Mark's Genie

"Life is complicated, Mark. Jo won't remember the blow job saga, but I'm not erasing this last bit."

"But you could?"

Genie shrugged.

"What else don't you do?"

"Oh, lots of things."

"I wish for some help."

The older man looked at Mark, bloodied and miserable, looked at Joe and Jo, and made a few decisions.

"I do like to help," the old man replied.

He handed Mark an ice pack that materialized out of thin air.

"Some ground rules," the old man began. "I'm a facilitator. I have certain powers. Like you, I don't always act proactively. I can give you some powers, like when you said, 'she has to do everything I say,' but these secondary wishes aren't as strong. They're more like strong suggestions. Overall, I do have wiggle room, and I'm more inclined to help when you've thought about the wish, and if I can help someone who deserves it."

Mark nodded from his bed.

"Over the years, I've worked within societies with a wide range of rules, religious edicts, and social norms, but of all the laws, I try to pay most attention to the law of unintended consequences."

Mark felt like he should be taking notes, but he'd never been much of a note taker, and the beating made him feel like a blob. He tongued around his mouth. Several teeth felt loose. "Can you fix this mess?"

"Two main ways. In the first, we leave. I can change your identity, and whatever they try to charge you with would be filed against someone who has disappeared. You'd have to abandon college, your family, and all of your friends."

"Plan B?"

"Well, in addition to wishes, I can do Resets, which is a subtype of wish."

Mark nodded, and the old man continued. "In a Reset, you get to start completely over from any previous moment in your life. It's like a sliding scale, and you just identify where on the scale you want to restart."

"Great," Mark mumbled. "Take me back to before they showed up."

"Mark, before jumping into a contract, it often pays to read the fine print." Mark nodded, and the old man continued, "You only get 3 Resets, total, in a lifetime. Resets also don't seem to extend your overall life. If you make it to 95 years old and decide to Reset back to 21, you don't get to live another 74 years. You'll die at about the time you'd have died otherwise, like at 23."

"So I can't just keep asking to live forever?"

"You can ask, but I won't do it."

"Won't or can't?" The old man looked out the window. Life moved on as before. Birds chirped. A dog barked.

"Do you know how long I'll live?"

"Nope, I can't read the future."

"How long have you lived?"

"Many centuries on this planet, but I come from far away."

"If you're from far away, why do you look like an old guy whose face I can't quite see?"

"Oh, that was your father's idea. He wanted me to look like a benevolent teacher. I can be any shape."

"My father? I never even met my father."

The old man looked down at him. "As if I didn't know."

Mark had heard enough but figured he could get details when he wasn't in pain. "I wish I could go back in time to just before I froze them."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

In an eyeblink, Mark felt his pain disappear. He stood, feeling energized. He hopped up and looked into the mirror. No wounds, no blood. he was alone in his room.

He looked at the old man, who stood next to the door.

The old man smiled. "Much better."

"How much time until they arrive?"

"Things don't always re-occur the same way. When you reset, all action from the moment of reset shakes out slightly differently. I took us back 10 minutes before they arrived, so they'll probably arrive at that same time. In this new world, however, one of them may bump into a friend who was 1 second out of sight last time, and then they might decide to go get a snack. Life is filled with uncertainty, especially the longer you let humans bang around against each other."

"So what you're saying is that we now have 9 minutes?"

"Basically," shrugged the old man.

With the return of his old self, Mark felt a resurgence of his old enthusiasm. "Okay, let me get a few quick and easy requests. You can't fix injuries, but you can shuffle around healthy parts? And if I ask for something that just applies to myself, I'll be able to fix it before anyone else sees?"

"Sounds right."

"Okay," Mark began, "I'd like a general body tune up. All these requests should seem normal, and if I'm stepping into something freaky, you should warn me first." He waited for the old man to nod. "Okay, I'd like to be one inch taller, to lose a bunch of body fat, and gain more muscle. The overall look would be that of someone who does competitive triathlons. I'd like my dick to go back to where it was when Jo woke up. Big, but not circus freak. My baseline sexual interests should stay basically the same, but I'd like to be able to get hard, stay hard, and cum whenever i like. Well, not a robot, maybe in the top 2% of sexual control for a guy my age. Oh, and make me more athletic in all ways. Hell. Make me in the top 2% in the basic athletic stuff. I'd like to learn skills quick, like within the top 5th percentile when I try to learn tennis or chess. I'd like to get rid of my occasional zits, and my hair should stay a mess but look sorta shiny, like from a shampoo commercial. Oh, and go back one. Do the same for my skin, make it look super healthy like it would if I were the kind of guy who washed and conditioned or whatever. And I'd like all my clean clothes to get folded and put away. All of my dirty clothes should get tossed in the hamper in the closet. Oh, hell, make all my clothes clean and put neatly away. Oh, and make all my clothes fit my new and improved self."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Mark took off his shirt and looked in the mirror. "Jackpot," he thought to himself. He smiled.

At that moment, the door opened, and Jo and Joe walked in.

"Well, somebody has been working out," said Jo, with a smile.