Nothing. I had wished to know what was going on, but the stone did absolutely nothing. No flash, no sudden urge to look away. Could something be wrong with it?
"Ok...let's see. I wish that I knew why my wish to know what the hell was going on didn't work." Whew. That's a mouthful. I thought.
I felt a sudden piercing headache, and then was startled to hear a voice in my head. It was deep, with an oddly gravelly quality, and sounded as though it was coming from far off.
"Your wish failed because it would counter-act the effects of a previous wish" The voice said. It seemed to increase and decrease in volume randomly, almost as if it were encountering some sort of interference. As soon as it stopped, my head returned to normal.
"A previous wish? I sure as hell didn't wish for anything that would do that. And the only person who had the stone before me was grandpa..." But I wondered. Did I really know that no one had had the stone before him? And what exactly was this voice?
"I wish I knew what this voice is."
Silence.
"Alright, I wish I knew why that wish didn't work." I said, frustrated.
"Your wish failed because it would counter-act the effects of a previous wish." The voice again, and just as before, hearing it gave me a massive headache.
"I wish I knew if someone had this stone before grandpa."
Silence.
"Let me guess? Previous wish."
The voice didn't deign to respond.
I had a very bad feeling about this. Something was very, very, wrong here. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to think about it. Karyn was expecting me. Maybe seeing her in person would shed some light on her predicament.
The whole situation was incredibly frustrating. Normally I would have been able to tell Karyn about the mysterious voice in my head and the Earth's altered history, but now I wasn't sure if I could trust her with something that....complicated. I didn't even know if this new version of her new about the stone.
Well, I was already another five minutes late, and standing around here agonizing about it wasn't making things resolve themselves more quickly, so I jammed the stone into my pocket, walked out the front door and braced myself for what I might find at Karyn's.
