Jon always knew that his family was strange. When he looked up all his ancestors on the web, he discovered that he had a whole range of colorful grandparents and great-grandparents, who came all the way from England and Scotland. They were all into magic and witchcraft, into healing and magical arts. They had passed on their knowledge through the generations, and Jon still had contact with his aunts and uncles in England from time to time.
Jon’s grandparents had immigrated to the United States during the Great Depression, and his own parents were born in America after the world war. His parents had changed careers in the army several times and moved around before getting divorced. Jon’s dad moved around and stayed single for a couple of years, before he remarried a much younger woman again. This time, she got pregnant, and little Jon was born.
Since Jon’s father was a big database administrator for the state of Florida who did tons of work using Oracle and who had set up tons of networks using all the latest software, servers, and wireless networking, Jon pretty much grew up knowing everything about computers. It helped having a father who was a geek and a mother who sold cell phones.
When Jon’s thirteenth birthday rolled along, in the last week of January, he received a package in the mail, from his uncle in England. He opened it, and noticed that it was a cell phone!
“Dad! I got a new cell!” he cheered. “This must be the coolest cell all the kids use in England!”
Jon turned it on and waited for the new Android Operating System to boot up. Then, once it came up, it displayed the date and time, and one icon on the home screen, beside the browser and the phone icons.
“Aww man… I need to go to the marketplace and download some more apps! It only has ONE app on it? I wonder what app it is?” Jon said, as he tapped his finger on the app, labeled “TF-TEXT”.
A text window and the small, digital keyboard popped up.
“Please enter your transformation subject and command here:” it said, above the text window.
“Say what? Transformation?” Jon wondered out loud.
Just then, his younger brother Peter walked in. Peter was only 10 years old, and he was getting ready to go to soccer practice.
“You got a new cell phone? But why? Mom sells those!” Peter grinned.
“Yeah, but this one is special. It has a special app on it!” Jon said.
Then Jon typed something in the small text window.
“Make Peter grow two inches taller”, then he tapped his finger on the SEND button on his phone.
Suddenly, Peter was overcome by an intense tingling feeling! He felt his legs stretch a bit! The short, ten-year-old boy suddenly began to grow from 5 feet tall to 5 foot 2 inches, in just three seconds!
“Whoa! Did you just grow two inches taller?” Jon gasped.
“What happened?”
“I made you grow… Using my cell phone!” Jon grinned. “This is awesome!”
Jon could just imagine all the fun he was going to have with his new cell phone at school…