BREWED, BONDED, AND BOTTLED

Adam Marten was comfortably settled in his favorite spot on the west side of the island for his afternoon meditation. He knew that it was around one or two in the early afternoon. He had stopped wearing his watch several years before when the batteries died. But even then, he had seldom looked at it.

Over the years he had grown accustomed to the rhythm of the island. What different did it make whether it was 1:15, 1:45, or 2:15? He sat about ten yards back from where the ocean gently washed upon the sandy shore. He sat only a few yards from the spot where he had washed ashore eight or so years before. He had stopped trying to count the days and compute the months and years about the same time he discarded the useless watch. Time would continue and life would go on and he would grow older, the last thing the island needed was a time keeper.

His life was colored with blues, tans, and greens, and occasionally a splash of red, yellow, purple, from the flowers that would blossom depending upon the season. And the various shades of humanity of the pacific islanders who populated the small island. Considering satellite technology, he doubted if it was an uncharted island, but civilization had left it and it few inhabitants alone. Perhaps it was too small to commercialize, too far off the main shipping routes for the tourist trade. He sat now, enveloped in the calming serenity of the endless sea, separated by the thinnest of illusions where the sea and never endingsky met.

His first year on the island was his hardest. When he sat in the same spot then, he felt an uncontrollable anger at his fate. After the first few years, the anger turned into depression, hopelessness and regrets. “Damn it, I don’t even have a freaking soccer ball to befriend,” he would sometimes mutter, remembering an old movie that he and Anna had watched on the ‘Telly’ in his apartment.

Anna? He had been transferred to Australia by Seshat International Neutronic Systems, Inc., a San Francisco based Computer Companyhe had worked for five years before Anna and he embarked on theirfateful outing. She was an undergraduate student, full of life, hopes and dreams, and he was classically geek, shy, introverted, and desperately lonely. He had given a talk to her Computer Science class at the University of Sydney on the future of technology in the 21stCentury.

Following the class, she engaged him in conversation and asked if he would join her for a cup of coffee. She had taken the initiative. She was a literature major and wanted to discuss the moral implications of the brave new world, he and others, were pushing the world towards. For reasons he could not fathom, he began to realize that she found him attractive, perhaps it was his shyness, or the confusion on his face as he struggled to justify implications of his career that he had never thought about before, much less questioned. Or maybe it was simply the old adage that opposites attract.

“You do realize that the acronym for the company you work for is ‘sins’?” Anna asked, with a sly smile that only a nineteen year old virginal coed could make seeking to appear sophisticated.  Adam smiled back, not because of the acronym, but because of the faint whipped cream mustache left by the Student Union’s deluxe coffee latte.

After a few months, they had become a couple with all of the benefitsthat the term implied. They had only been engaged a couple of months when he received notice that Seshat was transferring him back to the States.

Anna had told him about the many uninhabited islands only a day or two from Sidney. “What an adventure it would be!” she said. They could charter a small boat and then camp out overnight and spend a day or two exploring one of the islands. The captain could anchor and stay on board his boat. “Why did their honeymoon have to come after the wedding?” Anna asked, with just the right touch of innocence in her voice. She insisted their wedding be quickly planned and moved ahead to the following week so her parents could attend, once they moved to America; they may never have another opportunity for such an adventure, she argued.

The storm seemed to come from nowhere, tossing, battering and then shattering the small boat. Adam was thrown overboard and it was only through luck or misfortunate that lightening lit the sky and he saw and grabbed onto the empty ice chest floating near him.

He woke lying face down on the sandy beach. During his first year on the island his anger and grief were so jumbled that he was never sure where one ended and the other began. He ranted and cursed, stumped and shook his fist at the heavens. When you are stranded, shyness ceases to have meaning. He assumed that both the Captain and Anna had died in the fierce storm. And he blamed himself.

He had been immersed in technology, how could he be so stupid as not to check if the small boat had even basic radio equipment? Why hadn’t he asked the Captain for references? Or at least asked others on the dock if they knew him? Surely if he had, someone would have mentioned that the Captain was a drunk. Or at the very least, why hadn’t he checked the weather forecast for the remainder of that week.

Gradually, the depression won and he became subdued, sitting for hours seemingly hypnotized by the sea and sky. He was amazed at how little food it took to stay alive. Not that he could taste the food he ate; even raw fish seemed devoid of flavor. The weather was mild and he hadn’t even tried to build a fire or construct some kind of shelter. What was the point? His only regret was that he hadn’t also died in the storm.

Occasionally, objects washed ashore and they would momentarily spark his interest, but most were just reminders of the world he left behind, an old shampoo bottle, a broken lamp, a message in a bottle, there were several of those, but basically they were all similar, “if found please contact, etc.”, once an old computer keyboard washed up, he almost smiled for the first time in over two years. He sat it on his lap and his finger automatically began to air type: “there is no hope, all is lost.”  

