“I wish Karyn and I would be telepathically connected.” Jon read.
“But why would you wish for that, when we are already telepathically connected?” he thought. “Why does the voice in my head sound like Karyn’s voice?” he thought, but this time the words were in his own voice. “Oh shit!” Both voices chimed together in duet in his mind.
No explanation in words was necessary between them since they now both understood the situation, as the connection carried more than active thoughts in words. From Karyn’s perspective, they had been this way for 6 months since the night they took each other’s virginity. But they knew that had to be the illusion created by the stone since Karyn had been far away from Jon during the wish and that was what the stone did. But they remembered things both ways now. It was a deep telepathic link after all.
They didn’t just have the ability to send and receive thoughts. They had very nearly entirely become the same person with just one shared experience between them that night. And now they were in a sort of Shroedinger’s cat situation, both realities equally real to them, them having been this way for 6 months, and only for a few seconds. They preferred the version where it was natural and had been this way for months.
That first night, when it happened, had left them so confused and scared. To say it was a life altering change was an understatement. And yet they couldn’t help but love it too. They each loved adding the other’s existence onto their own. Jon remembering Karyn’s life before their minds combined, before they even met, as if he had grown up as a female child named Karyn, Karyn remembering likewise for Jon’s life. Since then, they had experienced so much together, and as each other, from sexual self-discovery as both a male and a female and both together to cheating on tests at school. Even now, Jon wasn’t just in his room, in his house, he was looking out through Karyn’s eyes, in her own room in her own home.
And yet it wasn’t all positive. They had lost something as well in losing much of their individuality with regard to each other. They couldn’t even feel love or much of any emotions for each other any more, since that would be little different from loving oneself. Kissing each other was boring as well, since it felt like kissing yourself. The problem with being so close that they were nearly the same person was precisely that they were now nearly the same person, and even though they were constantly close, they were lonely as between the two of them, in many ways there was only one person there. They had added onto themselves but at a cost of a friend and a lover and the very presence of a separate person as companionship. It was at the same time thrilling and endearing but also sad and unfortunate and they didn’t know what to do with themselves like this. Should they try to fix it with the stone? They couldn’t unwish it, but they could easily specify it to be a much weaker telepathic connection. But at the same time, they didn’t want to, as that would be much like disassembling their own mind.
