Jon said, "One last thing to cover. Someone can still take the stone, and prevent us from getting it back. You were right; knowing where it is might not be enough."
Karyn said, "What if we made it so we're the only ones that can move the stone? We could work it the same way as the last wish, and let us allow permission for others to carry it?"
Jon shook his head. "What happens if we got stuck someplace away from where we left the stone? And what would happen if the wrong person found the stone where we left it, and they got WAY too curious about why the stone couldn't be moved? Immovable objects are kind of rare." Jon had a sudden vision of his house surrounded by MIB agents, and shuddered.
Karyn said, "Your first point is enough; that last bit is kind of far-fetched. Do you have something else in mind?"
Jon did. "What if I had the ability to just remotely teleport the stone to me?"
Karyn vetoed the idea. "That defeats the purpose of leaving the stone behind. If you can just call it to you anytime you want, then it makes the wishes too easy again, remember?"
Jon pondered this for a bit. "What if I reverse it. What if we had the ability to teleport to the stone? I dunno 'bout you, but I won't be casually doing that all the time. Makes people wonder."
Karyn considered it. "Don't do it with any witnesses around, unless it's a real emergency, deal?"
"Deal." The comment about witnesses reminded Jon about a scifi novel he'd once read. He improvised an addition. "I wish that both Karyn and I had the ability to teleport to the stone's location, or to each other, just by concentrating, AND also teleport other places just like the character David could in the book Jumper."
Karyn's jaw almost fell off. "Jon! That was a lot more!" She felt a bit faint for a moment.
Jon cringed away from her. "I know, I know, but I was afraid that I'd accidentally limit a future wish about teleporting ability, and I've always wanted to be able to teleport like that."
"I've never read that book." Karyn glared at Jon. "You'll have to tell me how my new teleportation works." She was a more than little irked that he had just done this to her without discussing it first, and her face showed it.
Jon could hear her anger. He raised his hands in mock self-defense. "You'll like this! It's easy." He lowered his voice into calm, soothing tones. "Start simple. Just look at the other side of the room, and think about yourself being there. You have to really want it. Imagine what the room looks like from that other vantage point."
Karyn tried to go along with his suggestion, and found it was indeed easy. She found the right frame of mind to do a Jump almost right away. There was no sensation of movement, except the room suddenly shifted around her. She was just there, now on the other side of the room. She Jumped back. She Jumped on top of Jon's bed. She Jumped into the empty closet space by the Replomat. "Ok, this is admittedly cool, but you still should have asked me first!"
Jon was testing it out too, blinking all over the room. "Sorry." He didn't sound all that sorry to her. He laughed out loud. "Woot! This is great!"
Jon paused his rapid blinking. "OK, now something a wee bit harder. OK, a LOT harder. Pick a real place you've seen on TV several times. You know a lot about it, but you've never been there."
Karyn didn't have to think long. "The Golden Gate Bridge." That was on her "must see someday" list.
"Good one. I've never been there either, but how many times have we seen it on TV and in movies. Good choice. Go."
Karyn tried. She knew what it looked like, from many angles. She concentrated. Nothing was happening. She could see it in her mind, the bridge, traffic on the bridge, the view across to Alcatraz Island. Nope, nada. She still was in the bedroom with Jon. "I can't do it, can you?"
Jon admitted, "No, I can't; that's one of the limits. If you can't see it from where you're standing, it has to be a place you've actually been. But with the wish, I made an exception for getting to each other, or to the stone. We'll need to test that too."
Karyn punched him. "Why did you have me try so hard if you knew it wouldn't work?"
Jon rubbed his chest where she'd hit him. "Ow! Well, I was curious if it really was a limit. Y'know, 'I didn't know it was impossible when I did it.' You didn't know it wasn't supposed to work, so it might have worked for you. Oh well, it's kinda what I expected. No, it's too bad you can't use this to teleport somewhere new, but, if you've ever actually really been someplace, and you can visualize it in your mind... " He trailed off, visibly concentrating.
Karyn waited for something to happen. "What are you trying to do now?"
Jon looked disturbed. "Shit, it's not working! I was just trying to go to the living room."
Karyn thought about the way this power was supposed to work, and then she figured out the problem. "Doofus! You've never been there! Not in this reality! We haven't even looked at the rest of your house yet! And I bet we can't do cross-reality Jumping; the book didn't have that, did it?"
Karyn immediately put her theory to the test. She walked out of Jon's bedroom, closing the door behind her. And then she Jumped back into the room. And then she Jumped right back into the hallway, and then back again. "Heh, no need for an open door." She concentrated harder. "Nope, I can't Jump to my house. Guess it's the old fashioned way, at least until I visit there or we ditch this reality and go Home for real."
Jon gave her more of the crash teleportation course. "It works through locked doors. Right into any bank vault you've happened to visit, or out of a jail cell. If you can see the spot for real, you can teleport there. Binoculars can help with that. You can teleport with anything you can carry or even just briefly lift completely off the ground. However, don't get tied or cuffed to something you can't lift. It will hurt like the dickens if you try to teleport when anchored, and you won't go anywhere. "
Karyn felt a vague sense of dissatisfaction. "Jon, what if we're arrested or something and we're handcuffed? You've limited the ability, and we might not be able to fix it with a wish."
Jon looked like he wanted to smack his head. "Damn, I forgot about that part until now. In the book, David was always real careful to make sure that didn't happen. When he was almost arrested, he ended up exposing his secret rather than letting them handcuff him. Arrgh. I think I can fix that with another wish, though--"
Karyn cried, "Stop! No more for now."
"OK, we can work on that later." Jon tried to Jump out into the hall, and failed. He sighed, and walked out into the hall. He looked around carefully, noted a few differences between the way the upstairs hallway looked in this current reality versus home, and then Jumped back into the bedroom. He verified he could Jump back and forth like Karyn had.
Jon continued with exposition from Jumper. "It's not enough to simply have been someplace once before. You have to really remember it, vividly. You don't have to remember all the details, but you do need more than a few. For example, if it's a convenience store you stopped in for five minutes last year, you're probably not gonna be able to Jump there, unless something really memorable happened. This means that, while you're out and about, you should think about and really observe places you might want to Jump back to later. In the book, David used a videocamera to help him remember places he only visited once."
