"Jon, we're home!" They heard Jon's mother calling from downstairs. "Could you please come down here?"
They left Jon's bedroom and went downstairs. They found Jon's mother in the kitchen, just laying her purse on the table.
Mrs. Winters turned and spied Karyn coming in behind Jon. "Hi, Karyn!"
Karyn nudged Jon and pointed. This kitchen sported a huge replicator in the corner, much bigger than the one in Jon's room.
"Hello, Mrs. Winters. How has your day been?"
"Oh, just hectic. And I have to run right back out again. Would you like me to run you home? I'm headed back that way; save you the walk." She turned and yelled out the back door, "Michelle, get in here!"
This earned a double-take from Jon. He wondered, Michelle? Who's that?
She turned back and faced them. "Jon, I hope you didn't have any plans, because I really need you to stay here with Michelle until I get back. Zoe's got something going after school, and after I run this errand I'll be picking her up."
A cute little girl who looked to be about ten, the same age as his little brother Mikey, stomped in through the back door. She had long blonde hair, and she was wearing an adorable pink Hello Kitty tshirt, a denim miniskirt, and white tennis shoes. She was in the middle of some major pouting, and she appeared to be about ten seconds away from a crying fit. She was definitely not a happy camper. She looked at Jon, and whined, "Mom wouldn't let me go to Katie's house!"
Karyn figured it out before Jon did. She nudged him and whispered in his ear, "Say hello to your new little sister."
She turned back to Jon's mother. "Thank you, Mrs. Winters, I appreciate the offer. Can you hold on just a minute? I need to ask Jon something." She grabbed Jon's arm and guided him to the living room.
Jon barely noticed that the big wide-screen TV and entertainment center were missing. That wall now had a whole slew of family pictures and portraits. He was still feeling a bit off-kilter. I have another sister? Where's Mikey?
Karyn took in this new wall of pictures, and quickly found the one she was looking for. It was a "nuclear family" formal portrait, showing Jon with his parents, his goth sister Zoe, and the little girl they'd just met. No Mikey. She pointed this one out to Jon. "There's Michelle in your family portrait." As her hand brushed too close to the picture, her finger passed right through its frame! "Oh cool, they're like holo-pictures." She moved her hand up to it, and found she could press her hand right through the picture and flat against the wall behind it. "They're not really here. I bet this makes redecorating a snap."
Jon tested this out with a few of the other pictures, verifying for himself that they were indeed intangible. "Well, that's cool and all... but where's Mikey?"
Karyn rolled her eyes at him. "He's not here in this reality, doofus. It's the 'butterfly effect'. You got another little sister instead. This picture proves it. Anyway, that's not why we needed to talk." She turned away from the pictures to face him. "My mom expects me home at six. How much longer did you plan to stay here? I think this is kinda cool, and I want to see more of this reality, but..." She trailed off, looking at Jon expectantly.
Jon shook off the weirdness of having a new sister and concentrated on the more immediate problem. "Oh, right, yes, I want to stick around longer than that, definitely. And I've already thought of a way to deal with that problem...."
Just then they noticed they had an audience. Michelle had followed them into the living room, and was listening in. When Michelle realized she had been seen, she said, "You two are so weird. Mom said we couldn't afford another Change for me so soon, so you won't see Mikey for a while." With that she turned and flounced out of the living room. They heard her stomping up the stairs.
Jon turned back to Karyn and raised his eyebrow. "'Butterfly effect', huh?"
Karyn tried to recover from her astonishment. "Okayyyy, so I was wrong about that. So sue me. Anyway, what about our need to go home soon? Not just me, I'm sure your real mother might be missing you after a while too."
Jon checked around to make sure their little evesdropper hadn't returned, then he reached into his pocket to touch the stone. "I wish that the ARDs, whenever they return us to our 'home' reality, they'll always return us to the place and time we left from!" He removed his hand from the stone. "Now we can spend as long as we want here. You can go check out your home here in this reality, and I get to... babysit." He scowled at that last. "And then we can go 'home' whenever, and no one will ever know we were gone. I am such a genius!" Jon basked in his self-realized glow of accomplishment.
Karyn shook her head in mock disbelief. "If you're such a genius, why are you such a doofus too?" Karyn held her hand out. "There's one more thing. May I use the stone please?"
Jon handed it over.
Karyn went on, "We still don't know what happened to our cellphones, and I didn't see your regular landline phone in the kitchen. I wish that our ARDs can act like cellphones to contact each other."
The stone flashed, and when Jon was able to look at his ARD unit again, he saw a new PHONE control mode, with "KARYN" first on the menu. Jon nodded. "Good job, I like it."
Karyn pressed some buttons on her ARD, noted her new ARDphone now had "JON" as its first listing, and then she passed the stone back to him. He returned it to his pocket.
Some muffled shouting came from upstairs, followed by the slam of a bedroom door. Shortly they heard Mrs. Winters coming down the stairs, and then she joined them in the living room. She looked apologetically at them and sighed. "Sorry about that, Karyn. So, did you want that ride home?"
Karyn smiled and said, "Sure, thanks, I appreciate it." She smirked at Jon. "Have fun babysitting Michelle."
Mrs. Winters said, "Right then. We need to go now. Jon, Michelle is not to leave the house. Let's go, Karyn." Jon's mother lead Karyn back out through the kitchen, and out the back door.
