Chapter 2
Oliver and Astrid
Oliver sat on the cold linoleum floor of the grocery store just staring up at the plaster tile ceiling and the fluorescent lights long after the old man Mr. Smith had left. He still had some of Mr. Smith’s blood on him, and that made him sad, but also angry. Why had Mr. Smith knocked him over and hurt those men? He had always liked Mr. Smith, the old man would ask him the silliest questions and give him a dollar when he helped him out to his car with his groceries. Mr. Smith was always patient with Oliver, and he never seemed to care when it took Oliver a long time to answer him. He didn’t even mind helping Oliver when Oliver got confused. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there trying to parse through this new bout of information and his memory of the confusing event, but soon someone was tapping on his shoulder.
“You okay bud? None of this blood looks like it is yours.” Oliver looked up and noticed the police officer trying to talk to him. He was thinking about answering the officer, but he just couldn’t quite seem to get the words out.
“I’m going to need you to answer me,” the officer said sternly as he helped Oliver to his feet. Oliver wanted to answer the officer but sometimes he had trouble getting the thoughts all the way from his head out to his mouth. Oliver opened his mouth to try and answer.
“I… I… I… um.” The officer’s face screwed up and began to look a little angry.
“Have you been drinking son?”
Before Oliver could reply the manager of the grocery store politely tapped on the officer’s shoulder and pulled him a few feet away. The manager leaned over and whispered lightly to the officer, just quiet enough so that Oliver couldn’t hear what was being discussed. The officer glanced over at Oliver and then back to the manager and nodded his head. The officer came back over to Oliver.
“Oliver is it? I’m sorry about before. I’m going to have my friend over there drive you home now” the officer said as he pointed over to another policeman on the scene.
“Hey Rookie! Get over here!” The second and younger police officer ran over to them and the first police officer whispered to something to the second officer quickly.
“I see,” said the second police officer.
The younger police officer gently grasped Oliver’s upper arm.
“Come with me buddy, I’m going to take you home. It looks like you got out of work early today, score!” Ha, that sounded good to Oliver, the way the police officer had worded it made Oliver happy! Oliver smiled widely at the younger police officer and let him guide him out of the store.
“BYE EVERYONE, SEE YOU ALL TOMORROW!” Oliver managed to shout happily before they left the store. He loved giving everyone cheery goodbyes and cheery welcomes. Oliver’s father had told him that smiles were infectious, and Oliver had taken that sentiment to heart. He loved giving people big bright smiles on the off chance that they might smile back, in fact it was his favorite thing to do besides helping people.
“I like your style Oliver,” the policeman said to him as they were walking through the parking lot. “Hey would you like a ride home in a real police car!?” The officer asked as he pointed to his cruiser. When Oliver thought through the prospect of getting to ride in the car of a hero it made him so happy he laughed out loud and clapped excitedly. “I’ll take that as a yes!” The nice officer said.
The ride to Oliver’s house was exciting, the kind officer showed him how the sirens worked in the car and all of the neat instruments and buttons inside. Now that Oliver had calmed down a bit he was able to properly thank the officer.
“Thank you... so much... for showing me this” Oliver stuttered out. He had worked really hard with his many therapists to be able to put out sentences that clear, and he felt proud at his progress and how clearly he had just been able to speak to the officer.
The nice officer smiled over at Oliver, he must have also been proud at how well Oliver had spoken. Not wanting the conversation to die the officer asked “Hey, what’s your favorite thing in the world?” This question Oliver didn’t have to think about, he knew this one as sure and he knew and felt his heart beating in his chest.
“SUPERHEROS, REGULAR HEROES, ALL HEROES!!!! HEROES LIKE YOU OFFICER!” Oliver shouted out with joy.
The officer’s smile got brighter and he replied to Oliver.
“Damn Oliver, you really know how to compliment someone. I’ll tell you what bud, I really like heroes a lot too and I’m tired of going to hero movies alone. How about the next time a hero movie comes out, me and you go together?”
The officer had said a lot in that one statement so it took Oliver a second to parse through it, but once he did he was so excited at the prospect he shouted “WOOHOO!”
The nice police officer laughed and said, “Oliver, I’ll say it again: I like your style. You have truly brightened up my day. You know I don’t think I introduced myself properly, I’m Officer Hampton. You know what else, forget about that, you can just call me Tim.” Oliver thought about it a second and remembered his father told him it was good to shake hands with new people.
“Hi Tim!” said Oliver, while holding out his hand for a shake. The officer took one of his hands off the wheel for a second and shook Oliver’s hand.
