But then, a surprise. There, in his seat, was a wooden box!
Sidney plopped down into his seat and urgently beckoned Paul to get into his as well.
Puzzled by the presence of the mysterious box, Paul hesitated for a moment, before snatching it up out of his way and taking its place.
“Where did this...?” he whispered, nodding at the object in his hands.
“Shh!” admonished Sidney. The hymn was thankfully over, and Parsons was speaking now—and sneezing again.
Paul winced in mortification and looked away.
Perplexed by the article he was holding, Paul leaned forward and squinted at it more closely. There was an envelope taped to the top, with his name printed on it. The darkly stained box was perhaps a foot tall and seven or eight inches wide, its surface decorated with dozens of small six-pointed stars in a sea of intricately carved scrolls, spirals, and whorls.
The envelope was the standard white business type. Paul peeled it off the box and took a closer look. There was no writing on the back, only on the front. And that was just Paul’s name and underneath it the words “Read me first!”
The lamentable and embarrassing Christmas pageant was forgotten, Paul’s curiosity aroused. He pushed his eyeglasses further up his nose and then opened the envelope’s flap. Inside was a neatly folded single sheet of letter-sized paper. He pulled it out and unfolded it. Again in black hand-lettered print, it read:
• • • •
Dear Paul,
I hope you read this before you open the box. Of course you will.
Ever had to explain something real complicated to someone? Never been any good at it myself, but here goes.
A couple of years ago, I got the thing that’s in the box. I won’t tell you how I got it, ’cause that ain’t important, and it’s a long story anyway, too long to tell here. I don’t know what it’s called. Maybe it doesn’t have a name. I wouldn’t know. But I do know what it is. It’s like Aladdin’s lamp or that bottle the astronaut found on that TV show with the beautiful girl inside. There’s a genie inside this thing too, though it ain’t a bottle and this genie is not a girl. Funny, ain’t it? An astronaut finds a genie on TV, and now you, a jet engineer, have one too.
I told you I’d do you a favor. I know you need one. That worn-out antique you drive is pretty good proof of that. Course, it might not be much of a favor if you ain’t real careful, and I do mean REAL careful.
You only get three wishes, you see. And those wishes usually have strings attached. The bigger the wish, the bigger the strings. By cracky, even though I was warned, I had to use my second wish to undo my first one. My third wish I was more careful with, and that’s why I have some money now.
Yeah, I know you don’t believe me about the genie. At least not yet, you don’t. But this genie is yours now, and it will follow you around until you do two things.
First, you have to make your three wishes. That ain’t hard. What’s hard is ONLY making three wishes.
Second, you have to find someone to give the genie to. Not just anyone, either. It has to be someone especially deserving, someone that does you a favor, a big favor, and then turns down money for it. This is harder to do than I thought. Took me a year to find a guy that fit that description. You.
Okay, so, now you’re asking, if I had a genie, why did I give him up? Well, he’s already given me my three wishes. And also, he has to stay close to his owner. Never more than a hundred feet away. Any time I tried to get farther away than that, the little thing he hides in would show up by magic in my car or luggage or whatever. After a while, it got to be a drag. I’m actually a little relieved to give it to you.
Oh, don’t waste your time looking for me. I couldn’t take it back now even if I wanted to, which I don’t.
Something else you need to know. Other people can see him if you aren’t careful. And believe me; you don’t want that to happen. So be careful, okay? Don’t let that happen. Having a genie is real hard to explain to other people. Trust me on this.
Let’s see, what else can I tell you? Oh, yeah. He’s not a bad guy. I’ve talked to him a lot. He’s been around for a long time and knows stuff. Also, he will answer questions and they don’t count as wishes, but I’ve got to tell you that the more important the question, the less you will understand his answer.
Oh, one more thing, and it’s important. When you want to see him or talk to him, you have to say the magic phrase “Ati Kispu Alka.” And when you want him to go back into his box, you have to say “Ati Kispu Du.” Remember those phrases. They’re important.
Guess that’s all I’ve got to say except that I really do thank you for rescuing me and that I wish you good luck.
Regards,
Glenn Michaels
• • • •
At first, Paul was puzzled by the words he was reading, his mind refusing to comprehend their meaning. For crying out loud, a genie? He read the letter a second time and then a third. It still made no sense! The guy he had given a ride to last night had sent him a genie? It just had to be a practical joke of some kind. It was the only explanation that made an ounce of sense.
Yet it left unanswered questions, too. Paul twisted in his seat and looked uncertainly around the chapel. How had the wooden box ended up here, sitting in his seat? Paul felt certain that he had not told Michaels last night which church he attended. And he was also reasonably sure that if Michaels had entered the room and placed the box in his seat, he would have seen the man. The Tennessean was, after all, pretty distinctive.
So someone else had done it. But who? Paul scratched an earlobe in thought. All the other people in the church had been in bed when Paul and Michaels had arrived in town last night. And none of the other church attendees were likely to know who Michaels was, nor would they help him play a practical joke on Paul.
One corner of his mind noted that the youth choir was now making a shambles of “The First Noel.”
