The Universal Remote

"Thats one small step for man, one giant leap for...

Click!

....and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your...

Click!

....milk chocolate melts in your mouth and not in your...

Click!

Robert flicked through his TV’s channels with the remote control he had found down the back of his new second hand sofa. It had some very odd buttons on it, he thought.

For example there was a button called "Rain".

"What the hell does Rain do?", he said.

He aimed it at the TV and suddenly, on the screen he saw, in the middle of an outside news broadcast, the heavens start to open and rain pour down from the sky drenching a reporter.

"Wow", he said.

He turned over to another channel and saw an Agatha Christie whodunit in which a detective had assembled suspects in a drawing room but the detective had an open umbrella in his hand and rain was bizarrely pouring from the ceiling of the room.

He turned over to a sports channel showing a tennis match which had stopped for rain.

He turned it over again to a black and white war movie set in the desert where men who had run out of water were happily catching rain water in cups and tin helmets.

On every channel it seemed to be raining.

And he could even hear rain drops pouring on the window pane of his living room.

But then he pressed a button marked "Sun" and the rain stopped and the sun seemed to come out from behind the clouds.

"I wonder what else it does?", he thought, looking down at the buttons.

He pressed a red button marked "War" and suddenly the people on every channel seemed to be fighting; anchormen and women were announcing the outbreak of a third world war in the middle east and TV presenters on other channels, even on kids shows had abandoned talking to camera and were fighting with each other, punching or wrestling on the floor.

Fortunately, he found and pressed a white button called peace just in time to avert a global nuclear conflict.

"I can’t believe how much power I have in my hands", he thought to himself, "I could do anything with this, anything; change the world for the better; end all war; all crime; all sickness and poverty".

Just then however, he spotted a button named "Clothes" and, pressing it made a weather girl’s clothing and underwear disappear.

"Umm…well, maybe I’ll do that in a minute", he said, now sitting naked on his couch and, switching over to other channels, seeing an entirely nude world.

Just then, however, there was interference on the TV and then suddenly, the interference clearing he saw some old man with a white beard appear who seemed to be sitting on a golden throne that was floating on a white cloud.

"That remote control is mine", said the old man, "Put it down the back of the cosmic sofa where you found it. It is too much power for an ordinary man to control".

"Huh!", scoffed Robert, "Give you back your remote control, eh? I don’t think so".

He switched over the TV to the sports channel where women were playing beach volleyball nude.

But then suddenly the old man appeared again, popping up in front of the camera.

"I’m warning you, Robert. Put the remote back or there may be grave consequences", said the old man.

Robert switched over the TV again to a cartoon in which a nude cat was hitting a nude mouse with a large mallet.

The old man popped up again in front of the camera, this time in cartoon form.

"Right", he said, "If you won’t give it back then I’m coming to get it".

Then suddenly he saw the old man’s cartoon beard pour off of the screen and onto his living room carpet as he climbed out of the TV.

"Oh no", said Robert, frantically looking for a button to press to stop the old man coming to get him and then, suddenly, spotting the "Freeze Frame" DVD button, pressing it.

Time froze. Not just the old man climbing out of the TV but the clouds drifting through the sky stood still as well and the birds flapping through the air; cars stood still; planes stood still; trains and boats stood still; people everywhere in the world stopped moving and the world that normally spun upon its axis as it rotated around the sun stood still too.

Even Robert, because he was part of the world that he had frozen, was frozen in time as well and because he was the only person who could possibly unfreeze the world, he and the world stayed that way forever.