Ten Thousand Years…
It wasn't his fault. The master should have been more specific with his wish than using it to "See what the future holds."
It wasn't his fault that the master had been so appalled by the drastic changes that had taken place over time. Okay, getting distracted by the new devices might have played a part in his master's anger, the old man was only human and didn't have the ability to understand all languages like the Genie did, and thought the Genie was laughing at him instead of that funny man in the little box…
It wasn't his fault that the master was the jealous type, and after using his second wish to return to their era, had locked him away in an enchanted cave rather than use his third wish.
The Genie was stuck in his lamp, with nothing to do. Oh, there was that magic carpet, but the rug wasn't much of a conversation partner, especially when the Genie was trapped in his lamp. This was all part of a genie's life, he knew, but as the years turned to decades, he reluctantly admitted that the old master must have died. If he'd died, then how long would the Genie be stuck?
He had to do something, anything, to keep himself from going stir-crazy. Then, the Genie remembered those strange boxes he had seen in the future, the ones with the people inside of them. Perhaps he could find some way to duplicate one? But, a genie couldn't do anything for himself; until the day he was freed, a genie could only do things for his master…
What if he could use the people in the boxes, not for himself, but for his master? The master might someday wish for an epic story, or simply to laugh. The Genie could fulfill a wish like that better if he had, oh, say one of those boxes with people.
And if the people made the Genie laugh, so much the better.
It took some finagling, and a lot of bending and finding loopholes in the genie rules, but he managed to do it, create a…well, a projection of the people from the boxes on the inside of his lamp. That day when he first saw the man who had made him laugh so much again, he was so happy he cried tears of joy. He was able, after much more experimenting, able to figure out how to get other people on his projection, in an action called "changing the channel." As he watched, he learned more about what he was doing and the world he had only caught a quick glimpse of. And every bit he saw intrigued him even more.
He learned that those boxes were called "Televisions," or "TVs" for short, that the people on them were called actors. Sometimes they were themselves, others they acted, portraying other people. There was a technology that made the people look like they were in all kinds of places, other worlds even.
There were limits to how far his power would go, however. The Genie could only get the "Shows" that had shown on that particular day they had visited, but as he experimented more and more he discovered that he could get every single channel, big and small, from every country in the whole world. Not every show was a happy one, he learned. The "news" shows were particularly unpleasant, but not all of them were meant to be unhappy. The Genie decided that of all the shows, he liked the ones that made him laugh the best.
He especially liked the comedians. The first one he'd seen, the funny looking man with glasses and a mustache who eternally carried what was called a cigar and who could talk so eloquently and quickly that nobody realized the words were insults until afterwards, held a special place in his heart. His favorite comedian, however, was a man who played an alien in his show. This man was bursting with energy, exuberance, everything. As if he could somehow break free of the mortal skin holding him down. The Genie could relate, being trapped himself, and seeing the man as a sort of kindred spirit. In fact, he liked the man so much that even changed his voice to sound just like him.
As the centuries turned to millennia, the Genie realized one day that he'd taken to talking like the characters from his shows, not that it bothered him much. He watched his favorite shows over and over again, and when he got bored with them he acted them out. When he got bored of that, he started making up songs to pass the time, practicing how he'd sing each song for the master, and then creating dances to go with them.
Then one day in the 10,392nd year-not that he was actually counting, or anything-the Genie felt something he thought he'd never feel again-a rub at the lamp. As he felt himself whisked out of the lamp by the summons, he felt a wide grin come over his face.
Show time.
FIN
Author's Note: I have temporarily returned! College plus a second job means I unfortunately have very little time to write anymore, but at least I'm keeping busy. I might toss up one or two of my other works in progress over the break, hopefully.
So this Fic is something I came up to explain how Genie is so stuck in the 1990's. I wrote it for a creative writing class, and I figured I may as well celebrate the end of the semester by putting it up here.