Jon looked at all the group. Some looked like him but they were outnumbered by those who had clearly been transformed. There were so many versions of him from several different possible futures that he wasn't sure where to begin.
"Okay, why have you brought us here?" said one of the women, who was dressed in a business outfit. Maybe this woman was a CEO or something.
"I brought you all here because I wanted to get advice from my future self, who has experience with using the stone." Jon said. "The stone clearly brought as many possible future versions of me as it could before it overheated and burned the carpet. So here you all are. I need to talk to you all and hear your stories."
He paused. "I think I'll start with Karyn."
The three Karyns looked at him. One of the Karyns looked like the pre-wish Karyn, with short red hair and somewhat more manageable breasts, dressed in her favorite green jumper and scruffy old slacks. The other two looked like the post-wish Karyn; blonde hair and big breasts.
"You do know none of us are Karyn, right?" said one of the blonde Karyns. "We're you from the future."
"Yeah, I know. But I'd like to know what happened. How'd you get this way? What wishes did you make?"
"I think I'll start." said the red-haired Karyn. "This is kind of embarrassing. I was holding the stone while talking with the real Karyn about how we had to be more careful with it. We got a little tense, and I forgot I was holding the stone when I said 'We have to be careful what we say. What if I said I wish I were Karyn?'.
"Next thing I knew, I'd turned into Karyn. Since my mental image of Karyn was still as how she looked before she made that wish to give herself blonde hair and big breasts, that's how it came out. But it didn't just make my body a match for Karyn's. I got Karyn's memories too - all of them. This was especially awkward because the real Karyn was still there, standing next to me. We had to work together to resolve it somehow. In the end, we worked out a few wishes that put me back with my family. In the reality I'm from, I'm now Karyn Gibson and the other Karyn is Karyn Black. As far as everyone else knows, we're two girls with the same first name that happen to be best friends."
Jon tried to take in the story. "That ... sounds confusing."
"Believe me, I'm still getting used to it." Karyn Gibson replied. "But you wanted advice, so I'm giving it. Stop saying the phrase 'I wish' out loud unless you really intend to make a wish. Even if you KNOW you're not holding the stone, don't say 'I wish'. Wishes can't be directly reversed but they can be re-interpreted. That's why I'm still a Karyn even though Zoe's my sister and Mikey's my younger brother and so on."
Jon turned to one of the other Karyns. "And what about you?"
"Our minds swapped bodies. Long story." the second Karyn said. "It all started when I got bored and wished for something interesting to happen ... while holding the stone. Big mistake. Anything could have happened. We could have been invaded by aliens. Some crazy scientist could have tried to put weird chemicals in the water supply. Strange workmen could have taken away and reassigned our family. The cliques at school could have gotten super-powers and gone to war with each other. Anything."
Jon noticed a few odd looks from a few of the other 'future Jons' as the second Karyn said this.
"What happened was some strange body-swapping illness struck the whole town, and everyone randomly swapped bodies. Sarah was in Biff's body, Tiffany Sanders in Steve "The Stud" Farber's body, Jay Duncan switched bodies with Amber Levine, Nadine Ferguson with Zoe's friend Athena DeVries, Coach Jefferson with emo kid Derek Lettman, and I found myself in Zoe's body. Karyn found herself in Mikey's body, and right away got creeped out that Mikey was in her body. I accidentally wished that I was in her body instead, so Mikey ended up in Zoe's body."
"There were lots of body-swaps to keep track of. I wished some people back to their normal bodies, but the strange body-swapping illness was still around. It came in the form of some weird fog, and that fog went beyond the town and to the rest of the world, meaning I couldn't just wish the body-swapping plague away because it wasn't just contained in the stone's range limit. But because I specifically wished to be in Karyn's body, I couldn't get the stone to wish Karyn and I back into our old bodies. We've been stuck since then, and then your wish brought me here."
Jon gasped. "And all because you ... I wished for something interesting to happen? I unleashed a body-swapping plague on the world?"
"Yes." said the second Karyn. "But maybe if I talk to all these other ... mes, I guess ... we can work something out for when I return to my reality that will put things right without contradicting other wishes."
"And what about you?" Jon asked the third Karyn.
The third Karyn paused. "I was talking with Karyn about her problems with her new hair and breasts, and said 'I wish I knew what it was like'. Next thing I knew, I'd turned into her identical twin."
"And that's it?" Jon asked.
"No, I've made plenty of wishes since then, but that's how I turned into a Karyn." said the third Karyn. She was about to say more, when there was a noise at the door to Jon's room.
The dozens of possible future selves of Jon turned to the door. They and the Jon from this time and reality came to the same conclusion.
The noise from Jon's room, caused by this bizarre gathering of Jon's other selves from various alternate futures, had attracted attention. Zoe, Mikey, or Jon's mother, or someone had heard them and was now knocking on the door
