Remote Control Reality

      John pressed his microphone button and said “evening news” into his television’s remote, expecting to get connected to a report on the latest bloody news and casualty reports from the war in the Middle East.

     As he looked on in amazement, the walls in his apartment opened up and he found himself transported into a recently bombed-out section of Beirut. After shaking himself out of a state of shock, he ran for what remained of a nearby building to shelter him from the second wave that he expected to come soon.

     Wondering how this could have happened, the young man retraced the steps that had led him into a situation where his life could hang in the balance. Seemed like his sudden strange adventure began when he only began searching for the news with his TV control. In a panic, he pressed the microphone button and screamed “home.”

       In an instant he felt a strong pull on his right hand, which held the remote, and he flew through space and time until he found himself thrown back into his apartment and onto his sectional couch. 

       John couldn’t make up his mind if the three glasses of wine he had with dinner was playing intoxication games with his brain or if AI or virtual reality had taken over his television and his life. In any event, he decided to store the remote in his safe where he couldn’t accidentally activate what appeared to be a strange new power until he could figure this all out.

      Halfway through dialed the combination so he could lock away the troubled device he heard a knock on his door. He looked through the peephole then opened up to find Carl from next door standing in the hallway.

     “Hey pal,” the neighbor said, “figured I’d come over and we could watch the Orioles work their way into the playoffs over a few beers. Understand it’s close, but they’ve got a good shot at it.”

        Before John could act Carl grabbed the remote and yelled “local baseball.”

        The two men found themselves in two primo seats in Camden Yards.

        “Wow,” Carl screamed. “I don’t know what took over your cable system, but I’m going to find out where I can get one for myself.”

          Before the neighbors had time to settle in their seats John wrested the device out of Carl’s hand and directed it to send them back to the apartment.

         After they flew back home, his buddy yelled “What gives?”, knocked the remote to the floor, picked it up and ran out of the apartment.

         John chased him for two blocks before losing him in a stand of trees inside a local park.

         He didn’t know exactly how to stop the device from turning television show requests into reality or if Carl would endanger his life by using the mysterious powers now in his neighbor’s control.

        As he got closer he heard a loud noise, and a huge wind swept him into the sky.  He spotted his neighbor in a cloud a few yards ahead of him. The wind eventually threw them to the ground and knocked them unconscious. When they came to, they found themselves in an area that looked like Key West, Florida in the aftermath of a hurricane.

       “Give me that,” John cried as he roughly tugged the remote from his neighbor’s hand, “We need to get to the bottom of this.”

         “Home,” he commanded the remote, and the two friends instantly found themselves transported back to John’s apartment.

            When they opened the door they found someone had ransacked the place. It looked like a tornado had hit it, with papers ripped up and strewn all over the floor and clothes closets a total mess.  On one of the kitchen cabinets, a note from the Emergency Internet Repair Service told John to contact his internet provider as soon as he got home.

          The provider told him to come into his office which, strangely, occupied two rooms in a ramshackle building empty except for the office. When John and Carl entered two rough looking men threw them onto hard wooden chairs and bound and gagged them.

         “The devices you have stumbled upon belong to a secret operation. Your curiosity eventually will cost you your lives,” the one posing as the internet executive said.

          At that, a loud noise erupted and four men with guns drawn entered the office.  They handcuffed the so-called provider and his assistants and released John and Carl. 

      The one apparently in charge announced, “I am Harry Hampton, FBI special agent in charge of the bureau’s Baltimore field office. This person, posing as the manager of the local office of the internet provider, has ties to a Russian cyberspace hacking operation that has stumbled on a secret United States government experimental program directed at shutting down Iranian terrorist cells in Lebanon.

         “Had the United States perfected the program it would enable America and its allies to uncover and stop the radicalization of youth in the Mideast before those in charge had a chance to recruit them as part of their expanding jihad.

        “These spies, posing as employees of your internet provider, had incorrectly shipped to John one of the remotes that their comrades working for Russia had stolen. They had intended to deliver the devices to their technical support crew so they could block our signals, which could bring our operation to a halt.

        “Luckily, some of our undercover agents in Beirut detected the use of one of the stolen devices and traced it back to you. Had our enemies used it further in the wrong place and the wrong time before its perfection it could have made the situation much worse in that area and interfered with our fight to bring down those who want to destroy democracy.” 

        He added that, since the agency had discovered the robbery in time, they could shut down the spies’ operation and institute a new program to more peacefully and efficiently accomplish the goals aimed at stopping radicalization and terrorism.