Universal Remote

[dalejr38]

This is my very first story, so feel free to leave feedback about anything.

Universal Remote

“No, get away from me”, Melanie yelled at Steve, “I don’t want anything to do with you.” And thus began a normal day at college. “I don’t know why you would think I would even associate with a loser like you”, with this last remark Melanie walked off down the hall swaying her hips as if to say see what you’ll never get.

As if you hadn’t already guessed, Steve wasn’t real good with the ladies. Correction, Steve wasn’t real good with anyone. See Steve was sort of a loner. That’s not to say that Steve didn’t have any friends, just that he had a hard time communicating with others. Steve had always been smarter than the kids he went to school with. This, paired with his parents’ incessant need to safeguard their only son from the apparent evil in this world, meant Steve didn’t identify with many people. He wasn’t allowed to go to parties or to the movies, his parents also monitored what he watched on TV and the toys he had growing up. The only things Steve was allowed to do were those things deemed educational by his parents.

The only things that Steve had to associate with were his computer, with most sites blocked, and his ever growing collection of electronics. Steve found that if he occupied his time with working with or on electronics it helped to pass the time and as the years went by he really started to enjoy it.

So by the time Steve got accepted to college and finally moved out of his parents house he was more than ready to experience the real world. He could tear down and rebuild a computer in no time flat and make most small appliances out of spare parts just lying around, but none of this translated into any sort of social standing with those around him.

Steve ended up living in the dorms with two jocks based on the fact that he had registered for housing late. This was Steve’s housing predicament for 3 whole semesters. Steve didn’t mind this too much because he was in class all day and his dorm mates spent most nights out at some party only to come home after he was asleep. But when they didn’t go out, they made his life a living hell.

He was finally able to save up enough money to rent an apartment off campus for himself. Taking the few possessions that he had brought from home and moving them into the apartment wasn’t that hard. A computer, a small TV, his cell phone, a single bed, a nightstand, and a light and recliner he had found at a yard sale. What more could you need?

After getting everything set up just the way he wanted Steve noticed that it was already 11:00. He had spent all day working on the apartment that he didn’t realize it was that late. Even though he was tired, his mind was still going and so he sat down in his recliner to watch some TV. It may have been a Thursday night, but he didn’t have a class tomorrow. Late night talk show, late night talk show, local news, cooking with some chef he never heard of. Not much on TV, and then something caught his attention, an advertisement for a Universal Remote. This remote was different from those in the past as it worked off of a wireless connection. You have to understand that all electronics are now hooked up to a network and have wireless connectivity. All you have to do is scan for the device you want, tap into its network and bingo you can control it. Well Steve decided he just had to have one of these. The remote was $55, but that was a small price to pay for such a sophisticated electronic device. He just told himself that he would have to find a way to make up the money before next months rent. So Steve ordered it and had it shipped next day air. A little more channel surfing and Steve decided that there was nothing worth while on TV and figured he would go to bed anyway.

Steve knew that since he had ordered the remote late on Thursday, he wouldn’t actually get the remote until Saturday. So instead of just lying around the apartment, he decided to get to work making up that money he just spent. That meant that Steve would get to work on fixing other peoples computers, and with everyone needing their computers for everything, they all paid fairly well. One or two computers fixed and that should cover the cost of the remote he figured. Steve took pride in fixing computers, it was about the only thing he had over the majority population on campus. He knew how to fix their computers, and even the jocks had to come to him in instances like this.

So after a busy day of fixing computers, Steve was ready for bed. Doing wipes and reloads, virus scans, replacing motherboards and basic overhauls will really take it out of you. But, when all was said and done, Steve figured that the 5 computers he had fixed would net him about $250. Not bad for just a days work.

Steve slept in late on Saturday knowing that he didn’t have anything to do. He got up at about 10:00 and got some breakfast which was no more than just a bowl of cereal: can’t get much more than that when most of his money went towards rent. After finishing breakfast and calling all the people whose computers he had fixed, he went down to check his mailbox. The mailboxes were down in the lobby, and Steve was surprised at who he saw in the lobby. It was Melanie, 5’7”, red hair, beautiful eyes and she was even a cheerleader. With breasts that had to be at least a C and a great tan, she had a body to die for. “Oh geez, don’t tell me you live here too” Melanie asked Steve. “Yeah, I’m in 2G. I haven’t been here that long though”. ”Well that’s already too long for me. Whatever you do, just don’t come near 3C” Melanie retorted. Then Melanie was gone, leaving Steve alone in the lobby. He opened up his mailbox and pulled out a box. The box was only about six inches long and about 3 inches wide, kind of small for a remote Steve thought. “Oh well” Steve thought, “I’ll just take it up to my room and find out”.

