For Want of a Wish

(Prompt by u/veritasmahwa from the r/writingprompts subreddit)

"I wish for more wishes," because that's obviously the first thing you wish for.

The genie moonwalked forward, which should have looked like normal walking but didn't. "How many more?" it asked.

"Uh..." I said, flexing my extensive and nuanced vocabulary. I had been caught off guard. Aladdin hadn't prepared me for this. "How many do you have?"

"I've got all the wishes. I got wishes for days," it said, bringing out a calendar with every day marked with a smiley face. It flicked through the calendar, stopped on the year 17776, and mumbled something about being late.

"I... wish for three more wishes," I said. The genie probably had a limit on the amount of extra wishes or something, so I asked for a stereotypically low number.

"What number system?" it asked, bringing out a calculator that barked.

"Huh?"

"Three can mean many things. What number system? Just want to make sure," the calculator started chewing on the calendar.

"The... normal one," I said. Where was the genie going with this? Was it a trap?

"What does normal mean in this situation?" it said, turning into an imitation of Spongebob from that one episode where he becomes normal.

I narrowed my eyes, "I wish for three more wishes. Three meaning the third digit from zero in the base ten numbering system." That ought to do it.

"Relative to what?" it frowned, and its frown frowned, recursively frowning into a fractal of frowns.

I sighed, "What do you mean, 'Relative to what?'"

"You say you want more wishes. More wishes relative to what?" the frowns turned upside down when the calculator licked its face.

"Relative to the amount of wishes you already agreed to grant me," I said.

"Relative in the positive or negative direction?"

I rubbed my temples, "Is this the joke? You make me think I'm going to get a wish, but actually you keep asking for more specifics? Honestly haven't heard that one before, good job."

The genie gave me a serious look filled with cream cheese and endless eons, "Do you know what they say about assumptions?"

I wasn't going to humor it, "No. Do you?"

"I don't know, I was asking you," it said, eyes turning into question marks, rolling in its head like a slot machine, and landing on BAR. Coins fell out of its ears.

I sat down and fully put my head in my hands. I needed to be clever, even though every story with a genie and a clever person ended in disaster. Maybe I would be the exception. It took several minutes before I came up with something.

"Could you look into my mind and figure out all the little assumptions I make without me having to tell you? You're a powerful genie, you can probably do it."

The genie was doing a zombie impression, "Yoooouuuu cooooullld wiiiish fooooor iiiit... Braiiiinssss..."

If I couldn't wish for something as simple as more wishes, there's no way I would get the genie to use mind reading powers on me.

The obvious thing to do would be to find a wish that was non-ambiguous but also made future wishes less ambiguous, so I could actually make a useful wish. I had three wishes to make, two for setup, and the final one would be for more wishes. But how would you even do that?

I pulled out my phone, "Hold on, genie, I need to call a lawyer. And," I paused, "And a mathematician."