Story; OGR

Note; I'm aware that there is probably a lot to say about how this story could fit within a short format, and drastic changes may need to be made. As they say, it's often harder to write a good short story, as opposed to a long one. This is partly why the step outline isn't quite in the correct format, because I'm still not solid on the specifics of the story. However, I'm quite pleased with the world and universe rules, even if the narrative needs to be altered for time or story-telling reasons.

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Prompt Words;

Genie,        Greenhouse,        Diary

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Premise;

A Genie, enslaved to grow magic items in a factory for all eternity, discovers the secret to wielding their ultimate power.

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Logline;

For countless centuries, a Genie slaves to grow and maintain the magical items requested and sent out to the Human world. However, by nature 'Genies can't use enchanted items'. With such unfathomable power always at arms length, how can a Genie feel so powerless?

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Overview/step outline;

Contrary to popular belief, when a human requests an enchanted item from a Genie, it doesn't simply 'poof' and appear out of thin air. There's a whole world of dedicated Genie workers, who are enslaved under one-another to fulfil human requests; growing, sorting and delivering items much like a post office, connected to the human world through lamps.

At the bottom of the chain, there are the worker Genies that slave away at assembly lines in gigantic factory-like buildings. Requests slips are passed down by the upper management, and planted in enchanted soil. The request slips sprout like seeds into gigantic plants, the fruit of which takes the form of the requested item. However, this process is simply to shortcut traditional manufacturing techniques. The real magic comes from a mysterious glowing liquid named 'essence' which flows through the Geinie world, and grants all-manner of incredible powers when a person knows the secrets to its use.

 The items are harvested from the soil when ripe, tagged with a postal sticker containing relevant information, and importantly; labelled with a sticker containing the desired magical effect. The items are then rinsed with 'essence', which has the property of binding an item with a written magical property when it comes into contact with them. The now enchanted items are then placed in vacuum tubes and sent up to the sorting office at the level above.

The worker Geinie's have little magical power of their own, since in order for a Genie to have their own magical powers, they need access to 'essence', and an education in the secrets of how it works, and how to wield it; information that is deliberately kept from them. Despite regularly handling enchanted items with unfathomable power, the worker genies cannot use them, and are practically slaves.

Our protagonist is very slightly above the bottom of the chain; he's a log-keeper. His job is to patrol the gigantic factory floor, logging practically everything about the factory and its produce in his trusty diary/log book. In true bureaucratic fashion, everything must be logged; the attendance of workers, the levels of stock, the maintenance of machines, the daily request input and item output, the greenhouse temperatures, the soil acidity, the power usage, the progress of every single individual plant growth, factory rejects, accidents, damages, breakages, the list goes on and on. Despite being one level above the assembly-line workers, he is still very much an imprisoned slave, and running around the smoggy factory logging all day is no less gruelling.

One fateful day, our protagonist is up on one of the huge metal gantries in the centre of the factory. The gantries encircle a really really colossal vat, which is generally closed off by a gigantic metal lid on a hinge, through the cracks of which a beautiful light glistens. Every few months, the lid opens, and reveals a swirling pool of beautiful  glowing essence, which supplies the whole factory. A chute swings down from the ceiling, through which more essence flows from a transport vehicle above, re-filling the tank.

 Our protagonist is one of the few workers who regularly witnesses this event, and is stationed on the gantry to watch the re-filling and monitor/log information about the essence delivery from measurement gauges, and compare them to figures passed down to him from the transport workers to check for inconsistency (weight in tonnes, number of loads, purity, temperature, etc).

On this particular re-filling, our protagonist is in a somewhat detached mood, and is daydreaming about the world outside whilst staring emptily into the swirling vat of essence, entranced by its multi-coloured light. In a clumsy move, he manages to drop his sacred log-book off the edge of the gantry, and it tumbles the huge fall and disappears into the swirling vortex far below.

This sends our protagonist into absolute panic. The log-book contains weeks of information about the workings of the factory, and loosing it could land him in a world of pain with his masters. He scrambles down the clunky metal ladders; but soon realises it's hopeless as the vat is practically inaccessible.

For the next few days our protagonist is on edge; he has picked up a new logbook for the time being, and can get by for the short term, but not long and he'll be expected to turn in his full log-book for the past few months to be studied by the accountants. By a stroke of luck, the heavy book having sunk to the bottom of the vat, soon turns up, having been extracted by two maintenance workers repairing a workers clogged spray-nozzle. Our protagonist, who had been logging the maintenance work, is ecstatic and grabs his book from the maintenance trolley bin.

Upon taking it back to his tiny office, he places it on the radiator to dry, and later picks up the battered log-book to start transferring the information into the newer one. However, when he moves his hands close to the book, an incredible wind blows and the book glows, and the pages flutter, the lettering shining out of each page with piercing light. The logbook snaps shut, the room goes quiet, and on the front page our protagonists' name glimmers gently on the front. The log-book has become enchanted, and he is its master.

The crux of the story is that low level Genies believe that Genies, by nature, can't use enchanted items. However, unbeknownst to them, there's a secret third variable that effects the binding properties of essence; 1; The item, 2; An enchantment, and 3; A full name. The name on the seemingly unimportant postal sticker reacts with the essence to bind an enchanted item to the human that requested it. This means that an enchanted item can only be wielded by its bound owner.

Our protagonist quickly discovers that the enchanted log-book is incredibly powerful thanks to his obsessive recording of every aspect of every item within the factory. He can flip through the log-book to an event, and change the recorded values at will, or change the order of recorded events which changes the properties of the specified object in the real world. This gives him profound control over most of the objects within the factory in fantastical and novel ways, defined by what he has recorded about them.

This is all a set up to a fantastic escape sequence, in which our protagonist goes all out with his newfound powers, using the recorded information about the factory to make a break for it, and foil his pursuers. The possibilities for novel uses of the logbook are endless; he could increase resource intake to create avalanches of soil or burst pipes, he could cause equipment to fail or explode by removing maintenance sessions or bringing past catastrophic failures forward in time to the imminent future.
He could teleport boxes and crates around by messing with stock transportation, he could over-load machinery or conveyor-belts by increasing power usage, or perhaps collapse walkways and corridors by deleting construction work.

This will all result in his eventual escape from the factory, at which point the book will become useless. He could cause a catastrophic magic explosion by changing the amount of essence in the central Vat, destroying the factory and releasing all imprisoned within it.

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Structure:

All this likely seems like a huge amount to fit into two minutes, and I'm certain that there's plenty of work to be done on that front, but it's worth remembering that much of what I've written here will not be directly addressed within the final sequence, and I honestly believe this could be written fairly well in shorthand to fit into a much more concise animated short. This is how I imagine the final 'act structure' will work out.

First Act; Establishing Act; short establishment of the world, Establish the Genie's day to day life in montage form.

Second Act; Conflict; On the gantry; Geinie drops the diary into the vat, panics, searches for it and eventually finds it in the maintenance trolly.

Final Act; Comeuppance; Geinie in his office discovers the powers of the book and the secret to controlling essence. After a short play around, (perhaps accidently causing a ruckus, initiating the escape), the escape sequence starts and the Geinie uses the book to break out of the factory and escape.