"It's the stone!" exclaimed Joan. "The stone you just took from me. It's magic. It grants wishes."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in my life," she said. "I'm going to give you detention if you..."
"Think about it," she said. She could do anything if she could just get the stone back... even make Mrs. Miller forget again. "Is a magic stone any more ridiculous than someone becoming nine months pregnant in a minute?"
"It's... well..." she said.
"If you want to," said Joan, "look at the other girls. The stone changes memory for everyone who doesn't hear the wish made. Everyone else is like this, and everyone else thinks we're all supposed to be like this. It's some kind of a magic device that makes you actually give birth to a fake baby and changes back once the cord is cut."
"I don't know..." she said.
"It's easy to prove it. Take the stone and say 'I wish I knew how this stone works.'"
"It's in the supply room."
"Please, Mrs. Miller, go and get it! Please... look, as far as you know, I'm really pregnant. There's no way I could possibly explain it that won't sound weird. I mean, can you think of any explanation I could give?"
"I can't, but... Oh, fine. I'll go and get it. Stay here."
She walked for the door. When Joan tried to follow her, she closed the door in Joan's face.
A few minutes later she returned with the stone. Her face was pale. "I... you were right, Joan. This is a wish-granting stone."
"Of course it is," said Joan. "You saw the holographic 3D image I got from my grandfather that proves the stone is real."
"You never showed me any such thing... but if the stone makes there be a reason for something to happen, then I suppose there must be a reason why I know."
"Did you wish anything else?"
"No," said Mrs. Miller. "You don't have to worry about me changing you into a boy."
Joan was ready to say she was already really a boy, but of course Mrs. Miller didn't know that.
"But we're going to test it anyway. Now you sit down here... and I wish I was 20 years younger, without changing reality."
Instantly, Mrs. Miller changed. She was quite a hot woman now. Her greying hair was now long and reddish-brown, her face unwrinkled, her breasts not sagging. She looked down at herself, saw her hands, then got out a mirror. "It... it's real!"
"Okay," said Joan. "Can I have my stone back? It's not like taking a toy from me. It's more like taking a house or a car. You wouldn't punish a student by taking away his house, would you? I mean her house?"
"All right. First, though, I wish I was a ten million dollar millionaire, with no changes in reality either. Now, I wish that everyone knows I just got younger and just got rich, but thinks nothing of it, including the IRS."
One flash later, she said "Well, this is certainly an interesting day. You can have your magic stone back."
Joan sighed with relief.
"Let me fix your problem..."
"Wait!"
"Oh, it's the least I could do. I wish that the fake belly suits don't simulate pregnancy any more than they did before."
Nothing happened.
"You can't reverse wishes," explained Joan. "That might have affected the other suits, but it didn't affect this one. So now everyone else has a normal fake suit and I have one that looks really real."
"I see...." Mrs. Miller looked over the rock and finally it back to Joan, who looked at it too. "Thanks, Mrs. Miller... Now what? Hmm. I wish that I wasn't pregnant from this suit.
Suddenly the suit materialized on a table in front of Joan. But Joan was still pregnant.
"I don't understand it," she said. "It should have worked. You only wished the suit really works well. That doesn't mean I have to have used it. It can still be something that really works well if it's lying on the table wrapped in plastic. It... You've got to be KIDDING!"
"Don't yell, Joan!"
"I must be really pregnant now! Give me a break! I'm not pregnant from the suit, I'm pregnant for real. Well, it doesn't matter. I never said I wanted to be pregnant. I wouldn't really be reversing any wishes if I wished for that. Here goes, Mrs. Miller....
"No, Joan. You may not."
"Huh?"
"It would be murder. If you're really pregnant, you can't wish away your baby. You'd be killing it."
Joan remembered something she'd heard once, a slogan... "Abortion is a personal choice!"
"If you're nine months pregnant, that's not abortion. It's a baby, according to anyone's beliefs."
"And I'm due at 3:15..." Suddenly Joan felt a contraction. Of course, real labor would have already been going on for longer than twenty minutes....
