"Take a look at this." Robbie tossed Melissa a magazine. She looked at it.
"Seventeen? What's this for?"
"Look at it carefully, Melissa."
Melissa looked at the cover... and then she realized she was looking at herself, or at least her new self. The short-haired blonde girl she'd seen in the mirror a few moments before decorated the cover of the magazine. She looked at it in amazement. This version of her had shoulder-length hair, but the face and the body and the hair color were the same. She was dressed in a fashionable, feminine pink dress and posing playfully. Layed over the picture she saw a headline: "Melissa Saunders talks about her movies, her life, and playing... a man?"
She opens the magazine and searches through it until she finds the cover story, a story called "Pretty Boy." She doesn't read it, but she looks in amazement at the pictures. They all show this other version of her, dressed like a woman and posing for glamour shots. There's even one of her wearing what appears to be a male wig and male clothes and wearing what is very obviously a fake moustache. Below that picture there's a caption that reads "Teen sensation Melissa Saunders plays a teenage boy-become-girl in the upcoming movie 'You Are What You Wish.'"
"Is this me?" Melissa asked.
"Yes Melissa. That's the woman you've become. In this reality you don't exist as Jon. You're a popular young actress named Melissa Saunders, 20 years old, You've acted in television shows and movies for years, and your most recent project is one based on the life you've lived up until today... only in this reality that life only exists on film and in the mind of a pair of screenwriters. You, your parents, your sister, your friends, and Sarah and I have all become actors, and our old lives have faded away. We're the only ones who remember the old reality."
"What makes us so special?" Jon asked.
"You remember it because you made the wish," Robbie says. "Liz and I remember because we're part of a top secret organization that's been tracking the rock and similar artifacts."
"What? How..."
"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you or you family, Jon. And I'm sorry I had to fake my death, but when I found the rock I knew I had to go into hiding to keep the rock away from others who were looking for the rock. My organization, the Bureau of Magical Research, has enemies. Hiding was the only way I could protect you, so I used the stone to create a copy of my body and then killed it. Then I left you the stone and went into hiding."
"And Sarah?"
"Her name isn't really Sarah, in this reality or any other. She used to be a 37-year-old BMR agent named Carmen Milenti. When I went into hiding the BMR didn't feel comfortable leaving you or the rock unguarded, so Carmen volunteered to keep watch over you. She used the rock to turn herself from an adult into a young caucasian woman... the Sarah you think you know. She used the rock to create a fictional existence for herself as a student at your high school, one that everyone except the BMR, including you, believed in."
"And what happened to the rest of the BMR?"
"Unfortunately, when the rock created this reality, it wrote the BMR out of existence... as well as itself. In order to make your life a movie, it fictionalized everything about your life... including the rock itself. The rock doesn't exist in this reality, and it never has. I see you have the rock, or what looks like the rock... it's only a simple movie prop now. All of its powers have vanished. Since the rock doesn't exist, the BMR also doesn't exist, and all of the world's BMR agents... and their enemies, fortunately... have vanished. Liz and I only exist because we were a direct part of your life, and as such we were featured in your movie. We only remember being something other than actors because of our involvement with the BMR. The two of us lie at a unique crossing point between you and the BMR, and for that reason alone we were spared. You're lucky even we survived the change."
