The Writer is Bored, So He Daydreams...

The small child caught the afternoon sunlight glinting off of something shiny in the bushes.

"Sunlight! You shouldn't be doing that!" said the small child, rather out loud. Indeed, in his admittedly limited catalog of Acceptable Happenings, sunlight didn't glint off of bushes. He wheeled his pudgy little body around and approached the bush in Investigation Mode.

An airplane flew by overhead, full of recirculated, pressure controlled air. The small child paused to look up at it. His brain took a brief moment to wonder where the airplane stored all the farts it filtered out of the air. It must be a big jar or something.

It looked like a pretty normal bush. It was one of those piney looking ones with the leaves that look kind of soft, but are actually really pointy. His mommy told him that it wasn't really a pine bush, because it didn't have cones. The small child knew better, though. It smelled like a pine bush, and it was pointy like a pine bush. She had to be fibbing. She fibbed when she didn't want him to know things. His mommy made him bathe, too, which was another strike against her. She would probably make him bathe tonight because he would probably get some sticky sap on himself. Real pine sap.

The small child circled the bush suspiciously, bobbing his head up and down to see if he could catch it glinting again. There! Right in the middle, stuck in a tangle of branches! It looked like a shiny metal TV remote control with no buttons. The small child was overjoyed. His mommy and daddy never let him touch their remote controls. Now he had his own. Ha.

He reached into the bush, gritting his teeth as the honest-to-God pine needles poked his arm. As soon as he touched the shiny remote thing, it beeped, and a bunch of blue lights lit up along one edge. He hadn't seen them until they lit up. That was a pretty cool trick. He touched it again to see if it would beep again and maybe light up some more lights, but it didn't. He carefully worked it out of the branches and needles.

The small child was nearly vibrating with excitement. He ran across his yard to his tire swing. He inspected his new toy, draped belly-down in the tire, legs kicking happily.

"Pretty," he said, touching one of the blue lights.

"Agent Donaldson. It's good to hear back from you. What is your status?" said a man's voice.

The small child glanced around. It was just him and his shiny thing in the yard. Daddy was at work, and mommy didn't have a voice like that.

"Donaldson?"

The voice was coming from his remote control! Not only was it shiny and beepy and lighty, but it talked too!

"I want cookies!" the small child told his talking remote. He figured that he might as well be honest with it. Honesty was good when you made new friends.

"Indeed. Don't we all, Donaldson?" chuckled the remote. "Seriously though. How are things in the field."

The small child was a little confused as to why it was calling him "Donaldson," but he would probably figure that out later. He kicked himself around in the swing and looked over the backyard fence and into the big yard on the other side. The man over there never mowed his grass. It looked like a field, so that's what he called it. There were probably gophers and mice and boogeymen in there.

"There's a boogeyman in the field," he whispered to his remote.

"Shit!" hissed the remote. "Armed?"

Silly remote! Of course the boogieman has arms! How else would he grab little children and eat them?

"Well, duh!" he sassed. "And you shouldn't say that word. My mommy says it's naughty."

"I'm sorry, Donaldson. I forgot how you are about these things. Can you tell what he's armed with?"

"Big arms!" the small child giggled. The boogeyman did have big arms. He had to.

"Mud puppies. Donaldson, you're going to have to find a way around him yourself. I'm sorry, but there are no agents close enough to your position to provide cover fire. If you're quiet enough, you might be able to knock out his shield with an EMP and...do you have enough juice in your sidearm to take one down?"

The small child loved juice. Especially apple.

"I have a box of it over by that rock, but there are bugs in it now, so I don't want it any more," he said, pointing to a juicebox he brought outside earlier. Ants were crawling all over it. But that was okay, because the child liked ants and was perfectly content leaving the rest of his juice to them.

"Donaldson. Did I hear you right? You've sighted bugs? Please confirm!" The remote sounded upset. "This is worse than I thought! You have full permission to abort mission, Donaldson! It looks like you're in over your head!"

"I like bugs," explained the small child calmly. "They can have my juice."

If it were possible for an inanimate piece of metal to look stunned, the remote did just that. Then it gasped.

A few seconds of silence.

"Wait a second here. Hold on. Full stop. Slap the rabbits. Are you, in fact, Agent Donaldson?"

"Nope!" said the small child. "I'm a small child."

"I see. Well then." Then, in the background, "Mr. President! You can call off the attack drones, sir! Faulty intelligence!" Louder and clearer again, "small child? Are you still there?"

"Yes, talking remote!"

"Talking...never mind. Where did you find this, uh, talking remote?"

"In a bush!"

"Donaldson, you moron...Listen, kid. We need you to put the remote back in the bush--"

"But I don't wanna!"

"--Drones? No. Wait. Better idea. Kid? How about if you get your mommy or daddy to drive you to a police station? When you give this remote control to the police, they will give you a cookie. Deal?"

"Ten cookies!"

"Little bastard. Okay. Ten cookies on the taxpayers' dime. Happy?"

He was.