If the ease with which Sarza had gone about shrinking Olivia back down to size (give or take an inch, she would swear that she used to be taller) hadn't been enough to convince her of the legitimacy of the AI's ability to rewrite the world around them, then the long and complicated spiel that she got when she first asked how in the ever-living fuck this remote worked definitely sold the story. Brooke had lived her whole career working at a job with lots of buzzwords and corporate speak, and she was handy-adjacent with computers. But some of the words that Sarza was speaking to her didn't even sound like English.
Or, like, words that the human mouth could make. Whether it was the pointed teeth or the fact that she was an AI, Brooke doubted that she could have repeated a lot of what Sarza had prattled off when she asked for an exclamation.
"So." the illusory woman said with a dismissive little wave of her hand, "Any questions?"
Brooke raised her hand.
"Can you... dumb that down a bit for me?" Brooke asked a bit sheepishly, "I just... don't think that I understood any of that."
With a long, begrudging sigh, the AI companion rolled her eyes, rocked herself forward, and stood back up from where she was "sitting" on the couch.
"Fine. I'll ELI5."
"You use Reddit?"
"Is that really the question you want to be asking right now?"
"...I'll be good."
"You most certainly will." Sarza turned to face the wider Wider with her hands on her hips, "At least, if you want to even get close to using this remote to its fullest potential."
The following fifteen-minute explanation in and of itself was, to Sarza's credit, "dumbed down" enough so that Brooke had a better grasp of what the device that she'd been given could actually do. She still had her questions, but she got the basics.
The SAR-ZA remote was a tool that could affect the world around her; at least, in the way that any remote could affect any device. Her parents had cable for most of their lives before she and Mikayla had cut costs to save money, and it wasn't unlike one of the big bulky things that came with a package from Charter or DirectTV. There were buttons with numbers on them, a "channel" and a "volume" button, in addition to buttons that, on any other device, would be used to navigate menus. The "Guide" button was explicitly to summon and un-summon Sarza to ask questions, which would probably be handy down the line. Then, where the "source" buttons should have been over the arrows and OK, there were four blank buttons that Sarza said they'd come back to.
"Anything that can be affected numerically hit those buttons." the red-skinned woman pointed a nail at the numbers, laid out from 1-9 with 0 at the bottom, "Make sure you hit the # key first, and the * key when you're through. It caps out at four digits."
"So... my bank account..."
"Nice try." the AI rolled its eyes, "Those are for setting numbers, not adding to them."
"I should have known. There's no way that they'd make it so that I—"
"If you hit the # key and then the channel up and down buttons though, it can go up by however many times you press it." Sarza spoke over Brooke, "You want to pad your bank account or trim your waistline? That's how you do it."
"Oh fuuuuuck." Brooke held the remote a little closer, "That's wild."
"Right?" Sarza scoffed, "Whatever you want to affect like that, just point and click."
"So I could... pull up my bank account on my phone..."
"I'm here to instruct you, not moralize."
"Uh... what, uh... what else can this thing do?" Brooke was visibly fighting the instinct to pull up her Bank of America right there, if only so she could focus on whatever else Sarza had to say, "Just... y'know... before I get any ideas."
"Ohhh, you'll get ideas."
Sarza's explanation was surprisingly thorough—if a little lengthier, due to Brooke's growing wealth of questions. Does the remote affect age as well as weight? No. Why? It was in beta. Can it affect how many calories are in an Oreo? Absolutely. Why could it do one and not the other? Because it was in beta. Could it physically clone objects?
"Yes, but nothing that's, like... alive."
"...because it's in beta?"
"Because it's in beta, yes."
Simply understanding the power of the numberpad was enough to make Brooke salivate at the possibilities. Explaining the volume keys and the other various source options, plus the miscellaneous buttons that floated around the central pattern, was exciting enough, she supposed—she could "mute" whomever she wanted, fastforward throughout the day, or rewind so that she could use that clever comeback. Whenever she wanted, she could give people who spoke other languages "subtitles" that only she could see. She could adjust how bright the sun was on a personal level so that she never needed to wear sunglasses ever again.
Honestly, the list of things that this thing couldn't do were more surprising than the things that it could. Beta or not, DynaCorp's R&D were working on what was basically witchcraft, and they were succeeding! This was... this was just...
"Wow."
"Wow's right." Sarza chuckled darkly to herself, "The power of the universe at your fingertips."
"No kidding..." Brooke looked down at the remote with pause, "So... what do I do from here?"
"Uh, whatever you want. Duh." Sarza scoffed again, "If you're smart about it, no one will know that you've changed anything—there's a certain membrane when it comes to reality, and this thing just barely tickles it to make it do what you want. You wanna lose twenty pounds (not a suggestion, just an observation) everyone will think you've just been slowly losing weight until this point. You wanna be a rich bitch? You won the lottery last week, congratulations."
"Jesus Chri—"
"I'll do ya one better." the hologram corrected with a wink and a finger gun "SAR-ZA."
Looking at the hologram, and then back to the remote, back to Sarza, Brooke gulped.
Where in the world was she going to even start?
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