Jon didn't immediately yell out. Instead he said "Wait a minute. Karyn, open your eyes."
Karyn looked around, but nothing seemed to have changed.
"I didn't change anything," said Jon. "I just realized we did that wrong. The owner of the unwishing stone can't be made to forget how things were. So you'd always know that the new object wasn't there before. We need to change the rules of the game."
"I didn't think of that! I guess you're right."
Jon explained, "One person has to take both the stones into the other room, transform themselves into an object for 30 minutes, and send both stones back. That way the person who's searching won't be the unwishing stone's owner at the time of the transformation. I wish that when we're transforming ourselves as part of the 'it' game, both stones will automatically go back to the other person. Now we can start."
Karyn handed the unwishing stone to Jon and closed her eyes again. She heard Jon yell out, "I'm in the living room!" And then Karyn counted to twenty. She opened her eyes and walked into the living room.
Reaching into her pocket, she noticed that she did indeed have both stones again. She put the wishing stone back, held the unwishing stone, and looked around.
Karyn glanced around at the television set, the rug, the sofa, the three pillows on it. Wait a minute, why would a sofa have three pillows on it?
She thought about unwishing the left pillow. It didn't work. She tried it on the other two, and it didn't work either. The pillows must have been real--and she must have been too suspicious of even ordinary things because of the wish game.
Then Karyn realized that a one dollar bill was lying on the floor under the TV. She knew that that wasn't there before and willed the unwishing stone to unwish the stone back into Jon. Again, nothing happened. And Karyn mentally kicked herself. She realized that it couldn't possibly be Jon--the wish was for her to remember the object as always being there. She didn't remember the dollar--so the dollar wasn't it. Jon must have deliberately put that dollar there just to trick her!
She resorted to picking random things from around the room. A stray candy wrapper. An ashtray. Her diary, which she had left lying around. Karyn picked up the diary, leafed through it. She could remember everything she had written there, down to her reaction to Jon when she learned about the wishing stone....
Karyn willed that the unwishing stone reverse Jon's transformation into the diary. Instantly the diary disappeared to be replaced by Jon, and Karyn's mind cleared--she no longer remembered writing anything in it. She was never the diary writing type anyway.
"Congratulations!" said Jon. "Did you figure it out or was that just a lucky guess?"
"I figured it out. If you change yourself into an object, reality shifts so you never existed. The only exception is our memories, because we wished it that way. So if I had a diary, my diary would shift to fit the new reality and it shouldn't mention you at all. But it did! So I knew it was fake!"
"Oh, very clever."
"Now I'm 'IT'," said Karyn. "You wait here."
Jon waited, while Karyn went off. She yelled "I'm in the kitchen," and Jon began to count to twenty. Twenty seconds later, he realized that the stones were in his pocket again. Holding the unwishing stone in his hand, he walked into Karyn's kitchen and looked around. He didn't live here, so he wouldn't have fake memories of something having always being here. Which might make things a little easier, but not a lot. Which object could Karyn possibly be? And could he figure it out in 30 minutes?
