(I forgot that Sarah McMillan was no more, and that it was Sarah Smith and Melissa McMillan who had been split along with everyone else in that study hall.)
Kari pointed at what looked like a toy gun on the floor. Its barrel was smoking. "What's that?"
"I dunno," replied Nathan. "Kick it away from you!" She did just that.
Nathan didn't want his best friend to be caught with a gun, even a toy gun. "Let's just get outta here."
Their study hall was over, and another group of students was coming in, including Ryan and her best friend John.
The device had to come up with some way to explain twice the number of students in the room, so it assigned half of them to the current study hall session and the other half to the following session.
Since nobody knew, Kari and Ryan had no idea that they had been one girl. Each was the daughter of one of Karyn's parents. Similarly, John and Nathan were the sons of Jon's parents married to different spouses. In this new reality, the total number of students in the school remained the same, but the characteristics of Karyn, Jon, and the others in the room had been scrambled with those of the people who were coming into the room for the next study hall.
The effects rippled far beyond that room. Elsewhere on campus, half of Zoe's genes changed as she became John's sister. At another school, Mikey mutated into Nathan's brother. They were all totally oblivious to the fact that their family was no more, and they would never have believed that a toy gun on the floor of a high school classroom had twisted their ancestry.
A new Sarah - half Sarah Smith from the previous study hall and half sci-fi geek from this study hall - picked up the device which was lying beneath her chair. Cool, she thought. She couldn't resist the urge to pull the trigger. How could a toy possibly hurt anyone?
