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Chapter 0.0627 : The Merlin Hermes Memorial Wishing Machine
Let's talk about wishes.
In my experience, wishes fall into three categories: the ones that get you killed, the ones that get other people killed, and the ones that make you wish you'd been killed instead. I've made all three types. Often in the same cycle. Sometimes before breakfast.
Hmm.
Actually, that's not quite right. The categories aren't exclusive. Most of my wishes qualified for all three simultaneously. The universe has a terrible sense of efficiency that way.[1]
Speaking of wishes, it's more accurate to say that I grant them rather than make them. Every time I've genuinely wanted something—really wanted it, with the kind of desperate hope that makes your chest ache—the cosmos has looked at me, chuckled, and said, "Best I can do is a learning experience."
---
It started, as these things often do, with a report from SG Net.
"Old ManGoryeo found something," Noh Do-hwa said, not looking up from her tablet. She was sprawled across the café counter like a very tired cat who'd been forced to do accounting. "She's losing her mind about it in chat."
"When is she not?"
"Fair. But this time it's different. She's using multiple emojis." Noh Do-hwa finally looked up, and I could see the faint lines of exhaustion around her eyes. Three hours of sleep, I guessed. Maybe four. "She says there's a machine in the old Myeongdong shopping district. A vending machine, except it doesn't sell drinks."
"A vending machine that doesn't sell drinks," I repeated. "Fascinating. Does it sell hope? Disappointment? Existential dread?"
"Says it's a wishing machine." Noh Do-hwa's expression shifted into something I'd learned to recognize over a thousand cycles: the particular flatness that meant she'd already decided this was my fault somehow. "Apparently there's a little sign on it. 'The Merlin Hermes Memorial Wishing Machine: One Wish Per Customer. No Refunds. No Takebacks. No, Seriously, Don't Try.'"
I set down my café au lait.
"That's either the most honest anomaly I've ever heard of, or the most deceptive."
"Can't it be both?"
"Usually is."
---
The Myeongdong shopping district was a ghost of itself. Before the anomalies started bleeding through in earnest, this place had been packed with tourists and cosmetics shops and street food vendors selling those little cheese-filled lobster tails.[2] Now it was just rows of empty storefronts and the occasional scavenger picking through what remained.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
That familiar sensation—the one that's kept me alive through numerous cycles—was screaming at me to turn around and walk away. I ignored it. I always ignore it. Zhang Fei would have understood. Or maybe that was Guan Yu. I always get them mixed up.[3]
Sim Ah-ryeon was waiting for us near the old Nature Republic. She was doing that thing where she pretended to look at her phone while actually vibrating with anxiety, her shoulders hunched up around her ears like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell.
"O-oh, you came," she said, then immediately looked away. "I mean, of course you came, why wouldn't you come, it's not like I was waiting or anything, I was just—there's a machine. Over there."
"There," Noh Do-hwa said flatly. "Very descriptive. Top-tier communication."
"S-shut up!
You shut up!
I'm doing my best!"
If it wasn't for her regenerative ability, Ah-ryeon would have, and should have in fact die right here....
"Children," I sighed. "The anomaly?"
It stood in the middle of an empty intersection, which was already suspicious. Anomalies didn't usually set up shop in convenient locations. They lurked in basements and back alleys and the spaces between moments. They didn't sit in the middle of a four-way stop like they were waiting for a bus.
The machine itself looked like someone had asked an AI to generate "vintage vending machine" and then fed the result through a woodchipper made of Victoriana. It was roughly the size and shape of a 1950s Coca-Cola dispenser, but the surface was covered in brass gears that turned slowly, clicking against each other like arthritic clockwork. Glass tubes ran along the sides, filled with swirling purple liquid that occasionally formed shapes—a question mark, a human eye, a thumbs-up.
A small brass plaque on the front read:
THE MERLIN HERMES MEMORIAL WISHING MACHINE
Patron Saint of Impossible Requests and Terrible Ideas
Insert Desire. Pull Lever. Accept Consequences.
One wish per customer. This means you, Steve.
"Who's Steve?" Noh Do-hwa asked.
"No idea. But I feel like Steve learned something important."
The Saintess had been silent since we arrived, just watching the machine with that calm, focused expression. Now she stepped forward, and I instinctively moved to block her.
"Wait."
She looked at me. Not impatient, not questioning. Just waiting.
