You walk into your bedroom and shake your head. Dirty clothes, towels, books, and boxes liter the floor, mostly on one side of the room next to your step-brother's bed, but you notice that some of it is starting to encroach on your territory. "Ryan?" you ask, not getting a response.
Looking straight ahead, you notice that your step-brother Ryan is playing some sort of video game, and has his headphones covering his ears. Your first instinct is to say screw it and deal with it later, but you decide that you have to put your foot down on this sooner or later. You walk up behind Ryan and tap him on the shoulder. Not getting a response, you sigh in frustration, and then reach over and grab the headphones, forcing them down to his neck.
He looks up at you, a hint of an annoyed expression on his face. "What do you want, Patrick?"
"Ryan, could you please clean up in here at some point today?" You gesture around at the room, hoping you're getting your frustration across. "Your mess is starting to spill over into my side of the room. Please?"
A slight scowl comes to his lips, and he blows his hair out of his face. "Okay, okay. I'll get on it. Soon."
You shake your head. "Can you do it now, please? I need to use the floor to start doing crunches, and there's not enough clean space."
He rolls his eyes. "Fine. Whatever."
"Thank you," you say, turning around and heading back to the kitchen, hoping that he's sincere. As you grab a glass and fill it with water, though, you think that maybe he'd have a little more follow through if you help him a little, at least this once. Not to do the whole thing, now, but maybe showing a gesture of goodwill -- maybe that'll do a bit to help smooth out your relationship.
Making up your mind, you finish the glass and then put it in the sink. As you walk back down the hallway to the room, you call out, "Ryan, tell you what. I'll help you clean if you promise that-- Whoa!"
Your stunned reaction is due to the fact that when you enter back into the room, it is spotless. Ryan's junk is all off the floor, his bed is neatly made (matching yours now), and even the desk and tables look like they've been cleaned down. You spin around, looking for signs of everything having been stuffed into a closet or something, but all the clothes are neatly put away, the books are on the shelves (alphabetized even!) -- it's practically perfect. And in the middle of it all is Ryan, still with his headphones around his neck, still sitting at the desk, but now facing the room, with a look of confusion and amazement on his face.
"H-how did you do that?" you ask. "I was only gone for a minute and you cleaned up the entire room!"
"I -- I don't know!" Ryan looks up at you with wide eyes. "I… I guess I just looked around, wishing the room would be clean without me having to do anything, and… it just happened! It instantly became clean!"
You narrow your eyes, trying to process this. "What, like a genie granted your wish or something?"
"Maybe… I dunno." Ryan scratches his head. "I didn't even say anything out loud."
Wow, you think to yourself. Could this be true? Maybe you should test it out.
"Hey, Ryan," you say, trying to think carefully of what you should have him do.
"Yes?"
"Let's try something here. Try to see if you…"
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