Jon walked over to the waste basket where someone had thrown out a newspaper, picked it up, and come back.
"What are you going to do with that?" asked Morgana. "You're obviously up to something. But I have to warn you. The stone needs the life force of people."
"I know," said Jon. "I'm looking for something."
Paging through the newspaper and ignoring the food stains on it, Jon found several articles and tore them out. "I'm going to have to make a few wishes," he said. "Some information, and a teleport. Is that safe?"
"I'm not sure," said Morgana.
"I'm going to try it anyway." Jon looked through the articles. "Wars, all of them. There's always one going on somewhere. I wish I knew enough about the wars going on in these newspaper articles to know which ones are about killing the other side for no real reason except hate and greed."
Jon shuddered as he learned all about the depths of man's inhumanity to man. He could have picked something from the Middle East. A few years ago it might have been Bosnia or Timor. In this case the article he finally picked out was about one ethnic group in Africa slaughtering another with machetes.
"I wish that whenever one of these people tries to kill one of these other people with a machete for no real reason, the one with the machete will instead die and his life force will be used to power the stone. Now, I wish I had a counter telling me how many average sized wishes I have energy for."
Suddenly glowing red numbers appeared on the stone, almost as if painted on. Jon and Morgana watched as the numbers changed. "51... 52... 53...."
"You're not supposed to use it for that!" exclaimed Morgana. "If the stone drains life, you're supposed to stop using it, you're not supposed to find someone who it's good to drain life from!"
"Why not? Maybe I can ask the stone to go back in time and kill a few thousand Nazis. I wonder how many big wishes I can get with that. Maybe I can find a cure for cancer or feed all the poor people in the world. Or are you telling me the stone can only be used for evil purposes?"
