Genie

by Josh (Visit him at The Giraffe)

But you see I have to be interested in language. I own a genie.

Well quite, but tell me this: are you a Christian? Genies are in the Bible, you know. Solomon commanded them. "And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought there, so there was neither hammer nor axe nor tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building." They're in the Bible. In the Qu'ran as well. And in my possession. A recent acquisition -- current events in the Middle East have made it markedly easier to get interesting artefacts in and out of places. That big museum in Iraq that got looted? They didn't get everything back, and some losses you'll never hear about because they can't admit to ever having had them in the first place. (Hussein never knew about some of the things there, that's for sure -- if he had, Israel would be a smoking hole by now, I dare say.) But I heard about them - I "know some people who know some people", as they say.

At any rate, I only summoned it the once, just to be sure. Quite an experience: thunderclaps, fire, no smoke, but the rest of the usual theatrics -- the expected theatrics -- and then there it stood. Black as ash, all smiles and "master this", "master that", but you could tell -- the way it seemed somehow apart from its surroundings, as though the shape it was was merely a small aspect of it extended into our world, like a finger dipped into a pond. The way that behind all the smiles, there was that terrible eagerness, that desperate desire in those flaming eyes for me to make my first "wish". The self-satisfied expectation of a bully who asks "what are you looking at?", knowing he can justify giving you a hiding no matter what you reply.

Make a wish. Anything I can imagine. No, anything I can put into words -- and that's the problem isn't it?

Of course, I said nothing. Sent it away and commenced my study. I know how these creatures work: anything you say, they'll twist it to mean something else and shaft you as imaginatively as possible. Wish someone back to life and you get zombies; wish for her to love you and she turns into an obsessed boiler of bunnies; wish for money and the next thing you know, half the country's police force are politely asking you how the fifty million dollars that disappeared from the local banks ended up piled to the ceiling in your living room. But they only get away with it because our language lets them. Our filthy little whore of a language, rubbing up against every foreign lingo it has the slightest contact with, until we have so many words for everything, so much nuance and metaphor, that it's impossible to craft a sentence that can't be taken more than one way.

Surely this is not the case with all languages. I've only just started looking, but there must be a totally literal language out there, one where each word stands for one concept and one only, and each concept has only one word that denotes it. German was my first thought -- its consistency in spelling had me hopeful, but of course, no -- it's too modern, too contemporary, in the way that inbred mountain men with webbed toes and four nipples are too far removed from their strong, wilderness-faring ancestors. I need the progenitor -- the pure genes from before sibling languages started getting overly familiar and their essences became warped by linguistic incest. I need a language that lets me say what I mean and mean what I say and nothing else.

If this fails, I may have to become one of those "geek" people. Learn the language of computers, and create my own binary tongue where everything comes down to on or off, yes or no, black or white. Either way, I will find a way of making wishes that can't be misconstrued. And then I'll have it.

And the first thing I'll wish for is three more wishes. Just to take the piss.