Karyn and Jon continued to watch the house from behind the tree. The front door opened and Zoe walked out followed by ARD Jon. As they both walked down the drive ARD Jon attached the ARD to his wrist. Zoe waved over DTH Jon and Karyn.
Cautiously they walked over to ARD Jon and Zoe.
"Why did the cops leave?" asked DTH Jon
Zoe spoke first. "I made a wish with the stone, no point in hiding it now, was there. I also made a wish so that my family would forget about him after he left." Zoe told him pointing to ARD Jon.
ARD Jon said "I'm glad that's over. I tried to get back but the ARD stopped working and then the cops took it off me."
DTH Jon explained. "It didn't work because it got messed up when you departed. My DTH interfered with it's correct operation, no intended destination was specified and it sent you off to a random non-sequitur timeline. From your device's frame of reference there was no return location and hence it couldn't operate."
ARD Jon had a bemused look on his face, "Yeah... I guessed it was something like that."
Zoe spoke again.
"Okay you can all leave now. My life is complicated enough with a magic wishing stone. I don't need randoms from other universes suddenly appearing and making things worse."
"She has a point," Karyn told DTH Jon, "let's go."
"It's not that simple unfortunately." DTH Jon told her.
"No, it wouldn't be, care to explain."
"Certainly, since Jon here left his universe the timeline has diverged several times. If we take him back to where we left, it only populates that one timeline. He is still missing in the others."
"Easy, we take him back further in time and he'll exist when the timeline diverges."
"Nope that won't work."
Karyn frowned. "Grrr... I thought I was getting the hang of this."
DTH Jon put his hand on her shoulder to comfort his friend.
"It's all right Karyn, I'm glad to see you making an effort. All that would do is make a new timeline at that point. In any case that would take us too close to the time the ARD was activated and might mess the timeline up even further."
"So what do we do?"
"We need to get the other timelines to converge here and then split off again."
"Sounds complicated."
"Every version of us have to hold on to him and then synchronise our DTHs so that we all hop at the exact same moment back to our own timelines"
"Won't that like tear him apart?"
"Hey!" ARD Jon interrupted, "I can't honestly say I understand any of this but nobody is ripping me apart."
"It won't rip you apart. It's perfectly safe. An identical version of you will travel with each DTH.. ...theoretically at least." DTH Jon told him.
"You're not helping me feel better."
Zoe didn't look happy about the prospect. "So a lot more copies of you are going to be arriving?" she asked DTH Jon.
"Err... Yes"
"Great." she said her sarcasm barely contained.
"Hold on!" Karyn said as a thought just occurred to her.
"Yes?" DTH Jon asked.
"How do we get those different versions of us here?"
"I have a plan." DTH Jon told her as he removed the cover from the back of the DTH.
