This is part 2. Start with part 1.
Living room, India. Ganesh statue on a corner shrine. The genie hovers like another statue.
The mother makes her wish.
“Aisa hi hoga.”
Her husband sweeps her into a dance. The phone dips to a small boy rubbing his eyes, then returns to the parents.
James checks the translation: “I wish for Aarav and Arjun to be the best students in all their classes, and enough money to pay all their school fees through university.”
You really shared this where other parents will see? Now they know their kids will always be second-best, and it’s your fault. Good for the classmates, though — they’ll always have an excuse for why they missed that one question. And good for WishDB — one more file for the file gods.
Box of money. Long lives for the Chen family. Make me feel young again. Box of money.
A hundred years of bountiful harvests.
“Nahin.”
Ugh. Can’t wish that far ahead — infinite ways to go wrong.
“I wish for 100 million yuan in my bank account, and a sexy dream with Lu Yuxiao.”
“Ru ni suo yuan.”
And the bar goes wild. Is that a celebrity? Oh, she’s a babe. She’ll be trending in the morning. Sucks to be her. Sucks to be him?
Nope. He’s a guy, Weibo’s going to meme the shit out of him, but he’ll be a folk hero. Could’ve gone much worse. Pretty clear wish for someone in that state.
If the genie gives you a dream but you’re blackout drunk, do you remember it?
Box of — no, money in the bank. Smart. Keep our family safe from harm. Heal my son’s mind. Heal my daughter’s marriage. Make me a famous actress. Box of money. A whispered wish he can’t hear. That’ll be a pain to track down.
Busy street. Night market. Who’s the wisher? Oh, god. The guy is getting mobbed. It’s less common than you’d think — people tend to keep their distance and respect the genie, or something. But sometimes it just takes one desperate person, someone who needs the money or the miracle cure, and then everyone else jumps in.
“Sepuluh detik tersisa. Apa keinginanmu?”
Somehow, the genie always drowns out other noise. Most in the crowd step back, but a beggar dressed in rags is still holding the guy’s collar. He only has six, five—
He cries out to the genie. A box of money appears in the street. The beggar vanishes.
“Oh, shit.”
The crowd surges forward. One man tackles the wisher to the ground. Others tear open the box and grab fistfuls of bills, stuffing them into pockets before someone pulls them away.
The video continues. Whoever holds the phone decided not to join the melee, or realized they’d be better off selling interviews than trying for a pocketful of rupiah.
The wisher is surrounded. He curls up against the kicks and stomps. James watches, teeth clenched.
Shots ring out. People start running the other way. The phone’s owner huddles against a wall, but keeps recording as pedestrians stream past. Two police officers approach the crumpled form. The wisher struggles to his hands and knees.
The box is still there. Might have money. But the money belongs to a murderer, so the cops are probably going to keep it.
Wait. Is that… that’s the same beggar!
James turns to his other monitor. The translation is ready.
“Make me rich, and get this man away from me.”
Not “kill him”, not “get rid of him”. Just “get him away”. The genie must have teleported the beggar one street over. What a joke.
It isn’t James’s first mob; he’s thought about self-defense. You can’t solve everyone’s problems; the genie will vanish before you finish your sentence. If you help one person, that can be enough to soothe the crowd, but it depends on what you take for yourself, the way you’re dressed, the way your neighbors feel about the genie…
The best answer is to whisper. People almost never whisper; the genie is so loud and present that they feel the urge to shout. But he always hears you. And when he leaves, you just have to tell the crowd you wished for their health, or gave them all another year of life — whatever gets you safely home to the box of money in your bedroom.
From an intellectual perspective, this was an incredible wish. If they could figure out how much money the box held, they’d have a ballpark figure for the value of a minor teleport spell. If only the cash weren’t scattered across — he checks the location tag — Jakarta.
Things quiet down a bit. The genie never sleeps, but China does. Milo tends to pick up South American wishes; he’s half-Peruvian, and he likes to watch people celebrate in Spanish. James decides to catch up on the slush pile. He opens the team’s shared inbox—
A soft ping. Never mind. He opens Discord to read Benji’s message.
got a bad one for you
WWYD?
James hasn’t seen this one, but it’s not his first Indian wedding wish. The families aren’t rich: bare stone floor, bamboo canopy, plain lightbulbs on wires.
No one is watching the bride and groom. They’re watching the genie, and the man in the off-white kurta. It’s quiet for a crowd scene: two layers of reverence.
The man looks distressed. But he speaks clearly, before the ten-second warning. The video has an AI caption:
“A year of health and happiness for all of us here, and seven years for Rajesh and Sunita.”
“So it shall be.”
The guests stand and the shouting begins. The newlyweds and their parents will be the envy of the country this week. The wisher has to be pulled to his feet; he takes a moment to find his footing. James closes the video.
You first. WWYD?
definitely not boosting every single guest
just get a BOM and share it around. you don’t have to share the wish to share the proceeds. it’s tacky at a wedding but you can give everyone more money than they’ve ever seen and still keep most of it
You’re probably right. But easier said than done. Remember your first alarm?
Members of the Optimal Wish Project set genie alarms to ring at random times. You’d be at a party, or in the shower, or hooking up with someone, and your phone would go off and you’d have one minute to record a wish.
Once you have your wish locked in, the exercise isn’t too hard. But in its early days, some Owpers felt their “great ideas” evaporate as soon as they had to articulate them.
i had a hard problem, i’m trying to change the world
if you don’t want to optimize, just get the BOM
Any WOC updates?
no. still want luck, luck is the answer
we’re up all night to get lucky
Hope it works out better for you than Jesse.
jesse walked so i could get lucky
and he helped me write the new version
if it works i’ll make him a BOM with a very nice box
respect the brave wishers who failed for the cause
Well, good luck.
haha
Benji’s lifetime odds were half of one percent. James, the same. It was strange to have a hobby you would never really take part in. Like following football in a world where every team was a group of strangers who didn’t know the rules, while good players were trapped in the bleachers, leaning forward to yell instructions no one could hear.
James didn’t let himself think about his own wish. Too unlikely, and it would make every video that little bit more painful. He refused to become Benji, using every mistake under pressure as an excuse to armchair quarterback. The genie made wishes a human story, the same way NASA made the moon a human place. He wouldn’t go to space, but he could root for the astronauts.