When Djinni Met Genie
By
Eric Franklin (Kentauros) & The Rare Delurker © 2010
(Disclaimer: We do not own the characters of IDoJ they belong to their creators. This story is written purely for entertainment and not for profitable purposes. We do, however, own all original characters and the plot. If you would like to use the characters we have created, please ask first.)
~2~
Another world in another world. Old Baghdad. The large room with Arabian-style décor was filled with tables, mixing magical and alchemical items with modern electronics, some used with magical objects. At the center of the room stood a Past-Future Machine, tubes and wires protruding from it, connecting it to heavily modified tower computers. A man, or rather a djinn, Dr. Yosuf stood next to the machine peering into its screen.
He didn't react when a brown-haired genie with an orange harem outfit popped into the room. The genie, Jennifer Briars, clutched a pamphlet written in Farsi in her hand as she looked around the room.
"Janae?" she shouted. "Where's Janae?"
Dr. Yosuf looked up from the machine.
"Oh, hello," he said. Jen's hard gazes offended for a moment then went harder still.
"Where is she?" Jen asked.
"Around, I think," Yosuf said. "Last I heard, she'd come to visit her brother. I think they're still here." He looked around. "Maybe not. Why do you want to see her?"
Jen stormed over to the Past-Future Machine. And held up her pamphlet.
"She gave me this," she said.
He took it and smiled, saying, "Ah, yes. 'So You're Going to Have a Master.' Typical stuff. They hand it out at school. It gives some basic advice." He turned back to the machine. "Doesn't go into detail though."
"What details?" Jen asked. "It's slavery."
"Yes," Yosuf said as he adjusted one of the knobs he'd added to the Past-Future Machine. "But it's only a week with a Training Master. After that, don't let yourself get sealed in a bottle or anything and you'll be fine."
"Great," Jen said.
"Isn't it?" he mumbled.
"Are you even listening to me?" Jen demanded. He didn't respond and she sighed. "So what are you looking at?"
"Another one of those alternate worlds," Yosuf said. "The image has been flickering a little, but it's stayed on it for almost two hours now. The image hasn't been this stable for weeks. Come and look." Jen leaned over and looked, even though he didn't make room for her.
On the screen X.
Now the screen showed a vision of two genies. Or two people both in harem outfits. One, a brown haired adult was dressed exactly in the pink and red outfit Jen knew from her time with the Nelson family. The other, a red-haired girl perhaps six years old, wore a child's version of the outfit in shades of purple and blue.
The two sat in a large American-style living room with a statue of a tree in front of them.
"You don't like it, Mommy?" the girl asked the woman.
"It is not that I dislike it, dear," the adult said. "But you should not have done it in public. People could have seen the tree turn into porcelain. Remember, we are trying to keep our being genies a secret."
The girl, mollified said, "I know."
"How did you learn to do it, anyway," the adult asked.
"I was watching the DVDs of Jeannie," the girl said, "and in it she used the blink technique to do it. I wanted to try."
"A DVD of Jeannie?" Jen said. "Like Jeannie Jeannie?"
"It could be any genie," Yosuf said.
"Right, your stupid idea about names," Jen said.
"And it probably means they've also developed the ability to be visible to cameras," Yosuf said. But he couldn't stop wondering what "the DVDs of Jeannie" meant. It didn't seem like they were talking about a person when they said it. It was confusing.
"Yes, but if you remember," the adult genie on the screen said, "when Jeannie used that blink combination in that episode, it caused problems for her."
"Episode?" Jen said. "What, do they teach genie with videos instead of going to school?" She smiled. "Sounds like a better world."
On the screen, the door opened and a man about the woman's age entered.
"Daddy!" the girl cried and blinked herself from where she was to stand next to him.
"Hi, Jean," he said to the girl, stroking her hair, "Hi Christie," he added to the grown genie.
"Welcome home, Master," Christie said.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing to the porcelain tree.
"Jean tried something she saw watching I Dream of Jeannie," Christie said. "It was the one where Major. . ."
The screen burst into static, and then the screen changed. It often did that. Ever since Yosuf and Tony and Jeannie Nelson's son TJ had first modified the Past-Future Machine it had begun showing images from different worlds. Some similar to his own, some different. But the glimpses into these words were brief and shifted at random.
"I Dream… What?" Jen said. "What are they talking about?"
"That's what I was wondering," Yosuf said. He wished that view had lasted a little longer. What they had been talking about sounded interesting. There were even several theories about alternate worlds that might explain the meaning of what they were saying.
But it was a new world now and another chance to learn something. Yosuf smiled and looked at the screen, which now displayed a genie with a red and pink harem outfit sitting in front of a modern, Western computer. The genie was enormously curvaceous.
Jen snickered, "No way that's real."
"What's real?" Yosuf asked. Jen looked at him through narrowed eyes.
"The parts of her you're looking at?" she said.
"I'm looking at all of her, and the room and location," Yosuf said. "This is a new image; I have to get what information I can from it while I can. It could be an entirely different world, one we've never seen before. Who knows what I could learn from it."
"Looking at the walls," Jen said. "Right. Those curves of hers. She had to have surgery."
"Why surgery?" Yosuf asked.
"OK, fine," Jen said. "Maybe she didn't need surgery. But she had to have blinked herself that way. No way those curves are originals."
The genie on the screen folded her arms and looked like she was about to blink.
Something like a burst of wind, but less tangible, radiating with colors Jen had never seen before radiated from the Past-Future Machine's screen. Before she could scream, Jen and Yosuf were engulfed in the strange explosion. Jen felt like she was being pulled. And then she wasn't where she had been before.
