29th Day - We can’t all fly
Reading time: 4 min
The sky, that day, was full of flyers swirling and spinning and nearly crushing one into the other; all busy with their unimportant lives.
“One more,” Tony whispered to Magnussen.
“One more!” Magnussen shouted into the crowd.
Five kids and a teenager came closer and Tony, rolling his eyes, placed a hand on their shoulders in turn.
“Nope. Nope. Nope.” Three kids were discarded.
“Ew, no! What’s wrong with you, there are children here!” The teenager, too, was rejected.
“Nope. Ah-ah! Finally, I’ll grant your wish. Everybody else can go. I’ll see you all next week.”
The little kid exploded with joy, thrusting through the air like a deflating balloon. “Mommy, mommy! He chose me! He chose me!”
“No flying, little one. You know the rules.”
The kid landed gently in Tony’s lap and closed his eyes. “I’m so excited!” he whispered.
“I bet you are, buddy.”
Tony placed both hands on the kid’s head and closed his eyes. His conscience got mixed with the kid’s and started travelling through his desires. There was always something weird, even disturbing among children’s wishes. This one wanted a treehouse made of ice-cream. He wanted his teacher to not wear a bra and—creepily—wished his father had no eyes.
“Should I ask him about this latter one?” he transferred his thoughts to Magnussen.
“I don’t care,” Magnussen thought back. “And I bet you don’t either.”
“Not at the end of three hours of wish materialisation, no. Can you blame me?”
Magnussen didn’t reply.
“Here we go,” Tony said.
Removing his fingers, he extracted a sticky, rainbowy substance from the kid, then re-shaped it like a handful of dough and threw it in the empty space behind his platform. A giant goldfish materialised, with round eyes and green, red, purple and blue scales, while the crowd clapped and cheered.
“Mommy, look! It’s Pascal.”
The goldfish swallowed the kid and disappeared below the concrete, leaving the kid’s mother with a shocked look on her face.
“He’s safe,” Tony said. “He’ll reappear in a park near home. I saw it.”
Applauses and fireworks filled the air while Tony and Magnussen walked behind the scenes.
“Could you please photocopy the last one?” Tony asked to Magnussen.
“Sure,” the human-sized toy said, then projected a stroboscopic light in front of him and a second goldfish appeared, swallowing them both.
“To my apartment, please,” Tony tapped on the inside of the fish cheek, and it dived into a parallel dimension to swim all the way across town. Tony sat down, while Magnussen remained still, like a robot.
“Your last materialisation can’t always be a means of transportation.”
“Why not?”
“People will notice.”
“So what?”
“It’s boring. If people get bored, they’ll stop showing up and we’ll have to walk back home.”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t. I know you do.”
Tony went back on his feet. “Let them go back to their pathetic life then. What I have is a curse, not a superpower.”
“You make wishes come true.”
“All but mine. What about that?”
“We can’t all fly, Tony. Someone has to stay on the ground.”
“Why me? I didn’t ask for it.”
“I thought you got what you wanted. You’re the richest man in town. You got me. I am illegal, and yet, you got me.”
“You’re not illegal. You’re not a piece of technology; how many times do I have to explain it to you? You are a sentient toy brought to life by my powers. It’s not my fault that your owner died.”
“Is it not?”
“If you’ve got something to say, say it now.”
The fish turned abruptly, and they both almost fell.
“I think it was quite convenient that the owner of the only being in the universe without desires died and left me to you.”
Tony frowned, embarrassed. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t. You know I don’t. You created me. I’m just curious. Why don’t you do the same for your other desires?”
“Steal them from people? Sometimes I do, but nobody desires what I really want.”
“I see,” Magnussen said coldly. “Because everybody can fly. If I could feel anything, I would be sorry for you.”
“Thank you, Magnussen. As you said, we can’t all fly.”
