There was one person Jon knew he could tell. Karyn was the only other person who knew about the wishing stone, as far as he knew. If anyone would believe him, she would.
So Jon decided Karyn would be the first person he would tell about the approaching end of the world. However, the end of the world would not come for four years. He could tell her in the morning, and allow her to have one more night of sleep blissfully unaware of the wave of death that was consuming the universe.
He knew very well that he would not be sleeping well that night.
The next morning, Jon texted Karyn, telling her to come over. He had urgent news he needed to share with her.
He sat at breakfast without a word. His Goth sister Zoe stared at him for a while. "What's with you today?" she asked. "You look even more gloomy than Derek Lettman." Derek Lettman was the only emo student at Lake Point High School.
"It's ..." Jon started. He didn't want Zoe to know yet. She would have to know, sooner or later, but he had already made up his mind that Karyn would be the first person he would tell about his disturbing discovery of the previous day. "I still miss Grandpa." he finished.
"I know but you seem a lot more upset now than you did yesterday." Zoe noted.
"I ... guess it's only now sinking in." Jon said.
Before Zoe could respond, the doorbell rang. Jon knew right away that it was Karyn, and headed to the door to answer.
Karyn gasped when she saw the look on Jon's face. "Jon, are you all right?"
"Let's go to my room. I can talk about it there." Jon said, grimly.
He led Karyn to his room, and closed the door.
"Karyn, what I'm about to tell you is something I don't want anyone else to know about until we're ready to tell them." Jon said. "And ... it's not good news."
Karyn stared at Jon. She had never seen him look so ... haunted, before.
"Jon..." she said, hesitantly. "Are you ... sick?"
Jon was surprised by this question, but immediately realized he shouldn't be. "No. I'm not dying, Karyn. But the universe is."
"What?!?" Karyn exclaimed.
Jon explained his wish for a laptop with a star map, and showed Karyn the laptop. "I thought that this would be a safe wish. Information on life on other worlds. But when I actually looked at the map of our galaxy, I saw ... this."
Karyn stared at the depiction of the Milky Way Galaxy. It only took a moment for her to realize that something was horribly, horribly wrong. "What is this? Most of the galaxy is ... missing?"
"It's gone. Eighty percent of the Milky Way Galaxy is gone. It's been destroyed by this wave of death expanding at the speed of light. And it's now four light years away from our solar system." Jon said, his voice tense and breaking.
"Jon... are you serious?" But even as she asked, she knew he was. He was on the verge of breaking down in front of her.
"Maybe it's best that I show you." Jon said, picking up the wishing stone. He didn't have the words to fully explain. So he would let Karyn find out the way he did.
"I wish you would know everything I wished after seeing the star map, and everything the stone told me." Jon said. The stone glowed.
And in an instant, Karyn knew the horrible, soul-crushing truth. She knew about the weapon that had been designed two billion years ago by a civilization two billion light years away, whose weapon, once unleashed, created a bubble of death that expanded in all directions at the speed of light, snuffing everything out of existence. It was a wave of death that was spreading out destroying the universe, and it had been doing so for the past two billion years. And it would reach Earth four years from now.
Karyn then learned of Jon's attempts to wish the problem away, how he couldn't restore the universe to the state it was before the universe-destroying weapon was set off because the stone wasn't powerful enough to do that. How he couldn't even slow down the bubble because it was out of the stone's range limitation, nor could he move the Earth elsewhere to buy it more time. The stone had a range limit, currently of 90 miles, give or take a mile or two. That was only enough to affect their home town of Lake Point and the surrounding towns, cities, and areas, certainly not enough to affect the entire Earth.
As Karyn took in this information, and learned of Jon's failed attempts to change the situation for the better, she broke down, sobbing. Jon allowed her to cry on his shoulder, and he started to cry, too.
There was an awkward silence for a moment, before Karyn spoke. "So, now what do we do? Who do we tell about this?"
"I don't know." Jon said. "I wanted you to be the first to know. I was hoping maybe you'd have some ideas. Maybe you'd think of something I missed."
Karyn paused for a moment, trying to think. "The stone ... a hundred years ago, it used to have a range of over a thousand miles. But now it's somewhere around 90 miles? How did that happen?"
"I don't know." Jon said. "I suppose we could ask the stone."
He picked up the stone again and said "I wish we knew just what kind of wishes were used that caused the stone to use up so much magical energy its limit is down to 90 miles."
Instantly, both Jon and Karyn became aware of several powerful wishes made by previous owners of the stone within the past century. Among them were wishes that had averted floods, incredibly destructive earthquakes, hurricanes, and several nuclear holocausts. So many disasters, both natural and man-made, had been undone by powerful wishes. There were also a number of catastrophes caused by poorly-thought out or malicious wishes with the stone, that had to be mitigated by other wishes.
All this used so much magical energy that the stone's last owner returned it to South America six decades ago, to recharge it. And it was there that Jon's grandfather found the stone.
"Wow." Karyn said quietly. "That stone really can do a lot."
"It can do anything." Jon said. "Unless you're using it to affect something out of its range."
"But even if it still had a range of over a thousand miles, that still wouldn't be enough to save the Earth." Karyn said. "And it'd take two hundred years to get it to a point where its range encompassed the entire Earth?"
Jon nodded sadly. "Not enough time. I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to have to tell other people at some point. But will it do any good?"
There was a noise from outside the door to Jon's room. Had someone been listening to them?
