Universe Remote

A long, long time ago . . . alright, not a long, long time ago. That was probably a bit excessive. A long time ago is, perhaps, a bit better . . . well, now that I think of it, that is also a bit of an exaggeration; after all we aren't really talking about the distant past here. It isn't as if this story is about the dinosaurs . . . not that it doesn't have dinosaurs in the story; that is a definite possibility; what with all content being possible and permitted. It was a while back, though. I think that's a fair assessment of the amount of temporal displacement . . . though now that I think about it, that does seem to give the impression that it may have been years ago. Okay, let's just go with this:

Last week, on a Tuesday (well, the Tuesday I suppose; each week only has one after all), about 4:36 pm Greenwich Mean Time, give or take a few seconds due to the inaccuracy of clocks and our relative positions on the space-time continuum, some hyper-dimensional beings became interested in our little chunk of rock as it floated through our little solar system in our little galaxy in our little universe. Did I mention that the hyper-dimensional beings don't find us to be very relevant to anything at all, even remotely, of importance? I don't suppose I did. Well, let me assure you that we are about the most insignificant thing that is in their field of perception . . . except for maybe dandelions . . . those are probably less interesting to the hyper-dimensional beings than humans . . . and white school glue, that's pretty boring too . . . and dirt; wait . . . I think that they are more interested in dirt than us. In any case, we suddenly became interesting to a group of them last Tuesday.

It's not that we actually became interesting to them though; it was more that we had the potential to be interesting. You see, hyper-dimensional beings are a little difficult for us to understand. We exist in three spacial dimensions and one temporal dimension. The beings that I am speaking of . . . well, actually writing of, I suppose . . . they live in nine spacial dimensions and two temporal dimensions. Our three plus one dimensional minds are really not designed to deal with matters that exceed these dimensional parameters. That makes the abilities of hyper-dimensional beings seem almost magical to us. Examples in our fiction include "Q" from Star Trek, and Mr. Mxyzptlk from the DC Universe. Their abilities are normal for them; but to us they seem like magic. So, you can probably reason out how insignificant we would seem to be from these beings' perspective . . . but if you give a monkey a machine-gun . . .

The hyper-dimensional beings made a device. This device is designed to look just like a remote control for an electronic device. It is rather plain looking, being the usual shape and size for such devices. The only thing strange about it when one looks at it is that the buttons are not labeled at all. The remote comes with an instruction manual that is the size of an epic novel, and reads like Ben Stein reading stereo instructions in slow motion. If one can make it through enough of the instructions, one can find out how to activate personal button labels; allowing one to actually know what each button does. Now the clincher is that the buttons on the device are not always the same. They change to suit the use the device is currently being put to. Additionally not everything requires the use of a button. Much of the interface is neurally controlled. For instance if the user pointed the controller at a woman's chest and thought about her breasts while pressing the + button; her breasts would get bigger; if he were thinking of her age she would get older; and if he were thinking of her body she would grow larger. The mixture of neural and button controls were another way to make things interesting for the hyper dimensional beings.

So what can the remote do? Absolutely anything . . . well, it can do absolutely anything to our universe. It can't affect other universes, or hyper-dimensional beings . . . but in relation to our universe it grants truly omnipotent abilities. The problem is that the user doesn't know what it can do, or how to do it without reading the manual . . . and the manual was made to be intentionally difficult to read. So, now we come to the present (wait for the double entendre). The hyper-dimensional beings just left the Universe Remote for a human being to find as a gift (see, you didn't have to wait long . . . a present in the present . . . I slay). Now, who received the Universe Remote?

The Universe Remote was discovered by . . .

• Jeremy Simmons, a bright ten year old boy from a family of eight.
• Ken Jacobs, a 29-year-old electronics repairman and soon to be "Wizard".

(Feel free to add new characters to the list above)

Rules

1. Follow the site's Format Rules
2. Second person, present tense.
3. Keep the story consistent.
4. Try not to go too dark, it's intended to be a lighthearted story.
5. Don't give the characters too much control too quickly. The device is designed to make learning to use it difficult.
6. The more a user uses the remote the harder it is for others to use it as it imprints on the user.