Hoping to find out what was going on, Jon asked the stone, "I wish I knew what happened to my mom and dad in the 'accident' that Zoe talked about."
"Oh, no," Jon moaned once he understood.
"What?" Karyn asked.
"I guess we were kind of, uh, doing it in my room, which my mom didn't mind after we'd both spent a year away at college, and as long as we took, uh, precautions. Everything was cool until one day, my mom accidentally came into the room and saw us. I guess she was putting away some laundry.
"Anyway, there were, doing it doggie style, and since my mom was supposedly OK with everything, we didn't stop. We kept on. And my mom kept watching us, too, because I guess she always liked it that way and my dad didn't. Then, after we finished, my mom said, 'You know, I really envy the way you kids have so much fun with each other. It makes me wish your dad and I were all mixed up and incredibly oversexed.'"
"No, don't tell me. I bet you're mom was touching the stone somehow. Is that right?"
"Yeah, she was leaning against my dresser and that's where the stone was: right on top. And the stone really mixed them up, too. My mom and dad both have the same physique now, shorter than my dad used to be and taller than my mom used to be. My dad's face looks about sixty percent like his original and forty percent like my mom's did. Hers is reversed. They both have breasts. Neither has body hair. My mom has a dick and my dad has a pussy. They're both bisexual and they're not satisfied unless they do it eight or ten times a day. I guess the stone enhanced my mom's capacity so she can do it that much. They each wanted so many partners that they got divorced, but they still hang around together and organize sex parties.
"That's more than I wanted to know, but thanks," Karyn told Jon. "But if you're mom is so liberal about sex, why is she so suspicious about money?"
"Hang on a moment," said Jon, then he wished he understood that situation, too.
"Oh brother! Apparently, I've tried quite a few ways of using the stone to make money, and they've all worked, but people keep coming around and hassling me about it."
"Like what?" Karyn wondered aloud.
"Well, I tried wishing for a million dollars and sure enough, ten thousand hundred dollar bills appeared on my desk. When I took them to the bank, though, the manager started grilling me with a zillion questions. He just figured, where does a seventeen-year-old kind get a million dollars in cash, right? It has to be stolen or something. Naturally I wished away that problem, but then a couple of Feds pulled me out of class the next day and started asking me the same kinds of questions. OK, I wished my way out of that, but that night a SWAT team of narcs busted into out house! Then came more Feds: the FBI instead of the Treasury department. Then the Bureau of Engraving And Printing raided us, not to mention the stream of crooks and burglars who broke in at all hours of the day and night. In the end, taxes, penalties, and fines added up to more than a million dollars.
"Then I tried the stock market. You know: buy some stock and then wish it would go up. But every time I started making move than chicken feed, the Securities and Exchange Commission came around and accused me of insider trading or racketeering or falsifying my books.
"I tried Las Vegas, too. At first they wouldn't let me inside the casino because I was underage, so I had to give somebody some money and wish they'd be lucky. Of course at first, they'd just go out another door and take everything, including my stake. After that I learned to wish up front that they'd give me my share when they were done. Within a few days, though, the casinos figured out that a string of people were winning too much, and it took them very little time to figure out that I was at the center of it. They never figured out my 'method' of course, but they blacklisted me anyway.
"I tried some other things too, like wishing for a dumpster full of one-to-five karat flawless cut diamonds, and buying up spent oil fields and wishing they were full again, or wishing that I'd win a big lottery. In every case, though, some government agency would swoop in, and then try to arrest me, and then claim they could keep me out of jail only if I let them seize all my profits as tax.
"Lately I've been trying giant gold nuggets, like a couple hundred pounds in size. The metallurgists look them over, of course, and they always decide that they're natural. That means they're not melted down from stolen jewelry or anything like that. Nobody has reported any two or three hundred pound gold nuggets missing, so the cops and the feds have to accept that they're not stolen. Of course, they keep asking who own the property where I found each nugget, but so far I've managed to locate enough unclaimed vacant lots and open salvage areas to keep them guessing.
"Does your mom believe any of this?" Karyn asked.
"Well, of course I can't tell her what's really going on. That means she sees a lot of money, cops, Feds, and shady dealers passing through, and naturally she's suspicious. The only good part is that usually she doesn't care about money. She's too interested in sex."
"How much money do you have after all that?" Karyn wondered.
"About a billion and a half," Jon admitted. "Of course, if I spend very much at once, the cops and the feds and the financial regulators and all the other scum start showing up again. What concerns me now, though, is getting back to our own time."
"Why?" asked Karyn, who was otherwise speechless.
