Jon thought about it a bit. Then made his wish.
"I wish" said Jon, "that me and Karyn have the power to interpret wishes made on the other stone, so that we immediately know what the wish is, we know what's going on where the wish is made, and that we can mentally make the wish happen the way we want. I wish that we can turn this power on and off at will. I wish that when someone makes a wish on the other stone the thoughts of whoever has the power will temporarily speed up so much that they can reinterpret the wish without the person making the wish noticing anything."
Karyn took a moment herself to think that over. "Now that sounds useful. But you may want to add some things."
"What?"
"Well, let me use the stone..."
Jon handed it over, not sure what Karyn had in mind.
"I wish that if both me and Jon are using the power to reinterpret wishes, we can talk to each other in our minds. And I wish that if we're asleep when it comes time to reinterpret a wish, we'll be awake and alert to reinterpret it but can return to sleep immediately after if we want."
"Now that's a long wish!" said Jon.
"Do you think there's anything I didn't cover?" asked Karyn.
"I think that's it," said Jon. "Now to turn the power on..." And something clicked in their minds and they knew it worked.
Several hours later they were eating lunch and they suddenly felt it. Jon and Karyn saw the world freeze around them and realized that a man off in a warehouse had just made a wish... "I wish to have a lot of money."
Now how do we do that? wondered Jon.
Well thought Karyn, we could give him a lot of pennies or a lot of some kind of cheap foreign coins.
What about Monopoly money? thought Jon.
Or that... Or we could give him real money that he doesn't own thought Karyn, like crashing a bank truck into the warehouse. Or we could just give him what he wanted, after all we don't want him thinking the stone is useless, so we can't twist every single wish.
It doesn't matter much thought Jon. It's not like he tried to wish someone dead.
Sure thought Karyn. For now, let's go with Monopoly money, okay?
Okay.
With a single thougt from Karyn, the world unfroze, and Jon and Karyn knew that somewhere, someone had made a wish and been showered with Monopoly money. Not absolute power, exactly, but a nice means of self-defense. Twisting someone's wishes could even get to be fun.
