Inside The Lamp

My name is not important. Who I am is irrelevant. You need only know what I am. The rest is for another time. What I am is a djinn, but before I begin, I would like to set something straight.

Genies do not exist. They are a fanciful reimagination of the djinn. Softened for the sake of children. Though not all djinns are akin to the horror version popular media enjoys so much. If you should stumble upon a djinn untethered, well, you’ll never know anyway so it doesn’t really matter. If you stumble across a djinn tied to a lamp, it would be wise to tread with care. Many of them are rather bitter. Due to a history unlike mine.

All that is relevant for you to understand is that the djinn were created right alongside humans. Born from smoke they were gifted free will and tremendous power. Humans were created from earth, bound to flesh, while the djinn had no such limitation. The only way a djinn can be harmed is if they chose to take a fully physical form.

Most djinns at the time were forcibly bound to lamps. Few escaped the curse, but I’ve never met any. That term is used lightly as a lamp could be any object containing a djinn. As you can imagine they weren’t thrilled by this, and as such their benevolence or malevolence, like humans, relies on the individual.

I was not brought into this life as a djinn, but I have spoken to several that were. I’m told it happened worldwide in an instant. One moment everything was fine and the next they were forced into an object, unable to get out on their own. For some it was a treasured item. For those that didn’t have a treasured item it was the closest random thing.

It’s been a really long time so many of them have cooled off. Choosing to hate a long dead person rather than the entire race. This brings me to the djinn’s limitations and the conditions that were created. Even with the power to bind them, they were deeply feared.

While there are a few ways to destroy a djinn it is very difficult. Our bodies do not age or give out. We cannot die of time or disease. But this is not something we can give to others. Though we can lengthen someone’s lifespan and cure ailments. But the most I’ve been able to give is fifty years. So, no one can demand immortality, just a longer life.

The djinn were feared for the same reason they were bound. The ability to alter reality in any way is a powerful one, and its use was desired. But the danger they represented in the wrong hands was immense.

A djinn has no choice but to answer the call of a human. But their powers are restricted to the demands of the one who called. To avoid greed and catastrophe they are limited to three demands. Then that human can never call upon that djinn again.

Considering that all djinns had a grudge against humans they weren’t taken advantage of very often. After everyone discovered that while bound to their lamps, they still had some of their free will. They could twist a vague demand into something horrifying.

That’s why a failsafe was added. When a human calls them forth, their soul is bound to that of the caller. Should the caller die so does the djinn until all three demands are met. However, a djinn’s soul is bound to their lamp far more securely. If you destroy the lamp, you destroy the djinn. Many were lost over the centuries due to mishap. Though the lamps cannot degrade any further than the moment the djinn became bound to it.

As I said I have not always been djinn. My lamp is my most treasured item. A sapphire necklace gifted to me by my most treasured person. I was physically transported into the gem of my necklace and was greeted by a giant, mostly empty, room.

The only thing disrupting the emptiness was a waist tall pedestal with a book neatly centered on top. The cover of the book read, ‘Inside the Lamp: An Accumulation of All the Djinns Have Learned Living Inside the lamp’. Bit of a long title, but since the transition came with a handbook I didn’t complain. I suspect the djinn that bound me had taken pity on my sacrifice.

It’s the most powerful ability we have, but the soul must be willing to enter servitude. It requires the essence of the djinn and a human soul to volunteer. I’m told that without the lamp to bind the essence and the soul it wouldn’t be possible. It’s the only way a djinn has been created in thousands of years.

My story is one told many times in many ways. I come from a time when marriage was a must at a young age. Without marriage a woman was worth less than nothing. I had kept my father at bay for as long as I could. But it was inevitable, at least until I fell in love.

He was a traveler, new to our village. Very charming with many stories of travel and adventures. My father did not approve. To him, marriage to that man would mean I followed him on his future travels. And I was needed close by to help with my siblings and grow the family with my own offspring.

We met without permission for many months. My lover kept many companions that he traveled with, and built a home, but even that was not enough. Until the fateful night that he shared with me what I thought was his terrible secret.

On his travels he had encountered many djinn. Made demands of several and then freed them from their servitude. His companions were those that he had wished human to free and provide for them. But he only had two more demands from his current djinn. He used the demands to keep them in wealth and food. He was supposed to use one demand for more necessities and the other to free the djinn.

But he was very sick. Not likely to last another year and finding another djinn could take many. He couldn’t use both on himself because then he’d never be able to call his current djinn again to free him. He spoke of a miracle he had found. How a human can volunteer to be made a djinn. He asked that I become a djinn so that he could free the one with him. And then I could cure him, get him more resources when he needed, and then he would free me as well.

It took quite a bit of convincing. I was hesitant to leave my mother and many siblings. But in the end, I guess part of me thought that by entering servitude for a short time I could free myself from the servitude of my family. I thought it would be a matter of days, maybe weeks, but by then we could have started our travels for another djinn. After all he had found so many before.

