"Jon," Karyn said, noticing the "active line" LED light up on the phone in Jon's room. "I think your mom is..."
"probably calling 911 to tell them there are 2 dangerous looking animals in her son's room," Jon finished, putting a paw to her forehead.
Karyn quickly put a paw on the stone. "I wish your mother thought nothing was the matter because she remembered us as we are now!"
"That's not going to work Karyn, my original wish already explicitly said that the entire world would remember you as you were, and then you wished for the same conditions of that wish to apply to me."
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" Karyn said.
"Don't apologize to me, this is all my fault, besides, if you're stuck this way, by my doing, I want to be too," Jon said.
"I wish Jon's mom would change to be one of our species and everyone would remember her as she was before too!" Karyn said.
"Karyn!"
They heard the sound of the phone being dropped to the floor in the other room, and a shriek.
"We had to stop her!" Karyn said.
"We could have still talked reason to her! You didn't need to put her in the same boat as us! For starters, you could have wished that the phone line would lose its connection, or that she would forget about walking in on us!"
"Oh. That's, probably a better idea, now that you mention it."
"Karyn! You... Now you have something to apologize for! But not to me."
"Mom," Jon called out, pawing out of her room, her tail low and puffed up, afraid of the confrontation to follow. What could she say? Karyn followed her. "Mom, are you all right?"
"What are you! What have you done to me!" she said, looking at a paw, licking at her pointy teeth with her rough tongue.
"I'm Jon. Your son."
"Jon? That's ridiculous, I... but then, the same thing happened to me. Is that really you? What, what happened?" she was crying.
"Would you believe an accidental wish made with a magical artifact?" Jon asked.
"Actually, considering I'm a cat, yes. Is the other one Karyn?"
"Yeah. I'm sorry you had to see that," Karyn spoke up.
"I wanted you and Karyn to get closer, but I'm not sure like this," she said, laughing. "Not that there's anything wrong with it," she said, suddenly becoming serious. "But, my son has turned into a beautiful lady cat."
"There are worse things," Jon said.
"I still love you. And you're beautiful."
"Thanks, mom. I think. I'm glad you're calm now."
"Do you have any wishes left?"
Jon and Karyn looked at each other. "We have unlimited wishes. But we can't undo this, if that's what you're wondering," Karyn said. "Wishes can't be undone."
"What is this magical artifact?" she asked.
Jon showed her the stone and the letter from her father.
"How did this happen? What did you wish for?" she asked them at the end.
"The cat thing started as a prank," Jon said. "But aside from that, after I asked her if we could be more than friends, Karyn came out to me as a lesbian, and said yes but would rather I be a girl, I'm sorry Karyn but she saw us anyway, I was all too happy to make minor sacrifices for Karyn's happiness since we thought we made a wish with a time limit, we experimented a little, realized we were stuck that way, and then Karyn panicked when you saw us and carelessly wished this on you when she was afraid you would call the police and they would come here and shoot us GAAAAASSSPPP!!!!" Jon explained all in one breath and then breathed in heavily at the end.
"I wasn't going to call the police. Actually, I didn't know what to do. I ran for the phone, didn't know what to do, and thought I had hallucinated it. But about the wish thing. Can I make a wish?"
"Go ahead. Be careful though, I know you're the responsible one here, but one mistake and it could make things a whole lot worse. I assume you have some way to make this better?"
"A little, for me. You're going to be underwhelmed, but I don't think it will do any harm. Do I just touch it and then say I wish and then?"
"Yeah."
She put a paw on the stone and said "I wish I was as young and pretty as these two."
She changed almost imperceptibly, since she hadn't really been over the hill before, but generally looked more youthful, energetic and perky at the end. Enough so that Jon was disconcerted by how much she found herself attracted to her own mother. It could be worse, Jon thought, I could be attracted to guys now.
"As if this wasn't weird enough already," Jon said. "Now I'm the same age as my mom too. Are you trying to give me an oedipus complex?" Jon was thinking about her mom's 6 perky breasts now.
"That's really not a bad idea," Karyn said. "We should have a threesome some time."
Jon glared at Karyn.
"And now the big one, I wish the change that happened to the three of us... would happen to every single person on Earth."
"Mom!" Jon said in surprise.
