Ty’s Power- Living with Electronics – by scriptboy
Story ideas by Peter K. (peteroo6) and drakkenfyre
“Has anybody seen Peter today?” Ty wondered out loud. It was a Saturday afternoon and it seemed like nobody had seen Peter all day. Dustin was in the living room, studying for work. Ryan had been outside, mowing the lawn and the next door neighbor’s lawn as well. Ty had spent the entire afternoon cleaning up the garage. He had been looking for some old books and he had found them. But since there was so much junk lying around that was his, he decided to go through all the stuff and to see what he wanted to keep and what he wanted to sell at a yard sale.
Ty ran up the stairs and quietly opened Peter’s bedroom door. He had not even seen Peter come out of his room, and he wondered that maybe Peter was sick, or still asleep. There were computer cables all over the place. Two screwdrivers were on the floor, and there was an old computer on the floor which looked like it had been completely taken apart. There were books and interface boards all over the floor, and the room looked more like a computer workshop than a high school student’s bedroom. Peter had taken the cover off the old computer tower and he was trying to install a new hard drive.
“Peter, you are nuts! You’ve been in your room all day! What have you been doing?” Ty asked his cousin, who was just wearing a pair of shorts while he was sitting on the floor by the old computer. “Oh I’m trying to install a hard drive, a network card, a video card, and a sound card. Then I’m trying to connect this old computer to my laptop. Then I’ll need to burn a few CDs to hold a few gigabytes worth of data as a backup. Then I’ll need to…” Peter began to explain. “Holy cow, Peter! You’ve been working on this all day!” Ty said out loud, cutting him off. “Is it going to take you all day to get this to work?” Ty asked him.
“Well, yes, I’m afraid so, Ty! When you work with electronics, you won’t know whether something will work or not until you’ve plugged it in, tested it, installed the hardware, installed the drivers, set any jumpers, attached any cables, and do whatever else is needed in order to get something to work. I can’t control electronic devices with my mind, you know!” Peter told his cousin.
Then Ty had a big grin on his face. “Would it help you if you could? I mean, would you be finished with this if you knew everything worked beforehand?” Ty asked him. Peter just stared at him and then rolled his eyes upwards as he thought about his answer. “Yeah, it would help. I’ve never even thought about that before. Controlling electronic devices with my mind? Hmm…” he wondered out loud.
“Well, I just wanted to see how you were doing and why I haven’t seen you outside of your room all day! I just wanted to see if you needed any help…” Ty responded. Then he turned around and walked out of the room. He closed the door behind him and turned around. But when he was about to run down the stairs, he turned around and faced the bedroom door. “I wish Peter were able to control any electronic device with his mind!” he wished out loud. He felt his power working, and he showed a big smile on his face.
Peter held the little internal hard drive in his hand. He grabbed an interface cable, and plugged it into the slot on the back of the small, metallic case. The moment he grabbed the other end of the cable, he felt a jolt going through his fingers! It seemed as if the hard drive had suddenly come to life, the disk started spinning and the “in use” light suddenly came on. It scared him, he almost dropped the hard drive out of his hand, but he caught it right on time.
“What was that?” he wondered, looking at the little device in his hand. How could the drive suddenly start up on its own, without being connected to the computer? Not only that, but how could the drive get power, if it wasn’t even plugged in to the power supply? Then he tapped the plug at the end of the cable again, and it happened again! “Whoa!” he said to himself. “Did I do that?”
He worked up the courage to place his fingers on the plug and to hold on. He looked at the drive, and right away the light flashed and the drive began to spin on its own. He thought for a second that he wanted to view the contents of the drive. Right away, the drive beeped, and a directory listing appeared in his mind. “This is cool!” he said with a smile. He then focused on a specific folder, and he saw it in his mind. He then focused on a specific file, and he read the contents of the file in his mind as well.
Peter set the drive back on the floor and stood up. He then slowly walked towards the radio, when he noticed that it came to life on its own when he got within a certain distance. He thought about a specific radio station in his mind, and the radio adjusted the tuning to that station and it began to play music right away.
