When a genie grants you three wishes, you have to be careful to ask for exactly the right things or they’ll interpret your wishes against you. But when you try to trick the genie, then you’re in real trouble!
This is a very short story, but it’s quite fun. It’s essentially a meta-story about wishing stories where there’s always a hidden price to be paid. Besides the meta-commentary, Prodromou’s depiction of genies as genuine preditors is pretty interesting and he even throws in some references to Hofstadter.