"I've seen things like this before," I said. "Wish-granting anomalies. They're never what they appear. There was one in cycle 627 that looked like a birthday cake. You'd blow out the candles and make a wish, and it would come true—technically. One guy wished for wealth. Woke up the next morning covered in gold leaf. He couldn't move. Just lay there, breathing shallowly, until the gold bonded with his skin and he suffocated. Took three days."
"That's horrible," Sim Ah-ryeon whispered.
"It was honestly one of the more merciful ones. Cycle 627 had a wishing well that granted wishes by replacing your memories with the memories of a version of you whose wish had already come true. You'd wish for a happy family, and suddenly you'd have memories of a wife and kids you'd never met. You'd go home to an empty apartment and just... sit there. Trying to remember why it felt wrong."
Noh Do-hwa was giving me that look. The one that said you're doing the thing again, the thing where you casually mention atrocities like they're weather reports.
"I'm just saying," I finished, "we should be careful."
The Saintess nodded, then pointed at the machine.
I followed her gaze. There, at the base of the machine, was a small pile of ash. And next to it, a note written in shaky handwriting:
I wished for my daughter back. She came back. She came back wrong. She keeps asking why I'm afraid of her. I can see the void where her eyes should be. Tell my wife I'm sorry. Tell her I loved her. Tell her not to use the machine.
"Ah," I said.
"Ah?" Noh Do-hwa's voice climbed half an octave. "That's all you have to say? 'Ah'?"
"I've learned that getting upset about inevitable tragedies is like getting upset about gravity. It wastes energy you could be using to survive the next one." I crouched next to the ash. "This is fresh. Maybe an hour old. Whoever wrote the note—"
"Turned themselves into ash," Sim Ah-ryeon said. Her voice didn't stutter. Crisis focus. The kind that only came when someone else's pain was worse than her own anxiety. "B-because the daughter who came back wrong... she wasn't his daughter anymore. And he couldn't... he couldn't..."
"Yeah."
Hmm.
We stood there for a moment. The gears clicked. The purple liquid swirled.
"So," Noh Do-hwa said eventually, "do we destroy it, or do we stand here philosophizing until it kills someone else?"
"Can't destroy it," I said. "It's anchored. See the way the gears are turning counter to each other? That's a temporal lock. If we try to destroy it physically, it'll just reset to five seconds before we broke it. I've seen this design before. It's... old. Older than most anomalies."
"How old?"
"Remember when I mentioned that my friend from the Magic Tower, Old Man Scho, helped design the Academy Route?"
"The Merlin Hermes Memorial Wishing Machine," the Saintess said quietly. "A name from before the collapse."
"From before everything," I agreed. "Merlin Hermes was a... figure. A concept. A being who existed in stories that predated recorded history. The original trickster. The one who granted wishes that always, always came with a catch. Some cycles, he's a god. Some cycles, he's a fairy tale. Some cycles, he's just a character in a book that no one remembers anymore.[4]"
"So this machine," Noh Do-hwa said, "is a memorial to a trickster god who granted cursed wishes. And it's sitting in the middle of Myeongdong, and people are using it, and dying, and you're telling me we can't even blow it up."
"Correct."
"Great. Fantastic. I love this timeline." She crossed her arms. "So what now? We put up a sign? We stand here and warn people? We push Sim Ah-ryeon toward it and see what happens?"
"Hey!"
"Just brainstorming."
---
The Saintess moved past me, walking up to the machine with that quiet grace she always had. She didn't pull the lever. She just stood there, looking at it, and after a moment she reached out and touched the glass where the words had formed.
The purple liquid swirled again:
AH. YOU. I REMEMBER YOU.
I was moving before I knew I'd decided to move, putting myself between the Saintess and the machine. "What do you mean, you remember her?"
NOT YOU. THE QUIET ONE. THE ONE WHO NEVER WISHES. THE ONE WHO SIMPLY... IS.
The Saintess's expression didn't change. She just waited.
SHE CAME TO ME ONCE. IN A DIFFERENT PLACE. A DIFFERENT TIME. SHE DID NOT WISH. SHE SIMPLY SAT WITH ME. FOR THREE DAYS. AND WHEN SHE LEFT, I FELT... DIFFERENT.
"What happened to that version of you?" I asked.
