Jon got back into his bedroom and blanched when he saw Sarah holding the stone, casually flipping it in one hand.
Tired of him standing there frozen, not saying a word. Sarah decided to go first. “Aren’t you going to say something?” she said, impatiently.
“Could I have that stone there?” he began. Maybe it was fine. I mean, what are the odds that she would actually choose this time of all times to speak a sentence starting with the words I wish after all, he thought. If she knew what she had there, all hope would be lost, but actually that’s not a sentence that is said very frequently.
“Sure,” she said. “Catch!” She tossed it to him. He fumbled with it and juggled it for a moment before properly catching it, and sighing in relief.
“It’s a, um, it, has, sentimental value, to me.”
“I’ll bet,” Sarah said back. “Especially since it can do anything you ask it for.”
Once again, Jon was metaphorically sweating bullets. He wasn’t actually sweating, just very afraid. “What, do you, mean, by…. that.”
“Oh can it,” Sarah said. “I know all about it.”
“You do?!” Jon said in bewilderment. “Why did you, let me have it, back.”
“Did you know Jon, I’m actually a nice person?”
Jon thought back over his memories. To be fair, other than Sarah’s low-profile slutty sexual advances, the only negative thing he had to think of her was on Karyn’s account. Karyn was absolutely livid over all things Sarah, and Jon by default had low expectations of her because of that, but maybe it was actually mostly Karyn’s problem, and Jon had just been looking at her unfairly this whole time? Maybe every time Sarah flirted with him, Jon had just construed her ne’er-do-well nature from the misleading impression he got out of trusting Karyn too much, but her feelings about her were irrational? She hadn’t seemed so bad in this night.
“Also, it’s obsolete to me. And you getting what you want doesn’t interfere with me getting what I want, so why would I need to take it away from you?”
Jon tried to comprehend the meaning of that. “Obsolete? What, you mean you have a better model? Maybe it’s the newest iphone, makes calls, surfs the net, camera built in, plays apps, and grants wishes?” he said with increasing sarcasm.
“You’re not very creative, you know that? Especially for a supposed nerdy loner. I bet you have hardly used this thing because you’re scared to death of it.”
“Well yeah!” Jon admitted. “How would you… oh, no. You wished for something didn’t you… that’s why it’s obsolete.”
“Well there you go, you’re not that stupid,” she said.
A few seconds passed wordlessly. Obsolete. Obsolete. If the stone was obsolete to her, then that must mean…
“Well, don’t you want to know what I wished for?” Sarah beamed, excited about revealing it, to Jon’s semi-dread.
“Yeah…” he admitted. There were a few possibilities that seemed likely, but he figured he’d rather hear it from her rather than guessing.
“First I wished for knowledge of what the rules were. Now I was really afraid that there would be some limit like 3 wishes per person so I was very hesitant especially since I already tested it at first on something stupid,” she said, holding out her hand to show the nail polish. “But I decided it was important enough that I needed to, and fortunately it turned out there was no limit. Also none of that Robin Williams crap, no injunction against killing, resurrection or making anyone fall in love. I have no intention of killing anyone or screwing with anyone’s mind, but I do have a beloved cat to bring back, but in due time. What you’re probably aware of is there are some other limitations, namely that they won’t be granted if they contradict earlier wishes, and the range of about 8000 feet. And then there’s the exact behavior of it doing exactly what I’m not big on doing, rewriting everyone’s memories. And it must be doing that and not actually changing history if it has a limit of its range because suppose I wished for something that changes a person, but then everyone outside of 8000 feet would remember them how they used to be. Like suppose I wished that I had a sister, well my mother might remember having another daughter but my grandmother who lives 80 miles away would have no memory of her. Which means the only reasonable explanation is my mother’s memories were falsified rather than changing the past. It sounds like an unpleasant mess honestly, and too easy to end up doing something that would rightfully count as murder. But I thought to myself would it be possible to break those rules simply by doing it indirectly somehow.”
Jon thought about what she said. He hadn’t actually thought of it like that, but it seemed like all the more reason to avoid using the thing altogether.
“So my next wish was to have the power to grant my own wishes that I could reverse and override and wouldn’t have a range limit. This thing won’t do it but apparently it will give me the power to do it.”
“…and that worked?” Jon asked in interest.
“Apparently,” she said.
“Isn’t that, risky?”
“Possibly,” she admitted.
“What if you accidentally make all sorts of chaos with a stray thought, like in that movie ‘Sphere’?”
“I never saw that. But it isn’t set off by my every thought. That would be dangerous! My exact words were, hmm, I don’t remember my exact words, but I know I nailed it. Well let’s test it! I wish we would hear an audio playback of my 3rd wish.”
The words echoed from all around, in Sarah’s calm voice. “I wish for the power to grant my own wishes simply by saying out loud the words ‘I wish’ followed by what I want to have happen, but that when I do it, there would be no range limit and no injunction against contradicting earlier wishes that I grant for myself and if there is a contradiction between wishes that later wishes will supersede earlier ones, so basically like the rock but chronologically later wishes take priority not earlier ones.”
“Sooo… basically, the old ‘I wish for more wishes’ trick actually worked,” Jon said.
“Kind of, but it’s not the same. See that’s always for when you only have like three wishes in those stories but this isn’t asking for more quantity this is asking for more quality.”
“Ahh. Yeah that’s true.”
