Mark smiled back at Jo and grabbed a t shirt from his drawer. It fit great.
"Dude," Joe said, "What'd you do to the room?"
Mark looked around and noticed that not only did he have no clothes on the floor, but his bed was made and his textbooks were lined up on a shelf. And Joe's side of the room also looked neater. Huh, Mark thought to himself. The genie could do extras?
He looked at Jo. He thought of her pale, puffy nipples, tight abdomen, and the hooped belly button ring. He looked at her hand, clenched in Joe's, and he thought of those fingers jamming into her own slit, probing his ass, clawing his face. He looked at her smile and thought back to fucking her pretty face and the moment when she held his cock between those pearly white teeth, threatening to bite it in half.
He thought of the good and bad memories that his genie had helped create and then agreed to remove. He had to remember to ask the old guy what happened to that other world once he'd taken a Re-do
"I gotta go," Mark said, suddenly needing some fresh air.
Mark ran out the door, down the hall, and outside onto the quad. It was a different world. Brighter. He could smell the springtime. He wandered across the quad, wondering what he should do next.
Walking across campus, Mark asked, "so Genie, what have previous people called you?"
"Well, there's Genie, Janna, Jin, and a variety of local derivations. Sometimes just a name from their era."
"Can you be visible?"
"Sure."
"O.K., I wish for you to be visible so that I don't have to talk to the air."
An old man appeared. Mark looked him up and down. He wore a frumpy suit and a skeptical demeanor.
"Well, I can clearly see you, which is great, but now you look like pictures of my Uncle Sid."
"No surprise there. This is the look your father requested."
"Forget that. You should look like you belong on campus. I wish you to look like a guy my age. Better, like a girl my age. A really attractive girl who's visiting from another country. Wearing suitable clothes. Do you speak other languages?"
"I speak all of them. What did you have in mind?"
"What do you suggest?"
"Mark, you're surrounded by vague young people whose life experience has been shaped by TikTok and Cocoa Puffs; these kids are thin gruel and unprepared for their futures. They could use some education. Perhaps a Nigerian engineer, or an Iraqi poet, or a South Asian political organizer. Somebody smarter and more worldly than anyone on campus."
"Genie, I just want someone I can talk to without looking like a freak."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes"
Mark was suddenly talking to a pretty young woman of average height with black hair and thin brown arms.
"Okay, that's fine," he said. He noticed her skin was flawless, her eyes bright, and that she had the most intriguing smile. "Do you have a name?"
"Well, Mark, my name is now Kiara," she said with an English accent. She was suddenly wearing a deeply maroon silk sari. "Like you, I'm 21, but I'm from Mumbai. I'm fluent in Hindi, Mirathi, and English. You and I met on a summer vacation in Greece a few years ago. I was with my family, and you were with your mother and older brother. If asked by women on campus, I'd say you were a total gentleman. If they seem interested, and it seems tactful, I'd whisper that I'd offered my virginity but you had declined. You knew it was too important to me to be given up during a one-week vacation when I was just 16. They'd sigh with your gallantry, and I might add that neither of us was confident that you'd be able to get your enormous penis inside me. And maybe I'd mention something about how we did everything else we could think of, and that you were amazing in bed. I might swear them to secrecy just to ensure that they told their friends.
"But Mark, you can pick the story. Maybe I'm Greta, and we've been pen pals since 6th grade." Mark watched as the brown-skinned Kiara morphed into a tall, athletic blonde woman. "I'm from Hamburg. You wrote such sweet letters." Greta opened a backpack that had mysteriously appeared. "See?" She pointed to a thick wad of envelopes, written in Mark's handwriting, tied together with red ribbon. "Or I can morph into a Swedish hottie or a Tanzanian who works for a local NGO. You name it."
"Kiara works."
Kiara reappeared. No one on the quad seemed to notice.
"Just to be clear, Kiara, you function the same way, regardless of what you look like?"
"Interesting question, Mark. In a way, yes, but appearances and gender differences do affect my perspective and definitely affect how you see me. Plus, as the other version of my self, no one can see me at all, and you can't see me clearly. As Kiara, I look and function like a young woman, and everyone can see me, but I have basically the same powers and personal code as the old man."
"Excellent." Mark mulled over whether he should get some clarity about the extent of the powers and the meaning of a genie having a "personal code," but Mark was inclined in a different direction. "Okay, Kiara, I'd like you to freeze everybody in the courtyard. I have some serious fondling to do."
"What radius?"
"What do you mean?"
"How big an area? If I freeze, say, the 40 people closest to us, the people surrounding those 40 will think something's pretty strange. If I freeze just the women, that'd be stranger. If I freeze the whole quad, then the people just on the other side of the quad will obviously notice, and they all have cell phone cameras."
She paused, waiting for Mark, who'd gotten distracted by a particularly desirable woman who was checking out his newly athletic body.
"Mark, you'll remember that I've laid low for hundreds of years, so this freezing request would have some major ramifications--and your civilization would know something strange was going on if people started getting frozen wherever I go."
"So that's a no?"
"Yep."
"Okay, we're walking by 2 big dorms. Is anybody having sex in there right now?"
Kiara sighed. "Yes, but maybe I could introduce you to one of the women who's been checking you out, and you could see how it goes."
"Can you just tell who's having sex right now?"
"Okay, there are 6 couples in those 2 dorms who are either currently engaged in penetrative intercourse or will be momentarily. Three other couples are naked but won't be having intercourse. Two others just finished up, and there's one couple where the guy's lost his erection, mainly because he can't quite admit to himself that he's gay. A pansexual threesome is about to do something, and they're naked, but they're dithering because their sexual fingerprints don't really match up. Worse, they're about to be interrupted by the mom of one of them, who's currently approaching her child's room with the bag of electronic equipment that he left behind this past weekend; all four of them will be very embarrassed in about 30 seconds. Two gay couples are going at it. And there are a bunch of guys and a couple of young women who are masturbating, but I don't think you're asking about them."
"Right. I do mean actual sex between one guy and one girl. But, Kiara, how do you know who is GOING to have sex or who is GOING to get embarrassed? I thought you said you can't read the future."
"I can't tell the future, exactly, but I can read the room and listen to the music, and I'm pretty accurate."
"I think you owe me an explanation on some of this."
Kiara smiled. "What exactly do I owe you?
"Whatever. I want to get laid without consequences. Got it?"