As Jon disappeared, he sneezed. There was a lot of pollen in the air and though his allergies weren't too bad, they were bad enough at this time of year--right after Spring Break.
Jon's mother materialized and was about to say "Bye, Jon," and walk to the drugstore when she was shocked to see that Jon had been transformed into an oak tree the height of a man. It was as if his body had been turned to wood--it was still roughly the shape of a human, but where his hands and head were were branches ending with leaves and even a few acorns. His clothes fit poorly and a few tiny branches were poking holes in them. Where his feet were were a tangle of roots.
Jon's mother yelled. She knew how transporters worked. There must have been something wrong with the DNA filter--the transporter had picked up the DNA from the pollen in the air and used it to turn Jon into a tree. She never did understand all the complicated scientific explanation of how changing DNA could actually change someeone's physical form, rather than just producing a sick human with bad DNA, but then she wasn't a scientist or a transporter repairperson.
Of course she knew the cure. Find someone to fix the transporter. First, they needed to install a filter so small amounts of DNA like in pollen wouldn't have an effect. Second, they needed to reprogram the transporter to intentionally transform the passenger, and send Jon through a second time to turn him to normal.
"What?" said Karyn. "A transporter accident?" (Karyn thought transporters were normal because of the wish.) "Oh no. I have to get the stone..."
That day after school Karyn went to Jon's house.
"I need to get something from Jon's room! I, uh, left a homework assignment in there."
"Okay...but you know what happened to Jon, right? He's a tree. Until we fix it and send a DNA sample through to make him human again he's in the back yard...."
Karyn looked in the yard and saw Jon planted in the ground. She walked outside and said "Sorry, Jon," pulling off a few acorns, one of which she tossed to a squirrel. The tree didn't react. She said "Jon, these are your nuts!" but there was no response to the bad pun. Jon probably wasn't even awake in this form.
Then she waved to the silent tree and went into Jon's room. But the stone was nowhere to be seen!
Little did she know that Jon had had the stone in his hand. His hand was closed around it, so it was now a solid piece of wood with the stone embedded inside. She wouldn't be able to find the stone until Jon changed back.
It was several days before someone could come over and repair the transporter. Karyn and Jon's mom dug up the tree and put it in the transporter... but there was no sample of Jon's original DNA. Karyn knew it didn't really matter. If they just made Jon human, he could find the stone and wish himself back to Jon.
So Karyn suggested, "It has to be better to be human than to be a tree, even if Jon isn't exactly himself, right? Let's transform him to human even though we can't get his DNA. Instead we could use..."
