"I told you, Jen. I'm into the occult. Remember? Here's what we do. Uh... we research it?"
"Hmm?" said Jen. "Zoe, I thought you were going to give me a plan."
"If I had a plan in mind I wouldn't say 'keep it away until we figure out how to fix it'. We'd already know how to fix it. But we really should research it. I have some books. A couple are Wiccan, some are plain occult, there are a few magazines, and I have this weird old book with marks on its cover that I got at a garage sale. I know there were some things about magic stones and power in there. Why don't we look them up?"
"Maybe I should call Karyn too" said Jen.
"Karyn? Your friend who just got in from the mountains?"
"Yeah. I told her about the stone. We were going to work on it together. I wish my boyfriend could help, but I don't want to tell him about the stone until I have it all figured out."
"Boyfriend? You can't have a boyfriend. You're a guy named Jon!"
"I'm Jen, I told you that. And of course I have a boyfriend. He's really nice to me and we like a lot of the same things. Don't you want to watch football games with someone you like?"
"Sure, but I'm a girl. Oh, forget it, Jen, I give up" said Zoe.
Jen called up Karyn, while wondering if Karyn would remember Zoe as the old Zoe or the new Zoe. Meanwhile, Zoe wondered if Karyn would remember the old Jon or the new Jen. Neither of them knew exactly what the half-working stone had done. But it turned out that Karyn did remember the new reality.
"So you're really a guy," said Karyn, "but you don't look too much different from now anyway? Does that mean we'd be going out with each other then, Jen, if you hadn't used the stone?"
"Uhh, I suppose it's possible" said Jen.
Karyn blushed a little. "You know, you would make a cute guy, Jen."
Zoe, who remembered Jon, said "It didn't happen like that. You were just friends."
"Oh" said Karyn.
Jen wondered, then, just why Karyn wouldn't be going out with a male Jen, yet would still talk about it to a female Jen. Sure, Jen found Karyn attractive, but the idea that Karyn was a lesbian and attracted to boyish girls like Jen was a little out there. Besides, even though Jen liked both boys and girls, she already had a boyfriend.
"Ahem" said Zoe. "The books?"
"Oh, right" said Karyn.
They all began searching through various volumes. Karyn found a reference to stones of power, and even loss of power, but there was nothing specific, just a few lines and a picture of a man with the stone.
Jen glanced over at Karyn's open book. "Wait!" she said. "That looks a lot like Grandpa."
Zoe looked and said "It certainly does. What does it say?"
"It says," replied Karyn, "that this picture is from 1898. If it is your grandfather, maybe he used the stone to keep himself alive, but it doesn't really say anything here we can use."
Jen said "Right... Maybe this book's more useful." She had the old book, which was only from a little after 1898 itself. There were no pictures of the stone, but there was some text about Incan magic stones. "I think I found it!" she said. "The legendary stone of... I can't pronounce this word. It says that the stones need to be recharged about once a decade. You need to sacrifice one living thing of any sort and perform this ritual."
"One living thing?" said Zoe.
"Right..."
"But we can't do that!" said Karyn.
"Sure we can" said Jen. "There's a bag of potatoes under the sink."
"Hm?" said Karyn.
"They're alive" said Jen. "Otherwise you couldn't plant them. Anyway, it can't hurt to try. Maybe the Incas sacrificed people, but we don't need to. But there's one other thing we might need to worry about."
"What's that?" asked Zoe.
"The ritual makes the power overflow. You fix the stone, but you also leak energy for the next week or so and anyone near you who makes a wish gets it granted, just as if it was a stone wish. And you can't use magic to stop them from making wishes, either."
One mashed potato, one pentagram, five candles, and ten minutes of incantations and gestures later, Jen finished the ritual. The stone glowed blue, and almost seemed to pulsate, then it faded.
"I wish I knew if that worked" said Zoe. She blinked, then said "It did. But let's hope not too many people use those two words around you..."
