The die stopped on the 1--which meant 5 years old. Jon and Karyn suddenly shrank down. Karyn even lost her breasts.
They looked around themselves and everything was different! They were no longer inside a house, but in some kind of vinyl or plastic tent, the floor covered with padding. Some distance away was a child, also age 5, who looked like Jon's mother--at least her clothes and hair followed a similar pattern.
They walked over to her and Jon asked "Who are you?"
"I'm Linda... why did they take us here? I wanna go home!" She began sobbing.
"What happened?" asked Jon.
"The grownups came! And they put us on cars and they took us here! I'm hungry! I want my mommy!"
"She's really acting like a kid," said Jon. "Only you and I kept our own minds. But I don't understand why everything else changed, too."
"Silly," said Karyn. "You wished that everyone would remember things always being this way. So just like the wishes themselves, any change you make with the dice changes reality. It was always a town of 5 year olds. So there has to be some reason there's a town of 5 year olds."
The tent door was not just shut, it was closed with a lock. But it was a simple matter for Jon--"I wish that I could magically open any lock I want." Jon and Karyn walked out and looked around. The ground was mostly dirt, sand, and grass. It was covered with plastic tents as far as they could see. They peeked into another tent and saw five children in there, all aged 5. They were dirty and scared, just like Jon's mother had been.
Finally, Jon and Karyn found something other than a tent full of children. It was a truck, but nobody was driving it. Jon touched the door and willed the lock to open, and they scrambled inside. On the seat was a folder labelled "Project 32901 Emergency Evacuation Plans."
They read through it. Supposedly, there was a release of a biological agent in a nearby city. It was targetted to affect five year olds, and all the five year olds were evacuated to temporary shelters before it could spread to the city. They'd have to be brought here by adults, of course, but by pure coincidence (ha!) all the adults had had to go back to get food and other supplies.
"How could they do that?" asked Jon. "Leave 20000 5 year olds completely alone?"
"They didn't!" said Karyn. "The stone just created this situation. There aren't really any adults outside the city waiting to come back--that's outside the range of the stone."
Karyn and Jon left the truck and kept walking around. Finally they approached a small stream, with some trees growing nearby. "That's where Sarah McMillan is," said Jon. "Or at least where she lived, if I guess right. She lives right near the stream, so I bet she's in that tent now." They unlocked it and peeked inside to see four more children, sobbing at being hungry and far away from home. One was Sarah and one was her mother, but they had no way of guessing who.
"We know where there's food," said Karyn.
"You do? Really!"
"Just tell us who here is Sarah," said Karyn.
The blonde girl wearing pink and with longer hair said "I'm Sarah! And you stink, Karyn!"
Well, it was nice to know that some things never changed.
Jon made a quick wish for some peanut butter and jelly and milk outside the tent, and then brought the food inside. He couldn't just let them be like this, after all.
Jon locked the door and they continued to walk. At least the weather was nice, but they got tired easily. They met a lot more children, almost all upset.
"I can't take it any more," said Jon. "Everyone like this..."
"It was your wish," said Karyn. "Maybe it wasn't such a good idea... look! Who's that?"
Karyn pointed far away, where a girl dressed in black--a teenager--was approaching.
"I think it's Zoe."
"But why isn't she a kid?"
They waited while Zoe approached.
"Jon? Karyn?" said Zoe. "You're wearing Jon's jacket, only it shrunk. It's you, I know it's you."
"That's me..." said Jon. He decided to pretend that he thought he was five, at least for now.
"The whole town is under some kind of spell," said Zoe.
"Spell?" said Jon.
"You wouldn't understand me anyway, but I'm into the occult. I know some real magic. I have enough spells on myself that something like this would never affect me."
"There's no such thing as magic!" said Jon. Then he added a "Mommy says." to the end.
But he knew that that was wrong. His stone was the biggest magic item of them all. And if the stone was real, there was no reason why Zoe's 'magic', which she had practiced for years and which everyone thought was just teenage playing, couldn't be real too.
"Come along with me, Jon, Karyn," said Zoe.
They didn't have much choice. But now that they were coming with Zoe, they had to act like 5 year olds and never slip up. And what if Zoe found out about Jon's stone?
