TEASER
CREVE COEUR, MISSOURI
A man, Jay Gilmore is riding around a lot in a go cart (which looks like the xfs’ ones on the set, incidently). He yells for his worker Anson Stokes, but he doesn’t answer. Gilmore finally finds him, and he hasn’t done anything all day but sit and look at a boat magazine. Gilmore tells him to clean out a storage room.
Anson finally goes into the storage room. It’s filled with expensive antique furniture. On the ground is a rolled up Persian rug. Anson goes near it, and it moves. Carefully he unrolls it to find a woman inside. The woman is Jinniyah, a female genie (jinni).
Gilmore comes by again yelling for Anson. When he doesn’t answer, he goes to look inside the storage facility. He sees that nothing has been taking care of. He continues to yell until he suddenly covers his mouth, or what used to be his mouth. It’s disappeared.
ACT ONE
FBI HEADQUARTERS
9:22 AM
Mulder is in his office talking to Gilmore, who now has a mouth, sort of. It’s stitched horribly. Scully walks in and is very surprised, but she tries not to let it show. Gilmore tells them that he knows Anson did it, but he doesn’t know how.
MARK TWAIN TRAILER COURT
OLIVETTE, MISSOURI
While walking to Anson Stokes’ trailer, Scully gives Mulder some possible explanations for Gilmore. There is a disease, what’s called “small mouth” that causes the person’s mouth to shrink to only a small hole. Mulder tells her that that would take months, what happened to Gilmore was instantaneous. She tells him that some people are born without noses. Mulder tells her that it’s Gilmore’s mouth, not nose.
As they approach they see a large boat, just sitting in the Stokes’ front yard.
Inside, Anson sees them coming, thinking they’re IRS agents, he tells his brother Leslie, to get rid of them.
Mulder and Scully knock. The door opens seemingly by itself, until Leslie comes out from behind it. He’s in a wheelchair.Leslie doesn’t tell them anything, but that he thinks some chemicals might have hit Gilmore. It’s obvious to them that he is either lying or has no idea what he’s talking about. On the way out, Mulder and Scully spot Jinniyah.
Mulder and Scully go to the warehouse where they find the antique furniture. Scully tells Mulder that it’s really wonderful.
MULDER: Oh, well, you wanna hit some yard sales while we’re out here?
She tells him that she means its expensive, and that they probably stole some of it to buy the boat.
Mulder finds a picture that he shows to Scully. It’s of an overweight man standing next to two blonds. Behind them they can make out the woman that they saw at the Stokes residence.
Anson is in his trailer with his brother and “Jinniyah.” He’s mad about his second wish, that she should have put the boat in water, but she just tells him he didn’t specify.
After thinking about it, Anson wishes to be able to turn invisible at will. Unfortunately he forgets to wish that his clothes would become invisible as well.
Happy with his third wish, Anson runs around outside yelling and knocking things over. He spots two women on the other side of the street. The sign says “Walk,” so he goes across, not realizing that no one can see him. He’s hit by a bus.
ACT TWO
4:36 PM
On the side of the road is an indentation of a body in the dirt. A boy on a bicycle rides towards it, not knowing anything is there, until he hits it and is thrown off his bike.
In the morgue, two men (one played by Brett Bell!) bring Scully a body, sort of. The tray looks empty. They leave.Scully goes to carefully touch the tray, but she hits something solid. She gets yellow fingerprint powder and paints it lightly on the body. She keeps doing this. Finally she can make out a face. Scully gets very excited and is having fun painting the body.
When Mulder gets there, Scully’s already got the body completely yellow.
MULDER: I think you missed a spot here. I can see straight through to his ass.
Scully can’t believe what she’s seeing, and that it’s going to change the boundaries of science. He tells her that he doesn’t think
it has anything to do with science.He shows her the picture again of the man, two women, and the jinni. He tells her that he ran a background check on the guy. Mr. Flanken became successful literally overnight. In 1977 his net worth was $36,000. In 1978 it was $30,000,000.
MULDER: Then, there is the interesting way in which Mr. Flanken died.
SCULLY: How’s that?
MULDER: Chronic morbid tumescence.
SCULLY: You don’t mean what I think you mean.
MULDER: Schwing! On April 4th, 1978 he was admitted to Gateway Memorial Hospital with an extreme priapic condition. Apparently he was quite the specimen. They had to raise the doorframe in order to wheel him into his hospital room.
(in other words, he wished for a big yoohoo, and obviously didn’t specify how big)
Scully asks him what any of that has to do with Anson. He thinks that she is responsible for all of it.
He knows she wants to study the body, so he goes by himself to see her.
