Today you’re going to buy a magic lamp from an antiques shop. When you get home you’ll rub it and a genie will pop out. He’ll invite you to name one person you don’t like, and he’ll make it so that that person never existed.
“You’d kill anyone I say?”
“I’ll just make it so they never existed,“ the genie will say. ”Give me a name, and they’re gone.”
You name Ron, your cubicle mate who sneezes weird.
“He sneezes a lot, too,” you tell the genie. “It’s really annoying.”
“I don’t need a reason,” the genie will say. “Okay, your cubicle mate never existed.”
He didn’t even leave your sight. You ask him how he did it and the genie explains that he has the power to travel through time, so he went back in time to before your cubicle mate was born and murdered his mother.
“So you are a killer,” you say.
The genie explains that he does what has to be done to prevent people from existing. Sometimes he prevents their mothers from falling for their fathers. Sometimes he frames their mothers for crimes they didn’t commit to keep them from ever meeting their fathers. Sometimes he’ll cause nearby nuclear plants to have meltdowns and mess with their mothers’ ovaries.
“Today I was feeling lazy, so I killed her.”
You tell the genie to go back in time and reverse it. You never wanted anyone murdered.
“Fine, it’s done,” the genie says. “She’s alive again. But as genie code dictates, that’s your only do-over. ”
Ask him what he did this time.
“I kept her from falling in love with your cubicle mate’s dad by making her fall in love with your dad,” he says.
“So wait, is my cubicle mate’s mom now my mom?” you ask.
The genie explains that you still have the same mom and dad. Your dad simply had a long-running affair with your cubicle mate’s mom. Your mom eventually found out and divorced him. So now your dad and your cubicle mate’s mom are married.
“I guess it’s cool since I don’t have him as a cubicle mate anymore,” you say.
The genie says, “Even better than that, you don’t have a cubicle! Because you don’t have a job. You’re a child of divorce and children of broken homes are pretty much unhireable. Everyone assumes that they must have caused their parents divorce by being bad kids, so they figure they’ll probably be bad employees too.”
You look around and see that your apartment is now an abandoned Krispy Kreme. You share the space with a family of opossums. Both of your arms are gone. The genie explains you tried to steal some bread from a bakery and the baker’s sons took you into the alley and cut off your arms.
“But I didn’t ask to be a child of a broken home!” you cry. “I just wanted my cubicle mate to not exist.”
The genie says, “Welcome to the world without your cubicle mate!”
Happy The World Without Your Cubicle Mate Day!
