Jon declared, "A thousand to one should give us enough time to think!"
Karyn watched Jon speak and thought she had gone deaf. "Your lips are moving, but I can't hear... Gahh! It's like a really badly synced Youtube clip. Audio is lagging way behind the video."
Jon was experiencing the same thing from his end. "Shit, I forgot about the speed of sound! I wish that the ARD units will automatically compensate for sound delays when ARD users talk to each other."
Karyn felt the wish-induced vision aversion even before she heard Jon finish speaking the wish.
Jon spoke tentatively, "Testing, one two three... Say something."
Karyn replied, "Something. Your lips are synching now, are mine?"
They could speak normally now; Jon relaxed. "Yeah. That's something else Mr. Ashworth could have told us about in advance."
Karyn smirked at the reminder. "Oh god, he is such a geek. I bet he'd love playing with these things."
Jon and Karyn both had him for Physics this year, but in different periods.
Jon mused, "Maybe we'll let him."
Karyn frowned. "Make sure he doesn't try to give you a Nobel Prize for inventing them. Wouldn't be exactly fair."
Jon put an end to that train of thought. "Fun to think about, but probably just as bad an idea as telling anyone else about the stone."
Karyn went to the window and peeked out. She spotted a bird apparently frozen in mid-air. Down on the street, she saw a familiar neighbor kid frozen on his bike. "Oh god, I know him. It's your neighbor, Billy Peterson. Oh! These time-stop devices are the best pranking tools ever! Let's go do something to that foul-mouthed snot-nosed brat!"
Jon briefly entertained the idea, but then put it on hold for the moment. "He'll still be right there an hour from now, our time. Plenty of time to think up something diabolical. We've got more important things to do first."
Karyn brought her mind back on track. "Right. So, why did you want more time? Why didn't you just wish to know what your mom was talking about?"
Jon put the stone back in his pocket. "I didn't want to spoil it. Most of the fun we've been having is in just trying to figure stuff out. If we just wished for the knowlege, it's like jumping to the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Haven't you felt the same way?"
Karyn nodded. "Yah, I suppose you're right. So, how do we figure this out without wishing to know?"
Jon said, "Let's go over what we do know first."
Karyn brought her hand up and started ticking off on her fingers. "One. There's a 'senior prank' we know nothing about yet."
Jon continued, "Two. Mom knows all about it, and she's helping us. It's gotta be pretty harmless if she's willing."
Karyn added, "And your Dad too."
Jon went on to the strangely fascinating part. "Three. Whatever it is, going to a beauty salon will help, but it's not strictly necessary. It can be done with stuff from the Replomat."
Karyn abandoned the count. "In our 'home' reality, There was a senior prank two years ago that got outta hand, and the school nazis put their foot down. Don't you remember? We were bitching about it because we wanted to be in on ours when it got to be our turn, and they'd ruined it for everyone."
Jon remembered. "Yeah. No telling what's happened before in this reality. They probably did something different that didn't cause mass-expulsions. Or our class is just a hell of a lot more daring... or we came up with something that won't get us all expelled, even if we're caught."
Karyn thought the last part was most likely the safest bet. "Given how your mom approves, that's probably the most likely."
Jon countered, "Y'know, even if it is something stupid, dangerous, or will get us expelled, who cares? This isn't really home. We can do anything; no consequences when we leave."
Karyn recalled that wasn't strictly true. "No consequences to us... just to the Karyn and Jon who really live here. Oh, and speaking of them, what happened to them? Where are they?"
Jon flicked his finger back and forth, alternately pointing at himself and Karyn. "They're right here. We inhabited their bodies when we arrived. I wished for the ARDs to work that way."
Karyn asked, "So what happens to them when we leave?"
Jon blinked. "Um, I don't know. I didn't think about that part."
Karyn said, "That's something you should wish to know. I don't think we're gonna figure it out on our own."
"OK." Jon reached into his pocket. "I wish that we knew how the Jon and Karyn of this reality will be left after we depart."
The new knowlege shocked Karyn. "Jon! That's so unfair to them! They'll just wake up wherever we leave them, with no memory of what happened while we were here! Do something!"
Jon nodded. "Yah, OK, you're right. I should fix that. Hmmm. I'm thinking that it'll be fun to do this prank, but it really would be unfair if they got in trouble and didn't remember what it was for!"
Karyn said, "Did you ever see that old show Quantum Leap? What if we left them a sort of 'swiss cheese' memory.... they remember everything, except for parts about the stone and the ARDs?"
"Sounds good." Jon paused, carefully considering how to phrase it, then touched the stone in his pocket. "I wish that the ARDs will leave behind plausible memories in the inhabited subjects that don't include anything about the stone or the ARDs themselves."
"That should cover it." Karyn nodded approvingly. "This means using the stone as little as possible... and damn, probably should avoid using this time-stop gimmick as a pranking tool, otherwise the memories will have too many holes left behind."
Jon sighed. "Oh well, 'you can't have everything.'"