Officer Hampton pulled up to the address the grocery store manager had given him through the grapevine.
“Do you need help getting inside Oliver? Will you be fine alone?” Oliver pulled his key ring out and shook it at the officer.
“I’m fine Tim, I have keys to get in. Have a good day, very nice to meet you!”
Oliver happily jumped out of the car and ran up to his front door. The officer waited to leave until Oliver went inside. The whole time feeling better about himself and thinking that If Oliver can be happy covered in blood after being tackled by a senile old man than he surely had no excuse not to be happy himself. For a brief second, he also wondered why God chose to curse someone so special with a disability.
Oliver went inside excited to see his mom and his dad but was upset when they weren’t there. He remembered he was home early from work which meant both of his parents were still working themselves. They wouldn’t be home for hours so Oliver decided to do what he always did when he had extra time: watch cartoons and movies about heroes! Oliver nuked a bunch of pizza rolls and then plopped himself down on his couch ready to marathon some television. Once he set the plate containing the pizza rolls in his lap, he realized it had made a strange noise. It sounded like it had bounced off of something hard. He set the plate aside and looked down at his lap. He noticed he still had quite a lot of blood on him from Mr. Smith, and that there was a slight bulge in his apron.
The blood on his apron made Oliver’s mind wander and he felt bad all over again and he didn’t like that. Then he remembered the noise the plate had made when it hit the bulge. He reached inside of the large front pocket on his apron and felt around. His hands hit something solid, so he pulled it out. It was an antique brass lamp! How did this get here, he wondered. The lamp had Mr. Smith’s blood on the side of it. Seeing even more of Mr. Smith’s blood only further upset him. So he started trying to rub the blood off with his fingers, as he rubbed he noticed the lamp was getting brighter and warmer. That alarmed Oliver so he dropped the lamp and took a few steps back from it. It landed evenly on his carpet and it seemed to glow even brighter than before, like it was filled with fire.
Soon a loud hissing noise that was quickly turning into a roar started coming from the lamp, and a white vaporous substance started spilling from the spout and filling up the immediate area. More and more of the smokey yet silky substance poured out of the spout, and then it began to coalesce into the shape of a woman. Her form began to take substance as the vapor solidified. A beautiful woman with a long blonde ponytail hanging down her back was now in front of Oliver. He stared at her from top to bottom, she was wearing some kind of crude chain-mail. She had leather bracers on with intricately carved flowers on them. She also had a leather protection piece on her neck that delicately covered part of her upper chest as well, and ended in a diamond shape between her breasts. Below that she was wearing a skirt made of rough hide, and she had a leather belt on with a dagger, a sword, and a horn in three separate sheaths connected to the belt.
Her skirt was cut diagonally so her upper left thigh was extremely exposed and Oliver couldn’t help but stare. The woman was shapely and beautiful, but also for some reason Oliver didn’t even understand he knew she was quite dangerous. Oliver may have been dumb but he knew when it was time to get the fuck out. He turned and bolted for the exit of his living room that lead to his entryway and ultimately his front door. A second before he got there a wall of vapor quickly rose from floor to ceiling blocking his path. Oliver tried to sprint through it but he ran right into it and bounced off, the harmless looking wall of vapor had been as hard as stone. Oliver reached up and touched his nose, his fingers came back red with blood. He slowly rose to his feet and turned around.
The woman was there staring at him and he noticed something that he hadn’t seen before, just below her knees her legs tapered off and shifted into vapor, which was still flowing into the spout of the lamp. The woman smiled at Oliver and canted her head to the side ever so slightly.
“I know, I know, It’s amazing, but let’s get this show on the road so I can go back to sleep for a few hundred years. Talking to mortals is boring.” Oliver wasn’t sure what to say so he just smiled at her, then marched forward and held out his hand for a shake. “Hi, I’m Oliver, it is very nice to meet you!” he said enthusiastically. The genie shook his hand and nodded her head up and down once, and then just waited...
She kept waiting for a minute for the man to speak up but he never did, so she took the initiative.
“Well Oliver, I don’t know if you have figured it out yet or not, but I’m a genie and I’m stuck out here until you make your three wishes, so get on with it...Please.” she stared at Oliver for a few minutes and he still didn’t speak.
“Okay you seem really confused and unprepared for this, let me lay down some ground rules to help you narrow your choices down. The first and most important rule: You can’t wish for more wishes. I’m not going to explain that one because it should be pretty self explanatory. I need you to acknowledge that you understand each rule after I explain it to you. I’m only explaining these things once. So do you understand rule one?”
Oliver stood there stunned, he did basically understand the first rule but all of this was too much for him.
