by Adam Frost
“You have it,” said Danny, as he climbed on to the extension roof.
“Yesss!” whispered Eric.
The crystal in the cosmic remote was still glowing orange. This meant that the section of time was still playing; the pretend Danny was still sitting at his desk.
He was in front of his house. He saw a light on in the living room. There was his father but where was his mother?
He trotted round the back of his house and shimmied up the drainpipe. On the way up he thought he saw the top of his mum’s head crossing the landing window. She seemed to be heading for his room.
He got to the top of the drainpipe as fast as he could. He got one foot on the windowsill and then the other. He crouched down and slid into his room.
He could see the door handle being turned.
He could hear his mother’s voice: “Daniel!”
He looked down at the cosmic remote:
He looked at his desk: the other Danny was still sitting there reading.
His mind raced through all the possibilities. If he dived under the bed, his mother would only see one Danny – at the desk. He could run towards the door and stop his mother coming in – then she’d never see the Danny at the desk. He could pull out his cosmic remote and press Stop, but it always took about five seconds for the image to fade away completely and, besides, then his mother would see the cosmic remote and ask what it was.
But now the door was open and his mother was standing there.
The image of Danny at the desk began to fizzle out. For a split second, Mrs Danger saw two Dannys – one at the desk and one by the window. She blinked twice. She reached down for the glasses hanging round her neck and put them on.
“That’s better,” she said.
Only one Danny remained.
“Your father has come to a decision,” she began. “Tomorrow he is going to hire a skip. And everything in your room is going in it. All your comics, all your toys. Until you start treating our possessions with respect, we won’t be respecting yours!”
She nodded curtly – as if to say “Serves you right!” – and closed the door.
2
REWIND
That night, Danny lay down in bed as he always did, flat on his back, with his cosmic remote clutched tightly to his chest.
He thought about his mother’s threat to throw away everything in his room and wondered how his cosmic remote could possibly stop it happening.
He went through all the possibilities in his head: Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward, Record then Play, Rewind then Pause then Play again. Perhaps there were other combinations he hadn’t tried yet. He had had the cosmic remote for six weeks and every day he felt that he had learned something new about how and where and when to use it.
He thought back to the day when he had been given the cosmic remote. It had been a birthday present from his Uncle Charlie. It had been his only birthday present except for a book about horses from his sister (which she had immediately borrowed and not given back) and a bottle of detergent from his parents.
The remote arrived in a small wooden crate marked “Fragile” with a total of twenty-seven different stamps on it. The stamps featured a range of weird-looking animals: camels with three humps, two-headed snakes, bright-pink horses, cows with wings and a creature with an elephant’s trunk, a moose’s antlers and huge back legs like a kangaroo. Danny looked at the postmark and the back of the box and the currency of the stamps, trying to work out which country the package had been sent from, but it was impossible to tell.
As soon as Mrs Danger saw the gift, she grunted, “What has my oafish brother bought him now?”
She didn’t like Uncle Charlie and lived in constant dread of him coming to stay. He’d turn up every three or four months, tanned and unshaven, wearing old clothes, carrying a battered suitcase and smelling of coffee and chocolate biscuits. He said he was a salesman, but it wasn’t clear what he bought or sold, only that it involved visiting Britain for ten days a year and travelling overseas for the other three hundred-fifty-five. He’d merrily clump through the Danger house, blundering into pot plants and floor lamps, throwing himself into armchairs with a thump and sending any nearby cushions and doilies and footrests flying.
Mrs Danger would follow her brother wherever he went, with a can of air freshener tucked up her sleeve, releasing little squirts every minute or so. When it was time to go, Uncle Charlie would give Mrs Danger a thank-you present: usually something he’d picked up on his travels like a dress or bag or a vase. Mrs Danger would accept the gift with a weak smile and then burn it in the back garden after he’d gone.
Mrs Danger may have dreaded her brother’s visits, but they were magical days for Danny. As soon as he saw his nephew, Uncle Charlie’s face would light up. “Hey! Here he is, the man with the plan! What are we up to today, Danny boy?’
Uncle Charlie and Danny would spend the afternoon in the garden, pretending to be cavemen, building a shelter out of branches and leaves and garden chairs. They’d disappear into Danny’s bedroom and imagine they were astronauts and make a rocket out of boxes and rugs and bedclothes. They’d take over the kitchen and tell Mrs Danger they were scientists and create a potion out of bleach and orange juice and flour and washing-up liquid.
The day that Danny remembered most clearly was when he and Uncle Charlie pretended to be detectives. Whenever he was feeling sad or angry, he would close his eyes and think back to that day. Uncle Charlie had brought lots of equipment with him: a magnifying glass, a notepad, a small tape recorder, a pair of binoculars. He taught Danny how to dust for fingerprints using a paintbrush and talcum powder. He took Danny’s fingerprints using a pad of ink and then showed Danny how his prints showed up on glass and metal and plastic surfaces. He showed Danny how to make invisible ink out of lemon juice and how to copy a door key using soft putty. They followed Mrs Danger around the supermarket without her spotting them.