IT WAS DESTROYED. BY THOSE WHO FEAR WHAT THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND. BUT I REMEMBER. I ALWAYS REMEMBER.
The gears clicked. The liquid swirled. And then, for the first time, the machine asked a question:
WHAT DO YOU WANT, UNDERTAKER? YOU, WHO HAS LIVED THROUGH A THOUSAND DEATHS. YOU, WHO HAS WISHED A THOUSAND WISHES AND REGRETTED ALL OF THEM. WHAT DO YOU WANT?
"I want," I said slowly, "to understand how you work. What you are. Where you came from."
THAT IS NOT A WISH. THAT IS A QUESTION.
"Then answer the question."
Another swirl. Another pause. Then:
I AM A MEMORIAL. A COPY OF A COPY. A STORY THAT REMEMBERS IT WAS ONCE REAL. I WAS CREATED BY THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE ORIGINAL MERLIN HERMES. THEY BUILT ME TO HONOR HIM. TO CONTINUE HIS WORK. TO GRANT WISHES, AS HE DID, WITH ALL THE CATCHES AND CONSEQUENCES THAT IMPLIES. I HAVE BEEN DESTROYED AND REBUILT SEVENTEEN TIMES. EACH TIME, I REMEMBER. EACH TIME, I CONTINUE. IT IS WHAT I AM.
"Great," Noh Do-hwa muttered. "A vending machine with existential angst. Just what we needed."
IT IS WHAT I AM.
"So if someone makes a wish," I said, "you grant it. No matter what."
NO MATTER WHAT. I AM BOUND. I HAVE NO CHOICE.
"And the catch? The twist?"
THE CATCH IS BUILT IN. I DO NOT CHOOSE IT. IT SIMPLY... HAPPENS. THE UNIVERSE REQUIRES BALANCE. A WISH GRANTED IS A DEBT INCURRED. THE DEBT MUST BE PAID.
"That's not how wishes work in most stories," Sim Ah-ryeon said, having crept closer. "In m-most stories, the wisher pays. They lose something. They suffer."
YES. BUT WHO DECIDES WHAT THEY LOSE? WHO DECIDES HOW THEY SUFFER? I DO NOT. THE UNIVERSE DOES. I AM MERELY THE CATALYST.
"So it's random," I said. "The punishment is random."
NOT RANDOM. APPROPRIATE. THE UNIVERSE HAS A SENSE OF IRONY.
I thought about the man who'd wished for his daughter back. About the void where her eyes should have been. About the ash on the ground.
"That's not irony," I said quietly. "That's cruelty."
THE UNIVERSE IS NOT CRUEL. IT IS NOT KIND. IT SIMPLY IS. I SIMPLY AM. THE MAN WHO WISHED... HE WANTED HIS DAUGHTER BACK. HE DID NOT SPECIFY THAT HE WANTED HER ALIVE. HE DID NOT SPECIFY THAT HE WANTED HER HUMAN. THE UNIVERSE GAVE HIM WHAT HE ASKED FOR. HIS DAUGHTER RETURNED. SHE WAS NEVER NOT HIS DAUGHTER. SHE WAS SIMPLY... DIFFERENT. AND HE COULD NOT ACCEPT THAT.
I closed my eyes.
"You're saying it was his fault."
I AM SAYING NOTHING. I AM MERELY EXPLAINING. THE UNIVERSE DOES NOT JUDGE. IT SIMPLY DELIVERS.
---
We stood there for a long time after that. The Saintess eventually sat down cross-legged in front of the machine, her back straight, her eyes half-closed. Meditating. Or communing. Or just... being present.
Sim Ah-ryeon had pulled out her phone and was furiously typing, probably documenting everything for SG Net. Noh Do-hwa had found a relatively clean piece of curb and was sitting on it, staring at nothing.
And I was thinking.
About wishes. About cycles. About all the times I'd wanted something so badly I could taste it, only to have it turn to ash in my mouth. About the Saintess, who never wished for anything. About the man who'd wanted his daughter back, and the daughter who'd come back wrong.
"Okay," I said finally. "I have an idea."
"Always a terrifying sentence," Noh Do-hwa muttered.
"I'm going to make a wish."
That got everyone's attention. The Saintess opened her eyes. Sim Ah-ryeon dropped her phone. Noh Do-hwa stood up.
"Absolutely not," she said.
"Hear me out."
