The Third Wish

by Simon Archer

“Bacon will do that to a room every time!” she laughed. “There are pancakes and orange-cranberry muffins on the dining room table.”

  “Woman, you are a breakfast goddess, you know that?” I joked, heading for the dining room.

  “I’ll be knocked off my goddess pedestal as soon as Lottie gets her hands on this kitchen. If you haven’t noticed, your fiancé is an amazing cook!” Vila called after me.

  “Awe, that’s sweet of you to say, Vila,” Lottie’s voice floated into the room just before she walked around the corner. “I figured there was no way I would be able to top magic meal-making!”

  “Hello, my love,” I greeted her from the dining room.

  “Good morning,” she replied. Her hair was tousled from sleep, and her smile was drowsy as she walked to me. She was absolutely beautiful. Vila rushed to beat her to the table so Lottie would have a cup of coffee by the time she sat down.

  “Thank you, Vila,” Lottie smiled up at her.

  “Of course! The bacon will be out in just a minute. Have a muffin. The cranberries are straight from Washington!” Vila informed us as she walked away. Lottie glanced around the table and then shifted her eyes to me.

  “I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that we all slept outside last night. I swear it was the deepest sleep I’ve had in months!” Lottie told me. I nodded my head in agreement.

  “It must be the air,” I guessed. “Get out of the city, and the fresh ocean air apparently put the two of us in mini-comas.” She nodded her head as she took a pancake off a platter and started nibbling at it. Andi whizzed into the kitchen, no longer wearing legs, and nearly bumped into Vila.

  “Where’s the fire?” Vila joked, dodging her. Andi didn’t answer but instead went straight to Lottie and grabbed her by the hand.

  “Come on! Time for you to see what everyone was looking at yesterday!” Andi told her, pulling her out of her chair. The two of them rushed out of the room, Andi switching to legs a moment before they exited the kitchen. Vila chuckled as they disappeared.

  “How much grief should I give little Miss Andolyn for taking Lottie to see the whales without me?” she asked jokingly. Andolyn was Andi’s full name. Before she’d become a genie, she was an Irish princess. Vila’s full name was actually Servilia. After centuries, the girls had decided on nicknames for each other because their real names were ‘too long,’ so they said.

  “Ah, not too much. She looked really excited,” I chuckled. I took a drink of my coffee and stood up. Regardless of Jack no longer being my boss, there was no way I was going to show up to our meeting late. I would never hear the end of it. “Hey, will you tell Lottie I had to go to work when she gets back in. As you witnessed, I did not have a chance to!”

  “Of course. Tell Jack ‘hello’ for us and ask when he and Lorraine are going to come to see the house,” Vila replied as she opened the oven to place a pan of muffins inside.

  I walked upstairs to my office and set to hooking up enough of my computer equipment to make the virtual call possible. Fortunately, I finished at the set up with ten minutes to spare, so I logged into the meeting room early. It’d be fun to give Jack shit for lagging behind. I was fiddling around with additional setup when the monitor beeped to announce Jack’s entrance into the digital room.

  “You logged in here early to make old man jokes about me being slow, didn’t you?” Jack greeted me, rolled his eyes, and grinning.

  Jack Richards was a sturdy man who took pride in his appearance but was far from conceited. He had thick, dark hair with a touch of salt-and-pepper that his wife refused to let him cover, and kept himself trim with hours of walking golf courses.

  “You’re damn right I did!” I laughed. “How is it going way back there in the States?”

  “Same as ever,” Jack answered. “It’s a little quiet without you banging around here, though.”

  “Ah, you’ll get used to it,” I told him. “Just think about how well you’ll be able to concentrate!”

  “Anders,” Jack started, sarcastically. “You did not hear me say that I did not like it, now did you?”

  “Touché,” I replied, chuckling before switching to a more serious note. “You ready to give this international gig a try? What do you have on your end?”

  Jack instantly followed suit. “Sven and Asher are one-hundred percent in, as our investors. I knew we would be able to count on them.” Sven and Asher were two Russian business moguls with more money than God, who had seen massive success in their bank accounts due to several artificial intelligence projects they’d invested in with us. “We don’t need any further outside funding, so consider the financials crossed off.”

  “Financials, check,” I acknowledged.

  “All the licensing and bureaucratic bullshit has been completed so that you can legally operate from your new paradise,” he continued.

  “Now, that is a relief,” I replied. “With the way the paperwork kept getting stalled, I was thinking I may end up coming back to the states for a few weeks so that the project didn’t get held up.”

  “All clear,” Jack reiterated. “That’s it for this end. The rest is press and equipment crap that you want nothing to do with, I promise.”

  “As long as the ‘equipment crap’ is from the list I sent you, you are correct,” I laughed.

  “No, Anders. I decided to toss your list and go for some refurbished desktops that only operate on dial-up,” Jack shot back sarcastically.

  “Good, good. That is what I was hoping you were going to do,” I quipped to turn the jest around.

  “Now that your dinosaur computers are ordered, what do you have for me?” Jack asked, bringing the meeting back on track.

