The well was deep, dark and smelled like clean old moss. There was a sound about it that reminded Jesse of ripples.
“Now, throw in the pebble and shut your eyes,” said his grandmother.
He did.
“Now concentrate.”
He did.
“And breathe out-”
He
“-and in.”
did.
“Nothing happened,” he said.
“Look.”
He looked, jumped, and dropped the top six scoops of the ice cream cone down the well. Then he said a few words that he normally pretended he didn’t know.
“Oh, poor little Jesse. Well, at least you still have half the cone!”
“Wow.”
“Eat it slow, love. Only one wish per customer – more would make a mess. If wishes were fishes… well, you’d eat more fishsticks. Than you already do, that is.”
“Wow,” said Jesse, but now it was filler, just a verbal tic while his brain rolled around. “Wow.”
***
Jesse’s brain kept rolling. He grew up and up and it rolled on and on as he got older and older and finally it stopped on a conclusion right around the time he received his MBA.
“So,” asked Ben, “you got a plan?”
“As of five seconds ago,” said Jesse. He looked at Ben – his best friend or probably something close to it – and he looked at the number of glasses in front of him and he decided this was just about right. “Hey, want to invest in something?”
“Huh?”
“Real estate.”
“What kind?”
“I’m gonna buy the farm.”
Ben’s brows furrowed, taking most of his head with them. “Woah. That should be your LAST plan, not your first.”
“My grandparent’s farm.”
“Oh. Why? Condos?”
“Not quite.”
***
Inconveniently enough, Jesse’s grandmother had gone and gotten herself buried on the lot next to his grandfather. He had to pay quite a lot of money to have them moved, and he hoped they hadn’t seeped into the water table. Grandfather had certainly had enough time to percolate.
So they were overbudget already, which made Ben nervous. But that was fine, that was fine, that was fine. The main thing was the hydrology, and the charts and the maps and the funny little man with the fussy little ruler were all in accord on that.
It was a fine day for cautious optimism, but Jesse indulged himself and speculated recklessly for half an hour.
What with the land deal, the survey, the permits, and the contractors, a new pair of pants could squeak onto the company ledger without anyone noticing.
***
The test bore was shallow, shone under the flashlight’s beam, and smelled like freshly turned soil.
The pebble was tiny and irregular and as deeply, thoroughly dull as Jesse could find.
He flicked it in.
“Holy shit!” said Ben.
Jesse’s triumph was undimmed by the toppling of very nearly all the ice cream cone down the well. Twenty scoops had been a bit much, but he’d been guesstimating.
“So… what are we thinking? We’ve got to keep this exclusive or else whackaloons might get at it.”
“Agreed.”
“Got to keep it among the hands of those who wouldn’t abuse it.”
“Of course.”
“There’s at least one way to ensure that, I’d wager.”
“I know exactly what you’re thinking.”
“So then…a million a shot? Two million?”
“Ten,” said Jesse. “But if you buy a shot at each well, you get the second one at half price.”
“Nice.”
“Nice.”
Their fists bumped together lightly.
***
Fads rippled through the wealthy. Some now flew without the need of private jets. Some stopped aging. Some owned castles made of candy that never spoiled.
There was an art to one-upsmanship, especially of the kind you only ever got two (at a great price!) chances to exercise.
Around a year in they started to run into problems with repeat clients.
“No, you can’t pay someone else to make your wish for you. Doesn’t work.”
“No, you can’t make a selfless wish and get it to happen anyways. Doesn’t work.”
“No, you can’t wish for more wishes. Doesn’t work.”
“No, you can’t wish super hard and get half a wish out of the same well. Doesn’t work.”
“No you can’t.”
After that last one Ben and Jesse knew they’d reached the tipping point.
So they let the great and powerful and obscenely, fabulously, gloriously profligate squirm and writhe and twist in the wind for six months more, and then they unveiled the all-new Third Well.
Ben unexpectedly died while testing it of completely natural causes that nobody was even a little suspicious of, after signing over all of his worldly possessions to Jesse in a manner that everyone agreed was completely normal.
***
Well Four was a big splash.
Well the Fifth did big trade.
Six Wells was many little pipes and faucets linked together in a way that gave the illusion of hundreds of wells and hundreds of wishes, a haunting sight indeed.
“Lucky” Well Seven had one of the longest reservation lists in their history.
Really, it was only at Wellty-One that they ran into problems. Big problems to go with the big money – Forty Well and Seven Gulps To Go had cost ninety billion a shot; this one was due to stand at an even trillion. Of course, it all wished the same, but at this point the exclusivity was the real draw.
Anyone who was worth anything had taken a shot at the Wishing Well. But how many had taken the queue all the way?
“It’s dry.”
Jesse fidgeted with a perfect, golden fountain pen that beautifully matched his perfect, golden, unaging fingers. He liked the pen; it had been his tenth wish as a little present to himself. “So? Drill deeper. The water table’s still there.”
“Oh no, sir. The water’s fine. It’s the wishes that are missing.”
Jesse broke his pen in half quarters eighths sixteenths and stopped halfway through thirty-seconds to scream himself hoarse entirely in swearwords.
Doubling the depth worked, especially once Jesse wished himself a few tons of brandy.
***
The subsequent project – Well, the Universe, and Everything had to be drilled half again as deep.
Then half again.
Then double that twice.
In lieu of expensive mining drills, Jesse began to wish for deeper wells. That lasted him up until Well Five Zero.
Well Five Zero was so deep you couldn’t imagine it as real. Well Five Zero was blacker than the inside of a cave cricket’s innards. Well Five Zero smelled like the secrets that Earth itself had forgotten.
Jesse dropped a pebble down Well Five Zero and wished for Well Over Halfway and got nothing but an itchy nose a sneeze and a feeling of grave and terrible remorse.
“Personal appointment only, no listed price,” Jesse muttered. And he ran into his office and began sweating his way through his carpet, which he’d managed to get a good head start on before someone knocked at his door and told him that Forty Nine: The Well seemed to be having some sort of problem.
***
Wells forty-eight to thirty fell apart in the course of a few days, causing a corresponding riot in the news, stocks, and private lives of thousands of excessively to obscenely wealthy individuals and societies.
It held stable for a week at well sixteen, and that was enough time for hope to get nice and big before it was crushed in the loss of everything down to well three.
Two.
One.
Jesse’s email pinged.
He stared at it.
The Wishing Well was now dry.
“Wow,” he said.
He sat there in the office, sixty stories above the spot where his grandparent’s farmhouse had once stood, vaguely but powerfully sure that he was meant to say something else.
“Wow,” he said.
Nope. Nothing else came to mind.
“Wow.”
Maybe there was something else he was meant to feel?
“Wow.”
Not particularly.
“Wow.”
Come to think of it, he didn’t feel like he wanted to say ‘wow’ anymore either.
Or wanted anything else at all.
***
Sixteen rescue efforts at the Wishing Well Center failed due to instantaneous and overpowering apathy before attempts were called off indefinitely and the entire complex was condemned on account of total depletion of the local wanter table. Trespassers were prevented by sign, barricade, and a little life preserver attached to a rope that could be used to retrieve the aimless, listless bodies of anyone that made it three feet past the fence.
It wasn’t all bad. Much like Chernobyl, nature took over where humans feared to tread. Vines climbed; trees grew; shrubs ran riot. Topiaries and potted plants seized their days, their time in the sun.
The wells overflowed and trickled everywhere. Little ponds and streams came and went.
In those fleeting waters swam fishes, so many fishes. And not one of them wanted for a thing.