He walked into the kitchen, the Chunghop still in his hand. The indicator light was now flashing rapidly. He pointed it at the living room. The ceiling fan started spinning. He pointed it at the hallway. The bathroom light flickered.
The television in the living room turned on by itself. The volume maxed out. Then dropped to zero. Then came back at half. A channel was changing—not flipping, but scanning, agonizingly slow. It landed on an old black-and-white movie. A man in a fedora was walking away from the camera, into fog.
He tried 4011. The TV shut off.
“Dad?” Arthur whispered.
The man mouthed one word: Help.
Some remotes don’t change channels. Some remotes call back the dead. And some manuals—the ones with handwritten notes—are not instructions.
Arthur raised the remote. He didn’t know why. He pointed it at the screen. Chunghop Rm-l688 Universal Remote Manual
The TV, however, stayed on. The man in the fedora turned around. His face was a blur of static, but Arthur knew the shape of the jaw. The slope of the shoulders. His father, thirty years younger, stared out from the cathode ray.
Silence.
Breathing.