You stumble out of bed early the next morning, your bladder ready to burst, wearing a pair of thin pajamas and an old, ratty t-shirt. On your way back to the bedroom, you hear a knock on the front door. It's a quarter after eight, which means Allison has already left for work, and there's no way that the girls are going to wake up for another two or three hours. Rubbing the sleep from your eyes, you open the door and find an older man, short and balding, standing on the porch with a small, cardboard box in his hands. You wonder for a moment if this is Mitch's father.
"Can I help you?"
The man peers over your shoulder and says, "Yes, yes, hopefully you can. I'm looking for Brendon Foster."
"He's not here," you tell him. "Won't be back for a while."
"A couple hours?" After checking his watch, the man says, "I can come back. It's very important that he gets this."
"Oh, no, not a couple hours. He's out of the country for another month or so." There's something about the man's expression that strikes you as odd. It's almost as though he's discovered a new emotion, one that you've never seen before. "I can't give you the address, but I can, um, I can get it to him if you want. It's classified. The address, I mean. He works for the, um, government. As a contractor."
"I'm aware," the older man says, his eyes shifting with contemplation. "Yes, that'll have to work. Be sure to send this off straight away, but do not, for any reason, open this box."
You take the box and nod your head. "Yeah, sure, no problem. Have a - have a good day."
As he steps off the porch, the man looks both ways as though he's about to cross the street instead of the front lawn. He must have walked here, because he starts down the sidewalk, peering over his shoulder every fifteen seconds. When he's out of sight, you shut the door and examine the box.
"What the hell?" you ask yourself.
There are no labels or markings on the box, so you take it to the kitchen and search the junk drawer for a pair of scissors. No way are you keeping this thing in the house without knowing what's inside. It could be a bomb, for God's sake. After carefully slicing the tape, you open it up and find what appears to be a remote control, only it doesn't have nearly enough buttons. There are only three, which are labeled, "Grow," "Shrink," and "Restore." At the very top is a switch with two settings, "Global" and "Targeted." Just who in the hell was that man?
"What's going on?" Jennifer yawns as she shuffles into the kitchen with a pair of furry slippers on her feet. "Who was that?"
"No clue. Said he had this package for my dad."
Scratching an itch on her thigh, beneath her red, silky pajamas, your eldest stepsister shakes her head. "Why do they always want to deliver so early in the morning? I swear, it's like they want to make you miserable."
Jennifer heads back upstairs, leaving you to ponder the strange device. What the hell does it mean by grow, shrink and restore? That doesn't make any sense. Confused, you take the remote from its foam packaging and move into the living room, then you aim the remote at the television hanging on the wall and push your thumb into the fleshy button that says shrink. Nothing appears to happen at first, but then you hear a disturbing groan and realize that the television is, in fact, slowly shrinking, causing the wall mount to eat into the drywall.
"Holy hell," you whisper, glancing toward the stairs to make sure that nobody else heard that. "No way. No freaking way."
It's true. After enlarging the couch, reducing the coffee table and restoring the TV back to its original size, you are thoroughly convinced that this isn't a dream. The remote can proportionally manipulate the size of objects. What's more, the thing is pressure sensitive. The harder you push your thumb into the button, the quicker the effect.
"What about people?" you wonder silently.
Remote in hand, you pace the living room floor and consider who would make the best test subject for this experiment. You could try it out on yourself, obviously, but is that such a good idea? Emily, she definitely deserves to be taken down a peg or two, and maybe then she might finally leave you alone. Jennifer is the only other person in the house. If you hold off until about four in the afternoon you could try it out on Allison, though it might be tricky to catch her alone. Then there's Haley, the petite and gorgeous brunette next door, who will no doubt want to take a dip in the heated pool. This might be the last week for swimming before the weather turns for good. Of course, there are plenty of other options available. Would it be better to test the remote on a stranger just in case something goes wrong?
You tighten your grip on the remote and cement your decision. It's going to be...
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