The Charity Stone: A Devastating Demonstration

... Richard McMillan demonstrated his company's Reality Branches machine. It was the moment all of Lake Point had been waiting for. Almost every adult was employed by McMillan Tech Industries or some business dependent on MTI. Reality Branches was to be the pinnacle of MTI's long track record of success: a gateway to a tree of diverging timelines. Richard had the RB prototype installed on campus. His daughter Sarah had the honor of turning it on. One touch was all it took to ruin thousands of lives. The RB machine exploded into innumerable blazing fragments that struck the student body. The news media caught it all on video. Richard McMillan got more publicity than he ever imagined. Unfortunately, it was the wrong kind. In the previous reality, Richard McMillan was spending his dwindling fortune on his daughter. In this new reality, Richard McMillan had spent his entire fortune on thousands of students at his daughter's high school, paying for their treatments, surgeries, and rehabilitation after a class action lawsuit. MTI was closed. Parents were unemployed and some of their children would need lifelong care. Charities stepped in to pick up where MTI left off, but donations were reduced to a trickle once the media tired of retelling the tragedy of Lake Point. Months later, Jon's grandfather died. He had gone on an expedition to find what he claimed to be the solution to Lake Point's countless problems - a *steen,* as the Dutch-speaking Surinamese called it. A mere stone! Jon's family was outraged by the old man's tasteless assertion. Not even death could allow them to forgive him. When Jon received his inheritance, he threw it away. He wanted nothing to do with a dumb rock that his grandfather died for. What a waste. Since Jon never showed the rock to Karyn - and since wishes could not be undone - Karyn had been born with blonde hair and buxom genes. Her looks had led her down a different path. She had been Sarah McMillan's right-hand girl before the accident. Her childhood friendship with Jon was long forgotten. Since Jon's stone was missing and it was never stolen to be replaced with the Charity Stone, there was only one stone that could help the denizens of Lake Point get back on track and resume some semblance of their old lives - the stone within Athena DeVries' anti-magic pendant. Athena sensed magical forces wreaking havoc this morning, though she could not determine any details. She used an artificial hand to pick up the pendant. Putting it on, she realized ...