Jon’s doorbell rang, and his mom Mardette got it.
“You’re finally taller than me,” Mardette said to Karyn. The girl had been friends with her son so long, she had long since thought of her as a daughter, though really she hoped Karyn would one day be a daughter-in-law.
“I think this is it, if that makes you feel any better, so I’ll never tower over you,” the 5’9” Karyn said looking down slightly to the 5’7” Mardette.
“Until I start shrinking…” Mardette said. “Jon’s upstairs,” she continued before the talk deteriorated worse.
Karyn clapped her on the shoulder in a motherly consoling gesture herself and headed upstairs. She knocked on Jon’s door.
“Come in,” he said from inside.
As she entered the room, she saw 2 small piles of pennies and a pile of dimes on Jon’s bed.
“What’s going on?” Karyn asked. “Counting your money?”
Jon looked up at her to make sure she was alone.
“No, ongoing experiments with the stone,” he said.
“What sort of experiments?”
“Trying to figure out the rules of behavior.”
“Can’t you wish for the rules?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Here is the rule list so far,” he said as he spun a piece of paper at her like a ninja throwing star.
Karyn picked up the paper and read it:
Distance 1: henceforth known as “hearing range,” the distance inside of which all observers will by default remember things as they were before. 40 feet +- 18 inches. Does not depend on whether observer can hear the wish, only if in that range.
Distance 2: henceforth known as “stone range”, the distance inside of which the stone can alter physical reality. 16380 feet +- 180 feet.
Rules:
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If a wish is granted, stone will heat and compel anyone in hearing range to look away. If a wish is attempted but not granted, lack of these effects will indicate the failure.
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Wishes will not be granted if they would un-grant any part of earlier wishes. It is unknown if there is any backdoor or Easier egg to bypass this. What if the original wisher dies or wishes they had never been born? I haven’t tested this for obvious reasons. Perhaps this limitation is itself because of a wish made potentially hundreds or thousands of years ago and the stone originally had no limitations. If so and the wisher was dead now, that would at least mean that the duration isn’t limited by the life of the wisher.
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Information will not be provided directly and only information within stone range may be accessed by the stone. The stone also can’t access indirectly information that exists outside of the stone range. No wishing for knowledge or to recover anything that has previously been destroyed. However duplicates of objects existing within stone range can be wished for. What this means for living things is currently unknown since I was unwilling to torture animals other than insects to find out and it’s hard to tell if an ant that has been brought back to life has the same memories as before, but it can at least heal injuries, even serious ones, by extrapolating the functional body parts of nearby organisms. Was able to cure everyone at retirement home of diabetes and kidney disease because of other people within stone range with functional pancreas and kidneys but this was stopped when one of them rejected their new kidneys probably because the DNA in the kidneys didn’t match his own because the pattern for the healthy kidneys came from someone else. Barely managed to fix that problem without killing the man involved.
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Stone is not creative or intelligent. If it doesn’t know how something works, a wish for that something won’t work. No wishing for a new computer that doesn’t already exist within stone range for instance. And if a duplicate of that computer is wished for, its hard drive will be blank, even including lack of an operating system. No wishing for a cure for cancer or aging or anything else that science hasn’t made or doesn’t exist within stone range. No even wishing for a computer with a hard drive containing the data of a target computer or even a new computer with a fresh install of windows. Stone can perform simple requests that aren’t too difficult like turning pennies into dimes or changing the dates stamped on them, even to years in the future, but no wishing for a coin that doesn’t exist at all. Was not able to cure cancer cases at retirement home as stone couldn’t tell cancer cells apart from healthy ones. Was not able to wish them younger perhaps because stone couldn’t extrapolate what their cells were like earlier in life. Do not attempt de-aging again!
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Wishes must be immediate. Wishes can not be granted with a time limit or delay. No wishing for a change that will last 5 minutes only or will only take effect in 5 minutes. If it grants a wish, it will be right now and permanent.
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Stone itself can violate the known laws of physics but nothing violating the known laws of physics can be wished for. No wishing for a magic broomstick that will let you fly like a witch or a bag that will produce an unlimited amount of candy bars or shapeshifting powers.
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Stone is limited in strength and scale. No wishing for massive things, or even to lift massive things. The maximum masses and energies involved are variable and unreliable, but it could only lift a stone weighing 47 pounds 23 inches into the air. Maximum energy 125 joules? But it can make pennies and dimes out of nothing and turn one into the other thus apparently create and destroy mass equivalent to millions of megajoules by E=mc² or is it actually getting or disposing the material from or to other things around?
“Damn,” Karyn said. “I was just about to suggest we try wishing for things with a time limit. I guess it’s not god. It’s still amazing though. I don’t know if that makes it more dangerous or less though.”
