“Oh,” Sarah said.
“What?” asked Jon. Several seconds passed. “Come on Sarah. I’m letting you use the stone, don’t you think it’s only fair you let me know what you just learned? Of course I could wish for the information myself but if you tell me you really don’t want me to know, I will respect your privacy on that.”
“Yeah, I kind of don’t want you to know.”
“By the way, Karyn is coming to visit me in about 15 minutes. I assume you don’t want to still be there then.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess not…”
“Sarah I’ve got to ask you, why do you act completely different at school? If Karyn knew you were actually a nice person, she’d probably want to be your friend.”
“I have, reasons.”
1 year earlier:
Jon’s grandfather, Caleb McMillan, saw himself in his grandson Jon. While Sarah seemed to be frankly vapid. And besides, she was a girl, and as unpopular an opinion as it would be and considered old-fashioned, he wanted his heir to be his grandson, not his granddaughter, just as he didn’t want to pass down the stone to either of his daughters, Jon’s or Sarah’s moms. This was a legacy for a man. He liked how Sarah carried his last name, her mother actually convincing her husband to change his last name to McMillan when they married, but it was not enough.
However, he truthfully had a better way to decide. He had already written up his will, but he could change it after all. He could simply ask the stone for information.
“I wish to see what the world will look like in 50 years should I give the stone to Jon.”
Caleb saw a world of art and science and beauty. He saw a world of talking animals, of sentient robots, of humans and happily transformed semi-humans and cyborgs, of space travel, of a benevolent artificial intelligence which ruled over a truly fair and nearly perfect world, where everyone was wealthy and free to pursue their dreams, and if they weren’t happy with something about their lives or themselves, they could change it. And Earth had the best water slides and theme parks of any of the alien races they were in communication with.
“Now I wish to see what the world will look like in 50 years should I give the stone to Sarah.”
And he saw rivers running red with blood. He saw prisoners chained to walls and granted immortality so that they could be tortured forever. Sarah as an eternal goddess empress sat upon a thousand foot tall solid gold throne, wearing a witch’s hat, with an army of ghouls and ogres to capture and punish anyone who so much had a negative thought about her, to be informed of their crimes by all-seeing specters that were everywhere and no where was safe from. Her empire of evil also stretched across the cosmos, as all life everywhere cried out in a collective whimper of agony. But surprisingly enough, even in this hellish nightmarescape, Jon was actually doing all right. He was the king of Australia. So Sarah wouldn’t be turning on family it seemed.
“Oh man,” Caleb said to himself. “This is a harder decision than I thought it would be.” Whoever he gave the stone to, his grandchildren would be living life to the fullest either way. He had no idea Sarah was so ambitious. “Well, I guess, in the end, I’ll give it to Jon because he’s a boy.”
back to present day:
I can’t believe the only reason Jon got the stone was because he’s a boy, Sarah thought to herself in contempt. For that was in fact Caleb’s reason and that was the information Sarah had asked for. But Sarah was furious. The world would pay for denying her. Though she would see to it that Jon would get a nice future. After all, he had shared the stone with her of his own free will so obviously he deserved forgiveness for the unfair favoritism he had been shone, it wasn’t his fault after all. Well, she would try to be nicer to Karyn too, she didn’t see what Jon saw in her but if he wanted her as a girl toy and wanted Sarah to give her a chance, she would oblige him on that. But the rest of the world would pay, oh it would pay. She briefly considered what she should give Karyn as a peacemaking gesture. What even did she like? Probably a masculine video game or something, yeah that was the ticket.