The djinn asked me three times if I was sure I wanted to fulfill this demand. At first, I thought he just needed to be sure that I was willing. Later I realized he was trying to warn me with his persistence. The world got really bright for a moment, and then I was in the empty room, feeling no different than before.

The book outlined the rules. Which pretty much consisted of three. We cannot use our power outside of the lamp without satisfying a demand. We cannot leave without being called upon. And we can only bring in outsiders for a limited amount of time. Outside of that the only limitations are one’s own imagination.

Say I wished to go skating on a frozen pond. The ice will not be cold unless I want it to be, and it won’t thaw unless I desire it. Should I desire it, it would happen instantly, and I would continue to stand on top unless I felt like a swim.

I can be anywhere and while I am alone, I can populate it with people of my own imagining. I can either make them however I want or create exact replicas of real people from outside. The lamp allows us to indiscriminately watch the outside, and even partake in the various forms of media and entertainment.

If I want it, I can simply turn around and be walking down a busy street in Paris, France, and it match the real world in real time. Or I can enjoy the scenery empty of people. I can walk through history and see what really happened. I only must have a mind to.

The only drawback I’ve found is that the replicas are always hollow. I can sit and have a pleasant conversation with a perfect replica of someone. They would act and react exactly like the person they are copied from. Even have the same memories all the way to current events. But they somehow lack sincerity. Their smile, even though genuine, will seem empty.

They are perfect copies, but they lack the soul of that person. So, after that pleasant conversation is over, I let them dissolve into something else. I’ve gotten to know a lot of people that don’t know of my existence.

I had a surprising amount of time to read through the book and get to know my new home. Though time runs differently in the lamp. What felt like several hours turned out to be three months by the time he called upon me. Which was confusing as we had professed our love multiple times. When he did call, it was not for the purpose I was expecting.

There was no affection only a demand. Fifty more years of youth and vitality. He hadn’t been sick at all and was disappointed I could only provide fifty years opposed to the hundred the other djinn had been able to give him. After that demand he sent me back to the lamp for another several months.

I assume no one had ever described what it was like inside the lamp to him. He seemed to be under the impression that it was a miserable, cramped space. That his lenience was the only freedom we had from it. However, before he sent me back, I caught the eye of a familiar face. The djinn that bound me. He looked like he had something he wanted to say.

So, I conjured him up in my lamp. It was my first experimentation with a living thing. It turned out to be the best way for me find out the truth. We spent a lot of time talking. In fact, I learned how to free myself from our conversations.

He was not an original djinn, but a human turned djinn. What I thought were djinn discovered were actually djinn made. He didn’t find and free them, he had found one djinn and then convinced others to sacrifice themselves. He kept them djinn until their human lives would have been done. So, they had no home to return to, or life to finish living.

Then he used them as slaves to accumulate wealth and goods. He didn’t even free the first djinn. His skill for specific demands made it difficult to find any loopholes. He even managed to bind the djinn he freed after they turned human. They could not speak a single word of their history or knowledge of him with anyone.

The perk of the lamp’s inability to replicate souls, the replica I created that held all of this knowledge was not bound by the demands. He told me everything. Even the current information of our master’s plans.

Spreading that first djinn’s essence so thin has created weaker and weaker human turned djinn. That was the theory he was working with anyway. So he intended to use me to find another original, before freeing and binding me to him through circumstance.

I had forty-five years to sit and contemplate. My mother would be in her nineties had she lived that long. My oldest siblings were in their seventies to eighties. My father died only a year after I disappeared. They would have burned me at the stake if I had tried to return.

For the last five years my master decided he needed to earn my trust. Making excuses about how he had to keep me hidden. After all, if he had left the village right after I disappeared, he would have come under suspicion. I knew his intent by then and played along. Because of that I was given a reprieve from my lamp.

Then the day came, he made his demand. He wanted me to find and bring to him one of the original djinns. The look on his face when I returned with the first djinn he found was priceless. He could not make a demand of this djinn. But because my soul was originally human, I could.

My first demand, to be as powerful as an original. My second, to be freed from the bind of the djinn while maintaining my power and lamp. My third was to free that djinn from their own binding. I can no longer be destroyed by the destruction of my lamp, but I can still utilize it. I have complete freedom with an enormous amount of power.

Because I was free, I was able to truly free the others. To give them resources and the ability to live out their human lives in peace. I didn’t bother to say goodbye, simply popped to another part of the world while savoring his expression of shock.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gained the ability to come and go as I please. My isolation these days is self-inflicted. I grew bored of the outside when I can have whatever I want at any instant in my lamp. I can even call out to other djinns if they’re willing to chat.

I’ll probably make an appearance when I grow restless or bored. But that usually takes a long time.