Free Genie and Other Weird Tales by Alan Killip

Genie

    Contrary to popular myth, there is and only ever was one Genie. First and last of her kind, she was born in the heart of a neutron star when the universe was young, childhood spent lost in the unfolding forms of the early universe, before a deep and aching loneliness dawned. She spent her adolescence on a barren planet wrapped in heavy windless air where she arranged each spec of grit to form a massive sculpture of her longings. The task soothed her, but when it was finished she saw that it was a dead thing, and surmised that joy, if it existed, must lie elsewhere.
    She fell in and out of love with starlight, then sensed a universal light beyond the range of our own eyes or instruments. It nourished her in the vast space between the stars because it was the same as the light at the core of her spirit.
    She loved the places that fostered this light. She lingered for aeons on a planet of algae, believing herself fulfilled until her sadness resurged and nearly drowned her. So she flung herself void-wards and roved again for a million years or so. When she came upon a steamy planet of frogs and salamanders, attracted by the light in their brains, she saw that what she'd loved in the algae had been but a feeble glimmer. These creatures astonished her, these sacs of membrane, bone and muscle under the command of a light that shone from their eyes and powered their desires. She believed she'd found her kindred, that she was finally home.
    But eventually the amphibians tired her as well. They had no awareness of the universe at large, and they were uninterested in social interactions beyond mating. So she roved again in the freezing void till she found the ferment of light on the surface of our home. This was millennia before the electric light of the cities and roads formed dendritic patterns on the nightside of the Earth. The light that Genie could see was the light that shone from our eyes and powered our desires, the light she felt within her: her essence. To Genie this light outshone the sun.
    She explored, learning of our delicate interconnectedness and she entertained herself with tiny local interventions that would ripple out to the world at large. When she rebalanced a dew drop on a rose petal it slipped and trickled and carried a mutant microbe to a place place where it thrived and grew into a blight that starved a kingdom and triggered a war. This way of exercising her power soon lost its novelty, and after the initial thrill she derived from the exercise of power she would often be revolted by the consequences, so she made a vow to never again intervene on a whim.
    She observed us for a while, fascinated by our movements, voices and rituals. She saw we were conscious and social, we perceived time and made plans, had hopes and dreams, loved, hated, recorded and manipulated our impressions of reality. In short, she'd found the company she craved, and she felt the joy whose existence she'd always doubted. Then she realised that what for her felt like a year was a single second to us, despite the fact that she'd lived immeasurably longer, and she felt the sadness she'd always known.
    The gulf between her and us was vast, but she resolved to connect.
    She assumed the form of a human female, and willed herself to move and speak at a pace that allowed us to recognise her without losing our minds. It was a tremendous effort to slow down to the extent that she wouldn't cause a blast when she moved through the air, and to limit herself to one spoken word for every ten million thoughts. But it was worth the struggle when she met Sikarbaal, the spoiled, corpulent son of a merchant in the port of Byblos. She loved the light that shone from his eyes and glowed within each cell and nerve. She managed to waylay him at the market and they talked a while, and Genie asked him what he wished.
    Sikarbaal wished that the health of his father would be restored, for he was writhing in pain and convinced that Baal was crushing him in his