Jon swallowed as he found himself floating back to center stage. Simultaneously a huge wheel descended from the rafters of whatever building or ship they were in, and came to rest next to him. From what he could see the massive spinner was full of potential outcomes, he could land on, everything from "Transform the subject into an earth canine" and "Graft functioning wings on to subject" to "Hypnotize the subject to believe he is in fact subject four" and "Replace subject with robot duplicate and see if anyone notices."
Dimly Jon was wondering why the options seemed to be in English, and also why the aliens were speaking English for that matter. Talarian gestured to the wheel, "It's the WHEEL OF CHANGE, brought to you by Cloneios, made with real cloned space-donkey! Now of course our contestants are held in suspension fields for their own safety, and to make sure they can't go anywhere." The crowd chuckled at the joke. "So I'll be hitting the button to spin for Jon's change. For you folks just tuning in for the first time, all alterations will be observed for one quarter of a planetary cycle - seeing how the earthmen react to their changes and the changes of the other contestants. At the end, the prize of one wish, anything within the show's capability, will go to the winner, whoever best adjusts to their change and shows the most adaptability! And of course, the loser, whoever can't adapt, will face-"
The crowd finished his sentence for him, "A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH!" Talarian flashed his fangs for the camera, "That's right, a fate worse than death! It's adapt or die here on the Reality Game, let's see how well these Earthmen do. Time to spin the wheel for Contestant One, Jon Gibson!" The humongous wheel began to turn rapidly, with options whirling by. Jon was privately begging for something easy like deaging him to a toddler, or making him ten feet tall. He could stick it out for three months and get his stone to fix things once this wish summoned game ran its course, so long as he didn't get the fate worse than death.
The wheel slowed down, with the options slowly spinning by. It almost landed on, "Force subject to join the gothic sub-culture" before it rolled over to land on "Exchange subject one's brain with subject two." The crowd erupted in cheers and Talarian cheerily announced "A rare double transformation! Ms. Penelope Dearheart won't be spinning herself, since she's going to be going in for some brain surgery alongside Jon here! Let's give a big hands for our contestants while they go back to have the show doctor's work on them! We'll see them again before the big send off back to earth!"
Jon was floated over to face Ms. Dearheart and soon both began to float backstage. Taking in the beautiful form of the nurse in front of him, and considering one of the options had been, "Graft subject's head onto an earth gorilla body," Jon was inwardly quite relieved at what he'd be facing for the next three months.
