“You found his notes?” Hannah asked.
“Oh, no, these are mine.” He flipped through until he came to a page resembling electrical schematics. “So I was doing a little experiment this morning after Mom and Dad left, and it was around the time I was watching Anime Full House, which was better than I expected, I started cataloging all the stations, or channels, or whatever we are calling them. It looks like there are about twenty-six.”
He handed the notebook to Hannah who started reading the list.
“Game show, Sci-Fi, Fantasy…” She looked up. “Home Shopping?”
Scottie shrugged.
She continued on. “What’s with the channels with the stars?”
“Those should be the restricted ones,” he said. “I was able to compare with it turned on and off. So, if I’m right, turning off the restriction will only mean we lose a few channels, like Horror, True Crime, and-“
“Porn.”
“Correct. Well, it’s called Adult,” he said.
Hannah handed back the notebook and looked to the TV. The screen was blue once more with text in the upper right corner reading:
SCANNING — 99%
“So, what’s it doing now exactly?”
“Ah!” he said, excited once more. “So I think I’ve figured something else out. Yesterday, it didn’t work until I toggled this switch, right?” he said, gesturing to the bottom of the remote. “So I think the T stands for TV, or Television, or something like that.”
Hannah squinted her eyes. “So what does the R stand for?”
“Not really sure. I was just about to test it. I was thinking it means record, or rewind, or something. Whatever it is, the setup for it is much longer than for the TV. It’s been scanning for the last several hours.”
“Hours?”
Scottie nodded. “Yeah. I thought it was frozen at first but then I saw it move up a tick. It’s probably just because it’s really old technology,” he said, waving the remote. “It’s been on this screen for the last 10 minutes.”
Hannah was about to respond when the screen suddenly went black, then flickered and showed the words:
SCAN COMPLETE
“Oh, sweet!” Scottie said as he dropped the remote on the couch and grabbed the television’s remote. “What are you in the mood for? There’s a ton of soap operas on that I think we can turn into a music video or something… I believe I have that queued up,” he said as he was clicking through the basic channels on the TV.
As Scottie remained focused on the TV, Hannah’s eyes were drawn to the black box remote. Setting down her coffee, she reached across the couch and picked it up carefully. She looked at the small LCD screen seeing it was illuminated. In small, 8-bit letters, it read ADULT.
“Scottie,” Hannah said, holding the new controller. “When you set it up again, did you allow restricted content?”
“Ummmmm” Scottie said, slightly turning to look back. “I don’t know, I might have.” He was a terrible liar.
“Uh-huh,” Hannah smiled.
Scottie landed on a re-run of Baywatch. “Oh, well I guess… maybe this could work,” he said as he turned back to Hannah.
Hannah stared at him, feeling smug and having no reason to hide it.
“So, little brother,” she teased. “What station were we going to test again?”