Ring of Truth

Jason walked past the stores in the mall, searching for the right place to buy the right gift for his girlfriend Kelly. It was her 20th birthday and he wanted to make her gift a special one. But with a limited amount of money and not much time before he was scheduled to meet up with her, he wasn't sure how "special" a gift he could get.

"Excuse me, young man," a frail-sounding man's voice spoke suddenly.

Jason spun around and saw a robed man with gray hair, a bushy gray beard, and a tired-looking face.

"I couldn't help but hear your plight," the old man said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You're looking for a special gift, is that right? Then I've got exactly what you're looking for." He reached into a pocket in his robe, then pulled it back out and opened his clenched hand. In the palm, Jason saw a silvery-looking ring.

"A ring?" There wasn't even anything special about it. It was just a ring and nothing more.

"Oh, it's much more than just a ring," he said, before coughing and taking a moment to calm himself. It was clear that the man was ill. And Jason really felt like staying away from him. "This, young man, is the Ring of Truth. Wear this, and you can only tell the truth."

"Uh, yeah, sure," Jason said. Of course, he didn't believe him. This guy was obviously off his meds. He was probably one of those old fogies that had escaped from some nearby nursing home.

Before Jason could stop him, the old man took the ring and placed it on Jason's finger.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Jason asked, startled.

"Try it. You'll see," the old man said.

Jason looked down at his hand, then tried his best to take the ring off, but it wouldn't budge. He looked back up, saying "It won't come ... off." Hey, where did that old guy go? Jason looked around, but the old man was gone. No way he could have gotten away that quickly. He looked back down at the ring on his finger. Can't tell lies, huh? Yeah right. Like something like that even existed.

But still, part of him wondered. He thought for a moment, then decided to test it out, just to make sure, to reassure himself that the old guy really was nuts.

"I've got long blond hair," he said. Which wasn't the truth, of course. Normally, he had short brown hair. But the moment after he said it, something odd happened. His vision was obscured by his long blond hair. Man, I really need to get a haircut, he thought. Wait a minute, what? My hair wasn't this long before? And wasn't it brown, not blond? Or was it? It was strange. For some reason, it felt like his hair color and length was different, but he clearly remembered it always being blond and recently being long. He looked down at the ring. He remembered stating a lie, but it obviously wasn't one. It was the truth. But that's how the ring worked, right? According to the old man, the ring its wearer to only tell the truth. Yeah, that must have been what happened. He tried telling a lie and ended up saying a truth instead. Maybe that old guy wasn't as nuts as he first thought.

Little did Jason know, however, the ring didn't make people tell the truth. Instead, it turned false statements into true ones. Any lie that Jason told while wearing the ring would become the truth, even changing the whole of reality, fitting the words spoken.