Mulder is greeted by Leslie. When Mulder asks about the woman, he just tells him that she is gone. Mulder tells Leslie that he believes that the woman is Jinniyah, feminine for jinni (genie). He thinks she granted Anson a wish to be invisible. Leslie pretends like he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, until Mulder finally gets him to hand over the object the jinni lives in.
Leslie goes to the place where the furniture is still stored and sees the rug.
Mulder comes into the morgue and tells Scully he wants her to check something out. She doesn’t want to leave the body, but he tells her it will be there when she gets back.
He walks out and she closed the drawer Anson’s body is in. She whispers “Bye” to it.
At the office, Scully tells Mulder that she has a group of researchers flying in from Harvard medical and she can’t wait to see their faces.
Scully sees the container that Leslie gave him. She asks him what it is. He tells her it’s not what he was hopping for. Judging by the smell of it it’s where the Stokes brothers keep their weed. He tells her that’s not what he wanted to show her.
Mulder shows her a video clip of Mussolini. In the background is the mystery woman. Mulder ran her face through the data bases, which is how he found these videos. Next he shows her a video of Nixon, and again the woman is in the background. Scully asks why she would be there. He tells her that all he knows is that they’re both men who got all the power they ever wished for, and then suddenly lost it.
Leslie has unrolled the rug and put it in the trailer. The jinni wants to get the wishes over with. He ponders over the wishes. Jinniyah hints at him that he should wish to be able to walk, but he thinks she means a golden wheelchair. He thinks it’s a good idea, but tells her there’s something he wants more. Leslie picks up Anson’s picture and looks at it.
ACT THREE
Scully is back in the morgue, ready to show the doctors the body. When she pulls out the slab, there’s nothing there. At first she just thinks he turned invisible again, but he really isn’t there.
Against Jinniyah’s advice, Leslie wishes that Anson would come back. Anson’s still yellow and hurt from the accident. He smells bad and can’t talk. Leslie gets mad. He says that he told her he wanted his brother back to normal, and he isn’t normal. She tells him that he only told her to bring him back, he didn’t specify.
Leslie wishes that his brother could talk. Anson screams.
Back at the morgue:
SCULLY: I should just shoot myself...Oh…I was so happy. I was so excited. What was I thinking? An invisible man?
MULDER: You saw it, it was real.
SCULLY: I don't know what I saw, Mulder. I do know that having that kind of proof in my hands, it was just too good to be true.
MULDER: I don’t think that’s why the body disappeared.
SCULLY: Why did the body disappear?
MULDER: I think it was the result of a wish being granted.
SCULLY: A wish. Whose wish?
MULDER: Well, who would want Anson Stokes back? I mean, really, really back?
SCULLY: His brother? Leslie?
Anson is still screaming. He can’t feel his heart or his blood and he’s cold.
Anson is in the kitchen trying to get warm. He tried opening the oven and turning the gas up, and the knob broke off. Now he is trying to strike matches.
Leslie thinks about what he is going to wish for.
Mulder and Scully pull up to the trailer and get out of the car.
As Leslie starts to make his final wish, for legs, Anson obviously got a match lit. The trailer blows up.
Mulder and Scully duck for cover. With the debris comes a rolled up carpet. It hits the ground with a thud and a “Ow.”
Mulder takes the jinni in for questioning. He gives her the name “Jenn,” short for Jinniyah.
Scully comes in.
SCULLY: The, uh, fire department just recovered two bodies.
MULDER: Leslie Stokes and his brother Anson.
SCULLY: Looks like it. And, uh, Anson Stokes is visible now, of course. But what I’d really love an explanation for, is how his corpse got from my locked morgue all the way across town to the Mark Twain Trailer Park.
JENN (indicating Mulder): Ask him. He's got it all figured out.
SCULLY: Well, I know what he'd say. He’d say that you're some kind of a genie, “A Thousand and One Nights" or something like that. And that you grant people wishes.
JENN: Well, there you have it.
MULDER: Well, one thing I haven't been able to figure out is whether you’re a good jinni or an evil one? (off her look) Everybody you come in contact with seems to meet a bad end.
JENN (irritated): That's the conclusion you’ve drawn? That I'm evil?
MULDER: Well possibly evil, possibly cursed. A curse to others.
JENN: The only thing you people are cursed with is stupidity. (off their look) All of you. Everybody. Mankind. Everyone I have ever come into contact with, without fail. Always asking for the wrong thing.
MULDER: You mean making the wrong wishes?
JENN: Yeah. It's always "Gimme money. Gimme big boobs. Gimmie a big hoo-hoo. Make me cool like the Fonze." Or whoever's the big name now.
SCULLY smiles to herself
MULDER: You've been out of circulation a long time.
