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Three Wishes to Save the World

by Rebecca Zahabi

It started, like most of these things do, with a magic lamp.

Eden placed the lamp on the little Ikea table of their student housing and brushed their hand in one swipe from snout to handle. The burnished copper lamp turned to gold under their fingertips, glowing as if newly made, then began to rattle and puff silver-grey smoke.

The genie emerged with a hastily plastered-on smile. Contrary to popular belief, he was grey, not blue. He was wearing pointed shoes and a bright red tunic, through which his skin billowed out.

“Greetings, young…” The genie paused, hovering between ‘sir’ and ‘lady’. He had never had trouble identifying someone’s gender before. In the end, he settled for: “… young master.”

As a matter of fact, the genie was also what people would have called nonbinary, but lacking traditional female attributes, he had been considered male for so long that he now assumed he had to be a man of some sort.

Eden wasn’t awed by the genie’s sudden appearance. After years of witnessing a wilder, weirder, and worse reality on TV, and having also inherited their parents’ stiff upper lip, they greeted the genie with a thumbs-up. “You can call me Eden.”

This didn’t help the genie as much as he had hoped. “Ah yes, Eden, like the fabled garden,” he said, dipping into an elaborate bow. He was about to launch in a detailed explanation of the rules, but Eden interrupted him:

“It’s three wishes, right?”

The genie tried not to feel too put out. In his experience, people who knew the deal were uncommon but not unheard of. Having not been out of his lamp for over a hundred years, the poor genie didn’t realise that everyone he would meet from now on, including the youngest children, would be aware of not just the three-wishes rule, but also several potential loopholes, such as wishing for infinite wishes (a headache, luckily, for another time).

“That’s right,” said the genie, with a polite, I-don’t-mind-that-you-interrupted-me-no-really-it’s-fine sort of smile. “I imagine you’ve thought about your wishes, then?”

Eden nodded. “But first, can you tell me whether the wish has to be said in a certain way?”

The genie was offended at the implication. “Look, I’m a benevolent spirit, and however you present the wish, I’ll try to fulfil it to the best of my abilities. I won’t try to trick you.”

Eden bit their lower lip. “Surely that’s something a malevolent spirit would also say?”

The genie huffed at that. “I wouldn’t know.”

Eden took a deep breath, both hands on their knees, to steady their nerves. They had read enough stories where wishes went horribly wrong; they sincerely hoped this one would turn out right.

“I wish for you to solve the issue of climate change,” said Eden. “Or for it to be solved, I guess, to solve itself. But then either way it’s your doing, surely.”

The genie had no idea what the wish meant, but he’d be damned before he would admit it. Traditionally, people wished for fifty healthy camels.

“Your wish is my command, young mas… young Eden.” He closed his eyes. Sucked in a deep breath. Exhaled. Opened his eyes. “All done!” he said proudly.

Eden couldn’t help but find this anticlimactic. They’d worried about climate change since primary school, when the teacher had told them to turn off the taps so the planet didn’t run out of water. But it had only taken the genie a couple of seconds to sort out. “Really?”

They stepped up to the window. The genie waved towards the sky with a flourish. “Behold, your heart’s desire: from now on, the weather will never change!”

Indeed, the clouds were stuck in the sky, unmoving. The rain which always dampened Manchester and gave England its green countryside was hanging in droplets in the air. The trees on the campus grounds rustled with a repeating breeze, like a GIF on a loop.

“That’s not what solving climate change means,” said Eden.

The genie deflated; he’d suspected he might have missed something. Otherwise, Eden could just have wished for good weather, which was a rare enough resource in England. He snapped his fingers, returning the weather to its dreary prior state. Except for the fact that the drops now hit the tarmac, nothing much was lost nor gained.

“I will return,” he announced solemnly. With those words, the genie whisked out of the window.

Eden tucked the lamp between two textbooks on their bookcase and went to make some food. They lived in a big student complex where the kitchen and bathroom were shared. At the moment the halls were empty, it being Reading Week. In the kitchen, Eden boiled the water in a kettle to avoid having to wait for the cantankerous electric hob, which more often than not short-circuited and shut down. Eden poured the boiling water on their pasta and waited, hoping the now-lukewarm hob would be enough to mollify the macaroni.

When the pasta was on the edible side of al dente, Eden drained it, lobbed some pesto onto it, and returned to their room. They waited for the genie while scrolling through websites on activism, the oceans, and cute baby seals doing backflips in the water. Homework could wait for the end of the holiday. They joined a debate about social engagement, to which they answered: ‘I find magic often works better than activism.’

The genie returned, brushing invisible dust off his smoky shoulders.

“Is it done?” Eden asked.

