"Samantha ... Jon ..." Richard McMillan let a bit of his contempt slip through into his tone of voice. Not that his feelings for Jon Jennings were any surprise to MTI's top engineer. "Come in. Sit down."
Jon and his supervisor took chairs in front of the CEO's desk.
"I have a surprise for you," said Richard.
This whole morning has been nothing but surprises, thought Jon. There's no way I can guess what this could possibly be. Me getting fired? From a job I just started what, five minutes ago?
"As you know, we've never been able to get Reality Branches off the ground because we've been using low quality stones that had, um ... side effects."
Samantha blushed. She'd never get used to the innumerable freckles that she got after an accident with an RB prototype. At least her son Jay thought he had been born with them. The rewriting of reality was almost seamless.
"The most we could do was peer into another 'branch' of reality for a few seconds." The faces of Sarah and Fred flashed through Richard's head. "Not long enough to do anything useful."
Like what? Jon wondered. Now I know where Sarah gets her personality from. But at least she's sane. This guy's lost it. What's he talking about? He's supposed to be running a computer company. 'Reality Branches'? Stones? He couldn't mean ... no ...
"But then last night we finally got the stone we needed." Richard held it up.
Jon's eyes opened wide. "Oh my God ..."
A smile twisted Richard's face. This will make me God, he thought.