“I need you to say yes now,” the genie said calmly yet forcefully.
“Ye...ye..yes” Oliver stuttered out.
“Okay, moving on. Rule number two, you can’t make a wish that will alert the world to the presence of the genie, meaning me. What this means is no wishing for things like curing world hunger or stopping all war. Those wishes also break a second rule but I will get to that. If you want to feed the hungry people you could wish, for example, the power to turn anything you touch into food and then send that food to all the hungry people. Or, even the power to make crops grow really well, or make dead crops come back to live, etcetera. I won't stop you from doing that. Do you understand rule number two?”
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Oliver really didn’t understand rule number two that well since it was more complex than rule one by a fair margin, but he knew she wanted him to say yes and he wanted to make the pretty genie lady happy, “yes” he said.
“Moving on, Rule number three: you can’t make a wish that will directly force someone to do something they wouldn’t normally do. So you can’t wish for the girl you have a crush on to instantly drop her panties the next time she sees you. If you want to wish to be more attractive so she will like you more, we can do that.
This rule also applies to and reinforces rule number two. For example let’s go back to the world hunger issue. Say you wish to cure world hunger, and one country has a ton of food they aren’t using. How do you get that food from said country full of fat and selfish people, to the countries full of starving people, without forcing someone to do something that they wouldn’t normally do? See the conundrum there? At some point you would have to force someone to do something that they wouldn’t do, or reveal the existence of genies in some way. Maybe that wasn’t best example but it is what came to mind. Do you basically understand rule three?”
Again Oliver was very confused but he understood the pattern, the pretty lady went on a long tirade and she expected him to say yes, so he did “yes.”
“Right, rule number four, you can’t wish for someone’s death directly. If you want to wish for a super powerful weapon of some type to kill them with yourself, that is fine with me and well within the boundaries of the rules. Just don’t expect me to do your dirty work. If you want someone dead, you do it. In that same rite, you can’t wish for someone to come back from the dead. I don’t fuck with dead people, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Do you understand rule number four, the death rule?”
“Yes,” said Oliver.
“Good, final rule, rule five. You can’t wish to live forever, don’t get confused here. If you want to be alive for a very long time we could do that. You could wish for extremely good health, or to heal twice as fast, or to stop contaminates and poisons from working on your body, etcetera. There are lots of things you could do to lengthen your lifespan but you can’t wish to live forever. Do you understand rule number five?”
“Yes,” said Oliver.
“Okay great, also understand that as soon as you make all three wishes this lamp will disappear. You don’t get to give the lamp to your friend or your girlfriend and have them make wishes for you, that violates rule number one. So like I said, as a safety measure this lamp will be going somewhere random on earth as soon as our business is concluded here. As far as your actual wishes go, I’ve found that it works best if you tell me all three of your wishes first then I will make sure they aren’t violating any of the fine print and at that point I will grant all three at once after we both verify that they are legal wishes and that they are what you want. Then we will be out of each others hair and you can enjoy whatever you wished for. So let’s get started, tell me what you want.”
Oliver stood there literally dumbfounded until the genie’s patience wore thin once again “Listen kid, take a long hard fucking look at me. I live in a god damn brass lamp, everyone I ever meet I never see again, and all I do is help selfish morons. My only solace is every once in awhile the lamp is hidden for a long time and I get to sleep and have some peace. So hurry the fuck up and make your goddamn wishes.” Hearing that the genie was sad and trapped made Oliver feel bad.
“You are… stuck? Stuck in the lamp? Trapped?” asked Oliver.
“Whoopdi whoo the genius figured it out!” the genie sarcastically replied.
“Listen kid, I’m ready to be done with your shitty little house. I’m ready to sleep, let me help you out.” The genie looked around Oliver’s house and her eyes landed on the superhero cartoon playing on his television. “Boom, superheros, why don’t you wish to have a super power?”
“I like that.”
“Okay, so what power do you want?”
“I want to… I want to be able to help people… to make the world better.”
“The super power you want is to be able to make the world better?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm, I can make that work, that’s wish one. Let’s move on to wish two, how about a new place to live, this shabby little house sucks cat dicks.”
“I will have a superpower, which means I will be a superhero. A superhero needs a secret hideout.”
“Okay, boom, that’s wish two, a secret hideout fit for superheroes. Let’s move on to wish three, got any idea kid?”
“I don’t want you to be trapped and sad anymore, I want you to be free and happy.”