JENN: So what? In five hundred years, people have not changed a bit.
SCULLY: Five hundred years?
JENN: Granted, they smell better now, generally speaking. But human greed still reigns. Shallowness. A propensity for self-destruction.
SCULLY: You're saying that, that, that you have been a first-hand witness to five hundred years of human history? JENN: I used to be human. I was born in fifteenth century France. And then one day, an old Moor came to my village peddling rugs. And I unrolled one that an ifrit had taken residence in.
SCULLY: An ifrit?
JENN: A very powerful class of jinni. He offered me three wishes. For the first, I asked for a stout-hearted mule. For my second, a magic sack that was always filled with turnips. (seeing their stares) Did I mention this was fifteenth century France?
MULDER: What was your third wish?
JENN: My third I pondered a great while. I didn't want to waste it. So, finally, feeling very intelligent, I spoke up and I said, "Je souhaite la grande puissance et la longue vie." I wish for great power and long life.”
MULDER: And thus became a jinni yourself.
JENN: And the mark of a Jinn (points to jewel next to her eye), right there. It’s forever. Sorta like a prison tattoo. I should have been more specific.
JENN: So am I under arrest?
SCULLY: I can't think of anything we have to hold you on. Not surprisingly, we don’t have any evidence of any of this. (to Mulder) So, uh, I think she's free to go.
JENN: No, I'm not. He unrolled me.
MULDER (realizing): I get three wishes.
MULDER smiles
ACT FOUR
Mulder doesn’t know what to wish for. He asks Jenn what she would wish for if she were him.
She tells him she’s not him, but she would wish that she never heard the word wish and could live each day by the moment and enjoy everything for what it is, instead of worrying what it isn’t. She’d sit down the next day with a cup of coffee and watch the world go by. But again, she’s not him.
Mulder thinks he figured it out. Everybody’s wishes go bad because they ask for something for themselves. So, Mulder’s first wish is for peace on earth. Unfortunately he didn’t specify “good will toward men.” Everyone on the planet seems to vanish.
He yells at her. Mulder’s second wish is to undo the first. She does it and disappears, and he realizes he’s standing in the middle of a meeting in Skinner’s office yelling at no one.
Mulder is typing about his wish. He tells Jenn that he is going to wish the perfect wish, and is not going to leave any loopholes.
Scully comes in.
SCULLY: Skinner called me, Mulder. Is everything all right?MULDER: You don't remember disappearing off the face of the earth for about an hour this morning?
SCULLY: No.
MULDER: Then I guess everything's okay.
SCULLY: Muld...
SCULLY stops and glances back to JENN, who’s watching them
SCULLY: Could you give us a minute, please?
JENN: Sure.
JENN doesn't move. SCULLY glares at her, then turns to MULDER. After half a beat, SCULLY turns back, annoyed
SCULLY: I mean *today* --
JENN’s gone.
SCULLY (turning to Mulder): Where the hell’d she go?
MULDER (folding his arms in front of him and bowing his head): Boink.
Scully tells him that it has got to be hypnotism, or mesmerism, or something. He tells her that it is what it is. She examined an invisible body. She tells him that she thought she did. She says that even if he’s right, what he’s doing is extraordinarily dangerous, he even said it himself. He tells her that the trick is to be specific and make the wish perfect, that way everyone will benefit and it will be a safer, happier world – food for everyone, freedom, no tyranny, etc. Scully tells him that that sounds wonderful. He asks her then what the problem is. She says that maybe that’s the point of their lives, to achieve that. Maybe it’s a process that one man shouldn’t try to circumvent with a single wish.
With nothing more to say, Scully leaves.
Jenn comes back and asks Mulder if he’s ready to make his third wish. He tells her that he is.
Back at home (seems like a date to me:), Mulder pops a tape in the VCR. He carries a bowl of popcorn back to his couch where Scully is sitting. He tells her he can’t believe she doesn’t want butter on the popcorn – it’s un-American.
Scully questions his choice of movie: “Caddie Shack.” He tells her it’s a classic American movie. She tells him that that’s what every guy says – it’s a guy movie. He tells her when she invites him over to her place, they can watch “Steel Magnolias.”
SCULLY: So, um, what’s the occasion?MULDER: I don’t know. It just felt like the thing to do…Cheers.
They clink bottles
SCULLY: Cheers.
They each take a drink
MULDER: I don’t know if you noticed, but, um, I never made the world a happier place.
SCULLY: Well, I’m fairly happy. That’s something.
SCULLY smiles at him and he smiles back
Scully asks him what his final wish was. He just looks at her and smiles.
Somewhere, Jenn sits drinking coffee and smiling, watching the world go by.