“And because I was within the range of the rock when I wished for it and because I wasn’t asking the rock to undo an earlier wish, it was willing to do it apparently, even though I was asking for the ability to do what it couldn’t, or wouldn’t.”
“It’s kind of like one of those logical paradoxes, like the town where every man must either be shaved by himself or the barber, and who shaves the barber,” Jon said.
“I wish we would hear an audio playback of my 4th and 5th wishes,” she said.
“I wish that no one else would be able to directly or indirectly affect my mind or body with the original stone or with powers they wish for from it. I also wish that everyone else would obey my commands just by me telling them what to do, whether they want to or not, and that in order to fulfill my order, they would be able to do things they wouldn’t normally be able to do, and that though I could undo these effects of these commands, the rock being used by anyone else couldn’t be used to undo them.”
“Errr…” Jon said, a bit concerned about that last one. It could be very bad for anyone else, if she was just the least bit inclined to abuse it. Not that it actually wasn’t already the case from her wish granting ability. But maybe Sarah was actually good-natured?
“So you see now Jon why this thing no longer has any use to me,” Sarah said, waving at the stone in Jon’s hand.
“So, I guess, you can have anything you want,” Jon said.
“So could you,” Sarah said. “Actually, on second thought, that could be a problem. We can’t have two omnipotent gods. I wish the rock would be returned to my hands.”
“Uhhh…” Jon said in increasing anxiety.
“I wish this thing, would be safely kept in an alternate dimension for as long as I live, and if I die, which isn’t very likely, that it will re-emerge and be found by someone worthy. There!” Sarah said as the stone disappeared from her hands. “Don’t worry Jon, I’ll grant wishes for you. Subject to my approval.”
That actually did still make a certain amount of sense, and was not necessarily malevolent. Sarah was actually being rather accommodating if her intentions were good, and it was Jon’s own fault that he had missed the ball. If her intentions were good.
“So. How, are you going to, I mean, do things, differently?” Jon asked. “You don’t have much need to go to school now.”
“That’s a good question. I don’t know. Suddenly I can do anything, I’m basically Dr. Manhattan, except not so naked or blue. But I feel like life could lose all meaning if I did too much.”
“You just turned on all the cheat codes,” Jon said.
“Yeah, that’s, that’s it exactly!” she said back.
“You know that makes a game really boring. It’s like playing a game of chess where the enemy pieces not only die when you take them, but when they take you. There’s no point to the game. Or that episode of the twilight zone where the gangster dies and finds he is in a casino where he always wins, and everyone does what he wants, and he finds out he’s in hell.”
“Hmm, maybe that was a bad plan? No, living life well isn’t about triumphing over hardships, and it definitely shouldn’t be a chess game where your goal is to destroy the other players, it’s about enjoying your time.”
“Maybe. To an extent. People spend their lives watching television, reading books, not experiencing risk or any difficulty, if you call that living. So now you have a choice between being a couch potato or playing a game with the cheat codes on.”
“Those can’t be the only choices, seeing life as a game to be defeated or mindlessly watching the boob tube or equivalent? How about helping others enjoy their time? How about expressing creativity, being the creator of the book or the tv show? I could cure sickness, bring happiness. The only reason that twilight zone thing was hell for that guy was that his whole life revolved around gambling and pushing others around. The beauty of that fate is that it didn’t stand to be an eternal hell, it would cease to be hell as soon as he ceased to be a bad person who sees life as a game to win and the other people as things to conquer, and that could have happened many years after the episode ended. And there’s some of that in my own tendencies, I’ll admit, I came here to not just get the magic rock but win you over too after all, but it only goes so far and I’m not so simple, especially once I have you what would I do with you. Besides, I don’t have to do anything, I don’t have to use it.”
“You’ll be tempted, you’ll maybe use it a little at first, but eventually your threshold will get lower and lower, maybe you’ll use it as soon as something goes the least bit wrong,” Jon said.
“Yeah, you’re right, I can’t let that happen, I can’t rely on it too heavily. Just for fun, and matters of life and death? I really do feel guilty about taking that away from you though,” she said.
“Well, does that mean you want to continue with the studying or was you being here in the first place all just a ruse to get the stone?”
“Sorrry!!!” she said, smiling.
Jon grumbled.
“So what now?” Jon said.
“Well, there’s no matter of life and death,” Sarah said. “So I guess, fun it is!”
“Uhhh,” Jon said, stepping away.
“Don’t leave,” Sarah said.
Jon stopped in his tracks. He had to. Sarah ordered him to stop.
“I know. Let’s get that bland pouty feminist girl that hates my guts and has you wrapped around her finger over here. I wish Karyn was here.”
Suddenly Karyn appeared in Jon’s room. Naked. She looked down at herself, at Jon’s room, at Jon and Sarah, took a breath and looked like she was about to scream.
“Don’t scream!” Sarah said to her quickly. “I should have wished her clothes came with her,” Sarah said in a slight laugh. “Hey, not bad!” Sarah said encouragingly.
Karyn covered her breasts and stood crosslegged awkwardly.
“Ok, Karyn, I now have the power from the magic rock.”
“Oh, no…” Karyn said.
“You two. Tell me your fantasies. What do you most want, which you normally wouldn’t admit? Tell me, Jon first, then Karyn.”
Maybe Sarah was actually just trying to do something fun with her perspective friends? Or was there something more sinister?
Jon took a breath and began speaking, kind of wishing he could hold back the words, but kind of thrilled about how he couldn’t. Soon it would be Karyn’s turn. Would Sarah give them their fantasies?