“‘Let’s face it, we have a mystery on our hands!’” Paul muttered softly, quoting Jack Belicec in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Then, with another glance at the note, he mumbled, “I wonder what language those words are in? Sort of like ‘Klaatu barada nikto’ in The Day the Earth Stood Still, hmm? ‘Ati Kispu Alka,’ indeed. Humph!”
The change in the chapel was nearly instantaneous. All the lights in the room, including the Christmas lights on the tall tree, dimmed to half their former brilliance. And the sound level in the chapel dropped, cutting the volume of the choir and the organ to a fraction of their former intensity.
In the crossing, the space between the front row of pews and the chancel, a huge figure suddenly materialized out of thin air. Taller than the Christmas tree, the massive human physique dominated the expanse of the chapel.
The face was vaguely Asian in appearance, with high cheekbones, a huge hooked nose, a strong jawline, and sparkling ebony eyes under thick, swarthy eyebrows. There was a black circular beard, the hair at the chin waxed to form two prominent spikes thrusting forward. An oversized white turban with a large red ruby in the center topped the apparition’s head. Massive arms were crossed over a smoothly muscled, naked chest, the skin a golden brown. Coal-black baggy pants tapered down to the figure’s ankles, with pointed, white satin slippers on mammoth feet.
In every respect, he appeared to be a genie right out of Arabian Nights. The sight of him was enough to make Paul’s chin drop and his eyes bug out.
The genie turned his head slightly, staring downward, intently and directly into Paul’s eyes. Paul froze, unable to move a single muscle.
The choir stopped singing in mid-note, their expressions mirroring Paul’s as they stared at the towering figure. The organist, who was leaning over the organ’s keyboard trying to figure out why it wasn’t playing as loudly as before, took one look at the gargantuan image towering above her and fainted dead away. She collapsed on the keyboard, the organ shrieking forth a jumble of discordant notes.
Everyone in the chapel froze in pl
ace, staring in shock and confusion at the sudden effigy. At the rear of the nave, on the back pew, one middle-aged man was the first to recover from the shock. He stood, and at the top of his lungs, he shouted, “It’s a demon from hell!”
That pronouncement broke the spell. Suddenly, a whole host of the congregation was out of their seats, leaping pell-mell for the exit, some of them screaming, some crying, but all of them panic stricken.
At the pulpit, Minister Parsons grasped the crucifix hanging on the chain around his neck. Extending the small cross forward at arm’s length, his eyes bulging wide, he moaned in a raspy voice, “Be gone, ye fiend of the eternal pit! Be gone in the name of the Savior Christian!”
Sidney stood with his arms raised high and yelled, “Now, everyone, stay calm! Don’t panic! There is no cause to lose our heads here!”
Sister Georgette climbed unsteadily to her feet, her eyes locked on the genie’s bulk and her hand over her chest. “Oh, my heart! My heart!” she screamed as her eyes flew up into her head. She fell backward onto two other people, knocking both of them to the carpeted floor of the aisle.
Paul didn’t see who, but someone reached a fire alarm pull station and yanked it down, the whooping sound clashing with the organ notes and the screams of the other attendees, the flashing of the strobe lights on the walls only adding to the confusion.
Most of the kids in the choir scattered wildly, some diving under their chairs, others dashing behind the Christmas tree. The tree took a hit from one careless youth and toppled forward, smashing across the organ, ornaments flying into the pews.
One young boy stood frozen at his choir seat and screamed, “It’s a ghost!”
Fourteen-year-old precocious Adelle shook her head as she whipped out her cell phone. “Naw,” she proclaimed in that oh-so-superior voice of hers. “It’s a hologram, silly! Anyone can see that!” She pointed the cell phone forward. “And it will look great on YouTube!”
The lawyer was in the thick of the crowd, trying to pry her way out through the vestibule doors. She was also screaming at the top of her lungs. “I’ll sue, I’ll sue everybody here! Get out of my way!”
Gordon Atherton huddled his children and wife behind a pew and nervously peered over the top. “I’m not donating a penny to any church attended by devils or goblins!”
Sister Frieda, sitting in the fourth row, pushed herself to her feet and stomped her way forward, brandishing her cane at the genie. “Who turned this thing on? It’s in my way! I can’t see the kids, and it’s ruining the whole pageant! Why won’t somebody do something?!” And she proceeded to swing her cane at the specter, but the cane never connected with anything solid. When that didn’t work, she turned away and started casting her eyes around. “There must be some way to unplug this thing! I’ll find it.”
The bedlam and confusion was simply incredible. People in the front pews, unable to escape, were throwing hymnals, Christmas ornaments, and everything else they could find at the genie. For the most part, the objects simply sailed through the apparition without effect, though one or two of the projectiles hit someone on the other side.
Paul was finally able to break through his shock and move again. With his heart beating so fast and so hard that he thought it might break through his chest, he frantically clutched at the letter and scanned the print again.
“Ati Kispu Du!” he screamed, shooting to his feet, the box falling to the floor. “ATI KISPU DU!”
It was as if an off switch had been flipped. One moment, the hulking form of the genie was there, seemingly amused by the reactions of the congregation. The next, it was gone, the lighting and the sound returning to their normal levels.
