Many years earlier, in Peru ...
Jack Merlin held up the black stone. It was such an innocent little thing, until you knew what it did. Already, its color was changing, becoming grayer with just a splash of a reddish hue. That was its nature. Its color would change depending on the wishes made. Ever since he found it, Jack had been trying to make more innocent, less world-changing wishes. It seemed to be working. And since making such wishes, the stone had given him what he wanted. That was the danger with this thing. If too many similar wishes (like all wishes involving sex, or money, or control, those sorts of things) were made, then the stone would gravitate towards that "mindset", even if the wishes weren't specified that way. All wishes would essentially be put through a filter.
He knew what he had to eventually do. He had to give the stone away. But to whom? His daughter-in-law Carol? Or maybe Carol's son Jon? He wasn't sure yet, but ... it would have to be someone ... someone he trusted.
The tent opened and Juan's head poked in. "Jack. They need you outside. We may have just found it."
"Be right there." He set the stone down, then headed out.
Eventually, he did send it to someone. Jon, actually. But you already know that story. Jack trusted Jon implicitly. But the worst still happened anyway, because he never thought that someone like Sarah McMillan would get her hands on the stone and use to make a bunch of Republican wishes on Karyn and Jon's mother. The stone had gotten a taste of this new direction for itself and it wanted more. So it got more. A lot more.
And now, here we were, years later and in a completely different reality, all thanks to the malfunctioning stone. Yes, it was its nature to act this way, but it had gone too far, much farther than any other time in its history. It was already showing signs of it, when people's memories changed, even though they heard the wishes made, or people's memories not changing when they never heard the wishes. The stone was not to be trusted anymore. But whenever someone found out that stone could grant wishes, they just couldn't help themselves.
They just had to wish.