The genie did a so-so gesture with his hand. Under Eden’s bright, straightforward gaze, he grimaced. “No,” he admitted. He’d spent the last hour rearranging the clouds above Manchester, trying to work out which kind of change was the wrong kind of change, before giving up. “I might need a bit more information. Do you have a book about this ‘climate change’ you wish me to deal with?”

He hoped it might be a fancy name for an easy-to-fell, long-toothed monster. Maybe a climate-controlling djinn?

“Do you know how to use the internet?” Eden asked.

It took the genie three hours to get his head around the idea. Eden showed the genie how to use a keyboard, explained in broad strokes what a website was, how it could be reached through a search engine and, in a bid for honesty that only muddled the genie even more, tried to explain that there was more than one search engine. When the genie tried to compare Google and Bing to different kinds of books – say the Torah and the Bible – Eden gave up and told him to just stick to Google.

By the time the genie had mastered the basics of the internet, Eden’s pasta had gone cold. They dutifully packed the remains of their plate in a Tupperware for later and, as the genie was using their computer, they re-read one of their favourite comic books. When dusk came, the genie clicked his fingers for light, at the same time as Eden clicked the switch. They both briefly marvelled at what the other had achieved. In the end, to save electricity, they turned off the lamps, letting the genie’s magical glow fill up the flat.

By evening, the genie was scribbling down a list of names, mostly academics who had spoken on the subject, as well as some non-experts and Greta Thunberg. Eden had reheated the pasta.

“I’ll be back,” the genie said.

“Everyone will be sleeping by now,” said Eden.

The genie shook his head. “It’s always daytime somewhere in the world.”

With those words, he disappeared in a dramatic puff of smoke. Eden beelined for the computer.

They played videogames for the rest of the evening. They could have studied, but they felt their contribution to humankind was being dealt with, and a few good grades wouldn’t mean much in comparison.

Although, to be fair, their contribution to humankind thus far boiled down to buying the lamp second-hand from an antiques shop. Despairing at the state of the seas and growing each day more despondent, Eden had decided to spare themself years of studying oceanography by simply hunting for a magic lamp instead. They had guessed, rightly, that it would save a lot of time and trouble. Really, problem-solving through wishes should be better advertised at the careers service.

After several hours of gaming, in the absence of the genie, Eden went to bed.

The next morning, the genie returned as Eden was pouring themself a bowl of cereal with oatmilk. He seemed, Eden had to admit, a bit harassed.

“All right.” The genie sat down in front of Eden at the table. He squeezed his two hands together and pressed them against his lips, a politician’s gesture. “We need to talk.”

“If you wish,” Eden agreed. They wondered as they said it whether that was offensive to a genie, but it was too late to take it back.

“I’ve done some research, asked a few people, and the issue is a lot more complicated than it looks,” the genie said. “I’m not sure it’s a feasible wish.” He looked just like he felt: like someone awoken from a hundred-year sleep who thought he could get back to bed in five minutes and who had now been up for over twenty-four hours and hadn’t found a solution yet.

“But you have magic,” Eden said.

“There are lots of other things you could do with magic,” the genie said. “How about some lovely slaves, to cook your food and clean this place? From what I’ve seen you eat and the mess this flat is in, you could do with the help.”

Eden pulled a face. “I’m against slavery.”

The genie didn’t understand how anyone could be against the idea of people doing your bidding. For one thing, he had missed a few cultural shifts. Also, he was technically a slave. Had he been a well-read genie, he might have seized this opportunity to talk about the abuse humans had heaped on genies, maybe even mentioned the concept of ‘dictatorship of the djinns’, but unfortunately, he hadn’t come across Marx yet.

“Piles of gold,” he said instead. Gold was always a safe bet.

“I think you’ll find gold is devalued compared to your times,” said Eden, hoping they weren’t sounding too ageist. “Anyway, I’m against this capitalist society which encourages the accumulation of riches.” Eden, on the other hand, had read Marx.

“Never-ending caskets of wine.” The genie was growing desperate.

“I’m not much of a wine person.”

“Never-ending caskets of beer, then?” said the genie, showing he had picked up some key elements of British culture since he’d been summoned.

Eden shrugged with one shoulder, still shovelling cereal into their mouth. “I don’t drink much, to be honest.”

“What about fifty camels?” The genie spread out his hands with the expression of someone putting down his best card in a tough game.

Eden frowned. “What would I do with fifty camels?”

The genie groaned. When had his job become this hard? “Whatever you want! Ride them, race them, show them off to your friends, give them to your vassals and war-companions, use them as bride money for a beautiful spouse!”

