, inhuman. They had long ago learned patience of an unimaginable order.

“So, my boy and I are good. He’s ten now and doing great. He’s the only thing that’s important to me, and you can see how I would want to avoid her at all costs. But if I had it to do over, I would have to find a way for him to be born, you know? Could he be born from another woman?”

HER GENES ARE IRREPLACEABLE.

“You can’t tweak someone else’s to make the same arrangement?”

HER GENES ARE IRREPLACEABLE.

“But even if I use her again, doesn't fertilization produce a different pattern every time?”

IF THE NECESSARY SEQUENCES ARE AVAILABLE, THE APPROPRIATE PERMUTATION CAN BE ARRANGED.

“Really? I can’t take any chances here, you understand what I’m saying? If there’s any chance he could get lost in the shuffle, there’s no way I would do anything like this. But I’d also like the chance to give him a better life, you know? If I knew what was coming, maybe I could arrange to handle it all better, for him and for me.”

IF THE NECESSARY SEQUENCES ARE AVAILABLE, THE APPROPRIATE PERMUTATION CAN BE ARRANGED.

Rick took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“OK, fuck it. Let’s do it.”

THIS IS YOUR DESIRE?

“Yeah, what the hell. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I wish I was fifteen years old again, with all the knowledge I have right now, with the understanding that you will make this happen the way I want it to, and not twist my wish into something bad for me or my son.”

The eyes bored into him. Then, barely perceptibly, they seemed to narrow.

“Did you . . .”

There was a surge in the room. Everything seemed to swell, then there was shock wave that drove him backward along with the stool he had been leaning against. He landed flat on his back and his head snapped back hard against the floor. The pain shot through the back of his head, then down his spine and legs, radiating outward to the skin. He squeezed his head in his hands for a few moments until the pain began to subside, then lowered them to his chest while the ache continued to abate, keeping his eyes closed tightly against the brightness of the light overhead.

He took the opportunity to try to reflect on what had just happened to him. He had to consider the possiblity that . .

Wait a minute, why is it so bright in here? Only the security lights are on.

He turned his head and squinted through one eye just enough to find out what was going on.

“Rick? Art, come quick, he’s opening his eyes!”

The voice startled him so much he sat bolt upright and looked directly into the face of the speaker.

“Mom?”

He looked around. He was sitting in bed. His bed. The same bed in the same bedroom he slept in in during twelve years of mostly wasted public education. His mother was at the bedside, beaming. His dad appeared at the door. “Hey there ace, glad to see you back, we were starting to worry about you. You cracked that noggin pretty hard, maybe next time you'll listen when I tell you you're leaning too far back in a chair.”