Karen angrily squeezed the stone. "I wish I knew what was going on!" She blinked. That's how long it took the stone to inject the knowledge into her head. "Oh my God, Jon, what have you done!?" She grabbed him by the shoulders.
"What did I do?" Jon couldn't think. He was paralyzed by fear. He was apparently a father to Zoe and Mikey now. He went to work. He had adult responisiblities thrust upon him that he wasn't ready for, though everyone within the range of the stone except Karyn would assume he was ... he couldn't bear to think of it. Sure, he still had his health ... perfect health, but he had lost so much else. "Why!?" he moaned.
"Why!?" snarled Karyn. "Because you weren't thinking!? You idiot, you killed all the adults!"
"What!?"
"The stone interpreted 'everyone' to mean 'everyone alive.' So it wouldn't give perfect health to the dead, obviously. But it turns out health is finite. Meaning there's only so much of it to go around. The stone took away the health from the adults, giving it to the kids. Now every kid in town is in perfect health."
"Yeah ..." Jon looked out the window of his bedroom. He recognized a girl who was normally in a wheelchair ... but now was walking. "Look at her!"
Karyn didn't know the girl's name either, but she recognized her. "Yeah. There are no more disabled people. There are also no old people. Old meaning above 30. Like your parents and ... dammit, Jon, YOU KILLED MY PARENTS!!"
"Oh God, oh God, m-my parents ..." Tears formed in Jon's eyes.
Karyn was already crying. "A-and ... here, girls get pregnant in their teens ... normally ... because they don't live past 30."
"Like Logan's Run ... the movie."
"Who cares about a stupid movie!? This is real, Jon! Irreversible!"
"No, not if I can help it."
"Yeah, like I'm going to let you use this thing again!" Karyn placed the stone behind her. She was confident Jon wouldn't dare to grab it. "Your parents died when you were 14 and now by law you're Zoe and Mikey's guardian. You only have 14 years to live ... just like ... me ..." Karyn sniffled. "You didn't just kill most of the town, you reduced our lives to less than half of what they should be!"
"Oh no, Karyn, I just realized something ... if we're in perfect health ... for a short time ... 30 years or less ... what about my non-fatal alternative for cancer? How could that coexist with perfect health?"
"Your stupid alternative doesn't make people sick. When they catch it, they don't sneeze, have fevers, or anything. And they don't go insane either. Their bodies remain perfectly healthy. But they change ... you'll change ..."
"Into what, Karyn!?"