Oliver’s third wish had just hit the genie like a punch to the gut. Emotions raced through her immortal body and she suppressed a scream. This obvious imbecile would free her? She had been trapped in the lamp for over a thousand years, and in all that time no one had been selfless enough to waste one of their preciously limited wishes on her. She wasn’t sure why she hesitated, the words had already left his mouth. She should have immediately capitalized on the situation and freed herself but the thought of freedom scared her almost as much as being trapped in the lamp for an eternity. Where would she go? What would she do with herself? She knew no one, had no home, no skills in this modern time. The only reason she even understood the language and current idioms and slang was because the lamp filled her mind with that information every time she was awoken. You couldn’t exactly grant someones wishes if you didn’t understand their language.
“Oliver, are you sure that is what you want for your third wish?” Oliver didn’t hesitate in his response.
“Yes, it is sad that you are trapped. Everyone deserves to be free.” The genie felt a small tear roll down her face, if this man was going to help her then she was going to help him. She re-evaluated his first two wishes and used every trick, loophole, and every ounce of power inside of her to make the results of his wishes better.
The genie appeared to enlarge in size and began to glow, her voice came out of her mouth like the voice of a god and it shook Oliver’s house. Louder than a thunderstorm she shouted, “YOUR WISH IS MY COMMAND!” The light in the room continued to get brighter and brighter. Oliver threw his forearm over his eyes.
That vapor that was holding the genie’s legs into the lamp started blasting out so fast that it was making a whistle like a tea kettle left on the stove too long. The whistle became so loud that Oliver had to move his hands over his ears but that just made his eyes hurt because the room was so bright now and the light was actually permeating his eyelids. Oliver drove his face into the carpet to protect his eyes and held his hands tighter over his ears. Oliver’s house started to shake, all of these sensations at once were too overwhelming for his small mind so he began to scream as a weak defense mechanism. Vaguely he thought he heard the genie screaming as well. Then it all went black.
Oliver woke up when someone flipped him over onto his back. He opened his eyes and saw the genie leaning over him. Without giving him any sort of warning she smashed her mouth onto his and kissed him feverishly. She wouldn’t stop kissing him until he was finally able to push her away and yell “STOP.” The woman got off of him and Oliver noticed her feet weren’t vapor anymore, they were just feet.
“Yes, sorry, I’m just very thankful.” The woman looked around and then squished her bare feet around in the carpet and moaned. Then she looked down at her clothes “People probably don’t wear this kind of thing around do they?” the woman asked. “No,” replied Oliver. Oliver wished he could help the nice lady with her clothing debacle and he felt a weird pop in the back of his head.
A giant blue transparent menu popped up in his vision, he was so startled by it he let out a little shout.
“SOMETHING IS HAPPENING!” Oliver yelled.
“Ah yes, I’m guessing that’s your power activating for the first time. There should be some way to make it visible, look for the word ‘VISIBLE’, do you see it?” It took Oliver an extremely long time and he had to have the genie-woman spell the word out to him multiple times before he found it, he wasn’t that good at reading. There were two empty boxes on the bottom right hand corner of the menu. The top one said “Visible to Astrid” and the one below it said “Visible to all allies.” He clicked the one that said “Visible to Astrid” because it was on top not because he particularly understood the choices in front of him.
“There we go, I can see it now.” Astrid studied the menu, there was currently only one option available up, it said “Update Astrid’s clothing to a more modern style? Cost: 5 Points” Below it there was a stylized “yes” and “no” which were both slowly blinking. “Oliver press the one that says yes, that’s y-e-s.” Oliver reached out with his hand and pressed it like she had asked him to.
Astrid yipped when she felt her chainmail and clothes rip around her body very quickly. She looked down and noticed her skirt had changed some, it was now a bit longer overall and it ended in a straight line just below her knees. It was also now more form fitting. Each side of her skirt had a three inch strip of decorative chain mail from bottom to top. The skirt was still made of the original hide but it felt thinner now, and finer like the material has somehow improved in quality.
She no longer had the chainmail top on either. She was wearing a halter top that felt like it was made out of portions of what used to be her hide skirt. The halter top also had the three inch strips of chain mail on the sides of it. They ran all the way up to the bottom of her armpits. Around her neck she wore a decorative necklace which was obviously made from the chainmail as well. It widened around her throat and sunk down towards her now exposed cleavage. Finally she noticed she had a pair of hide sandals on, the straps of which were made from chain mail. She still had her original belt equipped with the sword, the horn, and the dagger.
“Damn I look good! What do you think Oliver, are these modern enough?” she looked up at Oliver and he just had a blank look on his face, a few seconds passed and finally he smiled and said “yes.” This man was now her only link the modern world. She couldn’t have her only contact and ally be a half-wit. Time to fix up the dumb dumb, she thought.
