Thankfully today was your day off from class and work, which gave you an opportunity to get out of town to figure out what this remote actually did. After all, if you tested it on anyone you knew and shit went down, it could all be traced back to you. You grab your wallet, the remote and your cell phone before wandering to the bus stop. You needed a place with a sizable population but was far removed from your immediate area. Luckily it didn't take too much effort to catch the train to Poughkeepsie. That was far enough away from the city to find out what your device would do.
As you approached the train station, you counted up the cash in your wallet and disabled the location on your cell phone. Was $40 going to be enough for the day to get through buying a rail ticket and food undetected? Upon reaching the train station, you decided to withdraw an extra hundred bucks. Thank goodness for direct deposit! With extra cash in hand, you wasted no time in buying a commuter rail ticket and made it to the train with seconds to spare.
The arrival in Poughkeepsie was a bit touchy. Since it was outside of peak rush hour and you embarked on the reverse commute, you were a bit exposed. Keeping a surreptitious eye out for security cameras, you fought to keep from running out of the station. As the skies suddenly shifted to the deepest gray you'd ever seen outside of NYC, you decide to hole up in the waiting room until the storm passed. Finding a tucked away bench, you pull the remote out of the pocket of your carpenter jeans to review its available functions.
There were more buttons at the bottom for neural functions. "IQ" was printed in bright bold letters above a pair of up and down buttons. Other functions were more obtusely labeled. A red to blue spectrum suggested political affiliation, but the dollar sign could have been for anything. A magnifying glass might have been for some sort of search, but it's not clear if that search is meant for you or for someone else. At the very bottom was an icon that looked like either Google's Incognito guy or a hybrid of 70s spy and the Trenchcoat Mafia from Columbine. Of course, you only knew about that from your intro to educational psych. You were just a kid with Klebold and Harris shot up the place. The rain poured onto the station roof, and you glanced up from the remote to assess the conditions outside. The storm didn't appear to be stopping anytime you, and you were on a mission. Time to take some chances.
Your first step was to press the spy button. This time, the vibration and sound you heard before were accompanied by what looked like a soundwave emanating from the remote. You shrugged and decided to walk around. Even with it being close to ten in the morning, there were some people in the station. One group of teenybopper girls appeared to be skipping class and gossiping on one side of the waiting room. A family of five say a few feet away from them playing a card game of some sort. An elderly couple stared out the window, frowns etched on their faces. It seemed like a pretty good test group. After a moment's contemplation, you picked out your first target.
Before trying anything, you managed to snag a picture of them on your cell phone. After that, it was time to get to work. Standing behind the elderly couple, you aimed the remote at their heads and pressed the age decrease button three times. There wasn't a noticeable effect visible from the back, other than a slight decrease in the gray in their hair. Walking a wide half circle around, you stand several feet in front of them and see far fewer wrinkles criscrossing their faces compared to before. Stunned, you somehow managed to pocket the remote and grabbed your phone without breaking anything. After snagging the "after" shot, it was time to try something out on the family.
While standing a few feet away from the family, you debated what to do. After a moment, you settle on figuring out what the dollar sign on your remote means. Pulling it out of your pocket, you aim it at the parents and press the up button next to the dollar sign five times. You pocketed the remote and set up your phone to get some video. At one point, the mother reached into her purse, and her jaw dropped. She extracted a stack of fifty dollar bills and showed them to her husband, whose eyebrows almost hit the roof. They stared at the money for a few moments clearly unsure what to do. They began grinning like fools about a minute later, and you decided to stop the recording. After all, one more group awaited.
The teens were both easy and perplexing when it came to determining what to do with them. On the one hand, you had an idea what functions you wanted to try. On the other hand, you were torn on how much of each effect you wanted to use. You sat down two benches in front of them and listened to their conversation. After listening to them argue over which member of One Direction was the hottest, you'd had enough. You turned to face them and pressed the up button for their IQ so many times you thought your thumb was going to cramp. After that, you slid the red to blue spectrum lever just aside from dead center. With that, the girls, stopped talking and ran off, muttering something about getting back to class. With a sigh, you looked out the window and noticed the rain had stopped. Even though you had some testing down, you didn't really know what this thing could do. It was time to find out more, and that required leaving the station.
The only question you had at this point was deciding where you wanted to go.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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