Jon would occasionally use the second chair in front of his computer when Karyn came to visit, but now putting the two chairs side by side made a fairly serviceable place for the two to snuggle up together while surfing the web, both hands on the same mouse and therefore on each other's hand too.
"How about this?" said Jon. He typed in "Clone" in the search engine.
"I don't think we're going to find much," said Jonnie.
"Me neither," said Jon. "But you never know. Maybe someone came up with something."
"If we did," said Jonnie, "we'd have heard it on the news. Cloning would be big news. Especially cloning like the kind we did." Jon knew that it been him who did it--she hadn't been created yet--but she did have his mind and nearly his body and it pretty much gave her the right to say "we".
"Maybe there's something that happened because of the wish," said Jon. "Wishes do change reality... no, wait. It wouldn't work."
"Right," said Jonnie. "The range limit. The stone can only change things so far. It probably won't be some place that has a web site about cloning, if Grandpa's even supposed to have gotten the machine from anywhere. He could have just built it in his backyard with the stone or something."
The results, of course, didn't show much. There certainly wasn't any secret cloning lab with a web site. They tried again with various search engine terms.
"Here," said Jonnie, pointing to one entry in the middle of the screen. "This sounds good..."
"Wait, that's just..." And they both said "X-23", since of course both of them recognized it, but that was the wrong kind of cloning--the non-sci-fi kind where the clone isn't the same age and doesn't have the same memories. Jon looked down the list and clicked to the next page. There were a couple items about clones of opposite sexes. One was a Danny Phantom episode. Another was a web comic which was closer, but not close enough--the female copy had the guy's memories, but they were living as siblings and they didn't have sex with each other.
But searches led to searches.
"Maybe you can use this," said Jon. "Sounds like Zoe might have read this story."
Jonnie was already reading off the words. "A boy becomes a girly girl caused by a scientific accident. Here is the story of the new girl's shopping trip with her best female friend. Sheesh. They're expecting someone who wakes up female to start buying skirts."
"Maybe whoever wrote it has a fantasy about wearing skirts," guessed Jon. "And they figured that since they do, everyone in the whole world would. But why don't you try it anyway, just once? It'd look great on you."
"I don't want to try it, you try it."
"I don't want to try it. Let's... No, let's not. He'd hate it."
Jonnie laughed.
"Seriously," said Jon, "you could..."
"I'm you!" said Jonnie. "I'm not going to do it unless one of us wishes for that."
"But I want to see you in a short skirt," said Jon. "And it would be less embarrassing than me doing it, that's for sure. Nobody would even look twice."
"Maybe someday we can," said Jonnie. "It's a little confusing."
"What do you mean?"
"I know you think a short skirt on me is sexy... I know I think one on me is sexy, in a mirror. But it's not the kind of thing I'd want to wear as clothes like I'd wear a pair of pants. Me with a skirt is like you going nude. You might want me to see you that way sometimes... but you wouldn't just walk around like that everywhere. And even then, there are times when it's normal to be nude, but not when it's normal to wear a skirt. At least not if it's us wearing the skirt."
"Then we can skip the skirt and go straight to the nude, Jonnie?"
"Sure, but nobody will know if we're surfing the web naked. Look, here's another story. It sounds a little similar. It says the girl becomes a cheerleader."
"It seems to go along with being a girl," said Jon. "I wonder what happens if they became a girl in a country where they've never heard of cheerleaders. Would they start wanting to dance with batons in front of football players without even knowing what football players or batons are? I don't think we'll get much from that." Jon clicked for the next page and saw another story buried in the results.
"Wow, another wardrobe and makeover story. Those malls must be doing a lot of business. Maybe this story can be useful."
Jon read a piece of it. "This is one where a guy becomes a girl and gets pregnant without knowing it because he doesn't know what it means to miss his periods. I don't get it. Most guys will have at least have heard that pregnancy has something to do with no periods."
"Yeah. I'm wondering when mine is. I've only existed for five hours and it can take its time, but if I don't have any for months, I'd figure out I was pregnant--it's common sense. And why do people in stories like this never know what an abortion is? Say... here's another period story."
Jon read the first paragraph and scrolled down. "This guy's an idiot. He becomes a girl and he doesn't even know what a period is when he's having one."
"Let's try another," said Jonnie. She went to a page of stories that had come up in the search. "Hmm, this one sounds like the cheerleader one but the guy's becoming a porn star instead. Here's a Hooter's waitress, and a maid. Do you know anyone with a maid?"
"No..." said Jon. "Wait a minute, you know what I know, you could have told me that."
"I know. Maybe Sarah McMillan has a maid."
"Not every bitch is a rich bitch, and there's a big difference between 'a little rich' and 'has a maid'. Let's try something else."
"Okay," replied Jon. "How about these breast size and penis size stories?" He smirked.
"No! It's just a 'more is better' thing. People assume that if some is good, an infinite amount is better. I don't want double-D breasts and you don't want a 12 inch penis. Nobody really wants either of those except as part of a werid fetish, and nobody wants to live with them." Jonnie yawned and looked over at the bed.
Noticing the yawn, Jon yawned too. Yawning is contagious sometimes, and he and she were equally tired anyway. "Maybe we ought to go to bed," he said, looking at the bed. "This is weird... we're going to be using the same bed, right? It was big enough before, but it's not going to be big enough for sleeping in."
Jonnie smiled and said "That's no problem." She picked up the stone and made a wish. "I wish that this bed is bigger, because Mom and Dad were expecting Jon to use the cloning machine and put a bigger bed in. I wish they don't mind us sleeping in the same bed because they think of us as versions of the same person."
They went to the bathroom and brushed their teeth. There was, of course, still only one toothbrush, which they shared. It wasn't as if either of them had any unique germs. They did try experimentally brushing each other's teeth, but id didn't work well. In their room, they stripped to their underwear. Jonnie set the alarm clock and put the stone next to it, then turned off the light.
The bed was still against the wall and Jon got in first. "It's our first night together," he said, as Jonnie got in. He kissed her and added "Tomorrow's your first day at school. You know everyone, but everyone doesn't know you. Don't forget I'll be there with the rock to help you out... Good luck, and good night."
"Good night, sweetie."
