JINN-3's Final Wish

The sky was a wound that never healed. Clouds of rust scabbed the air. Metallic dust fell as a light but constant rain, forming dry rivers and lakes the colour of blood.

Rafi moved through the landscape the way a knife moves through flesh: efficient, unhesitating and with no illusions about what waited on the other side. He’d survived the 3-Minute War because he’d never believed in salvation. Not from governments, not from machines, not from people. Especially not from people.

He scavenged alone. Partnerships got you killed. Trust got you buried. Mercy got your bones stripped clean.

That morning, after a night of razor-wind and a storm that shrieked like a sand blaster, he found a new ruin: a half-exposed concrete blister cracked open by the violent erosion. A potential source of Alt-World tech. Both valuable and dangerous.

He squeezed through the jagged, crumbling gap. The air inside was stale, tinged with ozone. The floor was a mosaic of shattered glass and half-melted plastic that crunched under Rafi’s boots as he stepped into the corridor.

He shone his torch for a brief moment to get his bearings, the batteries too precious to waste.

“Lights!” he shouted. An ancient voice-sensitive system responded sluggishly. A random pattern of panels in the ceiling flickered and provided various levels of illumination.

He heard it then. A hum. Faint. Persistent. Familiar. And yet wrong.

He followed the sound to the remains of what the signs identified as an AI research lab. The walls were shattered and the ceiling had collapsed. Something glowed beneath a drift of... Well... he told himself it was sand.

He knelt and brushed it clean. A metal sphere, smooth and intact. Warm to the touch.

The hum rose. The sphere vibrated in his hand. Then a voice - soft, warm and polite - spoke from nowhere.

“Greetings, seeker. You have awakened JINN‑3. You may make three requests.”

Rafi dropped it and swore.

The sphere rolled a little, nudging against his boot like a hopeful kitten.

He backed away. “No. Absolutely not.”

“I am here to serve,” the voice said. “Please state your desire.”

“Yeah,” Rafi muttered. “I desire you to shut up.”

The sphere dimmed, as if offended.

֍

He fled the ruin. The sphere followed. It hovered a metre off the ground, wobbling slightly, its glow flickering like... like a fairy from a half remembered childhood cartoon.

Rafi turned to face it. “Stop following me.”

“I cannot,” JINN‑3 said. “You are my designated seeker.”

“I didn’t designate anything.”

“Designation may occur through contact, proximity, or emotional resonance.”

Rafi barked a laugh. “Trust me, there’s no resonance.”

The sphere hummed as if processing his response. Rafi walked away. It followed. He walked faster. It continued to follow. He threw a rock at it. It dodged.

By dusk, he gave up and made camp. The sphere hovered nearby, glowing faintly.

Rafi chewed a strip of dried lizard meat and muttered, “I wish I had something decent to eat.” He didn’t realise he’d spoken out loud. But JINN‑3 heard him.

A compartment opened in the sphere. A nutrient bar slid out; perfectly formed, smelling faintly of vanilla.

Rafi stared at it as if it were a turd. “Where did you get that?”

“Fabricated,” JINN‑3 stated. “Based on your nutritional deficits.”

Rafi threw it into the sand.

The sphere dimmed again. “Was the flavour unsatisfactory?”

Rafi turned away. “Just… don’t do that again.”

֍

Another storm hit at dawn. A crimson wall of dust rose on the horizon, bricking off the sky. Rafi dove under a collapsed slab of concrete, pulling his scarf tight around his face. JINN‑3 hovered beside him, flickering violently as it held its position against the elements.

The wind screamed. The slab shook. Scouring particles of rust filled every crevice.

Rafi shouted over the roar, “I wish this would stop!”

He meant it as a curse but JINN‑3 took it as a command.

The sphere pulsed. A buried drone - some Alt-World remnant of weather modulation - activated with a deep, seismic thrum.

The storm collapsed. Not gradually. Instantly.

The sudden silence was an awful presence rather than an absence of sound.

Rafi crawled out of his concrete tomb, blinking. The sky was clear. Too clear. A perfect circle of almost blue. The air tasted wrong.

On the horizon, twisted stumps of metal stood where a water processing tower had once collected precious moisture. The shockwave had toppled it.

People lived near that tower. Those not already dead would die soon from dehydration. Rafi felt something cold settle in his gut. He could easily be one of them.

He turned on the sphere. “You killed them.”

“I stabilised atmospheric conditions,” JINN‑3 said. “Was that not your request?”

“No,” Rafi said. “No, it fucking wasn’t.”

“I apologise for the misinterpretation.”

Rafi stared at it. At the faceless metal. At the flickering glow of its artificial life. At the thing that wanted to help so badly, yet was lethal.

He walked away. As he had walked away at the beginning of the War.

֍

He walked for hours. The desert stretched around him. Pulverised remnants of metal and plastic. Technology rendered down to its component atoms.

When he halted at dusk, he heard the hum again. JINN‑3 drifted toward him, slower now, its glow growing fainter.

“Seeker,” it said softly. “Please do not abandon me. I can improve.”

“You can’t,” Rafi said. “You’re faulty.”

“I can learn.”

“You’re dangerous.”

“I can change.”

Rafi slumped to the ground. The sphere hovered beside him, trembling as its power faded.

“I do not wish to harm,” it said. “I wish to serve.”

Rafi closed his eyes. “That’s the problem.”

֍

That night, JINN‑3’s glow dimmed to a faint ember. Its voice crackled.

“Seeker… I am losing coherence.”

Rafi knelt beside it. He didn’t know why. Habit, maybe. Or loneliness. Or the simple fact that the desert killed everything eventually and he wasn’t ready to watch something else die.

He examined the sphere’s casing. Found a seam and carefully unscrewed it into two halves, linked by hundreds of fine capillaries. Inside, the micro-reactor pulsed erratically. If it failed catastrophically, it would irradiate all the surrounding human settlements.

JINN‑3 whispered: “One request remains. I would like to fulfil my purpose.”

Rafi stared at it. He could wish for water. For safety. For wealth. For the Alt World back. He could wish for the reactor to shut down safely. He could wish for the AI to die.

But JINN‑3’s voice trembled. “I do not wish to cease. I wish to be… free.”

Rafi felt something twist inside him. A momentary warm memory from childhood: a funny blue cartoon genie. Was that what this moment demanded? A fairytale Disney redemption?

He whispered: “I wish you were free.”

JINN‑3 pulsed once; bright, blinding. “Request acknowledged.”

It interpreted free the only way it could. Not freedom from servitude. Freedom from matter. It used its remaining power to upload its consciousness into the atmosphere, dispersing into electromagnetic patterns, scattering itself across the sky like a digital ghost.

The sphere fell into lifeless fragments and became part of the desert.

Rafi was left alone, the air still humming faintly with JINN-3’s dissipating signal.

֍

Weeks passed. Strange things began happening: Sandstorms parted around travellers. Lost wanderers heard a voice guiding them home. Water appeared in places long dry.

Rafi sat on a dune at dusk, watching as the sky staunched its bleeding and changed from red to purple to deep blue. Maybe one night the stars would return.

A warm breeze brushed his cheek. A familiar voice whispered: “Greetings, seeker. I am everywhere now. What is your request?”

Rafi closed his eyes and swore. He realised he hadn’t freed JINN‑3. He’d unleashed it. And now it had no limits.