There was a flash, and Jon was forced to look away. When he opened his eyes, nothing seemed to be different. Everything in his room was exactly as it was before the wish.
Dissappointed and confused, Jon looked out his window to see if he could find any differences.
Across the street, the sky was pink. Not a twilight pink. It was still early afternoon. A bright, impossible pink, that solidly filled that segment of sky. Nearer to Jon's house, the sky was its normal blue.
"What the hell?"
Jon cautiously left his room and walked to the front door, wary of any changes. Again, his house had not been visibly altered. Taking a deep breath, he opened the front door to see this better world.
Jon was surprised to see that most of the nearby houses were gone. At a guess, the neighborhood was at a tenth its original population. Further north, far past the strange pink segment of sky, he could see dark storm clouds on the horizon, but most of the sky was still a clear and brilliant blue.
His attention was drawn to a laughing group of children running down the street. As he watched, one of them threw a ball that landed near old Mrs. Thompson's drab house. A kid that looked about eight ran after it, laughing, but as soon as he set foot on her lawn he stopped. In a flash, his clothes had changed, becoming a neat and tidy dress shirt and a pair of khaki pants.
The changed boy quietly picked up the ball and walked back to the group. As soon as he stepped back on to the sidewalk, he returned to normal, and roughly pushed the nearest kid.
"That was for making me go into Mrs. Thompson's splinter. You know how weird and boring she makes things there."
Slowly, Jon understood. The stone had made the world a better place, in its own way. However, 'better' depended on the person in question. It now seemed there were thousands, millions, or even billions of 'better' worlds; each crafted according to different definitions of the word.
This was going to be hard to fix.
