Several years before the Great Change, Aziz, a fan of Disney movies, had watched Aladdin on DVD. And yeah, it was nicely animated and well-voice acted (Aziz already knew enough English to get that). And yet the whole take on Arab culture was so smugly ignorant, so American, that he had never watched it again and pretty much suppressed any memory of it.
And here, separated from Aziz by a gender and a universe, Aziza was watching a stripper dressed in a Princess Jasmine outfit. The stripper was not displaying any joy in exhibiting her body or even professional pride, but a grim and joyless compulsion. God, Kylie, Aziza thought not for the first time since entering this universe, what a truly fucked-up person you were.
"Half an hour in a private room with Jasmine for me and my girlfriend?" Tom asked the manager.
"One hundred fifty" said the manager, a bit surprised as Jasmine wasn't one of the more popular girls.
Tom paid it.
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Jasmine didn't look very enthusiastic. She hadn't looked very enthusiastic since the Party, which was only a dim memory. "Look into my eyes" said Aziza kindly.
These were always the hardest cases, Aziza thought. There was barely an original personality left to restore. "Jasmine" had originally been an artificial construct, but she was (mostly) the only current inhabitant of this body and had a right to existence. At any rate, the curse that had compelled her to be a stripper could come off to start with.
Jasmine's eyes opened as the compulsion, something that Kylie had implanted in her but which she had internalized to the point of thinking it was part of her personality, vanished. Her emotions freed, she began to cry.
"I am a princess, a princess" she muttered.
"Do you remember being Bill Davis?" asked Tom.
Jasmine hesitated. The name sounded familiar, but she couldn't place it. "I'm Jasmine, princess Jasmine."
"I'm sorry, Tom" said Aziza "but I think your friend is gone. Kylie essentially destroyed his personality to make room for Jasmine. He's not even there as a watcher."
Tom shook his head. "I hoped he was there, but if you say he isn't. . ."
"Who are you people?" asked Jasmine.
"We're here to help you. Do you still want to be a stripper?"
"No! I am a princess! This isn't where I'm supposed to be!"
This is a toughie, Aziza thought. Jasmine essentially had the mentality of a cartoon character in a non-cartoon universe.