Wishes, Inc.

         I've worked here for almost three thousand years. I speak all western languages. That's my department—Western civilization. We get almost twelve billion calls a day. People don't even know how often they wish for things.

         In my three thousand years, only one thing stands out in my memory. Only one wish. It is a wish that I hear millions of times a day. A wish I don't have the power to grant. This one person…was different.



         "I wish…I wish he would love me back."

         The call came at about 12:30 in the afternoon. I issued a standard response: a soothing stimulus and reassuring feelings. It's all we can really do. Not even He has the power to make a human love another human. It's the only power beyond Our control.

         She repeated the wish over and over, which is not uncommon for someone in despair, so we upped the dosage, but it didn't seem to help. Occasionally, in cases like hers, we have to look up some background information in order to find a more helpful method of consolation.

         In the past we would have to appeal to the highest choir of angels for an inquiry and a whole stack of scrolls would have to be signed…it could take whole minutes to get things done! We don't have minutes to spend. It was a difficult ordeal. Now we each have our own supercomputer with a complex database. It is much faster and easier now.

         We gathered all the information we could: her name was Taylor Kostova. She was sixteen years old, and truly, deeply in love with a boy who, it seemed, could not love her back. We were curious about the word choice; "could not" seemed indicative of something, but we couldn't figure it out. We got the boy's information as well, but nothing seemed different about him, no reason that he was emotionally incapable of loving her.

         One thing about our database…it is extremely outdated, despite the fact that it is so up-to-date as far as technology goes. It is very…I'll say "traditional". I routinely requested a photograph of this poor soul, and saw what the problem was. Taylor was not a girl, he was a boy. A young homosexual boy. It explained why the boy he loved couldn't love him back. Our computers tend to translate homosexuals as females because our "traditions" exclude homosexuals from everything…

         Needless to say, however, this also was not an uncommon occurrence, but we did not have the resources to deal with homosexuals, which is why so many of them had such terrible, difficult lives. I was unsure of what to do…and I regret this decision every time I had to make it…but, I let it go. I severed the connection.

         I might need to give you some background on Wishes, Inc. lingo. When we "sever a connection", we prevent the wisher from receiving help for that particular wish. It is not a malicious act; it is only done if we cannot find a solution. But when this happens, the wisher gets a feeling of hopelessness, helplessness, and severe despair and depression. We only discovered that this was a direct result of severing a connection a few years ago, about 2306 in human years, after we updated to accept homosexuals.

         Taylor's connection was severed, and he was left alone in the cruel world. Alone…to suffer the prejudices and hatreds that society bore upon people of his kind. I don't know exactly the events that transpired next, but I know the general story. His depression was more severe than any I had known. That information I knew because I kept a running emotion monitor on him for at least several minutes, to make sure he was okay, because I felt bad. That amount of time is quite lengthy for us.

         He must have overdosed on some narcotics in an attempt to commit suicide, to escape from the pain he could not escape…

         He went into a coma and was found in time to save his life, but the coma persisted for several hours. At one point when his chances of living were especially low…it happened.

         The office in which we work is blindingly white all around and stretches for eternity, like any other heavenly office. Well, that is not entirely true, because when He decides to appear as a She, Her offices have a few adornments. But that is irrelevant. In the whiteness, I saw a faint haze. I was startled, for I had never seen anything but the whiteness. A sort of silhouette, an outline, appeared. I knew it was him.

         "Where am I? What is this place?"

         "Are you Taylor?" I asked. I stopped everything, got up, and went over to him.

         "Yeah…where am I?"

         "That isn't important right now, Taylor. You don't have much time. You can't give up. You might think that life isn't worth living without that boy. It might be the most unbearable thing you've ever experienced, the worst pain. But it is worth it. There is so much to live for, so much to look forward to. Just look at—"

         "No, there isn't. What do I have to look forward to? I'm not smart, so I'll never achieve anything. My family hates me and I have no friends, so I'll never find comfort. Where I live, no one is gay, so I'll never be happy. I'll never be able to leave. I'll never be able to escape. I'll never be able to love. It isn't worth it." Taylor said this so monotonously, like he was done with emotion…he was so sure of everything he said. I began to lose my own hope.

         Taylor's silhouette became more solid. He was dying.

         "No…you can't…"

         "I can…I have to. I can't live like this, I can't suffer. Life without love, mutual love, isn't worth living. Life without love isn't life. It is emptiness. It is the emptiness I feel in my soul even now."

         "Just let God into your soul, and you will be free. You will have all the comfort, love, and happiness you need. All you have to do is open your soul to Him. He's always there, waiting for you." I said. It always worked; it always helped.

         "God? Is that who you work for? Is this heaven? You can tell your God that I closed my soul to him forever when he allowed his followers to condemn homosexuality. You can tell him he lost any chance of getting back into my soul when he allowed my father, the pastor of the church in my town, to so vehemently preach against homosexuality that the whole town began putting up signs and posters advocating the 'extermination' of gays. Do you know why they haven't killed me yet? I am able to act straight enough that they don't know it, and when people get suspicious, my mother briefly allows her genetic attachment to me to overcome her disgust enough that she will throw me in the basement and keep me there with minimum food and water while things die down. Tell that to your God, and then ask him why he did this. If you care enough, find me in hell and tell me. If not, I'll know that nothing up here has changed, and that innocent, good people will continue being hated, discriminated against, and killed because of their sexuality."

         Taylor had become almost solid, but as he ended his tirade, he began to fade again. Much faster now. I began to hope that he had somehow managed to live. But somehow I knew…I knew… He was being sent to Hell. His body was dead and his soul was being punished for eternity because he was gay.

         I began to weep. I knew not why…tragedies like this occurred every day…but they never occurred right in front of me like this. I wondered for years why he appeared here, in my office. Why right in front of me? Why didn't he appear in purgatory, where all are sent before judgment? I finally figured it out many years later. He appeared to me because his angered soul had unknowingly reached out to the one who denied it a future. That person was me. I destroyed all chances of him ever continuing on, of ever being happy.

         It was because of him we began the reforms…They took almost three hundred years, but things are better now. But Taylor, along with countless others, still suffers eternally in hell, because he was made to love the same sex.

         This I will regret for the rest of my existence.