"I won't let my beautiful dau.., her, handso... attractive so.. daugh... child live his... or her, or whatever. Jon, do you want me to still talk about you as if you were my boy?"
"Either way, it doesn't bother me," Jon said. "Neither he nor she is an insult, and both are partially correct. The people who obsess about that sort of thing are a bunch of perpetually offended idiots."
"That's a load off. Ok, I won't let my beautiful daughter live her life in the shadows," she said. "I don't care what chaos it causes. I'd sacrifice the whole world for you. You'll understand when you have children of your own one day."
"I'm sure Jon will make a wonderful mommy," Karyn teased.
"Karyn!" Jon whined.
"When you're a little older, I want the two of you to use this rock to conceive each others' children. I assume that is possible."
"Mom!" Jon cried.
"And I mean both of you. Don't make the girl you love do that all on her own, Jon. You have the equipment to do your fair share. And I want to be a grandmother by the time I'm out of my 20s again!"
"Yes ma'am!" said Karyn enthusiastically.
Of course, at that moment, the world was in chaos. Markets crashing, cats and dogs, living together (i.e. anyone who had a pet dog), mass hysteria. No human sacrifice though, since there weren't any to sacrifice, unless you call turning them into furry catgirls 'sacrificing' them.
"I don't know, mom," Jon said, turning it around, snide sarcasm in her voice. "You're biologically as young as us now. So shouldn't you wish yourself to be pregnant with Karyn's kittens too, by that logic? Or someone else. If it's for continuing the family line, grandkids are no better than having more kids yourself since you're just as able as us again, the only biological reason for you to want grandkids is for continuing a family line but you're of prime breeding age yourself now. You have no one but yourself to blame but yourself for that. Now you have as much responsibility for propagating your own genes again, as I might to give you grandkids."
"Oh. I hadn't thought of that!" she said, in surprise, "I just wanted to be as cute as you two."
Karyn cuddled against her and said "you are, you're super duper cute."
"Karyn!" Jon said. "Forget it, I'm not mad. Or necessarily even against it. I have seen my mother, I know she's lonely. She needs someone, in that way. It's just I'm not, not sure about how weird it would be, if I am to have a love triangle with you and my mom! But for that matter, mom, haven't you just doomed civilization, since now they're everyone's female and none of them have a magic rock that will allow them to be impregnated by other females?"
"Oh! You're right!" Jon's mother said. "I'll take care of that." She put a paw on the stone and said "I wish that members of our species would readily get pregnant with each other, just from kissing. And have multiple birth litters, like regular cats! And a gestation time of 3 months!" She then held Karyn to herself and kissed her on the mouth.
"Mom, you realize Karyn and I have already kissed too, and more."
"What, do you think the change is retroactive?" she asked.
"Yes, that's the way the stone works! You just created defining characteristics for our species, anything we have done since becoming that species would apply to that!"
"Oh. Don't worry son, you'll enjoy motherhood. It's nothing to be afraid of and not as unpleasant as you might have been led to believe. And being so young and pregnant isn't such a hardship if we have resources to fall back on, and I'm sure the magic rock can take care of that."
"I'd just better make sure never to kiss my mom goodnight again," Jon said.
"I can kiss you in a few days once you're thoroughly knocked up with her babies," she said.
"Oh, my god, I'm going to give birth," Jon said. "To a litter!"
"Don't be upset. I'm sure they'll be as beautiful as their mommy," Karyn said. "And is that so bad? You're also going to be a daddy. Unless your mom ends up being the dad."
"Oh, god," Jon said.
"Also, technically, I'm going to be a father twice over. Next time we have to make sure you're the dad. But forget that! My point is, we'll be doing it together. Every step of the way, our bellies growing together, cuddling each other like that, giving birth together side by side. Isn't that really pretty romantic?" she asked, kissing Jon.
"Yeah," Jon admitted. She was unsure about admitting to looking forward to it.
"Want to improve the odds that any kittens I conceive will be yours?" Karyn asked.
"And increase the chances of conception on myself too. Why not." That night, Karyn and Jon kissed and cuddled in bed together until they fell asleep.
Jon decided she really liked being a mommy after all. And 4 years later, the world population was 40 billion.
