Ryanne, Samantha, Rachel, and Jeffries turned to each other. Finally, Jeffries decided to be the one to speak up.
Jeffries turned to Denise Brewster. "You want to know where the Transformation Guns came from? You probably wouldn't believe me even if I told you."
"I've seen a lot of strange things today." Denise Brewster replied. "Such as our company's CEO being turned into a cheerleader. I'm sure whatever you have to tell me can't be stranger than that."
"Okay, but this is going to sound crazy." Jeffries said. He turned to Ryanne, Samantha, and Rachel, knowing his friends would step in when needed. "But my friends can back me up on this one."
Ryanne, Samantha, and Rachel nodded. Jeffries began. "Okay, as you know, in Research and Development, sometimes during our breaks we just let our imagination run wild. Sometimes we imagine stuff that we can actually create and pitch as actual products, and sometimes we imagine stuff we know we can't really create in the real world. Such as the Cargo Teleportation Chamber, some really sophisticated worker robots ... and the Transformation Guns."
Ryanne joined in. "It was the six of us in our group. Myself, Jeffries, Samantha, and Rachel, and Gordon Brewer and Dr. Jerry Chance."
"Dr. Chance. I remember him." Denise Brewster said, with derision. "A very shallow man, despite being a gifted scientist. He had no respect for intelligent women at all."
Rachel nodded. "It was a nice idea assigning him to work in our group. But it wasn't really working out. Not that it matters anymore."
"Anyway, it was all in good fun." Jeffries continued. "We got really ridiculous coming up with ideas for different kinds of Transformation Guns. Not that we ever really intended to even TRY making them real. We know MTI isn't that kind of tech company, and even if it was, we don't have the means to create them."
Samantha spoke next. "It was all just a silly fantasy. Good material for a role-playing game - and we talked about the possibility of creating one based on it - but not something that could happen for real. Or so we thought, anyway."
"So we made a catalog of all the Transformation Guns we came up with, no matter how ridiculous they were." Ryanne said. "We came up with all sorts of rules for them. I came up with the Restoration Gun only a few days ago. Samantha and Jeffries helped flesh out a few ideas, including the idea that it only undoes one transformation at a time, and any transformation that is not undone within 30 days becomes permanent. At that point, we were pretty much in the 'good material for a homebrew role-playing game' mindset as far as this went."
"How were we to know that when we came in to work this morning, all those things we'd been imagining for the past month would somehow be real?" Jeffries continued. "But there they were. The Cargo Teleportation Chamber, the sophisticated worker robots, and the Transformation Guns. The robots had even neatly arranged the Transformation Guns by the time we got there, and there were twelve of each type of Transformation Gun. Twelve Clown Guns, Twelve Geek Guns, Twelve Jock Guns, Twelve Goth Guns ... and so on, you get the idea."
Sarah McMillan sat there, listening. She knew exactly how it had happened, but she couldn't say anything. She had sworn to keep the existence of the wishing stone a secret.
Detective Maura Dunbar raised an eyebrow. "I'm an open-minded person. Some say I'm a bit too open-minded. Still, I'm finding this a bit hard to believe. Are you saying that somehow figments of your imagination became real overnight, and you don't know why?"
"That's just it!" Jeffries replied. "We don't know why! Last night, they were still just fiction. Gimmicks in search of a game to be put in. This morning, they were real and in our basement lab as if it were the most natural thing in the world."
"None of it makes any sense." Samantha said. "It's as if some outside force decided, for some reason, to make them real. But who? What? And why?"
Jeffries suddenly cringed, as a thought came to him. "Remember what I said the other day? I said I wish there was some way to introduce the rest of the world to the stuff we came up with? Do you think some force granted my wish?"
Sarah McMillan laughed. Words came to her head, and shoved their way past her mental guards and into her mouth. "Or maybe someone was messing around with a wishing stone or something and said 'I'm bored, I wish something interesting would happen'." she blurted out.
"What?" Nicolette Quarterson said. For a moment, several people were staring at Sarah.
Shit! Sarah thought to herself. She knew she had to say something, and quick.
