"It's Sarah, Jon. She has the rock... but she lost it somehow."
Jon relaxed a bit. "She didn't exactly lose it," she said, holding up the rock.
"Excuse me," said one of the guards. "You should be back in your room, unless you're leaving, but either way you shouldn't be in here."
"I wish that I'm an authorized visitor and will be left alone with Karyn and our babies until I leave."
The guard said "Of course you're an authorized visitor. I... what am I doing here anyway? You need to talk to your friend, right?" and left, closing the door behind him.
"Well, er..." said Jon. "Did you name the baby?"
"Yeah. She's Karyn Johnson, Junior. Nicknamed Kay. So what's going on, Jon?"
Jessie was pulling at Jon's blouse and Jon figured out that she had to open it, moving her bra aside and letting the baby drink from her breast. "This feels weird," she said. "I guess I've got to do it now. Here's the story... Sarah got the stone. She wished that if I even think about telling anyone about her, I'll turn into a woman until my next period. And right now I'd turn into one until tomorrow."
Jon continued, "Then she wished you were pregnant. I fought her and lost... so she made me give birth and be pregnant with triplets. But she accidentally made me get the rock back."
"That makes a sort of weird sense," said Karyn. "But there's something that doesn't make sense. Why is it that I know what's happening? Mom knew I had suddenly gotten pregnant. The wishes are supposed to change things so we'd forget. And I remember you, too."
Jon held up the stone and said "Tell me." The stone did nothing, of course; then she said "I wish the stone would tell me."
Karyn saw Jon suddenly jerk and stare into thin air as she tried to listen to the words the stone said in her head. Fortunately she didn't let go of the baby. "Jon, are you all right?" she asked. But a second later, Jon was all right, and she explained.
"Okay, you know what happened because Sarah wished that you'd become pregnant without changing anything else." (Author's note: we never did see the exact wording of that wish, so it's possible.)
Jon continued, "Why you remember me is a little more complicated. But think of it this way. If you wish to burn the school down, there's a reason why it burned down. Maybe someone left a cigarette burning... don't look at me like that, that's the example I got.
"But if you wish that everything you touch burns down, that doesn't mean that you touch one thing, then there's a reason why it burned down, then you touch another thing, and there's another reason for that, and so on. It doesn't invent a whole stream of lit cigarettes, and chemical accidents, and exploding lightbulbs. It only changes reality once--it explains why you're a jinx, it doesn't explain each fire one at a time."
"I see," said Karyn. "I think... So you're saying that things don't change so you were a girl all along. Instead, things change so that there's a reason why you keep turning into one. Then everyone remembers you're a guy."
"Right. There's also a reason why I can be six months pregnant even though I'm going to turn back into a guy tomorrow and I never change for longer than a month. And a reason why I have a one year old baby. Obviously things have been happening to me for at least a year or two."
"Okay, and..."
Jon was confused for a second and said "Wait, you want to know what those reasons are? It doesn't matter. Sarah didn't say what they are. We can change things, we can wish that the reasons are anything we want--and for both of us. It's easy. First of all, I wish Sarah would forget about the rock."
