Chapter 1

I had been browsing though an "antique" (i.e., a private second-hand store) store when I saw the box of old Aladdin lamps half-tucked under a table. I bent down, and saw that it was filled with a jumble of old, some broken lamps. Most seemed to be Model B's, but it looked like there might be a Model 11 or even a Model 6 at the bottom of the jumble. And my collection could use a spiffy Model 6, and, of course, a Model 3.

"If you want one, you gotta take 'em all" drifted over to me. "I don't mess around with kerosene and chemicals. You want one, it's a hundred bucks and you take the whole damn box. Sold?"

I reached into my pocket. If there was a decent Model 6 at the bottom of jumble, then the lot would be worth the hundred bucks. If I could clean up two Model B's out of the mess and pawn them off eBay, I'd be ahead of the game. But the hundred would eat up my toy budget for the month. No trip to Fry's until the lamps sold. I'd end up spending Sunday (and Monday night and Tuesday night, and probably Wednesday night and Thursday night) sitting at my kitchen table, piecing together lamps and polishing them up and taking pictures for eBay. I've done worse things than polish kerosene lamps.

A fifty, two twenties, a five and five ones later ("Take the lot, and I won't remember to charge you tax for cleaning hazardous chemicals out of my store.") I was loading the wooden carton into the back of the Porsche.

Yeah, it was a Porsche. 944. 420,000 miles, and still ticking. Paid cash back when the outfit that I worked for back them went public. Couldn't afford another one now. Hell, I couldn't afford a Toyota Solara like Ralph, our IT tech. Forty percent of everything went to Susan, "for the kids." In a pig's ear. Forty percent of my gross, plus what she made, and she was living the life of Riley. I was buying jeans for Sarah and Warren whenever they saw me for my visitation weekends. "Every other weekend" was maybe one out of six. Maybe one out of eight. After the dot-bomb, when the whole fricken' Valley collapsed and folks were packing the Honda and turning in the leased Explorer and driving back to Mommy and Daddy in Peoria and networking companies were cratering like a warez release, I had to find employment to stay out of "failure to make timely child support payments" jail. It didn't matter that I had no assets, that I had no income, I had to make that damn payment every month. When I finally landed something after five exhausting months that paid two thirds of my previous take, it took six months of expensive lawyering to get the payments dialed back to forty percent of my new gross. Of course, there was no refund of a year's worth of overpayments. I hated fucking peanut butter.

On my new budget, I shopped for housewares at the Salvation Army and at Goodwill and at every private second-hand shop I could find. In five years of "junking" I had acquired an eclectic collection of gourmet cookware, some decent Noritake dinnerware, and had started collecting Aladdin kerosene lamps.

The first was a lark, forty bucks for "old technology" to put next to the "new technology" iMac. Then I found another, and another, and I had started collecting.

It got me doing something, and I'd met a few people though the collecting thing. After the debacle with Susan, though, I swore off relationships. Collecting things, okay, that seemed to work.

So now I had a whole boxful to sort through. I headed back to the freeway and back to home. I hauled the box into the kitchen, spread out the Mercury News over the kitchen table, and started sifting through my finds. Four Model B's, all of different colors. And two brass lamps, a Model 8 and a Model 5. And a whole collection of Model 23's.

Looking at the lamps, I noticed that all of them had a pattern of scratches surrounding the filler. It looked like some sort of star had been scratched into the glass or into the brass with something sharp and solid that left firm, even lines. Oh well, even with "wear and tear," they would fetch maybe a hundred on eBay. I might make five hundred bucks off the box, all income that I wouldn't have to "share" with Susan. Sarah might get her iPod that I couldn't otherwise afford, out of the deal.

I took what seemed to be the best-looking of the Model B's and decided to see what it looked like, cleaned up. I took out the burner and eased off the filler cap. Empty, but a bit of a strange, musty smell, like a weird perfume of some kind. Perfumed kerosene? Maybe, back then. A third of a bottle of Orange Glo and most of a roll of paper towels later, I had a nice amber table lamp sitting in front of me. I still couldn't figure out the pattern of the scratches. I noticed that I'd missed a speck of dirt, and didn't feel like wasting another paper towel. Admire my handwork, haul it over to my desk for a picture, and put it up on eBay. I reached for the spot and rubbed at it with my fingertip.

Suddenly there was a breeze in the room, like the ventilation system had skipped a beat, and a swarthy, Arabic-looking fellow wearing a Google knit shirt was sitting across the table from me.

I didn't drop the lamp. He reached over and used my hand to move it to safety in the center of the table.

"I am the djinni of the lamp. I am yours to command. What is your desire, my Master?"

His tones were rounded and respectful.

I wasn't sure what was happening. I did know that I wasn't high or hallucinating. Susan's concept of "justice" ensured that my preference to keep a little baggie around had gone the way of the big house and our future. And I couldn't afford to both drink and pay for Porsche repairs, so the Porsche had won that one.

"Uhhhh... can you tell me how you got here?"

"Certainly. I was constrained within the lamp. When you rubbed the lamp with your hand, that released me from my confinement to do your bidding. What is your desire, my Master?

"Explain."

"Solomon searched through all the deserts of Arabia, finding all of the wild djinni, and binding us to his seal. He did not bind us to himself, although he could have. Instead, he bound us to his seal, created in the name of the Lord. Then he bound his seal to a bottle or to a lamp, and the djinni that was bound to that seal, became the djinni of that lamp or that bottle.

"When we are in the bottle or in the lamp, we are constrained, and we gather power. When we are outside the bottle, we dissipate power. The more that we are asked to do outside the bottle, the more we dissipate. When the task that we have been assigned is complete, we return to the bottle to gather more power. If the bottle or lamp is broken, or the seal is unbound from the bottle, we cannot return, for we are bound to the seal. If we cannot return, we dissipate, but not completely. Were we to dissipate completely, we would become wild. But we can never be wild again, because Solomon bound us. And since Solomon bound us to his seal for all Time, if a bottle were to appear with his seal bound to it, then some djinni would become bound to that bottle, until all of the djinni were again bottled.

"Your predecessor as my Master was an explorer for 'mysteries' at the turn of the last century. He uncovered the hidden mysteries of Solomon's seal, and bound it to a series of Aladdin lamps. He was surprised as me when he rubbed one of the lamps, and I appeared."

He chortled.

"So I could ask you to build me a palace... ?"

"And I would build you a palace. Where? Here or in Las Vegas? Marble or granite? Limestone? How many rooms? Gardens? But you would have to deal with the consequences... and you have a government that taxes everything that it can see. I am bound to Solomon's seal, so I have no consequences whatsoever for my acts. And Solomon was a Pure Master, and he bound himself to the Lord, so that all of the consequences from his acts worked for the greater glory of the Lord."

"So maybe all I should ask for is twenty bucks and a Timex watch?"

He laughed, and a twenty and a plastic Timex appeared on the kitchen table. There was a faint breeze, like the ventilation system had skipped another beat, and the djinni vanished.

I looked at the clock. It was almost nine, and I'd spent most of the evening cleaning the lamp. Do you sell something like that on eBay? How do you sell something like that on eBay? The guy with the haunted Nintendo put it up under "video games." Do you put an Aladdin lamp with a genie in it up under collectibles? Or is there a better category? Or do you rub the lamp again and solve the problem that way? And how long does it take the djinni to recharge?

Dinner was probably in order, before I started hallucinating from hunger. I started some brown rice, poached a chicken breast in lemon juice with capers, and steamed some broccoli. I filled a glass with ice water to wash it down. My belly filled, I reexamined my treasure trove. Six lamps, all marked with the strange scratches.