As Zoe wished that, Jon said "Wait a minute, I forgot... Rock, come to me!"
Jon was saying the words that, long ago, he had wished would summon the rock to him, and that he had promptly forgotten about. He would probably still have forgotten them if Zoe hadn't wished he'd tell her everything, which led him to review his previous wishes and remember. But when he said the words, nothing happened.
"It's too late," said Zoe. "I got my answer. It's a lot simpler than you'd think. Grandpa wished that if you ever started abusing the rock, I'd be able to take it away from you. Do you really think he didn't even consider that you'd abuse it?"
"I didn't abuse it!" exclaimed Jon.
"No, you just took revenge on your classmates, you raped Karyn, you tried to control me.... And even then Grandpa was very lenient. It took a whole day of you constantly doing that before his wish came into effect. Do you realize that I didn't become immune to you until just now?"
"What are you talking about?" said Jon.
"You started by wishing we'd be rich and not notice it. Well, we did become rich, and I didn't notice it. If I had been immune all along I'd have said 'wait, how did we become rich,' right? In fact, you had grown by six inches and gotten stronger. So if I was immune to the rock all along, when you and Karyn had walked in, I wouldn't have just wondered how Karyn became a bimbo, I would have wondered how you grew six inches in a day."
"Karyn, get me the stone back!" said Jon.
Karyn didn't obey.
"That isn't going to work, Jon," said Zoe. "Grandpa's wish would have been useless if you could get the stone from me indirectly. You might be new at making wishes, but he certainly wasn't. Now, let's see, what should I do?"
"I'm already in a w--wheelchair," said Jon, stammering. He was distinctively less confident than a minute ago. "Isn't that enough?"
"I don't know. First, I wish you'd reverse every wish or use of power you made today except your physical changes, the ones about us being rich, and your fix to Karyn's hair and breasts, but including the wish about having power in the first place."
Jon found himself forced to concentrate, to review everything he had done and reverse almost all of it. He even had to unbimbify Karyn. When he was finally able to think straight again, he tried to teleport across the room and found it would no longer work.
"You don't have any power any more," said Zoe, "Now, maybe I should make you a Buddhist."
"Huh?" said Jon.
"Claudia McGruger. You decided to go easy on her by making her into a religious person. It must never have occurred to you how horrible a thing it is to mind control someone into accepting an entire belief system that they didn't before. How about I make you a Buddhist? Or a Scientologist. Maybe a worshipper of Zeus. You'll honestly, sincerely, think that you need to follow the commands of a god who nobody's believed in in a thousand years. You'll build your whole lifestyle around this god regardless of what you believed in before my wish. I'd be going easy on you, right?"
"Don't do this to me!" yelled Jon. "It isn't the same thing!"
"And then there's the cheerleaders. Did you know it's illegal to kick someone off the cheerleading squad for being pregnant? It's called Title IX. I'm not surprised that a lot of guys haven't heard about it. Not only were you hurting those poor girls, but you were forcing the school to treat them as if women were still living in the stone age."
Jon waited in his wheelchair, watching Zoe, until Zoe finally said "I know what I should do." And then, unexpectedly, she said "I'll ask Karyn. Karyn, Jon hurt you, but Jon was also close to you and you know him pretty well. Tell me if Jon should be punished, and if so, just what I should do to him...."
