"I know," said Jon. "I'll make a cloning machine..."
"I don't know," said Karyn. "I'm sure you could do better than that."
"Yeah," said Jon. "How about this: Instead of a machine which just clones someone, it makes sci-fi kinds of clones... the kind which grow to adulthood instantly, have memories of the original, stuff like that."
"Sounds better," said Karyn, "but...."
"No, you're right," said Jon. "How about a machine which does that and lets me combine the DNA from two people and change their sex?"
"That's better too," said Karyn, "but that can't be your last idea. I just know it."
"Probably not," said Jon. "I think I do have a better one. How about one which lets me create any sort of human being I want without cloning? I mean, why should I have to go around getting DNA samples just to make the thing work?"
By now Karyn figured out where this was going, and wondered when Jon would, so she just nodded and waited for Jon to make the next suggestion.
"Wait!" exclaimed Jon. "Why do I want to limit this to just living creatures? I wish I had a machine that let me create anything I wanted at all whether it's alive or not!"
"You're getting close to the limit," explained Karyn.
"But not there yet, right?" said Jon. "I don't need to limit it to living creatures. I wish I had something in my hand right now which let me do anything I wanted."
Jon looked at the wishing stone he was holding, but needless to say, when he made that wish, nothing new happened.