Sitting behind a computer keyboard since the age of eight had not prepare him to be an explorer, or an adventurer, and the likely death of the only woman he had ever loved had only conditioned him for staring out to sea. There were times when he felt that he was being watched.

One morning he woke to see a small group of the island indigenous population, staring at him. So, he was not alone after all, he had not even bothered to explore the opposite side of the island. “If you have seen one palm tree, you’ve seen them all,” he had told himself. Perhaps his earlier ranting and raving had scared them off. Perhaps other white people had washed up on their island in the past and they had reason to be leery of him. Those watching him were all males; no doubt the women had been left behind in case the pale skinny human was dangerous. Adam Marten was not a student of human nature, but he knew that he needed to keep his hands open, smile, and not appear to be afraid, which strangely he wasn’t.

Adam Marten’s meditation had lasted for about an hour and he rose to return to the other side of the island where he now lived with the ‘human beings’. It was then that he noticed an intricately carved container, about the size of a small tea kettle, half buried in the sand. It was unlike any thing that he had noticed in the past. He lifted it and began cleaning the sand away. He realized that there were more than just decorative carvings on it, there was writing that he couldn’t read, possibly Latin, and a date, CCXVIII (218), and he recognized some religious symbols, including the Papal Cross, Fish, Crucifix.

He knew that what he held was no ordinary vessel. As he continued to clean it, smoke began seeping out the top. The smoke increased in size until it resembled a large green giant, a Genie? He suddenly felt hungry for French cut green beans. It had been years since he had hallucinated, the hallucinations had decreased as he assimilated into the island’s tribe of ‘human beings’. He moved his hand through the vapors emerging from the container.

“Yes, Master,” came a voice from several feet above him. “You have summoned me,” the voice was deep and yet, soft. “I can grant you one wish, as long as your request will in some way benefit mankind. Please do not summon me again until you are prepared to make your request.”  The smoke began to dissipate and seep back into the vessel.

Marten sat back down, he held the container tightly. What did it mean? It was like no hallucination that he ever had, not even back when he was most depressed and desperate for companionship. Not even when he woke from dreams of Anna, dreams so real that after he opened his eyes, it was as if her scent lingered in the air.

Years before, his wish would had been easy to make, to return to civilization, to phone Anna’s parents on the chance that she might miraculously had been rescued, saved. His own existence was proof that miracles could happen. A wish to reassume the life he had worked so hard to obtain? Even if Anna had somehow survived, surely she would have recovered from her grief after more than eight years. She would likely be married, she would have continued anew with her life. She would probably have children.

And most importantly, having lost one true love, how could he initiate losing a second love, Evenuka, a beautiful islander, who was kind, loving, sensual, and pregnant with their child.  

No, he couldn’t. The “human beings” after their mutual hesitationsaccepted him and had tutored him in their language and customs. When Evenuka completed the ceremony of flowering, she came to him and confided that he stirred her most intimate feelings and desires. And, Adam Marten acknowledged that as he witnessed Evenuka’s blossoming, he intensely felt feelings that he once thought only Anna could stir. Desires that rose with a force that demanded to be consummated. When they knelt before the Chief and confessed their love, the Chief decreed that they would be joined in the ritual of “forever more” at the next full moon.

When Adam Marten and Evenuka lay together that night, Evenukagently touched his face and said: “Adam, this evening you were both near and yet far, far away, have you been thinking of your old life, of Anna?”

“Yes,” Adam admitted. “But, I need to show you something and explain.”  He removed the vessel from the cloth he had wrapped it in. He told her of the Genie and the one wish offered to him if it would benefit mankind.

“Do you want to return to your old life?”

“No, never,” Adam Marten said. “This is my life and you are my only love. This is where I belong. I have never known such happiness as with the “human beings” and you. But I can’t waste the gift of making a wish that will benefit mankind.”

“Our Chief teaches that wisdom comes best when one ceases to struggle, but accepts. The three of us will sleep with our bodies touching wrapped in love and when you wake you will perhaps know the answer.”

“To be or not to be,” Marten mused, as he gently touched the swelling of her stomach.

In the morning, Adam Marten took the vessel and walked to the beach on the opposite side of the island. He rubbed the vessel and the Genie appeared. “Yes Master, you have summoned me. Are you prepared to make your one wish?”

