As they final yard was cleared the winner was Karyn!
Karyn placed her right foot in the door just a split second before John was able to clear the archway of his room.
"YES! I win. Woot Woot!" Karyn gloated as she did a little victory dance.
"Ya ya. You win, congratulations." John said congratulating his good friend.
"Alright! Where's that stone then?" Karyn said holding out her hand to receive her prize.
"In my pocket, just let me close the door. I don't want Zoe coming home early and seeing or hearing anything that's going on." John said walking over to his door panting slightly. Shutting his door and locking it, John turned around to see Karyn laying on his King sized bed.
John reached into his pocket and withdrew the stone. Holding it up at Karyn, Karyn clapped her hands together twice in the air signaling John to toss it to her.
Under-handing the stone to her, Karyn snatched the stone out of the air.
"Alright, before we go wishing anything though we should be careful to make sure that nothing done here will be anything irreversible." John said.
"Right, so why don't we put like a time limit on the wishes or something?" Karyn suggested.
"That sounds okay but I actually got a better idea. You won't really get a first wish but if you want to do what I have in mind, you can pick who goes first." John said.
"It depends on what the idea is." Karyn responded.
"Alright, well I was thinking it over on my way home. You remember that movie 'Jumangi'?" John said.
"Ya, I actually watched it with my little brother just last week. A magical board game makes whatever happens in the game come to life." Karyn said.
"Right, so I was thinking we could make our OWN version of a magical board game..." John said.
"Woah woah woah! That movie just went from bad to worse through most of it. I don't want killer Rhinos stampeding me to a pulp." Karyn said.
"No listen it would be anything like that. I thought about that and I have an idea that would make this really fun. What it is, is instead of actually a board game, it is like a magical virtual reality game. A player can join, then they are magically transported into the game, then we play through the board game IN the video game and see who can reach the end first. Like we would roll dice in there to determine how far we move and each square in the game would have a different effect. Some would be blank squares where nothing happens and you get to just be done with your turn with nothing bad happening, others would give you bonuses to use against other players or to help yourself out, and others would hinder you, some making you go back, skip a turn, or... and this is the best part. If you land on certain squares, various things would happen to you that would transform you into a certain form that you must complete a task while IN that form before you can progress. Each consecutive turn you have a chance to do your task and if you don't want to do it or CAN'T you lose your turn and have to wait until next time. If you pass it you may or may not return to your normal state and can then proceed. It all depends on what the tile states." John explained his intricately thought out game to Karyn.
"You know, I'm actually liking that A LOT. Lets do it." Karyn said.
"Alright, let's go." John said.
"GO? Go where?" Karyn said confused.
"Well I don't want to put the game in HERE. I was thinking we could put the game down in my basement. You've seen how big it is down there, plus we could set it up so that spectators could watch it on a T.V." John said.
"Oh ya cuz nobody would think it suspicious." Karyn said.
"Here. Let me see the stone real quick." John said. Karyn tossed him the stone and John made a wish.
"I wish that the game me and Karyn are about to wish up would not seem suspicious and instead simply be looked at as a new, high-tech game system." John said. The stone glowed bright and became warm for a few second and the wish was done.
"Right then, lets go." John said unlocking his door and heading for the stairs. Karyn followed close behind him and they were down in John's finished basement in a minute.
John went to the second of the 2 room in the basement, the front part, only about a fourth of the entire basement, was the laundry room. The other 3/4ths of the basement was a finished off entertainment room. On the wall at the back was a big projector screen and from the ceiling hung a projector that displayed an 80 inch screen on the screen.
"Right then, lets get this underway." John said.
"I wish..." John began wishing up the new game going over every detail he had described making sure it was perfect. The game was full of multiple dead ends, twists and turns, traps and more. John finished describing the game and put the finishing touches.
"...finally, I wish that once somebody reaches the end, everybody will be returned to the real world, exactly the same way they entered it to begin and that a gold trophy will appear in a virtual trophy case that can be viewed from the "Winners Screen" in the start up menu with their name engraved on it, a list of all the challenges they accomplished, and how many turns it took for them to win. As a last wish, I wish that the game would be called ..." John thought for a moment and the name came to him. "The Magic Machine." John said.
