Yok by Tim Davys

Author:Tim Davys
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

4.

Down on oil black Boulevard de la Vilette, Fredrik the genie was waiting.

“Finally.” The genie sighed. “Mr. Ape, I beg your pardon, but after thousands of years in a bottle one doesn’t have much patience left. What were you doing? Did you take a wrong turn in the elevator?”

“Go away,” Mike answered, starting to walk south.

The Afternoon Weather was on its way in over the city, and Mike was longing to be back in Corbod; he wasn’t made for the broad, clean streets and pulsating traffic of Tourquai.

“Sir, I realize that mental exertion is not your strong suit, and I have complete respect for that, of course, but can’t we think of something?” the genie insisted. “Now that you’ve had a little time to yourself to think it over?”

“Shut up, Cloud,” Mike said. “Leave me alone.”

Deep inside Mike Chimpanzee’s head sounded an ominous tone that was barely perceptible, but irritated him anyway. He was ashamed of himself. He had played the chorus for Toad, but couldn’t stand by it. He had apologized immediately, and promised improvement. That was disgraceful behavior, and it was because far too much was at stake. Getting a song of his own on the record, a song that wasn’t programmed out of one of Lancelot Lemur’s self-playing computers, meant more to Mike’s ego than he dared to admit.

Right from the start the record company had reduced him to a singing puppet, but now he got the feeling that this pointless floundering was exactly what they expected. That they were sitting in their skyscraper, laughing at his predictability.

With the faint sound in his head came a headache. Mike stopped by a crosswalk and let the seemingly endless stream of dark Volgas rumble past while he leaned the guitar against the stoplight and lit the joint that Toad had just denied him.

“Sir, isn’t it true that drugs stimulate creativity?” the genie asked rhetorically.

The genie was hovering around in his impatient way, and the headwind from the cars caused him to sway even more.

“If material things don’t interest you, you can always consider experiences. You, the one who likes marijuana? Only the imagination sets the limits?”

“My own dealer genie,” Mike mumbled, crossing the street. “Leave me alone now, then I’ll—”

The genie took the opportunity with one motion to remove a couple of cigarette butts from the sidewalk to an ashtray hanging on the light pole, and then he caught up.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Ape, that’s not how this works,” he informed him. “You make three wishes, I’m free. If you don’t make three wishes, I’m not. So, you have two wishes left, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

“Mm. But right now,” Mike said, taking a high step up onto the sidewalk on the opposite side, “right now I’ve had enough of you. If you leave for a while, I promise to think about it.”

“Given the short time we have spent together, I have a hard time attaching too much importance to such a promise,” the genie noted drily.

“Shut up,” Mike said. “Shut up, leave me alone.

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