But Karyn was able to keep her away from the stone. Then she remembered something. "I wish," said Sarah, "that I was a mile away from here with the stone."
(Author's note: This thread, early on, had established an unusual rule: you don't need to touch the stone to use the powers, you only need to be close.)
The stone teleported into Sarah's hand, but somehow she found herself compelled to run. Jon and Karyn watched; somehow, just like Sarah was compelled to run, they were compelled to watch her disappear off into the distance without following.
"Shit," thought Sarah. "She wished I had to work for what I want. I guess running like this is work."
A mile away, Sarah stopped. As a cheerleader, she was pretty athletic and wasn't more than a little bit winded after running the mile. She was in a park, and chose a bench to sit down on. Damn that Jon.... She needed to fix the wish, but she didn't know how.
Which, since she was still Sarah, was just another chance for her to sneakily try other methods. If she didn't know how to use the stone, the stone could make her know. "I wish that I was super-smart!"
Suddenly, a young man tapped her on the shoulder. "Excuse me," he said. "My name is Dr. Eric Stutman. Me and my friend Keith are paranormal investigators. We're trying an experimental drug to make people smarter. Would you be interested in participating in one of our trials?"
"Sure," said Sarah. What was going on? Wasn't that a strange way for a wish to come true?
"All right, would you be willing to clean test tubes for a while?"
"What?"
"We're really sorry about that," said Eric. "It's a paperwork thing. You see, to be part of an experiment, you have to sign a consent form. All the consent forms we got describe the subjects as employees. We didn't want to wait to get a new batch of forms, so we make everyone work for fifteen minutes before they participate."
"Isn't that, I don't know, weird?" asked Sarah.
"Hey, don't blame me, blame the computer."
After fifteen minutes of working, Sarah signed the consent forms and tried the drug. When she did, suddenly she discovered it was much easier to think than before. She knew how to reverse the wishes, then, and she knew a lot of other things. And she didn't, as she had feared, suddenly feel any attraction to geeky pursuits. But then, with her new intelligence, she knew that being smart doesn't mean liking something geeky. There was no reason a cheerleader couldn't be smart.
"Oooh, I feel strange," said Sarah. "I need to go to the bathroom."
As soon as she left the room, she used her new intelligence to start undoing the wishes.
"I wish that the work that I need to do to get what I want means the kind of work that a person does just by living and breathing. Now, I wish for a new red lipstick."
The lipstick appeared in her hand without any extra work needed.
"Good. Now, I wish that...."
