... nothing, as far as anyone could tell, had happened.
"What?" said Joy. "I don't feel any different. Maybe it takes time to change me... " She paused for ten seconds, then continued. "Well, if it does it takes longer than that. I wish to know why that doesn't work."
This time Alison waited for ten seconds. "Well?" she said.
"Oh, it did tell me," replied Joy. "We can't reverse wishes. If you could reverse a wish just by wishing for an object to reverse it, you could reverse anything. Not being able to reverse would no longer be any real limit at all."
"What? That doesn't make any sense. If you wish to be blonde, does that mean you could never wish for hair dye because that could be used to reverse the wish?"
"No. We can't reverse a wish using the stone's magic. If you wish for hair dye and dye your hair, you're not reversing the wish by magic. Hair dye doesn't work by magic, even if you made it by magic; it's just stuff."
"So if there was a way to change our sex without magic, we could wish for it like we could wish for something to dye our hair without magic?"
"I think so. But what is there that could change our sex without magic?"
"A doctor?" replied Alison.
"How about something sci-fi?" suggested Joy. "Wish for some alien artifact that changes sex."
"But the science in sci-fi isn't real. If you wished for one of those and it worked, it wouldn't work by science, it would be magic that just pretends to be science."
"Maybe there is science that would work."
"Yeah, Joy, but do you know any?"
"Um, no. But there's got to be some other way around..."