“How did you learn all this stuff, Uncle Charlie?” Danny whispered in the supermarket.
“I had an uncle – Uncle Percy – who taught me,” Uncle Charlie whispered back, “and now I’m teaching you.”
Occasionally, when Danny and Uncle Charlie were putting up a tent in the front garden or painting each other’s faces in the living room, Danny’s sister Mia would hover in the background, looking mildly curious and quietly intrigued. However, when Danny turned round and asked, “Do you want to join in?” Mia would look cold and distant and walk off haughtily.
“She’s nice underneath it all,” Uncle Charlie would always say. “She’s just scared of showing it.”
Once Eric had dropped round and shown Uncle Charlie how to rewire a remote control car so it went at twenty-five miles per hour.
“Hey, we could use someone like you!” Uncle Charlie had said.
“Who could?” asked Danny.
“Oh, just work, talking about work,” Uncle Charlie had said quickly. “Come on, boys, let’s test our new toy on the extension roof!”
When Uncle Charlie left, Danny was always in trouble because of all the mess and the noise and the state of the house and the state of the garden and what his poor mother had been put through and what his poor father had put up with. He’d be banished to his room for a week or made to hoover the hall and the stairs and the landing every morning for a fortnight. His weekends would be hell for about a month: he’d have to clean the glass on every single one of his mother’s framed tea towels; he’d have to scrub and oil the tools in his father’s shed; he’d have to polish the trophies in the living room that his sister had won for gymnastics.
But Danny didn’t care. It was worth it for all the fun he had had when Uncle Charlie had come to stay. He’d think about Uncle Charlie’s next visit and how all this cleaning and polishing didn’t mean a thing because everything would soon be tipped over and mixed up and bashed about again.
So when his tenth birthday had come around and the present had arrived in the post, Danny knew it would be from Uncle Charlie and
he knew it would be brilliant. His mother kept muttering to his father – they knew it would be trouble.
Danny picked up the box from the kitchen table and took it upstairs to his room.There was no way he was going to open it in front of his parents. Mia tried not to look disappointed. His mother called after Danny, “If it makes a mess, we’ll confiscate it.”
As soon as he was inside his room, he threw the box on the ground and ripped it open. He clawed his way through the brown tape and the polystyrene swirls and the bubble wrap. He felt something hard and plastic with rubber buttons and a bump on the back. Finally he pulled out the cosmic remote and stared at it for a full minute before turning back to the package and seeing if there was anything else inside.
There was just a note from Uncle Charlie.
Danny folded up the letter and put it in his pocket. It was strange to be given a birthday present that belonged to someone’s work, but then this was Uncle Charlie so nothing was ever straightforward.
Danny turned the present over and over in his hand. The crystal on the back was pretty cool and it all fitted neatly into his hand and the buttons were satisfyingly chunky. But he couldn’t help feeling a slight sense of disappointment. At the end of the day, it was just a remote control. Where was the thing it controlled?
Danny’s disappointment vanished when he touched the Rewind button. The bubble wrap and polystyrene swirls leapt back into the box and the box resealed itself and started to hover above the floor and his bedroom door swung open. He let go of the Rewind button.
He pressed the Fast Forward button and the door swung shut and the box dropped to the floor and the bubble wrap leapt back out of the box and Danny began to hear footsteps drumming on the stairs.
He let go of Fast Forward and pressed Pause. The whole world stopped.
This was the best birthday present he had ever had.
He walked out of his room and on to the landing. He saw his mother and his father, halfway up the stairs, frozen in time, their faces twisted into strange expressions. His father’s right foot was in mid-air, about to land on the stair above.
So many questions raced through Danny’s mind.Why had the remote not flown back into the box when he pressed Rewind? If he was moving time backwards and forwards, why was he not affected? Why was he outside it all, watching events unfold?
If he could pause time, what happened to anything he touched or moved when time was paused? Did it fly back to its old position afterwards?
He laughed out loud. He was going to enjoy finding answers to these questions.
He looked down at the remote. For the first time he noticed the display flashing:
For the first time, he felt the crystal ticking round in his palm. There must be something magical hidden inside this box, Danny thought to himself.
He looked again at his parents, suspended halfway up the stairs. He had a thought. A thought that made him smile. Uncle Charlie was going to be proud of him.
He tripped down the stairs and undid his father’s right shoelace. Then he squeezed past his parents and moved the table in the hall a few centimetres to the right. There was an assortment of vases and ornaments on this table; Danny moved them all a few centimetres to the left. He kicked up a corner of the rug in the hall, unhooked the latch that kept the cupboard under the stairs closed and moved everything in the cupboard forwards so that it was leaning precariously on the door. Then Danny trotted back upstairs again, squeezed past his parents and hid behind the laundry basket on the landing. He pressed Play.
Life started up again. His father put down his right foot, and his lace was caught under his shoe; he lurched forwards and then toppled backwards. He fell on top of Danny’s mother and they both bounced down the stairs. As they collapsed in the hall, Mrs Danger nudged the hall table that Danny had moved slightly to the right and all the vases and ornaments that Danny had moved slightly to the left toppled off the table and plummeted towards the floor. A china dog hit Mr Danger on the head and broke in two. Mrs Danger tried to catch a picture frame but fumbled and managed to snap it in half instead.
