Von Hauser looked about nervously, and then asked me, "Am I naked, Joe, or am I hallucinating?"
Suppressing every emotion in my being, I nodded.
She folded her arms across her chest and looked at me sternly. "You wouldn't have an explantion for this, would you?"
I confessed everything to her-- told her all about the magic ring and the old lady, and apologized for what I'd done. I even wished her clothes back on to
demonstrate.
"Have you ever read 'The Man Who Could Work Miracles', Joe?" she asked me.
I hadn't.
"It's about a man with powers very much like your own. He goes about making wishes until he wishes that the earth would stop rotating, and nearly kills himself. I
wonder...does your ring allow you that same kind of power?"
I was a little nervous, but I wished that the earth would stop rotating. Nothing happened.
"So you do have limits." Von Hauser mused. "All the same, Joe, I think you should turn the ring over to me. It shouldn't lie in irresponsible hands."