Jon quickly dismissed the thought that he should ask Leonard for a change. Who knows what could happen to his relationship with Karyn?
"So, what, are we just going to sit here and do nothing for the next seventeen and a half minutes until Karyn arrives?" Leonard asked.
No one in the basement had to answer, because the door at the top of the stairs opened, and a voice yelled down, "Leonard, would you and your friends like a snack? I just made lemon bars."
"Sure, Mom!" Leonard yelled back. "Be right up!"
The only problem with the lemon bars was Mrs. Drullers grilling Jon as the group sat around the kitchen table. "Why haven't I seen you in this house in so long?" she asked. "How is your mother? How about your father? They always seem so busy, too busy to talk to me. What about your little siblings, Xenu and Mitchell?"
Sarah inhaled some powdered sugar and had to cough as Jon said, "Zoe and Mikey. They're not so little anymore, either."
The questioning continued until, mercifully, Karyn showed up and had to bear the brunt of the interrogation for a few minutes until Leonard could finish the last few lemon bars and announce, "Mom, we need to go back downstairs for an experiment. Science awaits!"
Karyn and Jon went down the stairs behind the other two, allowing Karyn to take the stone out of her purse and hand it to a relieved Jon, who quickly shoved it into a pocket of his jeans.
"Jon and Sarah have already seen it, but this is my invention, the Reality Altering Machine," Leonard announced to Karyn, throwing his arms wide to indicate the electronic equipment. "I have already demonstrated to myself and to Sarah that widespread changes are possible, at least over a 5-kilometer radius. I have used it to alter scientific knowledge, and to change the human genome itself, several times!"
"Um, what?" was Karyn's response.
Jon murmured, "Just go with it. He says he's the reason men have horns and women have tails, and why fusion power exists."
"Don't forget women's hairless bodies!" Leonard pointed out as Sarah nodded. "Now, I will admit that I was a little surprised when Jon made a pedestrian request of me as the next demonstration of the RAM, but I think it will actually make an excellent test, if you agree with it, Karyn."
"Oh? What did he ask for?" wondered Karyn.
"I wanted to try using the RAM to give you short red hair and smaller breasts," said Jon.
"Really?!" exclaimed Karyn, a bit too enthusiastically. She then managed to compose herself. "Well, I guess that is something we'd talked about, so, yeah, let's have Leonard do it."
"Perfect," said Leonard. He opened up an ancient-looking laptop that was semi-permanently wired in to the RAM. White text scrolled up on a black background. "All right, so when you say short red hair and smaller breasts, were you thinking --"
"A-cups, and kind of a pixie cut," Karyn immediately replied.
"Okay, a girl who knows what she wants." Leonard tapped at the keyboard briefly and then said, "I gotta activate the RAM. Hold onto your socks." He leaned over and threw a large knife switch attached to the unit.
Within seconds, the other three were holding onto their ears, as the whirring and sparking of the machine rose to an uncomfortable volume, especially for people who'd grown up in a world run by fusion-powered silent engines.
"You've gotta work on making this thing quieter!" Sarah told Leonard over the crackling hum.
"Sure, sure!" Leonard said as he nodded in agreement, typing something else into the laptop. "I think you'll be happier with more of a B-cup and a bob down to here," he said, looking straight at Karyn and holding a hand at about chin level.
"I didn't hear a word you just said to me!" Karyn complained.
"Do we have to stand right in front of the machine?" Jon asked.
"Huh? No," said Leonard, shaking his head and waving his hand. The three of them moved further away, toward the farthest corner of the basement, next to a stack of boxes marked "XMAS DECORATIONS," and found the volume seemed only a couple of decibels lower, which was better than nothing.
The pitch of the hum got lower, and the rate of the throbbing got faster, making it sound to Jon like something was happening. It occurred to him at that moment that maybe he should have stood where he could actually see what Leonard had typed into the computer. Maybe he wasn't going to do what Jon had asked after all. Or maybe the RAM didn't really work in the first place, and Leonard was completely off his rocker --
There was a "ka-chunk," and then the noise faded away, and Leonard announced, "It's done!"
Only then did Jon realize that he'd had his back to Karyn, when he should have been looking at her during the test. He turned to see her, just as Leonard also stepped over to check out what had happened...
