To Whom Is It Granted?

By Asta Bender

Binjol placed the rug in the middle of the living room–rolled it further and fixed it properly to align at the center. The rug was too big for the room–wasn’t even something he could afford. But he inherited the rug from his grandfather, and wanted to honor his last wish.

Binjol never had anything in the middle of his living room, even if it had been long since he started to live on his own. It was almost as if his grandfather knew he would need something to keep his feet warm, but would not put an effort into buying anything.

Memory of those judgemental eyes looking down at Binjol from above the glasses were always mixed with horror and love.

Grandfather was no more and he would not be sitting on the sofa, but Binjol sat on the rug and caressed it with his finger as he used to while at his grandfather’s. It felt as piercy as it did before. He missed the assuring hand on his head from above, that he took as a reliable anchor that he could hold onto incase he needed guidance.

He used to listen to grandfather’s stories while sitting on the rug. It would leave a mark on his body, but listening to grandfather used to make the time fly quickly.

Binjol was trying to remember those beautiful memories, but with them came the realization that he would not be able to hear those stories again. Even if he had grown up and had little time to see grandfather due to his job, he still managed to see him once in a while. Now, those moments were gone too.

He was never as religious as his grandfather. Even if he was certain heaven didn’t exist, he wished it did for his grandfather’s sake.

He wiped the tears off his eyes and got up from the rug to get to work. While standing up, a little dust whooshed up with his momentum. The rug needed cleaning.

He put his robotic vacuum cleaner on and let it run over the rug.

Binjol got out of the apartment and went to his job.

He had his own dreams, but as he grew up, they were thinning out and molding into a functional life. He didn’t budge from it, but still, sometimes he wondered what would happen if he actually went to chase those ambitions like he always wanted to.

When Binjol came back home, he was a tiring person, as always. He entered the apartment, to see that the robot was flipped a little farther away from the rug. Most of the time, while swiping the floor with its circular disk, it would be stuck on a corner or get tangled on wires. But this time it was out in the open, just flipped.

Binjol was too tired to make a logic of how it got into that position.

He went to flip it back up, but then the rug caught his eye. A faint figure, with the shape of a person, was hovering on the rug. Dust was trickling from its side, and fueling its shape from below.

Binjol did not believe in superstition, but he was still not too blind to not know what was happening in front of him. His heart race built up to the point it was trying to rip apart from his chest, and he got that as his cue to leave and started to move towards the main door.

“Three wishes,” the figure said.

Binjol stopped to process what was said. At first, he thought the figure was threatening him. But after understanding those words on repeat pronunciation by the figure, he realised it was asking for wishes to grant them.

Binjol thought about it for a while.

“Infinite wishes?” he said. An obvious choice.

“Three wishes,” the figure repeated.

He repeated his wish as an assertive sentence rather than a doubtful one, but still, the figure didn’t budge.

Binjol could not see the figure exactly; only an outline of a body with a barely visible face on top of it. It was not looking in one specific direction.

“I wish to be a millionaire,” Binjol said in a hurry. He regretted not aiming higher, but still, he had to check whether this was real. He needed to be more careful next time.

“Three wishes.”

“Invisibility.”

“Three wishes.”

Binjol said everything that came to his mind. Flying, speed, world peace. But nothing worked. Binjol went through every iteration of words he could imagine but could not be confident something would work. His tiny hope of being something was crumbling on itself as he kept on thinking.

He tried to brush off the rug to see if it could restart the process. The figure swirled around his hand, formed back into a vague figure, and repeated chanting the same words.

“Three wishes.”

He was getting too tired to not care about this unusual event happening in his living room. Binjol thought to deal with whatever this situation was in the morning, to see if something would come up later.

In the morning, he woke up hungry and a little late to prepare for the office. Binjol thought to eat outside and left the flat as it was. He had no visitors in his life to be worried about the hovering wisher.