"Nothing! It's stupid. Forget I said anything." Sarah said.
"Anyway," Rachel said. "The Transformation Guns were there, and we had to figure out what we were going to do with them. Dr. Chance was the first one to try testing them. He zapped two mathematicians with the Bimbo Gun, reducing their intelligence until we were able to find them hours later and use a Restoration Gun on them. Dr. Chance and Jeffries got in a fight with a Random Gun, and Dr. Chance turned into a punk rock woman who HATED her previous misogynistic male self, and then went on a rampage. Jeffries also got zapped, and he turned into a mad scientist supervillain type."
Rachel explained how she and Gordon Brewer escaped from the basement lab. Gordon Brewer and his daughter Gladys escaped MTI HQ and headed to Lake Point High School, while Rachel got kidnapped by Martin Stragey. Samantha told of how the transformed Jeffries locked all the Restoration Guns in his personal storage locker (except for one that Samantha managed to switch with a Random Gun), and teleported one of each type of Transformation Gun to Lake Point High School.
"So THAT's how they ended up at school!" Sarah interrupted. Under normal circumstances, she would have had very harsh words for Jeffries, demanding to know what the hell was he thinking, but she knew how the Random Gun worked. The Jeffries in the room with her seemed a decent person, but decent people could be turned into nutcases with the Random Gun. Sarah had seen it happen with Mrs. Williams over at Lake Point HIgh School, and it had clearly happened here as well.
"Yes, and I'm very sorry about that." Jeffries said.
Samantha explained that Jeffries also used the Cargo Teleportation Chamber to send one of each type of Transformation Gun to the upper levels of McMillan Tech Industries HQ, and was planning to send two of each type to MTI's Pittsburgh branch. Samantha described how she was cornered by two robots, but managed to reach a discarded Jock Gun and zap herself with it. With her Jock Gun enhanced strength, she got past the robots and fought with the transformed Jeffries, but could only pull one Random Gun out of the chamber before the chamber was accidentally activated.
Samantha described how she pulled Jeffries to safety as the chamber's energy source overloaded from having to transport a huge load, and then exploded, sending an energy wave all over the world. "It wasn't long after that that we found out that energy wave had swept all over the world, transforming every gun in the world into some sort of Transformation Gun. All the world's firearms have been replaced with Transformation Guns, as you've heard on the news, and it all started here."
Samantha breathed a sigh. "I sneaked a Restoration Gun into one of the batches the Chamber teleported. I hope that means there are Restoration Guns out there in the rest of the world. But so far, I haven't heard of any."
Ryanne and Samantha went on to describe how Jeffries suddenly regained his original personality and gave them the combination to his storage locker, allowing them to recover the Restoration Guns and restore Jeffries to his normal self. They would later learn that Jeffries' recovery of his original personality happened at the same time that the transformed Board members regained theirs.
Sarah sat there quietly and said nothing. She was glad everyone had moved on after what she had blurted out, and didn't take it seriously. For now, it seemed, the secret of the wishing stone was safe.
Jeffries breathed a deep sigh. "I am very sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen."
He turned to Denise Brewster, a pleading look in his eyes. "I know what you're thinking. You're probably thinking of firing us all. But we never meant to hurt anyone! We didn't know these things would be real!"
"If you're going to fire anyone, fire me. I was the main instigator. I was the driving force behind the whole silly Transformation Gun thing, and just roped my friends into it. And even though I wasn't myself when I did it, I'm still the one who made everything worse by teleporting those Transformation Guns. It's all my fault..."
Jeffries looked about ready to burst into tears. "I'm sorry about Mr. Coakley, and Mr. McMillan."
Denise Brewster stared at Jeffries, and at Ryanne, Rachel, and Samantha. There was a long, uncomfortable silence, as if Denise was a judge about to pronounce sentence.
"Nothing in the classes I took ever prepared me for a situation like this." Ms. Brewster began. "However, I believe I've heard enough to make a decision."
She paused again, for effect. Sarah noted the looks on the faces of Jeffries, Ryanne, Rachel, and Samantha. Sarah knew their futures would be affected by what Ms. Brewster said next.
