Jon handed the stone to the wizened old mage. The man, in fact, was a friend of his grandfather and Jon knew that once he had found him he could explain all sorts of things.
The mage held up a magnifying glass to the stone and said "Hmm. It has some cracks in it. I don't think this is your grandfather's stone. Someone must have switched it!"
"Really?" replied Jon. "What does that mean?"
"Oh, the cracked stone twists wishes. That's all." He put the stone back into Jon's hand.
"That's all?" replied Jon. "No wonder we had such problems. Let's see, for a while I was a girl with one breast, and there was this time I turned the whole school into lizard people, and then there was this time where I made everyone horny for a day and forgot to leave out babies and kids, and then Karyn turned into this hologram...."
"Yeah, and?" asked the man.
"And... And well, I need the real stone back!"
"No you don't. Look into this crystal ball."
Jon stared into the crystal ball. It showed him dozens of wishing scenarios, and almost all of them had something going wrong eventually. Jon as a whore, or with three breasts, or transformed into a pregnant leopard. Sarah getting hold of the stone. Bullies using the stone, or Jon using the stone to bully others. In one scenario, Jon accidentally destroyed the world....
"You see, Jon, if you had the real stone, things would go wrong and wishes would get twisted anyway. Replacing the stone with a cracked one didn't make much of a difference at all."