“Yes. But first I want to explain. After all, I don’t want to rub you the wrong way,” Adam Marten said and smiled. “I have known two worlds and both have influenced my thinking. I have come to understand the concept of unintended consequences. I was shipwrecked, that was a bad thing, but I was swept by the sea to this island where I have learned the meaning of happiness and love, whichis a good thing. Man in seeking wisdom created religion, to explain the unknowable, that was a good thing, but because humans were separated by oceans and mountains, and such, religions in different parts of the world were given different names and those differences led to centuries of wars, a bad thing.”

“Is this going to take a while?” the Genie asked. “Perhaps I should have brought a chess set. Even though I have an eternity, that doesn’t mean I want to spend it talking to you on this beach.”

“I need to explain,” Adam Marten said. “When you first appeared, my impulse was to be set free from this island, but then I realized that it is only on this island that I have ever felt true freedom. I thought that I had lost the only person I could ever love, but now I know a love greater than any that I could ever have imagined. Then I realized that there was nothing I wanted or needed. So I expanded my thinking to more global issues.”

“Thank goodness you didn’t say to more universal issues. Time my good man, time is ticking away,” the Genie said.

“Take time, for instant. My life used to be ruled by a small band I wore on my wrist, now, the sun comes up and the sun goes down, seasons come and go, we eat when we are hungry, sleep when we are tired, it is the way of the ‘human beings’.”

“You keep saying ‘we’, do you have a mouse in your pocket?” the Genie laughed.

“You know,” Adam Marten said. “For being around for so long, your sense of humor seems to be stuck at about the age of an eight year old. Pockets, that’s another thing; I wear this cloth to protect my vulnerable body parts, not out of fashion or shame. I have no needs for pockets. I hardly believe it, but I used to wear three piece suits. Our women hereare beautiful but they realize that their breasts are for nurturing life, not for titillating men, so they have no needs for covering them.”

“I just came from California, where you lived most of your life, need I remind you that the first word in titillation is ’tit,” the Genie said, and then he laughed and laughed.

“Anyway,” Adam Marten said. “Unintended consequences, I could wish for people to live forever, but what if everyone got stuck at age 98, weak and feeble, maybe senile, would staying alive forever be a good thing?  Or I could wish for an end to hunger, but what if people turned to cannibalism again.”

“Do you wish for me to stay and listen to this drivel?” the Genie asked.

“Aargh!” Adam Marten exclaimed. “You tried to trick me!”

“Then get on with it, I understand your point! I wasn’t brewed, bonded and bottled yesterday.”

“This is my wish,” Adam Marten said, nervously. “My wish is that you remain locked in your vessel so that you can never again grant a human being any wish, good or bad.”

“You little son of a bitch!” the Genie gasped, as he started to evaporate.

“Please understand,” Adam Marten pleaded, to the misty smoke seeping back into the vessel. “When you give man the power to interfere with the natural order of things, no matter how well his intentions, there is no way of knowing what the unintended consequences might be.”

It was barely a whisper, but the last thing Adam Marten heard emerging from the vessel was the faint, fading, fizzling sound of a phrase beginning with the letter “F” and ending with the sound of “U”.

Her, lain slain.

Her, with silver pouring from her veins.

Diced.

Sliced.

Constrained.

Her, somehow picturesque restless,

though, this infinite sleep she does not feign.

Lungs, breathless.

Water, surrounding.

Porcelain, stained.

Eyes, vacant yet arcane.

Sound, unresounding.

Heart, not responding.

Skin, wet just like the rain.

I rub the lamp gently, feeling tides of mana converge as the conditions of the contract were met and the genie was summoned.

"Ahh," it says, looking at me with interested eyes, "a wizard. It's been aeons since I've been summoned by a wizard."

"And it's been decades since I've last had the pleasure of talking with a genie," I remark humbly. Dealing with genies was always a dangerous business, but showing respect was always a good way to start.

"I believe you are aware of the conditions?" the genie asks, amused by my demeanor.

"Yes, one wish in the form of a problem, which you will then help me solve."

"Excellent." the genie chuckles, rubbing his hands in anticipation. "Shall we begin?"

I nod and begin to speak.

"For my entire life, I've dedicated every waking hour to my experiments, and have never had any worries besides those of a failed experiments consequences. As time has passed, my worries have shifted to more... mundane issues."

I pause, watching as the genies expression shows his recognition of my problem. Taking note of this shift in expression, I pull off my hood to show my frail body.

"My problem is that my experiments must be continued, but I am only human. I'm aware of the possible problems with asking a genie to solve this when I easily have access to alternative solution. But my curiosity has won, and I now cannot help but think of this process in itself as one big experiment," I grin maniacally. "So I request of you glorious genie, solver of problems, to solve my problem of a limited life span."

The genie snaps as I finish my request and I feel the condensed mana disperse. Before the genie fades away, he winks at me, leaving me alone as I await whatever form of immortality he had granted me.