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disturbing interview—if that
was the right word for it—as rapidly as possible.
    “Ati Kispu Du,” he said quickly. The genie faded out of
sight, and Paul was faced with an empty garage again.
    For several moments, he leaned against the workbench for
support, his knees weak, as he frowned, mentally trying to deal with his
encounter with the genie. He grimaced at the sight of all his tools, still
neatly arrayed for his use. None of them would really help him with this type
of problem.
    He still found himself wondering if he had really even seen
the genie, if what instead he had experienced was yet another delusion, a
mental aberration of some kind, brought on by fatigue and stress. What was
reality anyway? How much of what was seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled
was real, and how much was contrived within his mind? Until that day, Paul would
have sworn that genies had no place in cold, hard reality. Yet he had just
talked to one. Was it his concept of reality that was flawed, his perception of
it, or had delusions seized control of his mind?
    Paul shook his head in confusion. What choice did he really
have? According to what he thought he had just seen and heard, he now had three
wishes to think about. Maybe he was deluded. Maybe not. The best he could do
was play the cards he had been dealt.
    His knees wobbling, Paul gingerly took the brightly colored
object and carefully put it back in the box, snapping closed the lid.
     

THREE
     
    Home
    Mojave, CA
    December
    Thursday, 10:00 p.m. PST
     
    T ry
as he might, Paul could not get the genie out of his mind. For four days, he wandered
through life like a man in a dream, wrestling with a thousand variations of
wishes he might make. Nothing he could come up with seemed to be satisfactory.
The more he thought about it, the less sure he was that he had actually seen a
genie at all. And although he used every spare moment to research genies and
magic on the Internet, Paul was also totally uncertain about what he wanted and
how to wish for it. As a result, he became utterly distracted and frustrated.
    It didn’t help the situation, either, to be followed around
by that blasted wooden box! It seemed to be everywhere! At home, at work, in
his car, at the stores where he went shopping—everywhere that he went! And the
fact that everyone else noticed it and asked pointed questions about it that
Paul found difficult to answer only compounded the issue, making him feel like
a liar.
    His co-workers and neighbors all became very much aware of his
distracted condition as well. Some were concerned but the majority was irritated,
and in a couple of cases were genuinely exasperated with Paul. Only a couple of
people tried to give him some space to work out his problems. Everyone else
pestered Paul with questions or chastised him for being so dysfunctional and
unresponsive to their demands on his time. His stress levels rose dramatically.
He felt despondent and even more isolated and alone.
    Thursday night, Paul ended up sleeping on the couch. He
tossed restlessly, unable to fall asleep until well after the mantel clock
chimed 1 a.m.
    And then, in his sleep, he dreamed that he was the genie,
trapped in a bottle by an evil master, who only let him out when he wanted some
greedy, twisted wish granted. Paul dreamed that he was the one confined in a
bottle—a horribly small, dank, and dark prison—while the evil, repulsive master,
who totally controlled him, laughed hideously, pointing at Paul with a gnarled,
misshapen finger. It was a ghastly nightmare which woke Paul up with a start. He
came to sitting fully upright on the couch, gasping for breath, his heart
racing, his forehead drenched in a cold sweat, the dream still vividly and
terribly real in his mind. Gradually, he got control of his breathing, calming
himself by degrees, telling himself over and over again that it was only a bad
dream. A glance at the coffee table confirmed the presence of the wooden box,
the faint light in the