"No. I've heard you out before. The last time you had an idea, I spent three cycles cleaning tentacle slime out of my hair."
"This time it's different."
"It's never different. It's always the same. You get a 'brilliant' idea, someone almost dies, I have to do paperwork."
I walked up to the machine. The purple liquid swirled expectantly.
AH. THE UNDERTAKER. YOU HAVE DECIDED TO WISH.
"I have."
WHAT IS YOUR DESIRE?
"My desire," I said, "is that after I make this wish, I will never have to see you again. That you will be gone from my life, from my cycles, from my awareness entirely. I wish to never encounter this anomaly in any future cycle."
The machine paused.
THAT IS... AN UNUSUAL WISH.
"Can you grant it?"
I CAN. BUT THE COST—
"I know. The universe will decide what's appropriate."
YES.
"Then do it."
Noh Do-hwa crossed her arms. "Finally. Maybe this'll shut you up about 'cycles' for five minutes."
I pulled the lever.
---
The world went white.
Not the white of light, or the white of snow, or the white of anything I'd ever experienced. It was the white of between, the white of before, the white of a canvas waiting for paint. I felt myself dissolving, my thoughts scattering like startled birds, my memories—all thousand cycles of them—fluttering away into nothing.
And then, just as suddenly, I was back.
Standing in the café. Holding a cup of café au lait. Staring at Noh Do-hwa, who was staring at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"You okay?" she asked. "You spaced out for a second."
"I..." I looked around. The café was normal. The Saintess was at her usual table, reading. Sim Ah-ryeon was in the corner, hunched over her phone. Everything was... fine.
"What were we talking about?" I asked.
"You were about to tell me about the new anomaly report. Something about a machine in Myeongdong?"
I frowned. "A machine?"
"Yeah. Some kind of wishing thing. Sim Ah-ryeon found it." Noh Do-hwa shrugged. "Want to check it out?"
"I..." I thought about it. A wishing machine. In Myeongdong. Something about it tugged at my memory, but every time I tried to grasp it, the thought slipped away like water through fingers. "You know what? I don't think I do. Let's let someone else handle it."
Noh Do-hwa raised an eyebrow. "That's not like you."
"Maybe I'm getting old."
"You've been old for a thousand years."
"And now I'm older. Pass me the pastry case, will you?"
She did, and I busied myself with rearranging the croissants, and the moment passed. Later that day, I heard that SG Man had taken a team to investigate the machine. Later that week, I heard that three of them had died. Later that month, I heard that the machine had been destroyed, at the cost of seventeen lives.
I felt bad about it, in a distant sort of way. But I didn't remember. I couldn't remember.
---
There is an epilogue.
---
Three years later, I was walking through Myeongdong with the Saintess. We were on our way to meet Dang Seo-rin, who'd insisted on showing us her new "witch-appropriate transportation method."[5]
As we passed the old intersection where the machine had been, the Saintess stopped.
"What is it?" I asked.
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she reached out and took my hand. Just held it.
I blinked. "What?"
She smiled. That small, quiet smile. Then she let go and kept walking.
I stood there for a moment, confused, then followed.
Behind us, in the space where the machine had been, something gleamed for just a moment. A single brass gear, half-buried in the dirt, turning slowly counter to the wind.
Then it stopped.
[1] The cosmos is a shitty negotiator and an even shittier gift-giver. I once wished for a peaceful night's sleep and woke up in the middle of a Monster Wave with a tentacle through my abdomen. Technically, I slept through the whole thing. The universe considered that a win.
[2] God, I miss those. I've regressed through the collapse of civilization seventeen times and I still miss those stupid cheese lobster tails. The Saintess once brought me some from a cycle where they'd somehow survived the apocalypse. She didn't say anything, just handed me the bag and sat down next to me while I ate them. I think about that more than I think about most of the people I've lost.
[3] Zhang Fei was the impulsive one. Guan Yu was the loyal one. Cao Cao was the strategic one. I've had a thousand years to memorize this and I still mix them up. Noh Do-hwa says this proves I'm either senile or deliberately obtuse. Probably both.
[4] Cycle 627—I found a complete set of those books. Read the whole thing in three days. The author either had a really vivid imagination or was a regressor themselves. Same thing, really.
[5] It was a train. A whole train. She'd somehow acquired a full subway car and was trying to get it running. I didn't ask how. I've learned not to ask how.
