People, especially in the media and entertainment industry, have made wishing upon a star out to be some mystical process. But it’s really quite simple.

Since wishes travel faster than the speed of light, the star so wished upon receives the request instantly if it still exists; many stars in the night sky have gone supernova but we won’t find out until the light from the explosion reaches us. This is, incidentally, why many wishes go unanswered.

Once received, the wish is sent off for central processing. How efficiently that happens depends on the volume of requests; popular stars like Sirius and Polaris are much more likely to be backlogged. Processing takes place in the heart of the universe, where the wishes are sorted by length, complexity, and deservedness. Whether or not any previous wishes have been granted, and whether the granting of a wish might reveal too much about the process are taken into account as well.

From there, tweaks are made directly to the fabric of the universe, as it is a convenient location for doing so. Unlike the act of wishing, the act of granting a wish does *not* happen faster than the speed of light, hence a delay of minutes to years. If someone dies before their scheduled wish is fulfilled, this is duly noted and forwarded to the next life for compensation.

Difficulties arise when people wish on things that are not, strictly speaking, stars in the night sky. Wishing on a planet, like Venus, or a shooting star may coincidentally reach a star in that general direction, or it may hurtle into the void. As much as they enjoy hearing from you, neither planets nor meteorites have any pull with the celestial bureaucracy. Wishing on the Sun is not done very often anymore, even though it is technically a star. In the old days of sun worship it was more common, but strict tradition keeps stars from forwarding wishes from within their own orbits. Some kinder stars have been known to forward the wishes anyway (our Sun sends them through Alpha Centauri B).