"What are you looking at me for?" asked Jack. The others stared at him skeptically and he admitted, "Oh, okay. I have several ideas. First of all, I wish we had a list of all the wishes made since Mike stole the stone from Jon... without changing reality."
"Without changing reality?" asked Gary.
"Yes," replied the older man. "If you wish for something, the stone changes reality. I'm sure you can think of a couple of ways in which reality would change to explain why we have a list of all the wishes. I'm also sure you can figure out why some of them are not so good. Now..." he said, putting the list on the table. "The first few wishes are on Fred Orr. We'll have to fix them at some point, but they're not the main concern.
"There's a wish about girly chores. Personally I doubt that there is any such thing, especially since they were a boy's anyway. The first big one is trading ages. Jon's already older than Mike, so that one doesn't matter. Then there's the one about being a little girl. You reversed the "little" part yourself by waiting five years and now that it's already reversed, you can change your age whenever you want."
"Wait a minute," said Jo. "I can guess what's coming. You don't know how to reverse the 'girl' part."
"I didn't say that," replied Jack. "But it's something we'll have to think about. Next are a whole bunch of wishes on you, most of which are one-time or expired anyway--wishing you into the Girl Scouts doesn't mean you stay in the Girl Scouts for the next 100 years. Next is Damonte. You know as far as I can tell he's not that bad a person. But he didn't really meet or marry Linda. And he's not really Jon's father. We have to disentangle him from all of this. Let's see, there's the sci-fi option...."
"The sci-fi option?" wondered Gary.
"Yup. When there are only a few ways something can happen in the real world, there are usually a lot of ways it could happen in sci-fi. I could wish that Damonte doesn't exist and you are a shapechanger, making you Damonte. I could wish that you and Damonte used a mind-transfer machine and Jon was conceived by him in your body. I really don't like sci-fi solutions because of the side effects. Hmm. How about this. Damonte is legally Jon's father because they were married back then, but biologically Jon is Gary's child."
"You wish for that and you lose any chance of completely getting rid of the marriage," said Gary.
"Yes, that's why I didn't just wish it right now," said Jack. "We need to be careful. Now, there's another problem with Jon--his age. When Gary became 27, Mike couldn't be 21. Well, Jon can't be 21 either."
"What about Zoe?" asked Gary. "She can't be 18 any more than Mikey and Jon can be 21. She may be outside the wish range, but she remembers Jon as a young girl..."
In the end they decided on a set of fixes:
Linda's pregnancy would vanish. The reason: the child, if born, would be the child of Linda and Damonte. Changing history didn't make the child really Gary's, for the same reason that changing history didn't make Jon really Damonte's child.
The "legal father" dodge would have to do to fix Jon. They were worried that that would make it impossible to erase the marriage to Damonte, but it turned out that Mike directly wished for the marriage, so it couldn't be completely erased anyway.
Linda's age would be bumped down to 29 to make things a little less awkward, and to give Gary a chance at another child like he wanted. She was married to Damonte for about two years. Jon would be 7, but Jon would immediately be re-aged without changing reality. They decided on 18 as Jon's new age, so he could start college. Zoe would also be 7 according to the records, but she was outside the wish range. The memories of Zoe and Linda would be fixed so they know the truth and so Linda doesn't wonder why her 7 year old twins suddenly turned 18.
A couple of teleports would be used to change details outside the wish range. It wouldn't do to have Gary be a new lawyer here and an old one in California at the same time, nor for Jon to be deported as an illegal immigrant since there are no records of him.
Jack made the wishes. He silently faded away for a few minutes for all the wishes that required teleports, and then reappeared just as silently.
Jon was a young adult now, old enough to vote. Her skin was that shade of pink called "white", like that of her dad's. She had her familiar hair and face, more or less. But she still had those features in feminine versions. She had C-cup breasts and her name hadn't even been changed back from Jo. She was happier and less upset, but she wondered. "So this is really it? I'm a girl forever? I hoped that you'd find some way to..."
"No," said Jack. "You're not a girl forever. If nothing else, there are always the sci-fi solutions. If I have to wish that you're a girl because you're a shapechanger, or because you had a transporter accident but you can be changed back using your old pattern, I will. But let's try to come up with something better, okay?"
At this point, there was a loud thump sound coming from outside. Jo ran towards the back of the house. The windows were boarded up, but there was a sliver of light where two boards hadn't quite overlapped. Jo looked through it and recognized the girl outside, who was on the ground with mud on her pants. It looked like she had tried to sit on an old tire swing that had collapsed. "It's Sharon! But she's really Karyn."
Jack and Gary followed Jo. "She's in the wish list," said Jack. "Mike swapped Karyn and Sharon."
"I suspected as much," said Jo. "Let's go let her in and talk to her. And we can fix the swap once she's here to hear us do it."
"Wait," said Jack. "How does the memory work?"
"What do you mean 'how does the memory work'?" asked Jo. "If you hear the wish, you remember things before the wish. If you don't hear the wish, you don't."
"Exactly," said Jack. "She should remember the swap and know that she is Karyn, because the wish was made in front of her. But... the wish that made Mike 5 years old wasn't made in front of her. Does she remember that Mike swapped her 5 years ago, but she thinks he was a newborn when he did it? Or does she remember that a 16 year old Mike swapped her, but she thinks he turned into a newborn the next day? Or maybe she remembers the swap, but blames someone other than Mike. Maybe she thinks the real Sharon did it. For that matter, maybe Sharon thinks Sharon did it."
"I don't know," said Jo.
"Does she even remember you? As far as everyone here is concerned, you're 7. You'd have no reason to know either Karyn or Sharon."
"She remembered the amusement park we went to," said Jo. "No, wait. She remembered the park, but now that I think of it she never said I was there with her. Okay, I see your point. Can we let her in?"
"Sure," said Jack. "I wish I know who's outside this house. Okay, she wasn't followed." He stepped to the door and opened it.
