After school, Jon encouraged Karyn to come home with him. It occurred to him that he hadn't been paying much attention to Karyn lately. Why were his thoughts so taken up with thoughts of Biff? It made especially little sense, since, after his reckless initial wish that brought the scourge of the mist into existence, it was clear that he had been subtly modified by the altered history in one certain way. Though he remembered things the way they were before, he hadn't been completely beyond the influence of the change, and there was no denying, he had a sort of cat fetish now. He couldn't deny it. He was a bit embarrassed by it, though it seemed to be more socially acceptable here than before, what with enough people being literal cat-people now, Biff and Karyn not even being the only ones. But it was also clear, that he only had a cat fetish because he liked Karyn, and Karyn had changed into a cat-girl in this alternate history. Not the other way around. He didn't like Karyn because she was a cat, he had a thing for cats because he liked Karyn. So it really made zero sense that he'd be so into Biff of all people, just because he had turned into a huge sexy female cat. Errr, into a huge female cat, Jon corrected in his thoughts. But the point was, the one he really liked was Karyn, right? She was the reason for his change in tastes, right?
"So you seem to have some plan," Karyn said as they approached his house.
"The plan, is I'm going to draw this thing on the floor in the basement."
"Oh."
"With your help," Jon continued.
"Oh, thanks," Karyn said sarcastically. "It's nice that you only want to hang out with me because you want to put me to work helping you do something weird."
"This concerns you too, Karyn. 'for something interesting'. Karyn, I wished for something interesting to happen. And then the next thing I know, the mist exists, and you're all catty."
"Oh. Yeah. It's still kind of weird to me, even knowing that my memories of the last few years, are, not real to you. The result of a wish you made a few days ago. Are the things I remember real? Did they really happen, or are they fake memories of something that never happened? Are you even really my friend, or some other Jon? Is the Jon I know gone? Or did he never even exist at all? Are you at best a childhood friend I haven't seen in years, starting from the moment where my life was different and you split off from the Jon I know? I guess, even before I changed, things were different, so maybe you're not the Jon I know at all."
"I think I'm the Jon you know, because I did change, I just remember things the way they were before."
"You changed?" Karyn asked. "How did you change?"
"Oh. Uh, just, something, subtle," Jon said, not willing to volunteer that detail to the cat-girl. "Something, that was different about your Jon, I changed, to be like your Jon."
"Then how do you know it was a change to be like my Jon? How do you know that was the way he was, if you don't remember it? What was the change?"
"I'd like to plead the 5th on that."
"Hmm," Karyn grumbled. "So, making your magic circle, just on the floor of the basement. Do you have chalk?"
"Yeah. It's down here."
Jon and Karyn spent the next hour reproducing the figure captured in the best photo he had of it in chalk on a big scaled-up version on the basement floor.
"So, what now?" Karyn asked. "I think we've done every detail from the picture now."
"I don't know," Jon admitted.
"Jon," Mikey called down into the basement. "What are you doing down here? Oooh, what is this thing, mom's going to be mad when she sees what you did in the basement floor."
"This is, um..." Jon hesitated.
"You're very weird, did you know that Jon?" Mikey said, trying to scratch an itch with her left wing, walking around the figure at its edge, considerately not quite walking on it.
"Well, you see, this is," Jon continued, trying to figure out some way to explain it, or find some excuse that made the least bit of sense.
"Aiee!" Mikey squeaked and hopped in surprise with her bird feet. For the chalk image on the ground had just lit up. Or rather, the segment where Mikey stood at the edge of had. One fifth of the chalk image was glowing in electric blue light, like it had been drawn not in chalk but in LEDs.
"Mikey, could you, walk around the rest of the figure, and see if it does that for any of the other four parts?"
Hesitantly, Mikey made a slow tour of the circumference of magic circle. As soon as she left the edge of the segment that was lit up, it stopped glowing. And nothing further happened as her springy talons took her around the circle, until she got back to the one segment that had reacted to her. When she got back there, it lit up once again.
"What element was that segment for?" Karyn whispered to Jon.
"Mass," Jon whispered back. And then he realized, Mikey's power to all but render things massless, by grasping them in her talons. That couldn't be a coincidence. She had a power, to alter mass. And then it occurred to him, with Biff's power to see the future, perhaps she could stand in the segment for 'time'. But then, if Mikey was mass, and Biff was time, who was space, who was charge, and who was life? And what would happen if all 5 segments were occupied by appropriately empowered changed individuals?
