Sarah McMillan clicked to return to her inbox and made a McKayla Maroney face at her screen for a few seconds. Then she shrugged her shoulders, walked over to her vanity, and opened the drawer where she'd put that ugly, ugly porcelain egg all those months ago.
Then she smashed it. And what was inside made her gasp.
It was an iPod Nano. One of those old music players. It was about an inch or so wide, and about the length of her hand. A tall screen took up about 2/3 of its face, with the remainder being occupied by a clickwheel. For all intents and purposes, it looked like an ordinary iPod Nano. But there was also a small sheet of folded paper that looked like it had been torn out of a notebook.
Sarah, this is the iPod Nano of Wish Editing. It is keyed to the magical frequency of the stone that Malachi Gibson gave to his grandson, and you can use it to wield power over that stone. Normally any wish made on the stone cannot be reversed, but the device in your hands is capable of overwriting the original wish. It is the lone exception in the world to this reversal immunity, because it goes back in time and changes what the wish was in the first place. The screen on your iPod Nano will show you a video of the last wish made on the stone. You can use the clickwheel to fast-forward or rewind the scene. And when you are ready, hold your finger over the center button and think of one change that you would want to make to the wish.
If the magic senses more than one change, it will reject your suggestion and you will have to try again, so make sure you are only changing one thing. Then reality will be re-written as though the wish had been made with your change. It makes more sense when you actually try it out. Go ahead, pick up the iPod Nano and let it show you the most recent wish made on that stone. Then change it.
Sarah picked up the device and held it sideways so that the screen was in a landscape position, and watched as a video began playing: it was Jon Gibson and his friend Karyn Black, sitting on a wall just outside of school. She knew where this was. But for some reason, in the video Karyn had red hair instead of the blonde that Sarah always remembered her having.
As she watched the scene play out, Sarah could see herself walking in the background, and then she heard Karyn utter those fateful words: "God, I wish I had long blond hair and big boobs and maybe then I'd get some of the attention." And her hair color in the video changed to blonde.
Had Sarah's memories been re-written by this wish? Was that why Sarah didn't recognize Karyn's red hair? But this confirmed for Sarah that everything her grandmother had written for her was true. How else would a video like that even get on an iPod Nano that had been sealed in a porcelain egg?
A smile crossed Sarah's lips as she used the clickwheel to rewind the video.
"God, I wish I had long blond hair and big boobs and maybe then I'd get some of the attention."
"Long blond hair and big boobs and maybe then I'd get some of the attention."
"Big boobs and maybe then I'd get some of the attention."
Then she paused the video. And she rewound one more time. And she placed her finger over the center button.
