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Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Microstory 1637: Wish Fulfillment

I’ve not said anything about universes that contain a great deal of people with spirit abilities. Mine is like that, but throughout the bulkverse, we’re pretty rare. In any given brane, you might find one or two spirits in all of history. In Genieverse, there are many, though not quite as many as there are here in Voldisilaverse. The Voldisil are complicated in that we never all get together to make decisions. Each one of us tries to do whatever they believe is right, and sometimes that doesn’t work out so well, but we never decided to form some kind of governmental system. The spirits in Genieverse did. They were all born with the ability to find and recognize each other, and in the hopes of creating a better world, chose to found an organization that would utilize their abilities effectively. All spirits here were the same thing, though to varying degrees of success. They called themselves Genies, as you could have guessed, and I’m sure you’ve heard of them, but you probably know them to be slaves, or evil creatures of some kind. The real Genies can’t manipulate reality, or alter the laws of physics, but they can answer people’s prayers. And answering prayers is what they chose to do. They could have charged for their services, using regular currency, or maybe favors, but they wanted it to be fair. They opened their doors to all, and their only rule was that no wish could contradict someone else’s wish, or interfere with someone’s general happiness. Lots of people wanted the person they loved to love them back, but that would violate that other person’s agency, so it was off limits. It’s unclear whether they would be capable of such a thing anyway. They thought this simple restriction was all they would need, but there were problems, of course. It led them to prioritizing certain people over others—usually on a first come, first serve basis—resulting in an unfair system. It also resulted in chaos.

The Genies were powerful, intelligent, and knowledgeable. If two people wanted the same promotion at work, the person who asked for it first would usually be the one to get it, unless the Genies were aware that the second person was better suited. Well, this came with questions, like what were their parameters for job fitness, and what right did they have to circumvent the hiring manager’s decision? They were trying to become gods, while pretending they weren’t trying to be gods, while just making everything worse for everyone. They didn’t have any rules about how many wishes any one person was allotted. They didn’t think too far down the line at possible consequences for their choices. As long as a wish did not pose an immediate threat, and it was within their power, they made it happen. Society fell apart as people became obsessed with making their lives better without actually putting any effort into that goal. They believed as long as they didn’t ask for too much at one time, they would not be denied, and all of their dreams would eventually come true. It became impossible for the Genies to understand the ramifications of their actions. Soon, contradictions were popping up all over the place, and the solutions never really helped, because they always felt unfair as well. In two years, pretty much everyone in the world was unhappy, and there seemed to be no way out. The only reason it took that long was because not everyone believed the Genies were real right away. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter what they did at this point. No one was really wishing for the environment to be healthier throughout all of this, so the Ochivari came through, and wiped them all out, but it was their last successful mission.

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