Steve made his way back up to his apartment and sat down on his bed. He opened up the box and emptied the contents onto the bed beside him. Out came a remote no bigger than your average cell phone and a piece of paper with writing on it. Steve picked up the paper and started reading.

Congratulations on your purchase of the brand new “Universal Remote”. “Oh geez, so creative” Steve thought, “like they couldn’t come up with anything better to call it besides The Universal Remote”. Steve continued to read, “This remote comes with a 1 year warranty and blah blah blah, yada yada yada, “All the standard mumbo jumbo” Steve thought. “Alright, here we go. To activate, press and hold green button for 3 seconds. Sounds easy enough.” The remote screen flashed and then showed the message “Specify primary user”. “Steve, ahh Steve Gates.” The message on the remote changed to now say “Name and voice recognition saved. Please input fingerprint for identification”. “Sure seems like a lot of security features for a remote” Steve said. Steve went back to the instructions to look for where it said the fingerprint scanner was, but before he could find out a laser grid was emitted from the remote and scanned his hand and was gone. “Fingerprint identification saved”. “Well, now that that is over with, time to find out what this thing can really do” Steve said.

The remote had a screen about two inches by two inches, and below the screen were quite a few buttons. Directly below the screen were buttons for up, down, left and right with a button in the centre of them. Under those five buttons were twelve other buttons each with an assigned function. The only problem was that the functions had yet to be assigned to them. After reading a little more of the instructions Steve found out that the functions would be assigned to the buttons after the electronic device the remote was to be used with was selected. That seemed easy enough.

Steve pressed the button labelled scan. The screen was flashing the word “Scanning” and had a status bar scrolling across the bottom of the screen. This went on for about a minute, when the screen stopped flashing and the words “Scan Complete” popped up only to be replaced by three items. These items were his cell phone, his computer and the TV. Just for starters Steve selected the TV. The buttons that previously had no function lit up. The up and down arrows directly under the screen said volume and the left and right buttons said channel. The centre button was the ok or select button. Lastly the twelve other buttons became the numbers for channels along with and on and off button.

“Seems fairly simple” Steve said. Steve pressed the on button and his TV turned on. “Well at least that works”, Steve said, “Now how about the rest of the buttons”. So Steve went through all of the buttons one after the other, turning up the volume and then down again. Channel up, Channel down, punching in the numbers, it didn’t matter the remote worked perfectly for the TV.

“Now to see if it works with everything else,” Steve thought. Steve now selected his cell phone. The buttons changed to reflect the change in electronics and now resembled a second phone. The number buttons were still the same, but the on and off buttons had become the call and end buttons and the five buttons together had become just selection buttons. “Looks like it works for the phone too”

Last thing Steve had to try the remote on was the computer. So this time he selected the computer and waited for the buttons to change. This time something different happened, only the on and off button and the selection buttons were functional. “This seemed kind of odd,” thought Steve, “What about the rest of the buttons”. Steve pressed the on button and waited, the computer booted up and then the screen on the remote changed. There was still an on and off button, but instead of assigning functions to the buttons, since there were way too many, the screen grouped them together on the screen and allowed the user to scroll through them and select the appropriate one.

The groups were Tasks, Programs, Memory/Storage, Files, Control Panel, Hardware, and Network Connection. Steve selected the Programs group and the screen on the remote and his computer screen both changed to show all the programs on his computer. Steve then selected the Memory/Storage and was able to see that he had 2 hard drives, each with 120GB, one CDRW Drive and one CD burner. Lastly Steve selected the Hardware group and this brought up a list of the Hardware installed on his computer. The Monitor, the printer, the Keyboard and mouse, the speakers, everything. “ This thing is amazing” Steve said aloud to no one, “I’ve got to try this out on more things”.