Challenge #01497-D036: Incautious Wishing
They go about their daily lives, unnoticed, but without them, things would soon fall apart. -- Anon Guest
He'd got his wish. Those Types were gone from his country. They may even be gone from the world, but he didn't really care about anything beyond the borders that didn't make him money. This encapsulated quite an amount of uncaring for the world, had he cared about that, either.
He had exactly forty-eight hours to enjoy his newly-made paradise. No man remaining in his country was unemployed. In fact, businesses all over the country were scrabbling for employees. They even hired women into traditionally male arenas because there were just so few people in the country to work.
And there was nobody to clean up. Offices remained as filthy as they were left. The trash began to pile up. The laundry began to pile up. The housework, not done by the working wives, piled up. Weekends, usually a time of rest and relaxation, filled to the brim with drudgery and monotonous maintenance.
The roads fell into disrepair. There weren't enough people in the work crews to repair them. The nation was depleted of everyone who did the hard work that went into maintaining the status quo. The invisible jobs that he hadn't thought were necessary.
He went back to the Djinn who had granted his wish. "This is not what I wished for," he complained.
"It sounds like the letter of your wish to me. All the -er- I won't use your exact wording, but all the non-white people you had slurs for have been removed."
"That's not what I wished for! I want all the lazy ingrates who never lifted a finger to help this great nation move forward, all the shiftless wonders and those out to suckle at the government teat, I want all the drains on this fair nation gone, and all the honest, hard-working folks put back! I want this nation to really work again!"
"As you wish," said the Djinn. He nodded his head once, and all the diversity of the nation (and perhaps the world) returned. He nodded his head again, and the ignorant man (and all others like him) vanished without a trace. The wish did come true, and his nation really did work again. It was easy, now that people like him weren't in the way.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / rfcansole]
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