When the doorbell rang Jon went downstairs to let Karyn in. He looked up and down her body and didn't see any really noticeable differences from his memory.
"Hey!" exclaimed Karyn. "Don't stare at the boobs! They're a mistake, remember?"
"Uhh, right," replied Jon. "It really isn't that. It's something I wished for. Come on to my room and I'll tell you all about it."
"Wait a minute. You dodn't wish for something that affects me, did you?" as she followed.
Jon didn't know what to say. "Have a seat," he added as they entered his room and they each took a chair, Jon at his desk. Finally he said "I wished for something interesting."
"And?"
"It's the future now. And I'm the only person who remembers that I made a wish. I didn't meant to affect everyone, but it's not like wishing everyone's my slave. It's just... the future."
"But it's not the future. It's still..."
"It was 1971 yesterday," said Jon. "I made the wish and it acted really funny, and then all of a sudden I'm in the future. Everything has a computer in it... I thought I had a TV set on my desk but it's not. Suddenly my Mom is a lawyer. My brother Mikey's no longer reading comic books. Almost everything is different in some way."
"But your Mom's always been a lawyer, and...."
"No, she hasn't," said Jon. "I asked the stone about that one. Back then we were just getting started with having women with jobs. It's gone further now. It was hard for her, with a family and all that, but she made it through law school."
"All right. So what I think of as the present is really the future? Your wish somehow shifted everything forward? You told me it only had a limited range."
"It was acting weirdly. It didn't immediately zap me, it took some time. Maybe a wish could only do a small area all by itself but the wish found some bigger magic item which it could use to zap everything. So now it's the future. And I'm still confused."
"Hmm. I know you can ask the stone whatever you want but I'll see what I can do."
"Okay, where's my record collection?"
Karyn could barely stifle a giggle. "You get music online. Either you buy it or you pirate it or you copy it off of CDs and you put it on your iPod. The CDs are..." Karyn indicated a tall plastic holder with many square plastic objects in it. "Those things over there. Nobody uses records any more."
"So let me get this straight, this 'iPod' is the replacement for the replacement for my record collection?"
"Pretty much."
"And the computer?"
"It's a computer. You, uhh, you write papers on it and you use the Internet and you play video games."
"Video games? I take it those were invented after 1971."
"I guess so. Or if they were invented before, not a lot of people had them. See that thing under the TV? That's there just to play video games."
"What about world history?"
"I don't know. The, uhh, the Vietnam War ended. We don't draft anyone. The Soviet Union is gone. Other things. I don't remember them. Wars are against terrorists, or people who may or may not be related to terrorists. Japan has a bad economy but we get fun things from there."
"Never mind, Karyn. I never paid that much attention to history anyway."
"Let's see. Gay marriage is starting. Wal-Marts got invented. Televisions are big and you can buy movies and keep them."
"I found out about the TV. What's a gay marriage and a Wal-Mart?"
"It's, uhh, two guys or two girls getting married to each other."
"You're making that up."
"No, seriously. Ask the stone. A Wal-Mart is a big store which sells everything. Go there and come home with raw steak, tires for your car, clothes, and a new blanket."
"Uh-huh. Has... well, we were going to do math homework. Did they discover any new math?"
"Jon, how could they discover new math?"
"Well, we had something called new math, but I don't think anyone discovered it. Anyway, I wish we had some snacks." Some plastic cups and a bag of potato chips appeared on the desk. Jon prepared to open the chips, then stared at a cup. He picked it up. There was a straw that was unnaturally wide and the bottom of the cup was full of black spheres that looked like frog eggs, or at least what Jon imagined frog eggs to be like. Meanwhile, Karyn just took one and began to drink from it. Jon stared at it and gingerly took a sip while avoiding the spheres. "Tastes like tea with fruit flavor." He put it down while Karyn watched, amused.