  “The network should be finished running the set of data that I entered before the move. I will be completing the set up of this office today, so I’ll have analytics by the end of the day,” I reported. “Depending on those results, the next step could go one of two ways. We move on to an entirely new disaster scenario, or we end up digging further to find out what the fluctuation is.”

  Jack and I were developing a new artificial intelligence software that would accurately predict natural disasters and weather forecasts to a degree never seen before. The project was inspired by a vision Andi and Vila had given me after horrible tornado destruction hit a town we lived near earlier in the year. Regardless of that specific storm turning out to be created by evil magic, the incident brought to my attention that there really was no efficient, effective way for people to be warned that they could be in mortal danger. Therefore, I decided to create a way.

  The program used centuries of successful and failed weather predictions to create new algorithms that could read weather patterns more efficiently. One of the specialties of the program was that it used human error as a data set to analyze weather patterns and their results. Up to that point, testing on the program had gone wonderfully. We had predictive success with earthquakes, tsunamis, and heavy snow totals. However, when we started in on tornados, typhoons, and dry lightning storms, something started interfering with the AI program. It was some sort of energy fluctuation that couldn’t be accounted for by the system with any of the historical or ongoing data it had at its disposal to process with.

  Unless we could either figure out what was causing the fluctuation or at least find the energy’s own patterns, the entire project may stall out before we’d get a chance to move ahead further.

  “As usual, I have my fingers crossed that this random energy bullshit will take care of itself somehow,” Jack huffed. “How about we meet back here after a bit to see?”

  “Just give me a little time, and it’ll be good,” I confirmed.

  Jack leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath.

  “Okay, how long before the house is set up and Lorraine and I can come down? You know damn well we aren’t paying for a hotel as long as you own a house like that one!” Jack was a master at separating work and life, and he could switch from one to the other faster than I could
blink.

  “The girls are going to be tinkering around with decorating and rearranging today while I work on this. Next up will be the housewarming party that Lottie wants to throw. After that, all should be quiet on the home front. About a week sound good to you?” I asked him.

  “I’ll run it by the wife and get back to you,” he replied. “You alone in there?”

  I knew what Jack was about to ask me, and it was something that very few people were allowed to hear about.

  “Yeah, all clear,” I verified.

  “Have you had a chance to get back and look at those rocks again yet?” Jack asked in a low voice.

  The ‘rocks’ he was referring to were called Lightning Stones. When the group of us were vacationing on the island, Lottie and I had stumbled upon a cave, so we’d wandered in. Initially, we thought the cave entrance dead-ended into a sand wall, but I was able to push the wall in. Behind it was a cavern filled with the most gorgeous blue stones, growing down from the cave ceiling, and all over the walls.

  The fact that the cave was filled with a single-color of stone was strange enough, but it was the fact that the stones glowed that was really intriguing. Every single one of the blue rocks was glowing. Some were brighter than others, but all of them emitted some sort of light. Lottie and I had brought a small one back out onto the beach to show Jack, Lorraine, Vila, and Andi, but it looked like a normal blue stone when seen in the daylight. That is when we discovered that the stones only glow in complete darkness.

  Andi and Vila had heard a legend about ‘Lightning Stones’ that seemed to have some of the same qualities, so we’d all just started calling them that. In the legend, the stones were created by lightning strikes into wet sand and were said to have magically infused water inside. The type or intended use of the magic water was unclear, however. Centuries of storytelling had the water doing everything from granting immortality to creating a superhuman race. I felt drawn to the stones and became even more intrigued when I was unable to use the power from my second wish on them.

  My second wish was to be able to see the history of anything I chose to, but it did not work on the stones. Contact was required for my power to work, but when I touched them, I didn’t receive a single image showing me where they’d come from. Andi and Vila had never seen any magic more powerful than their own and, therefore, had no ideas about why the stones were immune. I knew to the core of me that I needed to be near them, so we’d moved to Barbados to do so. My house was actually a mere three-hundred yards down the beach from where they were hidden in the cave.

  “I have not been yet,” I started to answer Jack. “As you are aware, bringing our tech to the island has gotten quite a bit of attention. I think it’s best to wait until prying eyes have moved on to something else before accidentally leading people straight to the stones.”

  “Good call. I’m warning you, next time we are down there, Lorraine is going to do everything she can to talk you into letting her have a couple of those stones for a pair of earrings she wants to make,” Jack laughed.

  I wasn’t surprised. I’d actually used one of the stones to propose to Lottie with.

  “I don’t see why not, as long as she doesn’t wear them at night,” I told him. “In the daylight, they could pass as sapphires.”

  “She’ll be elated that you said so!” Jack replied happily. Typical for him, he switched the subject without warning. “Now get to work, dammit. There’s money to be made!”

  “Since when did either one of us work to make money?” I joked. Jack was a millionaire several times over, and I had not only earned millions, but I had been gifted thirty-million dollars from a kid who won the lottery because I bought him a ticket. That was one of the ‘good karma’ rewards I’d gotten from my first wish.

  “Just trying to fit in with the trend!” Jack laughed. He clicked off, and the screen went dark.