Eden wondered if they should point out that they didn’t believe in traditional gender-roles, and were, overall, against the idea of bride money. Then they remembered how long it had taken the genie to understand why a simple click worked just as well as mashing the mouse, and decided to shake their head instead.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll stick with the climate change wish.”

Cursing, the genie disappeared. He left a smell of sulphur behind.

Eden finished their breakfast. Bearing in mind the genie’s criticism, they did the washing up and vacuumed the flat. Once the chores were done, they studied in a dilettante fashion. It was a nice day outside, so they often went to the window to breathe in the smell of cut grass. Around noon, they left their flat for a coffeeshop on campus, where they ordered a soymilk latte with a toasted vegan sandwich.

While they ate, they browsed the café’s books. They placed themself near a window, so they could enjoy the sunlight pouring through.

The genie appeared in a cloud of red and silver smoke. The waiter beside them jumped, and a few people in the café turned to stare, but everyone was too polite to comment. A woman in the crowd caught a picture of the genie, pretending she was only taking a selfie.

“Okay,” the genie said, obviously having picked up some modern-ish words. “Where do you stand in the preservation versus conservation debate?”

Eden hesitated. They remembered that preservation efforts required preserving nature as it was, in reserves for example, as free from human influence as possible. The idea was to preserve a state that had been, and that maybe had since been lost and needed to be restored. As far as they were aware, conservation was about protecting existing species and situations, trying to avoid more damage, but without going back on what humans had changed.

“I’m not sure,” Eden admitted.

“I need to know your thoughts if your wish is going to be done right,” said the genie. “Do you want human influence to be taken away from the natural world?”

There was a glint in the genie’s eyes that clued Eden in.

“I still want to be able to enjoy my latte afterwards,” they said severely.

The genie slumped on the table. Not being fully corporeal, he mostly slumped through the table, but he was too downcast to care. His idea – to make everything human and human-made disappear in one go – should have been a fool-proof one. It even had the bonus of making Eden the Brat, as the genie had recently nicknamed them, disappear. He would have to change his job description to ‘mostly benevolent genie’, with some small print about exceptions regarding very dumb wishes, but it would be worth it.

“Look at it this way: humans have been changing things since they first worked out how to stand upright.” He was trying to argue, but he was also exhausted from the longest-to-fulfil wish of his career so far, so his voice came out muffled from where his grey head was resting on his grey forearm, wafts of smoke rising out of his ears like small volcanoes. “I mean, you eradicated the megafauna. And that was during the Pleistocene epoch.”

“When was that?” asked Eden.

“No idea,” said the genie. “But trust me, it was a very long time ago.”

Eden asked the waiter for another latte, please, for my friend. They gingerly patted the genie’s hand; their fingers went through the wispy skin, which was surprisingly hot, as if it were smoke from a fire.

“I understand it’s hard,” said Eden. “Look, just do your best. Don’t bring back the megafauna, or the dodos. It’s rough that they died, but it’s done. Try to make sure we don’t exterminate anything else, don’t rely on fossil energy, that the poles don’t melt, huge natural catastrophes don’t destroy all life on earth, and we stop putting oil in the oceans and carbon in the skies. And plastic. Do something about plastic.”

The genie looked up from the table. “Listen to yourself! That’s not one wish.”

Eden fidgeted. They knew it wasn’t one wish, not really, in the same way that climate change wasn’t one problem but a huge, interlocked, complicated issue, but they had hoped to get away with it.

When the genie spoke next, his eyes were glazed over, as if he were quoting an expert – more than one, as it turned out – from memory. “The problem is, human behaviour impacts climate change, which causes extinction of animal species. Human behaviour also directly impacts various species, without necessarily changing the climate. But species dying off or on the contrary having huge demographics can influence their environment too. It’s really about more than just the climate.”

The waiter brought them a dairy-free latte. The genie, if anything, seemed even more depressed.

“So, you won’t do it?” asked Eden.

The genie straightened to sip at his drink. “I said I’d do it.” When he licked his lips, his tongue was black and red like glowing embers.

“Maybe I’ll just give humans infinite energy,” he said at last. “Everything will run on magic juju.”

Eden shook their head. “Surely that only encourages people to be irresponsible.” Then, as an afterthought: “Magic juju? Is that a legitimate term?” They went on their phone to check.

The genie shrugged. “You said climate change, not people change.” He tapped his fingers against the table, but they didn’t make a sound. He rubbed at his chin, deep in thought. This wish required a lot more planning than usual.

“Juju is derived from the French word ‘joujou’, or ‘toy’,” Eden read out from the article on their phone, “and it is originally a colonial term used for West African magical trinkets, discarding them as toys, or playthings. Now it’s generally used to mean magic dealing with good luck. It seems to have voodoo connotations.”