Karyn completed the hoary cliche. "'Where would you put it?'" She grinned. "I guess we can save those pranks for when we get 'home'. Billy Peterson is safe... for now."
Jon glanced back out the window. "We'll get him. That little fuckhead deserves it."
Karyn remembered something else. "Oh damn! I so wanna see what this prank's all about, but we won't have time! Your mom said the appointment is at 5:30, but my mom expects me home for dinner by six! We'll have to leave before then!"
Jon grinned. "Not to worry, not to worry. Ever see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?" He didn't wait for her response. "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!"
Karyn had indeed seen it. "Oh! Yes, I did see that one! The kids spent a whole lifetime in Narnia, grew up, and when they came back, they were kids again!"
"Now we can spend as long as we want here. Do the prank, appreciate the results... and then go home 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 amused disbelief. "Don't let it go to your head." She held out her hand. "May I have the stone please? I think I need to know when my mom in this reality expects me home."
"OK." He handed the stone over.
"I wish that I knew when my mom expects me home in this reality, and what her dinner plans are." A stone-flash later, and then Karyn knew, and reported what she found: "I'm due home whenever we get done preparing for the prank. No family dinner plans, just whatever I want out of a replicator. Huh. Some things never change. Mom was always light on the cooking before anyway. Now with replicators, she doesn't have to at all."
Jon picked up on that important new bit of info. "Damn, she knows about the prank too. I wonder if all our parents know about it?"
Karyn pursed her lips. "Depending on how many kids were in on planning it, it's not surprising that some parents found out. And they do talk to each other, y'know."
Jon was a bit disappointed in this new possibility. "If all our parents know about it, this 'prank' is probably lame-o."
Karyn thought about the deja-vu feeling she received when she had wished for the knowlege. "I'm not entirely sure... actually, no, I am sure. Mom doesn't know what the prank is. I think I assured her that it was positively harmless, and punishment-free, and she believed me. And it had better be; I know better than to abuse her trust like that."
Jon thought this was better news. "Well, I don't think we're going to be leaving our counterparts in any trouble that they wouldn't have gotten into on their own. Yes, even if it's lame, I want to see it through."
Karyn had another idea. "So, you think you might have something about the prank written down? Where do you keep your notebooks?"
"On the desk, or in the desk drawer when I feel like straightening up."
Karyn pulled open the desk drawer, and found a single notebook. She started to thumb through it, and found no real notes, just doodles. "I bet all our class notes and whatnot are on our computers, wherever they are." She continued thumbing through the notebook, and found some drawings that bordered on the pornographic.
Jon was looking over her shoulder and saw what she had found. His eyes widened in alarm. "Hey! that's private!" He grabbed the notebook from her and shoved it back into the desk drawer.
Karyn raised an eyebrow. "But Jon, that's what the 'local Jon' did, not you... ohhhh, you actually did draw something like that too, didn't you." She snickered. "Heh, I don't wanna know."
Jon blushed. "No, you don't."
Karyn brushed this new tidbit aside. "So, we really need to figure out how to access the computers in this reality. Somehow, I don't think it's normally done by talking to one's Replomat. You heard your Mom talking to you in your head at first, and then she was surprised when we routed the call through the Replomat. She expects us to always have access to IM, and got frantic when we didn't answer. We need to be on board with that too by the time she comes home. We kinda promised."
Karyn was starting to get a bit tired of this pussyfooting around. Jon was taking forever to get anywhere in this "investigation", and she still had the stone. It was time to move things along. "I wish we knew how to access the local computers the same way everyone else in this reality does."
Jon stared at her in surprise. "Damnit Karyn, I wanted to figure that out for myself!"
That's all he managed to spit out before the world around them turned fuzzy. Their brains filled with detailed information on the way to access their surgically implanted neural interfaces. Their heads swam as their brains were "trained" to work in tandem with the computers wired up to their nervous systems. Normally, a new user took weeks or months to gain proficiency with this access, but it was all shoved into their brains in a matter of seconds. They struggled for some unknown time, mentally flailing about like someone who fell into the ocean but can't swim. Karyn was having second thoughts about her hasty wish; she buried her face in her hands and groaned.
The information stared clicking into place. It was all there, and it started making sense. The world normalized again. They now knew the basics of how to really "speak" to the computers around them. A significant amount of computer power was there implanted inside their bodies. They were surprised to learn even more power was sewn right into the clothing they were wearing. The computers in the house dwarfed that power, and most "simple" tasks, by this reality's standards, were accomplished by commanding computers that were installed everywhere, not just the house. This really was a wired world. The two devices they had discovered so far, the Replomat, and the Hair Genie, were lowly peripherals, akin to printers in their "home" reality. They were normally commanded by directing files via their brain interfaces, not with voice commands.
After this new revelation, Jon said, "OK, I forgive you for that. We could have sat here for like, weeks trying to learn it the normal way. Now we're past the 'baby talk' stage and we can find out what's really out there in our computers and on the web."