Binjol was at work, but his mind was with the figure and those wishes. This was a potential gift for him from his grandfather. Something that could change his life forever.

All day, the only thing he was thinking of was ways to make the figure give him his wishes. Nothing came. A little frustration was starting to build up. He felt like he finally got his chance at life, and the universe was taking it back.

“Can you move aside?” someone said.

Binjol broke his concentration to see that the janitor was cleaning the floor in the office. The realization of the idea came way before he heard the sound of the vacuum cleaner, but when the buzz came from it, Binjol jumped with excitement. The janitor gasped, looking at him, and even stared for a while as Binjol ran out of the office.

Binjol started his car and hurried to get back to the apartment.

Could the figure be talking to the robot? It was stupid to think a spiritual figure would talk with an electronic device. But again, who was keeping up with the rules of the universe? His rug was not supposed to come to life, yet it did. Binjol kept on thinking about how to make this work. He needed those wishes.

He came to the apartment to see the same figure repeating itself from time to time. 

He looked towards the robot. If he was going to get those wishes, he most definitely had to make sure that it had to look as if the cleaning robot was asking for it.

Binjol started with the basics. He wrote “1 billion dollars” on a piece of paper and put it on the top of the robot. Didn’t work. Taped the paper to it. Didn’t work.

He took a deep breath and thought about what would qualify as a robot’s request, and not be considered cheating by the figure. The cleaning robot was an electronic device, so maybe he needed an electronic device to make its offering and not a piece of paper.

He took out his smartphone, taped it to the robot, and typed the text “Who are you?” on it.

“Dijd,” the figure said.

That worked. Binjol took another long breath. Binjol was thankful that the previous ones didn’t work. Would have been a waste of a wish.

Now he was going somewhere with the situation.

Apparently, magic was not keeping up with the current technology or was integrated too well into the system.

Binjol started to think about what to type next.

“Can I get infinite wishes?” He typed just to make sure.

“No,” Dijd said. “Only three wishes.”

“I wish I could fly,” Binjol typed. It was the most useful one, as he ruled out.

“Two wishes,” Dijd said.

Binjol waited for himself to fly. The anticipation was killing him. Nothing happened.

Instead, he saw that the robot beside him started to lift up. He realized he typed in the first person, so the robot flew. One mistake. One wish gone.

He jumped on the sofa to grab the flying robot as it was trying to touch the ceiling.

The wish was a word trick. He had to type something so that the wish would be directed towards him and not the robot.

He tied the robot to the sofa. Luckily, it was not lifting the sofa, but still trying to escape the knot.

Binjol started to think about what could be the best possible sentence so that he could make the words directed towards him.

Binjol started to write his thoughts. For this thing to work, he had to make sure he was the one to whom the robot was referring. An individual in the world. So it could not be his name, as so many others had it.

“If I give you a person’s specific details for you to identify that person, would you be able to direct my wish to that person?” Binjol typed on his smartphone which was still attached to the robot.

“No,” Dijd said. “Only you. Two wishes.”

It was only going to be the robot. Whatever the text was going to be, it was never going to be beneficial for Binjol. The robot triggered the figure to come out, so the wish had to be beneficial to it. Did a benefit even qualify for a non-living thing?

“1 trillion dollars,” he typed. He was still the owner of the robot, so technically, the money should go to him.

“Not applicable,” Dijd said.

“100 dollars,” Binjol typed to test.

“Not applicable,” Dijd said.

Maybe making the robot a conscious being could be useful. He could convince it to ask for a quadrillion, or even removal of hunger from the world would do. With one more wish left, it would at least be something rather than nothing.

“I wish to be a conscious being,” Binjol typed on the phone attached to the robot.

“One wish,” Dijd said.

Binjol looked at the robot to make a convincing conversation.

“Four limbs,” the robot typed itself.

After rediscovering his love for reading stories in mid-twenties, Asta Bender decided to write his own