The day my life changed forever began much like any other.
I was a twenty-year-old college sophomore; white, straight, male, middle-class, I was pretty unremarkable and never really expected anything that unusual might happen to me. But then, after I showered and dressed and sat down at my computer in my dorm room, I got the e-mail that started it all. Apparently, the campus admissions adviser wanted to see me. Weird; I was already enrolled, after all, and had been for more than a year. But the e-mail said it was important and I didn't have any classes that morning, so I agreed to meet with her.
When I arrived at the office, I found the admissions adviser was waiting for me; she was an attractive black woman in her early thirties. There was something strange on her desk I'd never seen before, some sort of weird-looking crystal, but I figured it was just a paperweight and ignored it as I took my seat. "Do you know why you're here?" the advisor asked.
I shrugged. "No idea," I said.
"You see," she told me, "we've recently come under criticism for diversity in our student body; apparently too many of our students are straight, white men, and it's something we've been hoping to change. Do you understand me so far?"
"I think so," I said. "But I've got no idea how I'm supposed to help you with that."
"We believe part of the key to creating a more diverse environment is open mindedness," the advisor said, picking up her weird paperweight. "I want you to take a moment and think, and then describe for me a student who you think would do well here but is someone different from yourself in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or some combination thereof."
"Okay," I said. "That's a nice exercise, but how is it going to help make us more diverse?"
The advisor smiled warmly. "Oh, trust me, it will," she said. We were quiet for a moment, and then she asked, "do you have someone in mind?"
"I do," I said; it hadn't been hard to come up with someone. Of course, what I hadn't realized yet was exactly how this was going to make the school more diverse - the advisor's weird crystal paperweight was a magical artifact that was going to rewrite reality to transform me into the person I described. I mean, who would expect something like that, anyway?
I opened my mouth. "The person I'm thinking of is..."