The stone shone an incredible bright light and grew unbelievably hot to the point where John had to drop the stone. The stone continued to shine however and Karyn and John were blinded for a good minute, To the point where they simply closed their eyes and waited for the white light to no longer be seen through their closed eyelids. When the light faded John and Karyn rubbed their eyes and saw a massive contraption in front of them. It looked similar to the transporters from Star Trek, a stage with 10 circular shining metal plates, a big top to the machine with a similar metal plate lined up with its counterpart on the bottom. The entire machine was encased in a glass wall with a glass door in front of them. The machine stood to the right of the T.V. and a small control panel was on the outside of the glass, wires ran up and down from the panel, through the glass to the top and bottom of the machine. It was a touchscreen display and displayed:
"MAGIC MACHINE
Touch Screen to Continue"
The Projector was on now and showed a massive Board Game zoomed out. It was massive. The screen would a square and then display a short little clip. John noticed a square that had a cartoon representation of a cow on it and then the screen flashed to, what John assumed was, a volunteer for the testing of the game. Only she was not normal. The woman was less human then animal. She was for all intents and purposes a cow, only she had distinguishing human features. Her face, while cow-like, was representative of human features, she had long brown hair as well. The woman went from standing up to down on all fours, Her udder hanging down now. A farmer walked up to her with a bucket and a milking stool and sat down next to her and began milking her. The screen now flashed to another square of a cartoon representation of a baby. John stopped watching at this time and looked over at Karyn.
"Amazing..." Karyn said looking at the machine.
What John and Karyn HADN'T seen was that game retailers all over the world had now had order booklets appear in their shops for people to order the Magic Machine. On top of that, the stone had arranged so John's family had won a giveaway for THEIR Magic Machine. These machines went for 200 thousand dollars each so not everybody had one. In this new, slightly altered reality, John was quite popular since he got his machine, kids and adults alike would stop by the house on weekends to play the game with a 20$ fee that John and Zoe charged at the door. It was a good bit of income for them. Each game ran a few hours long so they may only get a single game in a night but that was 200$ on top of the 5$ they would charge other people to simply watch the game play out. This would usually bring in another 100$. John was just taking notice that his Entertainment Room had changed. There were 10 couches all positioned around the T.V. where only 3 had been before and other various Arcade games had once been. There was also a small popcorn machine in the left corner of the room.
"Huh... I suppose the stone re-purposed the room for more people to watch or somethin'." John said.
"Ya probably. So are we gonna play this or not?" Karyn had said.
"Sure. Let's see how this thing works..." John said. He tapped the touch screen and a new calming blue screen appeared. The screen displayed:
"CURRENT PLAYERS: 0
ADD PLAYERS"
"So Karyn, who is going to go first. You or me?" John said to Karyn.
"I want you to go first. Give me an idea of what to expect." Karyn said.
~Simple enough.~ John thought to himself. John tapped the "ADD PLAYERS" button and a new screen popped up. The blue color remained but a "QWERTY" keyboard popped up and a small text area with "NAME" listed to the left of the text box.
John quickly typed in "JOHN" on the touch screen and hit "ENTER"
The previous screen appeared and now read.
"CURRENT PLAYERS: 1
-JOHN
ADD PLAYERS
BEGIN"
Karyn stepped next to John and mimed the process John had just preformed. The screen now read
"CURRENT PLAYERS: 2
PLAYER 1: JOHN
PLAYER 2: KARYN
ADD PLAYERS
BEGIN"
"Alright then, I think we are good to go." John said as he pressed the "BEGIN" button.
A new calming purple screen appeared with a screen shot of the inside of the machine. On the screen the top left was labeled "JOHN" and plate directly next to that was labeled "KARYN". At the bottom of the screen was printed
"PLEASE TAKE YOUR POSITIONS"
John opened the door and held it for Karyn to go in first. Shutting the glass door behind them, John and Karyn took their places. When they both stepped on the plates a large glass tube dropped from around the plate on the top of the machine and sealed to the bottom plate. John and Karyn could not get out now, short of breaking the glass. A purple mist came out of both metal plates and quickly filled the tubes. John and Karyn both inhaled the mist and when the fog cleared, they were both gone, the tubes however, remained sealed.
The T.V. now flashed
"BEGIN" for a second and the zoomed in on the big green starter square. John and Karyn were both standing on it, looking slightly confused.
John and Karyn looked around, all they saw was a big game board and the rest surrounding them was black.
"Unbelievable..." Karyn said amazed at the game.
"I'll say..." John said.
Suddenly they both heard a commanding voice from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
"JOHN'S TURN"
"Huh? Oh right, I'm player 1." John said. "Uhh... where are the dice?" John added, confused on how to begin. On cue, a single die appeared in John's right hand and a small table with walls on 3 of the 4 sides appeared in front of John.
"What's this for?" John thought aloud.
"I think its for you to roll the die on." Karyn suggested.
"Oh good thinking." John said.
Looking at the squares ahead of him John noticed several different squares. The 6 squares ahead of him were as follows.
1: A blank square
2: A Tile with a '?'
3: A Tile with both male and female symbols on it, linked together at the circles.
4: Another blank square
5: A Tile with a Cartoon Baby on it
6: A Tile with a Cartoon representation of a horse on it.
"Yikes... I don't really see much promise in this first roll..." John said worried about what was ahead of him.
"Alright... come on 1 or 4..." John said rolling the die onto the table. The die bounced off the walls and a 4'th wall appeared where the open slot had been to keep the die from falling off the table. The die spun around as it came to a halt and John looked down onto the table to see he had rolled a...
