The pressure of Em’s wish settled onto me. Without any direction from me, threads of chance reorganized themselves, becoming complex chains. If strands of DNA went to a rave, it would look something like this. Bright colors flashed in and out of my vision, and it wasn’t long before I couldn’t see anything else.

The energy lifted me off the ground, and I started spinning violently. I could feel my mist trail unraveling. The shriveled parts smoothed out, and information flooded me. Images flashed through my mind as I watched countless lives begin and end.

Great cities littered early Earth’s landscape. The Shaytan and Malak brought devastation upon one another as Proto-Humans carved out a meager existence on the fringes. I watched as the first human caught the eye of one of the Malak. The powerful being gave no thought to the groveling creature, even as it trampled her. She was an insignificant bug.

More and more, humans made themselves known to the beings they had come to revere. For who could deny the divinity of these creatures? The Malak and Shaytan used the naïve people as pawns in their war. Power flowed freely over the earth, and humans wielded the power of chance and called it magic. Or else, they prayed and begged for salvation from a creator they’d never met. Instilling in them the belief that there had to something greater, some reason for their suffering. Longer and longer, humans toiled under the thumb of the Malak and Shaytan.

Then came the Thawrat Bashara, the first human uprising. A sect led by Akhem Kareeb stormed the Madinat ‘al Sahra, first citadel of the Malak. The siege lasted many years, and the bloody fighting reaped the lives of hundreds of thousands of humans. In the end, they managed to defeat the Malak Lord, who at the time called himself Anubis. In honor of their victory, they raised three great pyramids and called them Alharan Almuqadas, a signal to whatever god who might be watching that humans would be pawns no more.

The retribution for their perceived hubris came swiftly, and the Malak claimed Alharan Almuqadas for themselves. What had been two warring races became three. Humanity quickly outpaced the Malak and Shaytan in population and strength. No longer could these god-like creatures exert their will unchallenged.

The bloody conflict wreaked havoc on the world for many thousands of years. Neither the Malak, Shaytan, nor humans could overcome the others. I watched as the leaders of the three races met on the field of Makan ‘Ilhi to discuss terms for a truce. They bound their souls together, and the power of that binding washed over the earth. Humans were stripped of their powers, save a select few, and the Malak and Shaytan found their own strength greatly reduced.

Behind all of these grand events, I could see the Universal Probability running. It actually did look like a complicated math equation. What could be numbers flashed too quickly to make out, some appearing to fall out of existence, while others appeared from nothingness. The realization of what it meant slammed into me, and I fell to the ground.

“David!” Em called. “Come on, David, open your eyes, please.”

“For crying out loud,” I said, “I’m up

Em crashed into me, crying. I tried to see through her mess of hair, but the sun kept getting into my eyes. Wait, the sun? How fucking long had I been out? I gently pushed Em away. Rawlins sat next to the cooler, drinking another beer and munching on some McDonalds.

“Didn’t I say no more beer for you?” I said.

He raised his bottle with a wicked smile. “Bought it with my own money.”

Em pulled my face to her. “Don’t do that, David.”

“Do what?” I said.

“You know, that guy thing where you play stuff off and try to act cool. You were unconscious for hours, and you were crying. What happened?”

Had I really been crying? It made sense, given what I’d seen. Even now, the memories were fading, but the knowledge remained. I had thousands of years of history in my head, and I knew all about the Muqadas Nadis, but I still didn’t know a damn thing about the Zaeim Aljiniy.

“It’s all fucking pointless,” I said.

“Yeah,” Rawlins said, “we might need just a little more to go on than that.”

“What do you mean, pointless?” Em said.

“I mean pointless,” I said. “As in there’s no point to a goddamn thing any of us do. Well, any of you, at least.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” Rawlins said.

“You got a thousand years?” I asked.

“Ok,” Em said, “the Cliff Notes version, then.”

I tried to calm down. “The Malak and Shaytan existed long before we did, you know that. But, what you don’t know is that we were just as powerful as they are once. To end the war between us, a treaty called the Muqadas Nadis was created. It reduced the power of the Malak and Shaytan and stripped almost all humans of their power as well.”

“Almost all?” Rawlins said.

“Yeah,” I said. “The ones that kept their power became the Djinn. Our role in the Muqadas Nadis was to safeguard the Universal Probability. It doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with helping humanity or giving them a fighting chance. We’re glorified math nerds.”

“So,” Em said, “why do say it’s all pointless?”

“You don’t get it, Em,” I said. “There’s no god. There’s no higher plan or purpose. Good and Evil? Figments of our fucking imagination. They don’t exist! It’s all about keeping a balance between creation and destruction. Wanna know the best part? We’re losing! More energy is being lost than created. To whit…it’s all fucking pointless.”

“Entropy?” Em said. “David, that’s not an earth-shattering revelation.”

“It is for me!” I shouted. “You don’t get it, but Jinn did. I’m not human anymore, Em. I’ve been fighting against it, but people matter less and less to me every day. And now I know why. It’s because, to me, they’re just numbers in an equation I can never balance.”

“I don’t believe that,” Em said. “There’s something different about you. Jinn said it, Halinel and Rockslide said it. There might not be a grand purpose, but that doesn’t make it pointless. Staving off entropy is a noble aspiration, even if it is futile.”

“She’s right,” Rawlins said.

“Even it means I lose my humanity?” I said.

Em kissed me. “I’ve already told you, I won’t let that happen.”

“Be that as is may,” I said. “I still have a major problem. You wished for me to have all the knowledge a genie is supposed to have.”

“Yeah,” Em said.

“Then how come I still don’t anything about the Zaeim Aljiniy and the Genie’s Laws?”

“Just a guess,” Rawlins said, “Maybe you got precisely what Emily wished for, and all that other stuff came later. Kind of like the constitution. If I wished for all the knowledge an American was supposed to have, would I get the constitution as the Fore Fathers wrote it, or would I get it with all the amendments?”

“So,” I said, “You’re suggesting that I’m operating within the original framework of the Muqadas Nadis, and not whatever crap got added later?”

“Sounds right,” Em said. “Maybe whatever power created you doesn’t agree with the changes the Zaeim Aljiniy have made.”

“If that’s the case,” I said, “where does that leave me?”