  I chuckled to myself as I went back to setting up my office electronics. It took another two hours to get the more complicated machines and wiring properly assembled, but when I was done, the system fired up like she was refreshed from a long nap. I’d always had a bit of anxiety associated with disconnecting and connecting programming equipment, so a huge sigh of relief followed. I ran some systems checks and verified files before setting to work on my weather program.

  The data that was running in the network showed the unidentified energy fluctuation once again. I did not mind the mystery of what the energy was, or even where it came from. It was the complete lack of predictability of its strength and behavior that was so frustrating. Even more peculiar about the energy was that it presented differently within the same weather types. I would’ve felt closer to an answer if the energy just affected tornados differently than lightning storms and the like. However, it changed characteristics and behavior from tornado to tornado and storm to storm.

  I poured over the data, looking for similarities, or repeating differences but still couldn’t find any. I leaned back in my chair and put my hands behind my head. I was more determined than ever to figure out the one element standing in the way of my program’s success and, if it was going to take half as long as I thought it might, I would need more coffee.

  I headed to the kitchen and poured myself a cup and was just turning around to head back to my office when Vila floated up from behind the other side of the island. Startled, I dropped my coffee cup. It felt like life slowed as I watched it fall. It was my ‘lucky’ cup, and I instantly mourned its certain demise. I heard a ‘snap’ and the cup stopped in mid-air. The coffee inside, which up to that point had not spilled out, sloshed over the edge and fell to the floor without the cup.

  “That was close,” Vila laughed, her hand still in the air from snapping her fingers and stopping the cup. I looked at her and down at the cup again before taking the cup out of its floating state.

  “If I were to drop this again, could you stop it like you just did but slower?” I asked her.

  “Sure. Why?” she asked.

  “I just saw something, and I want to see it again,” I answered. “This is my favorite cup, however.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll stop it,” she said with a smile and a wink.

  I filled my cup with coffee again and held it out in front of me. I glanced up at her and raised a brow to reiterate the importance of her not letting my cup break. She waved her fingers and rolled her eyes at me, gesturing for me to let it go. I released the cup and watched intently as it fell once again. Vila snapped her fingers, and the cup slowed to a stop before hitting the ground. The coffee inside did the same as the first cup but not as much spilled out.

  “I don’t believe it!” I yelled out and clapped my hands together loudly.

  “You don’t believe that I can keep a coffee cup from breaking twice in one day?” Vila asked sarcastically.

  “No, not that! I am rather certain I just figured out a consistency in the random energy behavior!” I pulled my cup from the air and set it on the counter, forgetting that I wanted more coffee. I kissed Vila on the cheek as I ran from the room and back to my office. “Thank you!” I called back over my shoulder.

  “Sure thing! Happy I could help,” I heard her voice call back to me.

  When I reached my office, I threw myself into my chair and pulled up a set of data from the last ten recorded tornadoes. I spent the next hour writing an analytics program and then ran the tornado data though it. Three minutes later, I had the answer I was looking for. The strange energy did have a recurring characteristic: the lower the power within a tornado funnel, the larger the energy surge up into it. The higher the funnel power, the smaller the energy surge.

  “Yes!” I yelled to myself, entering my hands up in the air like a fighter who had just won his match. I dropped my hands back down to my desk and picked up my phone. I dialed Jack and tapped my foot impatiently, waiting for him to pick up.

  “Jack Richards,” he answered.

  “Jack! We got a break!” I yelled into the phone. “We couldn’t see
the energy’s pattern because we were looking at the weather incidents incorrectly!” The line went dead as Jack hung up, and my video conference buzzer started sounding. I threw my phone down and answered the video call. I immediately started sharing my screen so Jack could Follow what I was telling him.

  “We were classifying the tornadoes based on funnel, destruction, and precipitation. The larger precipitation storms were classified higher when, in fact, we should have lowered their significance because, in each instance, there was more precipitation when the funnels had less power!” I jumped my cursor around the screen, as I explained.

  “So smaller funnel, more precipitation, making the overall incident look, and be classified as more severe?” Jack asked for confirmation.

  “Yes. Now, in each instance, the smaller funnels show a higher surge of the unknown energy-type,” I continued.

  “Which would mean, the higher the energy surge, the more precipitation,” Jack muttered, unsure.

  “Yes!” I shouted. Jack was silent for a moment and then cleared his throat in such a way that I knew he was wondering if I had lost my marbles.

  “Anders, we already checked for precipitation versus energy patterns, haven’t we? Why wouldn’t this have come up then?” Jack asked tentatively.

  “Because the power surge is in ratio to the funnel power, not just precipitation result,” I explained. “For example, if an F5 hits, the power surge is huge, but there is very little precipitation change. In an F1 scenario, the power surge can be the same but resulting in a massive amount of precipitation.”

  “Yeah, still not seeing the connection,” Jack replied.

  “I believe the energy is designed to cause precipitation increases,” I tried to clarify. “The difference is that it gets absorbed more in higher power funnels, so smaller amounts of the energy make it to the storm cloud above.” Jack was silent, and I saw his cursor start darting around the screen as he connected to my system remotely. He flipped through the data my analytical program had produced for several minutes before breaking his connection.