Early the next morning, Karyn stopped by Jon's house.
"Hi, Karyn," said Jon's mom, as she let Karyn in. "Jon's in his room."
"Okay, thanks."
She went to Jon's bedroom door and knocked.
"Who is it?"
"It's me. Karyn."
The door opened and Karyn walked in.
"Are you going to tell me why you called me over here?"
"Because of the stone."
"Well, I had a feeling it was about that. But, why didn't you just take it to school with you, like yesterday?"
"Because I wanted to try something out before I went to school. And I wanted you here with me when I did it."
"Okay." What was Jon going to do? Karyn was interested even more now. "So, what are you going to wish for?"
"Well, it's not like that. It's sort of an experiment and a game all in one."
"What are you talking about?"
Jon scooped up two dice in the palm of his hand. "See these things?"
"Yeah?"
"All last night, I thought of different characteristics that people could have and I wrote them all down on these dice." He gestured at other dice sitting on the floor. "There will be a time limit. Say a day. And I'll make everyone in town whatever I roll. It's a gamble, so you never know what you'll get. You can even mix them, to make things more interesting. Or weird."
"Why do it at all?"
"Because I can. Besides, we'll have tons of time to use the stone later."
"Good enough for me."
"Okay, now for the wish." He picked up the stone and said "I wish that for one day everyone in town would become the characteristic of the die or dice rolled and I wish that the ones rolling and the ones near the ones rolling will remember how things were before the rolling of the die or dice."
"You thought that out a lot, didn't you?"
"I wanted to make sure it was specific. So, which one do you want?"
"How about that one?" she asked, pointing to one of the dice.
Jon held the die between his fingers. It was the one that had to do with ...
