The screaming stopped. The man froze, looked directly at the air where a camera shouldn’t be, and whispered, “B023? Who has B023?”
She pressed MUTE.
She pressed GUIDE.
She had two choices. Let it reset, and face whatever chaos spilled in. Or press the one button she hadn’t tried. Spectrum Remote B023
Mira’s hand trembled. On the remote, the button labeled was now illuminated.
Mira smiled—a real smile, the kind her grandmother had always said meant trouble.
She looked at the button. Then at the lens, where the man from Channel 89 was now pressing his hand against the inside of the feed, leaving a palm print that smoked. The screaming stopped
And somewhere, in the static between one world and the next, her grandmother laughed and said, That’s my girl.
A beat.
“I’m sorry, Mira,” her grandmother said, though her lips didn’t move. The words arrived inside Mira’s skull. “B023 doesn’t control your television. It controls spectrums . The spectrum of time. The spectrum of probability. The spectrum of the dead.” She pressed GUIDE
Mira dropped the remote. It clattered on the hardwood.
But the label stopped her.
For three days, she didn't touch it. But the remote hummed at night. She’d wake to find the lens glowing, cycling through channels: a child’s bedroom where the wallpaper bled, a parking garage where shadows moved backward, a conference room where every attendee wore the same face—her grandmother’s face.
Of course, she pressed 4-7-3.