The Gene Genie

The sun was setting slowly over the mountains at the far side of the bay, painting the sky with burning red, orange and yellow. The day’s wind had dropped down and, while waiting for the changing of the guard that would bring on the offshore evening breeze, it was windstill and quiet.


Joe was strolling along the beach happily, absentmindedly humming tunelessly to himself and enjoying the feeling of wet sand under his feet. He had had a great surfing session only a few hours before, and was now just quietly passing the time of day while waiting to go home and cook dinner. Life was beautiful.

All of a sudden he stubbed his toe on something hard, and his bubble of contentedness burst.

‘Ow! Fucking hell!’

He reached down, grabbed the big toe of his left foot and started rubbing it vigourously, thereby encouraging a greater flow of blood to the affected area and making any potential injury significantly worse.

‘What the fuck was that?’

He looked down. There in front of him something dark, lumpy, and, apparently, hard, was sticking out of the sand. He reached down and picked it up. It seemed to be made of some sort of metal, black and rusty, tarnished by a presumably extended sojourn in the salt water of the ocean, and covered in sand, caked hard all over it. He scrubbed at the sand, rubbed and brushed it off.

WHOOOOSH!

A cloud of blue smoke emanated from the black rusty thing and rose up in front of him. Joe got a fright, dropped the lump of black rust on his sore toe and jumped back.

‘Fucking hell’ he said, for the second time that day.

The smoke got thicker and more opaque. Something dark seemed to be taking shape inside of it, with tendrils of black wispy darkness coalescing into a form ...

The smoke cleared up.

‘Goodday mate’.

Joe’s jaw dropped. In front of him stood a person dressed in Blundstone boots, moleskin trousers, a checkered shirt, an Akubra hat complete with corks dangling from it, and, in spite of the heat of summer, a long Drizabone oilskin coat of the deepest purple.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ said Joe, whose vocabulary was limited and anyway he liked to swear a lot.

The apparition gave him a big wide smile and nodded politely at him.

‘I’m Aladdin’, he said.

‘Aladdin?’ Joe repeated, stuck for something better to say. Dumbfounded didn’t come close to describing it.

‘Yeah, you know, from the lamp’. The bloke in the hat with the corks nodded downwards at the lump of black rusty metal that lay in the sand next to his big left now very sore toe.

‘Aladdin?’ echoed Joe. ‘Bullshit. Pull the other one.’

‘Nah mate, serious. You’ve heard of Aladdin, haven’t you?’

Joe nodded, speechless.

‘Well, there you go. You picked up the lamp, you’ve gone and rubbed it three times, and so I come out of me lamp to grant you your three wishes.’ The genie in the moleskin trousers spoke with a strong backcountry accent, more usually found in remote areas of the Northern Territory than on surf beaches.

‘You’re kidding me. You’re insane.’

‘Nah mate, true story ey, no word of a lie’, replied the genie, still smiling widely.

‘But ...’. Joe’s mind was reeling. He gestured wordlessly at the bloke’s appearance.

‘But ...’, he said again. ‘But if you’re Aladdin ...’

‘Yeah mate, that’s me’, the genie said, nodding encouragingly.

‘... then how come you’re not dressed in a turban, and sort of generic middle eastern garb, and that?’

‘Ah well, that’s easy’, said the genie, ‘I just conform to local custom and tradition, you see, so I wouldn’t stick out, wherever I go. I blend in, me.’ And he tapped the side of his nose and winked knowingly.

‘Right’, said Joe carefully, eyeing off the checkered shirt and purple oilskin overcoat. Away over his shoulder a group of five people had stopped their beach walk and were now pointing at the character in the hat, and taking photos on their phones. Three surfers had put down their boards a bit further over and were standing and staring.

‘Right’, said Joe again, ‘well, you got that right, no worries there.’
‘Yeah, pretty good ey?’The genie gave him a dazzling smile revealing the stumps of three black teeth. ‘Anyway, so what’s your wish?’

‘Yeah, right, my wish ...’. In spite of himself Joe was starting to warm to the situation. He scratched his head. ‘All right ...’. He reached a decision. ‘All right, so, if I can make a wish, and you’re actually really real, and not a figment of my overheated imagination ...’. He had to stop himself there. If was going to imagine a genie out of a lamp it definitely wouldn’t be wearing a Drizabone, purple or other. He plunged ahead.

‘All right, well, for my wish .... I’m a surfer you see’, Joe said, and swept his right arm expansively around the beach, taking in the waves, a few stray die-hards on boards further out and a couple of curious dolphins sticking their heads out of the water to look at the clown in the funny hat.

‘Yes, I can see that’, the genie agreed.

‘So, as a surfer I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii, to ride the really big waves, you know?’

The genie nodded his consent. He knew.

‘But I’m scared shitless of flying in planes, and I get real seasick on anything that floats on the water, other than a surfboard, so I can’t fly there and I can’t get on a boat to get there. So I’ve never been there.’

‘Yes, I see the problem’, the genie said sympathetically.

‘So, I was thinking ... would you be able to construct me a road from here to Hawaii so I can drive my car there?’

The genie’s face fell.

‘What? A road from here to Hawaii? Across the ocean? Over thousands and thousands of miles of open water?’

‘Er, yes please, if that’s all right, that’d be great, thanks’.

The genie shook his head forcefully. The corks flew around and hit him in the face. He flinched.

‘Nah mate, that’s just impossible, that can’t be done. Even with all the magic that I can do that’s just too hard, too painful. No way. Sorry mate.’

‘Ah.’ Joe was disappointed. So much for all this genie-out-of-the-lamp magic business.

‘Look, I really want to help you, and anyway that’s in my job description, so is there anything else you’d like for a wish?’ Aladdin gave his most sincere and widest smile and hitched up his sagging moleskins.

‘Right. Okay, lemme think a bit ...’. Joe rubbed his chin and picked his nose distractedly. Then he brightened up.

‘Yes, there is’, he said excitedly. ‘There’s something I’ve always wanted to know.’

‘Ah, knowledge, that’s easy mate, I can do that standing on me ear. Go on, tell me, what is it?’ The genie leaned forward amicably, eager to please.

‘Well, you know, I’ve always wanted to know what it is with women. What makes them tick, how do they work, how do they operate, how do they think, you know? That’s always stumped me.’ Joe beamed expectantly at the genie in the Akubra hat.

The genie stared at Joe. Joe looked back in joyful anticipation. The Secret would be Revealed At Last. The genie opened his mouth, then closed it again. He tugged his right earlobe thoughtfully, then cleared his throat and coughed.

‘Right’, the genie said eventually, very carefully and deliberately. ‘So ... would you like that to be two lanes or four lanes?’




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