Carl furiously tinkered with the remote, his mind racing to figure out how to undo the damage he’d accidentally caused. His dad, still wedged in the doorframe and puffed up like a living blimp, was glaring at him impatiently.
“Alright, Dad, I think I’ve got it this time,” Carl muttered, squinting at the alien symbols and pressing a sequence of buttons. “This should deflate you and get you back to normal.”
Marco crossed his arms—or tried to, given the sheer bulk of his bloated form. “I hope so, kid, because I don’t know how much longer I can take being stuck as a human blimp.”
Carl gave his dad an apologetic smile, but just as he was about to hit the final button, something went wrong. The remote flickered in his hand, its symbols flashing wildly, and before Carl could react, a strange pulse of light shot out from the device, hitting him square in the chest.
For a brief moment, Carl felt a weird buzzing sensation in his head, like static filling his brain. He blinked, trying to shake it off, but the feeling only intensified. It was as if his thoughts were slipping away, one by one, draining from his mind like water leaking from a cracked bucket.
"Wha—what's happening...?" Carl murmured, his voice trailing off as a fog settled over his usually sharp, quick-thinking mind.
He reached up to his forehead, rubbing it as if that could somehow stop the sensation. But it only got worse. His thoughts became slow, sluggish, like wading through mud. His vision blurred, and for the first time in his life, Carl felt… dull.
“Carl, what’s going on? You okay?” Marco asked, his eyes narrowing with concern.
Carl opened his mouth to respond, but the words were stuck. He couldn’t quite grasp what he wanted to say. It was like the ideas were there, just out of reach, but he couldn’t form them into anything coherent.
“Uh… um,” Carl stammered, staring blankly at the remote in his hands. He tried to focus on the symbols, tried to think through what he had done, but the knowledge that had always come so easily to him was fading fast.
He scratched his head, confusion washing over him. “I… dunno, Dad. My brain feels… funny.”
Marco's bloated body wobbled slightly as he tried to shift in the doorway, his eyes widening. “What do you mean ‘funny’?”
Carl blinked again, a vacant look on his face. “I mean… like, all the smart stuff is gone,” he said slowly, each word dragging out like it took real effort to string them together. “Like… I dunno what’s happening. The buttons… they don’t make sense no more.”
The room around him felt bigger, fuzzier, as if all the complexity of it was melting away. Carl’s once razor-sharp mind, the mind that had solved problems in seconds and hacked alien tech with ease, was now a foggy void. He looked down at the remote, tilting his head, and a dopey grin spread across his face.
“Maybe… if I just… press a lotta buttons, something’ll happen,” he said, his voice lower and slower now, full of dimwitted confidence.
Marco’s eyes widened in horror. “Carl, no! Don’t just—!”
But it was too late. Carl began jabbing randomly at the remote’s buttons, his movements clumsy and thoughtless. Each press sent more sparks flying from the device, but Carl didn’t seem to notice—or care. His face was blank, a faint chuckle bubbling out of him as if the whole thing was a game.
“Oops… heh,” Carl giggled. “Maybe this one’ll make things go boom!”
His dad’s bloated form struggled in the doorframe as he tried to stop him. “Carl, stop messing with it! You’re making it worse!”
But Carl wasn’t listening anymore. His eyes had glazed over, his once brilliant mind reduced to little more than a fog of basic instincts and simple thoughts.
“I dunno, Dad… I just… can’t think right no more,” Carl said, scratching his head with a goofy grin. “Everything’s… uh… fuzzy. Kinda like… cotton candy. Ooh, I like cotton candy…”
His gaze drifted off, as if the concept of cotton candy had somehow overwhelmed the little bit of brainpower he had left. His thoughts—once intricate and layered—were now simple, disconnected fragments.
Marco stared at his son, his heart sinking. “Oh man. My brilliant kid just got turned into a total moron.”
Carl just grinned vacantly, completely unaware of the depth of the trouble they were in. The transformation was complete—Carl’s brilliant intellect, once his defining trait, was now gone, replaced by the simple, bumbling mind of a dimwitted fool. And without his smarts, there was no telling how they’d ever fix the mess they were in.