They looked up from their mobile.

“Why would you use a colonial term?” they asked, their voice full of disapprobation. “Surely you’re from a part of Africa yourself? The antiquarian said you were from Morocco.”

The genie gave Eden a blank look, until Eden squirmed and put their phone away.

“Coming back,” the genie said, his tone as frosty as a fire-djinn can manage, before disappearing swiftly, like fog dispersed by the wind.

Eden spent the rest of the afternoon quietly reading in the café.

The genie joined them on the way back to their flat that evening. He was wearing a suit – maybe after his lengthy talks with various world leaders – but he had kept his traditional pointy shoes. He fell into step beside Eden.

“Look,” he said. He summoned words, written in smoke, in front of Eden. The list included items such as rewilding, plastic waste, the meat industry, green transportation. “This is what needs doing for climate change.”

Eden stopped – it was that or stepping through the smoke screen. They stared. The genie stared. The smoky sentences billowed, but kept their shape. It was hard not to feel discouraged at this wall of grey words.

“Magic cannot solve climate change,” the genie said. “But I’ve found out what can.”

“Infinite energy?” Eden said, hopefully.

The genie shook his head. “Work.”

Eden pulled a face.

The genie frowned. Sparks flew under his nails as he did an irritated gesture in front of him. “Young Eden. Do you want to solve climate change, or do you want to sit at home feeling like you’ve done something useful without actually doing something useful? Because that’s a different wish.” He paused, musing. “A much easier one, by the way.”

“No, of course not,” Eden said. “Work. Sure. Everyone joining in. How are we doing this?”

The genie clicked his fingers and disappeared. The sky above Eden roiled. The clouds parted, then reformed. Because of the low sunset, the lights were red and gold, bright and beautiful. In big letters in the sky, the clouds spelled out:

TO DO LIST

And detailed what needed doing, with little boxes beside them that could be ticked.

People in the street stopped. They craned their necks to read.

With a sigh, Eden realised ‘everyone’ included them. Squinting, they picked an item on the list. Clean the oceans and rivers. It seemed Eden might need to get back to their oceanography studies after all. When they focused, the list zoomed in for them, to focus on water waste in Manchester. That seemed more manageable than the whole world, to begin with. Then the list tightened even further, to just one problem, for starters: preventing the water waste factories from throwing their micro-plastics in the river each time it rained.

Eden didn’t see the genie for the following week. On the news, people were discussing the appearance of The List. All over the world, The List now filled up the sky with urgent to-dos. It turned out, by comparing notes, that The List changed according to who was reading it: it changed language, so it could always be understood. But it also brought forward what needed to be done locally, and gave people problems small enough to be dealt with.

In some cases, the guidelines simplified even further: call the factory this morning to discuss their waste management. Call your local MP and ask them to raise taxes against factories that don’t properly treat waste. Go to this square, at this time, and meet up with the fifty other people looking for solutions to the same issue. Talk to journalists. Block the factory’s front door. Read this guide to civil disobedience.

Awareness didn’t need raising much further – it was already sky-high.

Eden, who had been lounging at home so often, found themself out and about a lot more. They met up with other people from different backgrounds and ages and class, who all wanted the same thing. One elderly lady wanted to be able to fish in the Mersey again, in a non-invasive way. A young boy wanted to be able to swim in the clean waters. Eden wanted the oceans clear, and to get there, they needed the rivers to be, as well.

So they stood up at meetings, they phoned water waste factory owners, they chanted during protests, they wrote for the local press, they tested the Mersey water with a homemade kit to check its quality. On the activist forum which they used to scroll, they admitted that collective action was better than individual wish-making.

They kept going. And others did, as well.

Slowly, but not unnoticeably, a few items were checked off The List.

Eden was in the common kitchen cooking pizza when the genie returned. They had spent the day outdoors, and their face was lit with a smile, their locks wind-ruffled, their eyes bright. The genie, in comparison, looked worse for wear. He didn’t have an unshaven beard, or eyes rimmed red with sleepless nights, or messy hair (what with being made out of smoke) but still he managed to give the impression that he had.

“Behold, your heart’s desire! I have not solved climate change, young Eden,” the genie admitted, “but I have given people all the tools they need to do it themselves.”

Eden removed the pizza from the oven, placing it on the kitchen counter.

“Thank you,” they said, scraping vegan cheese off the sides of their plate. “That was great.”

“What’s your second wish, young Eden?” the genie asked. He gave Eden a hopeful, let’s-be-reasonable-about-this-now sort of glance.

Eden carefully cut the pizza into four squares, getting grease over their fingers. They licked them clean and said:

“I wish for world peace.”