“Oliver do me a favor, think about your menu and then think about being smarter.” She patiently waited and reiterated herself a few times to Oliver to keep him on track. Eventually his menu changed in front of her. A slider popped up, there was a dial on the slider that was currently all the way to the far left. The far left side of the slider was labeled “mildly mentally disabled.” Near the middle of the slider there were three nodes. The first node was labeled “slightly below average intelligence”, the middle node was simply labeled “average intelligence”, and the last node was labeled “slightly above average intelligence”.
The far right side of the slider was labeled “extreme intelligence.” Astrid pointed to the one labeled “slightly above average intelligence”.
“Slide that dial over to here for me please.” It was taking Oliver too long so she guided his hand which in turn moved the dial. She noticed as the dial moved right, a point value at the bottom of the menu appeared and slowly increased as the dial moved further up the intelligence scale. When the dial was at the setting she wanted it at the point cost at the bottom of the screen now read “25 points.” Below the dial now read the word “Confirm?” and below that there was a small “yes” and “no.”
“Select yes again Oliver, please.” Oliver slowly reached up and pressed “yes.” Then he started to scream...
Oliver’s steady scream slowly became louder and more desperate, more like an animal in pain then a human. He gripped the sides of his head. His fingernails dug into his temples hard enough to draw blood, and he fell over and began to roll back and forth on the carpet. Astrid jumped down to try to hold him still and peel his finger nails out of his skin to stop him from doing further damage to himself. All of a sudden Oliver stopped screaming, his eyes shot open and they landed on Astrid.
“You were the first woman that's ever kissed me Astrid. Do it one more time please.” Astrid shrugged her shoulders and gave him a quick kiss.
“Yeah, that feels awesome,” Oliver said with a smile.
“Don’t be getting sweet on me now boy, we just met and frankly you look kind of stupid,” Astrid said with a smile.
Her comment made Oliver think, which surprised Oliver because thinking was happening very fast now. Oliver did look ‘kind of stupid’ as Astrid had put it. Why was that? His menu which he had forgotten about during his painful experience popped up again like before, and then updated itself in front of him which drew his eyes sharply to it. “Fix the effects of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and other congenital anomalies? 25 Points” was posted over the top of his menu now, the familiar confirmation options were below. Sure why not, he thought and pressed the blinking “yes.” A lot of things started happening at once and they generally all really hurt.
“OW OW OW OW OW, OWWWW!” he started yelling. His whole body was in pain and then as before the pain abruptly stopped.
“Holy shit, you are actually kind of handsome now. Go look in a mirror” Astrid half-shouted. Oliver followed her advice and ran to his bathroom mirror. When he got there and finally saw himself he was stunned. He was kind of handsome now, Astrid was right again. His head had changed shape, his eyes and jaw had gotten bigger. His nose was a more stereotypical ‘manly’ shape. He looked down and noticed his pants didn’t quite touch his shoes anymore, HA, he had even gotten a little taller. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome... That didn’t make sense his mom didn’t even drink. Then he realized something, something that had just become glaringly obvious, he was adopted. His parents looked nothing like him, and his mother hated alcohol. He wasn’t really sure what to think about that and he had a lot of other things going on right now that he should be focusing on so he stored that information for later.
“Astrid, one more kiss please and then I’ll stop asking” she shrugged her shoulders once again and jumped on him. He almost fell over because he wasn’t ready for her weight. She really laid this kiss on him this time, her tongue darting in and out of his mouth. Then she jumped off of him and acted like nothing had ever happened. When he was finally able to talk he just said “whoa.” Astrid smirked at him and clapped her hands together sharply.
“Alright let’s get this fuckin show on the road!”
“What show? Where are we going, and what are you talking about, and why do you swear so much? Wait, how do you even know what swear words to use?”
“Well I swear a lot because this is how my people talked, we were a rowdy bunch. I know all of your slang, and idioms because it was ‘downloaded’, I think that is the right word, directly into my brain as soon as you rubbed the lamp. I have to be able to understand every aspect of the wisher’s language to accurately grant his or her wishes. For example imagine if someone told me they wanted a giant cock as one of their wishes. I grant this hypothetical persons three wishes and disappear. Mr. Tiny-Dick looks down and notices his winky is still microscopic. Then he notices he has a 13 foot tall chicken in his backyard. See the problem there? As to where we are going I figured we could go check out your fancy smancy new superhero hideout.”
“How are we going to get there? Remember, I was mentally retarded like two minutes ago,” said Oliver.
“I’m not sure of the specifics, but our ride is out back.”