As they struggled to their feet, wailing and roaring, Mrs Danger tripped over the rug in the hall that Danny had kicked over and flew forwards, her arms flailing, catching her knee on the door of the cupboard under the stairs. The cupboard swung open and the hoover and the ironing board and the mop and three buckets and several collapsible chairs dropped out.
The hoover broke open, releasing a billowing cloud of dust.The ironing board dropped open, burying one its legs in Mr Danger’s stomach and another leg in Mrs Danger’s neck. Mia rushed in from the kitchen and put her hand to her mouth, unable to believe her eyes.
Danny peered over the banister and called out innocently, “What’s going on?”
He tried not to smile but it was hard. For the first time ever, there was mess everywhere and he could not be blamed for it. For the first time ever, looking at the plume of dust from the hoover and the broken ornaments on the floor and the plastic bucket wedged on his father’s head, Danny felt at home in his parents’ house.
***
Over the next few weeks, Danny experimented with his cosmic remote in all kinds of situations. At dinner times, he would wait till his family had finished their meals, and then press Rewind and watch everyone unchew their food, spit it gently on to their forks, and place it neatly back on their plates. At other times, when he had been banished to his room for two or three hours because he had sneezed without using a handkerchief or left a thumbprint on a glass of water, he would press Fast Forward until the time had passed and then come back downstairs, smiling broadly.
It took him a little longer to get the hang of the Record button. After a few days of pressing it and nothing happening, Danny was sitting on the front garden wall one morning when he accidentally squeezed the crystal on the back of the remote and heard something click. His thumb was hovering over the Record button at the time and he instinctively pushed it down. He was astonished when a beam of light shot out of the end of the remote and bathed the street with a yellow glow. He directed the beam at an old lady sitting in a car on the other side of the street. Nothing seemed to be happening to the car or the old lady, so after a few seconds he pressed Stop and the yellow beam disappeared and the crystal started to flash.
Danny forgot all about it until, later that day, he was sitting at his desk at school staring out the window. He pulled his cosmic remote out of his pocket and noticed that the crystal was still flashing. He tried pressing Record and then Stop and then Play. The crystal had stopped flashing but had anything else happened?
Then he heard one of his classmates say, “Sir, why’s there an old lady in a car on top of that tree?”
Danny looked up and saw a shaft of light pouring out of the cosmic remote. The old lady in the car was hovering in the middle of the beam of light. Because of where the remote was pointing, it looked as if she was perched on top of the tree at the bottom of the school field. Danny pressed Stop as quickly as he could.
Danny’s teacher, Mr Boswell, walked over to the window.
“What are you talking about, boy?” he snarled. “There’s nothing there. One hundred lines: ‘I must not tell lies in class’.”
“Aw, sir,” protested Danny’s classmate.
“Another hundred lines: ‘I must not answer back’,” fumed Mr Boswell.
Danny looked down at his remote in amazement. There seemed to be no end to its powers.
As the weeks wore on, Danny began to think more deeply about what his remote was capable of.What if he pressed Rewind and kept pressing Rewind, would he slowly become seven and then six and then five, and gradually turn into a baby, still holding his cosmic remote? And what if he kept pressing Fast Forward, would he get older and older, until he was eighty or ninety or even a hundred, barely able to hold the remote in his twisted, trembling, old man’s hands?
Danny might have tried this out – there were all kinds of experiments he wanted to run – but exactly a mo
nth after receiving the remote, something happened that made Danny more cautious about where and how he used his new toy.
It was a Sunday afternoon and Danny was walking down the stairs, quietly singing a song he had made up the day before:
Danny headed towards the front door, thinking that he owed Eric a visit. He had half opened the door when he heard his mother’s voice behind him.
“What’s that for? And what’s it doing on the floor?”
Danny turned round and froze. He had dropped his cosmic remote and it was lying in the middle of the hall. His mother was bending over to pick it up and his sister was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking bored.
“Nothing to do with me,” said Mia. “Must be Danny’s.”
“It’s m-mine, it’s m-mine,” stammered Danny, trying not to show how much he needed it back.
Mia suddenly looked more interested. “It is Danny’s. Don’t give it to him, Mum.”
“I’ve no intention of giving it to him,” said Mrs Danger.
“Please give it back,” mumbled Danny desperately. “It’s really important.”
“If you drop it on the floor, then it must be rubbish,” said Mrs Danger. “It’s going in the bin.”
Mia smiled, as if she had worked out why Danny was so afraid. “Press one of the buttons, Mum. Let’s see what it does.”
“No!” shouted Danny. He knew he had to do something drastic. He knew it didn’t matter what he did, he could press Rewind and erase it all.
His mother’s thumb hovered over the Play button; his sister looked over Mrs Danger’s shoulder.
Danny ran over to one of the framed tea towels that was hanging in the hall. It said:
He pulled it off the wall, threw it on to the floor and jumped up and down on top of it until the glass broke.