He Takes It Inside

Jack picked the remote up, curious about what it was. The symbols on the buttons weren’t in any language he could think of, except maybe Sinhala?

“I wonder what TV you go to,” he muttered as he looked it over. But there was only so much looking he could do before he had to move.

Stuffing the remote in his pocket, Jack made his way over the sidewalk, up the long metal stairway, and inside the door of his apartment after fumbling the key for a few seconds.

Inside, Jack sighed as he saw the state of it. There were fast food wrappers thrown about the small space, most ending up in the trash but the rest scattered in different corners of the room. His furniture was all old and beaten up, his table barely standing on three legs and the couch with cat scratches all over, just like when he found it.

In the bedroom, he knew the bed would still smell, the shower would only spray cold water, and he would only have a few changes of clothes that weren’t part of his uniform.

“Home sweet home…” The joys of being on the lowest rung of society, all the more apparent after the day he had.

Sitting in a plastic chair that was still pretty okay, Jack put off the reality of his apartment as he pulled the remote out of his pocket to take a closer look at it. Maybe it was worth something?

“Wait…” Looking over the buttons, he saw something that didn’t make sense. Before there were definitely swirls and curves that didn’t add up to anything he’d consider a written language on the rubber-like surfaces, but now they all seemed to be written in plain standard English.

Scratching his head, Jack looked over the buttons to see what the remote could do…