For several moments, the chaos continued. Then, as people realized that the giant figure was gone, they began to calm themselves and remember where they were.
In the second row of pews, Brother Oren Burchfield leisurely stood up, clapping his hands slowly. He turned to face the wild-eyed Minister Parsons (who was still holding forth his crucifix).
“Minister Parsons! That was the best Christmas pageant I ever saw, bar none!” he hollered as he wavered slightly back and forth.
• • • •
With the box sitting in the passenger seat of the car, Paul frantically raced home, running all the stop signs. He didn’t even wait for the garage door to open but instead left the car in the driveway and dashed to his front door, the box tightly clutched under one arm while fumbling with his keys to get the entryway unlocked.
In the house, he slammed the door closed behind him and dumped the box on the couch. Then he froze.
What do I do now?! he silently screamed at himself. He had concentrated so hard on getting home that he had not considered what to do once he had arrived. Should I call forth the genie in here? No, he’s huge! He would never fit in this room! And I can’t do it outside! My neighbors would have a fit! Okay, maybe in the garage! It has an open ceiling. He will probably fit between the beams. But then what?
His thoughts ran wildly off on a dozen different tangents.
Egad! What would the other members of my church say if they ever found out who was responsible for that...that apparition? What would Minister Parsons say? Zounds! If one of the gossips, say, maybe Georgette, found out where the genie came from, that I have it, the whole town of Mojave would know in hours! The national network news would know in less than a day!
He was assuming too much. What if the genie wasn’t real? Maybe the image they’d all seen was a projection of some sort? Perhaps a dream? Maybe a hallucination brought on by stress and overwork? After all, he had put in 150 work hours over the last two weeks, eating fast-food meals on the run, which were followed by liberal doses of antacid tablets.
What was that quote from the Charles Dickens novel, The Christmas Carol? “‘You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’”
Pacing wildly back and forth, he glanced at the box every time he passed the couch. It was real enough. So was the letter. With every step he took, he began to calm himself, allowing his engineering training to take hold.
He only briefly considered taking the box and dumping it someplace or burying it in a deep, dark hole. If Michaels was to be believed, that wouldn’t work since the box and its contents would follow him wherever he went. Assuming, of course, that there was any truth to this genie nonsense!
Besides, his curiosity was now rekindled. Was it possible? Could there really be a genie in that box? And could he really grant Paul three wishes? What could he wish for if it were true?
On the other hand, this was far more likely to be some sort of scam. The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Devil’s Due” came to mind, in which a woman with advanced technology had used “magical tricks” pretending to be the devil incarnate. Paul would much rather believe that possibility than to believe that there was an actual genie ready to grant him three wishes!
Or worse, this could be an opening bid in some sort of terrorist plot. The scene in his church vaguely reminded him of the story of the panic that had occurred during the War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles back in 1938.
Paul put both hands to his head. Enough, already! It was time to check it out, slowly, cautiously, and using a scientific approach.
He would probably need a few tools. There was a well-equipped toolbox in the garage with a complete assortment of screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, and hammers. Also in the garage was his workbench, stocked with a scope meter, a digital voltmeter, soldering irons, a portable drill, magnifying lenses of various sizes, and wire strippers. Oh, and he would need his digital camera too. It made sense to photograph his progress while examining the box and its contents.
He didn’t even take the time to get out of his shepherd costume. The sooner he resolved this problem, the better!
• • • •
A half hour later, Paul had everything set
up in the garage, nearly every tool he owned laid out nearby and ready to assist in his inspection. The box was in the center of the workbench, under two bright portable lights as well as a fluorescent light mounted to an overhead rafter. In his hand, he held a clipboard with blank paper, and in his shirt pocket, he had two mechanical pencils, ready to take notes as he worked. The camera, a compact digital model, also sat on the workbench, easily within arm’s reach.
“It’s time to get this show on the road,” he muttered, making a notation on the clipboard with one of the pencils. He was so flustered that he couldn’t think of a suitable science-fiction quote for the occasion.
Approaching the box, he took a number of photos, capturing the scrollwork on each face thereof. When he finished doing that, he took a deep breath and gingerly snapped open the small clasp on the box, guardedly prying the lid open and looking inside. The interior of the box was lined with red velvet, with an odd-looking thing sitting placidly in the middle. More photos, taken from a half-dozen different angles. This was followed by probing the interior of the box with the voltmeter and the scope meter to check for static charges or voltage potentials and waveforms.
But there was nothing in that regard. Electrically, the box and its contents were neutral.
Delicately, Paul placed his right index finger on the object. It felt vaguely metallic, smooth and cool to the touch. More notes followed these observations. Then, warily lifting the object out of the box, he rotated and studied it closely. Roughly teardrop in shape, maybe six inches in diameter and almost ten tall, it had a small black metal frame holding several smooth yellow, blue, and red rectangular panes (glass? plastic?) around its circumference. The entire object glowed with a soft yellow light. One corner of Paul’s mind noted that the metal frame appeared to be Arabic in design, with tiny etched swirls and lines that matched those on the outside of the wooden box. Otherwise, the object was featureless.
Genie and Engineer 1: The Engineer Wizard Page 3
