The Ultimate Genie Wish

What follows is meant to be an instructive account of what to do if you find a Genie. The wish outlined here is rather complex, so the Reader would be well advised to first consider how many wishes are available from this particular Genie, and phrase the wish accordingly to squeeze all of these caveats into the appropriate number of long-winded wishes.

Since the beginning of time, people have used their fingers to make the shape of a gun and pretended to shoot at people in jest and in play. Indeed, Jake and I (your Authors) do this more often than most, often pretending to shoot our own heads as well as various objects.

So what if every shot ever fired by a finger-gun could be a real shot? And what if this were retroactive? That is the first part of the wish: that all imaginary bullets (or whatever type of weapon it is declared to be, barring nukes, bio/chem weapons, and large bombs) shot from a pretend gun are real, and that this is retro-active. Of course, not wanting one's own head to explode in a shower of hundreds of once-imaginary bullets is a reasonable request. Because of the possibility of violence in the post-imaginary-bullet-apocalyptic world, another condition of the wish must be that Jake and Billy are protected (retroactively as well as in the future) by an intelligent magic shield.

It is a well-informed assumption that boys play with imaginary finger-guns more often than girls, and it follows that there would be a lot more girls left than boys after this wish takes effect. It would be the regrettable duty of the wisher and his buddy to systematically, erm, re-populate the planet. Of course, because of the tremendous position of power this gives us, the magic shields become all the more important, for fear of assassination. What, though, about when one of the fortunate magic shieldees becomes bored with life and wishes to welcome death? A caveat of the magic shield is required to allow voluntary death, but it must protect from hasty decisions. Therefore, the magic shield will allow any particular form of shieldee death only after a week of discorporal meditation.

We hope this has been helpful.