Zack's attention is pulled away from the lion documentary when he feels his heart racing and his blood rushing through his body. He feels as though his muscles are contorting and changing shape; that even his bones are starting to move around and change in size.
Whatever is happening right now, Zack assumes it must have something to do with magic.
'I wish whatever is happening to my body right now would stop and reverse its effects! He quickly thinks to himself. He is relieved as all the aforementioned contortions and movements went in the opposite direction until everything felt normal. Zack let out a sigh of relief as his heart rate returned to normal.
A letter falls on Zackary's lap.
'...what?' He thinks to himself, having no idea where this envelope came from. He didn't even notice it come into his field of vision; it must have appeared in-between blinks.
Taking a look at it, it reads:
"ONE WITH THE WISHING POWER: PLEASE OPEN"
Zack takes an awkward look over at his mom, who thankfully is too absorbed in the documentary to notice. He looks over at his sister who is scootched up right next to him on the love-seat, but luckily for him, she can't read. So he just opens the envelope, pulls out a letter and gives it a read.
"To the one with the wishing power,
You have made two wishes that contradict each other. Please allow an explanation.
You wished that to whichever extent your sister becomes dependent on others as a result of your wishes, that you would be the one to bear the responsibility of taking care of those new needs.
Just now, you had wished that your sister became dependent on breastfeeding. By default, this wish would be fulfilled by having your mother's breasts return to a milk-producing state, but because of the previous wish you made, this would cause a conflict of logic.
If your sister were breastfed by your mother, that would be going against your wish that all of your sisters' new needs be fulfilled specifically by you.
In order to maintain order between these two commands, you were going to physically transform into a young woman. You were going to become a 16-year-old girl, and with the body of one who had given birth to a child at that--even though no child of yours had (or was going to) come into existence.
With this transformation in effect, you would be able to breastfeed your sister Susan. Your mind would have remained exactly the same, but everyone around you would have had their memories altered to the effect that you were born a girl.
However, as your gender transformation was taking effect, you made the wish that it be reversed and canceled. This put the logic of your wishes back into conflict.
What would have happened next, was that you simply would have grown milk-producing female breasts and retained your otherwise male body.
However, fortunately for you, the designer of this power wrote a fail-safe into its code for situations like this. It will be detected with the owner of the power obviously is confused about the logic of their wishes, and is trying desperately to reverse what they've done. This, clearly, was the situation you had put yourself in.
When you wished to reverse your gender bending, your breastfeeding wish was reversed as well, in order to maintain the balance of logic. And then, naturally, this letter was fabricated and placed on your lap, so that you could come to an understanding of your mistake.
So keep in mind, if you desire to continue making wishes, to take time to consider the logical ramifications of what you're wishing for, and more importantly, how the various wishes you make might interact with one another.
Thank you for reading all of this."
Zack's interest was piqued as he folded the letter up, and wished it out of existence.
'Well then!' He rubbed his chin, taking in this new information. This incidentally made him realize that he needed to shave. He patted Suzie's thigh as he got up and headed to the bathroom. This took a little bit more time than he thought it would, because the layout of the house was much wider and slightly different.
As he opened the cabinet, he was a little thrown off to see things not in their usual places. Normally it was simply a matter of distinguishing his razor from the ones his mom and sister use, while trying to not notice all the half-opened packages of tampons and pads. This time, however, there was considerably more cabinet space than there usually was, which would make things much less cluttered, if it weren't for the addition of several large packages of diapers filling up so much space. Diapers, in addition to many other baby supplies like powder, cream, wipes, and various special needs paraphonalia.
The longer he looked into this cabinet, he realized that it actually is much deeper than he thought; it's just hard to see all the way back there. The back of the cabinet is stuffed full with small pieces of bathroom furniture; an unused stool, a piece of glass that was probably going to be made into a mirror, ext.
It would seem, even though Zack's family has become rich, they aren't any more organized or less messy. However much space has been afforded by this house, his mom has probably just bought way more stuff to fill all that space with, and they probably haven't ever hired a house cleaner, because Zack knows his mom would have a hard time trusting a stranger to wander around their house no matter what magical timeline they're living in.
Hilariously, there was also a potty chair stowed away in the back of the cabinet. It was actually pretty big; way too tall for a toddler to sit on, implying that it was intended for an older child.
"Hoh... I wonder what the story behind that is." Zack thought to himself.
In this moment, he remembered what the letter had said; that his wishes could have all sorts of unintended side-effects. In this case, there was at least one glaring side-effect to all of these lifestyle-altering wishes Zack had been making; they had been altering the memories of both his mom and sister, but not him.
Mulling this realization over, Zack considered that there may be a ton of things about his family history that just now retroactively came into existence, that he doesn't know anything about. It would be very awkward if, for example, his mom brought over friends from work (something he knows she tends to do), and none of them were the same people they were before, because his mom probably works somewhere totally different now, considering she makes so much more money.
Susan and him often would often take a book or comic or manga home, take turns reading it over the course of a week, then have several long conversations about the thing they just read. These conversations became the foundation for a lot of the ideas and phrases the two of them shared; the start of a lot of their running jokes they'd crack at each other.
But given that, thanks to his wish, Suzie has never learned to read, it would make sense if literally none of these conversations ever happened. Even talking to his sister might get confusing sometimes, since they would be talking to one another from two different timelines.
"Okayyy...." Zack whispers to himself. "I wish I had all the memories of this altered reality, in addition to my memory of the original reality that existed before I made any wishes."
Zackary felt dizzy and lost track of where he was for a moment, but quickly regained his balance.
Nothing felt unusual to him.
He did remember, though, that they had been trying to potty train Suzie when she was eleven, but she never did good making it to that potty chair.
He remembered the whole reason he originally came in here was to shave. So he finally located and pulled out his razor and got himself ready. He wasn't looking forward to shaving, as he never is, just because it kind of hurts. He casually wished that his face and neck were immune to most of the pain of shaving, and that his neck wouldn't have those ugly red spots all over the place when he was done.
Relieved to finally not mind shaving for once, Zack thought about the wish he had made a little bit ago about making his sister start breastfeeding.
'I mean, now that I think about it, turning into a chick isn't a bad idea.' He thinks to himself. 'I wouldn't have to be shaving my face like this, for one thing. Butttt then I'd just be spending even more time shaving my legs.'
He decides...