Welcome to

The sun beat down on the cracked asphalt of the suburban cul-de-sac, turning the Saturday morning garage sale into a shimmering mirage of discarded memories. Emily nudged Lucas with her elbow, gesturing toward a folding table buried under a tangle of old cables and yellowed electronics manuals. “See anything cool, tech wizard?”

Lucas, ever the tinkerer, was already sifting through the box. “Mostly junk. VCR manuals from 1998. A busted graphing calculator.” His hand paused, fingers closing around something sleek and black. “Whoa. Okay, this is weird.”

He pulled it out. It was a standard universal remote, but it felt significant. It was heavier than it should be, made of a cold, brushed metal, and had a simple layout: Power, Volume Up/Down, a directional pad, a button with a simple TV icon, and one solitary, ominous red button set slightly apart. A faint, almost imperceptible LED glowed near the top.

“That looks… intense,” Emily said, peering over his shoulder. “Think it works?”

“Only one way to find out,” Lucas grinned. He aimed it at a dusty old tube TV sitting on the grass with a ‘$5’ sticker on it. He pressed the power button. With a soft click and a hum, the TV flickered to life, displaying static snow. Lucas laughed, a sound of pure relief. “Holy crap, it does work. And it’s not even paired to it. Score. I do need a new remote anyway.”

“Maybe it really is universal,” Emily mused.

An elderly woman with soft silver hair pulled into a bun shuffled over, her smile warm but tinged with a deep, lingering sadness. “Oh, you found Albert’s little project,” she said, her voice like rustling paper. “My husband. He was an electrical engineer, retired. In his last few months… he became quite obsessed with fiddling with that thing. In his spare time, right up until the end.”

Lucas turned the remote over in his hands. “It’s really well-made. What was he trying to do?”

The woman’s gaze grew distant. “On his deathbed, he was delirious with the pain medication. He kept holding that remote, babbling about harmonics and dimensional frequencies. He said he’d tuned it not to channels, but to worlds. Said it was a portal device.” She gave a soft, sad laugh. “He told me I should use it when my time comes. He said the transportation takes …