He picked up the sound card, and he felt right away that the card worked. He did the same to the video card and the network card, and he was pleased to find out that all three cards worked, without having to test them individually! Then he grabbed the computer case and placed his finger on the processor on the mother board. Right away the computer sprang to life, and Peter saw several settings displayed in his mind.
As his last test, he walked up to his laptop and put his finger on the USB port on the side. Right away he felt the connection, and he realized that he was able to make text display on the screen just by using his mind, and without even touching the keyboard. He made the mouse pointer move and click on objects on the screen, and he didn’t even touch the mouse. He pulled up his word processor, and he made some text appear in it. He quickly put the old computer together and he connected all the wires. A day’s worth of testing had just been cut down to just ten minutes worth of work. But how did he do it? He remembered that he had not wished for anything and he had not used his own powers at all that day, so could Ty have done this to him? No matter, he decided to go downstairs and to have some fun with his ability to control electronic devices!
Ty was watching TV when Peter came down the stairs. He was watching a movie on HBO, which was channel 24. Peter looked at the TV and thought about watching channel 29 instead, which was ESPN. Suddenly, the channels changed, and Ty was now watching another channel on TV! “Huh? How did that happen?” Ty wondered. He grabbed the remote and put the channel back on HBO. He still hadn’t noticed Peter standing behind him. Then the channel flipped back to ESPN! “Huh?” he wondered out loud again. Peter couldn’t hold in his laughter any more, and he chuckled just loud enough for Ty to hear him. “Hey I can change the channel on the TV set without a remote!” he told Ty. Ty just rolled his eyes like it was old news. ‘I know that. I wished for you to be able to control electronic devices! So go test your new powers on somebody else and quit messing with the TV!” Ty mumbled. Peter was about to walk into the other room, when Ty stopped him. “Hey, recharge these batteries for me and reset my watch on time, okay?” Ty said, while handing Peter his wristwatch. Peter removed the back compartment and touched the two small batteries and held on to them until he felt that they were fully charged. Then he put them back, closed the compartment, and he looked at the watch. The watch reset itself to the correct time, without him having to press any buttons at all! The batteries were charged and the watch was back on time again, and Peter handed the watch back to Ty.
Peter walked into a small back office, where Dustin was studying. He had a small radio that was on and it was set to a country music station. Peter hated country music but loved Top 40 and contemporary music, so when he walked into the room the radio station changed and it began to play the music that Peter liked to listen to! “What on earth…” Dustin wondered out loud. He was about to mess with the dials on the radio. “Don’t bother setting the station on the radio. It has changed because of me! I did that!” Peter explained to Dustin. “I can control electronic things now!” Dustin just laughed.
“You’re weird, Peter! You surprise me time after time again! Well, can you charge the batteries in my flashlight? The batteries have worn out on me!” Dustin said, as he handed Peter the empty flashlight. Dustin had removed the batteries and had laid them on the coffee table, so there were no batteries in the flashlight! But still, the light began to shine as soon as Peter grabbed hold of it in his hand. “Hey, the flashlight works!” Peter said, shining it in Dustin’s face. Dustin looked at the batteries on the table and yelled “Aaaaahh! How did you do that???” Peter just laughed. He grabbed each battery and charged them one by one.
When Peter walked out of the little study, he dragged his feet over the carpet. Sparks suddenly came from his feet, and they hit Dustin in his legs! “Auww!!” Dustin screamed, as Peter walked across the room with a chuckle. “You’re weird, Peter! Very weird…” Just when Peter walked by the desk, both metallic desk drawers flew open, hitting Dustin right in the stomach! “Oooof!!!” Dustin shouted, feeling the pain of the metal drawers as they slammed into his stomach. Then all the loose paperclips flew out of the little plastic tray in the top drawer, and they magnetically attached themselves to Peter’s arm! “Peter!! You’re making a mess out of my office! Get out!!” Dustin shouted at him. “Alright, alright…” Peter said calmly, realizing that he had annoyed Dustin enough and that it was time to move on to bigger and better things. Peter gave Dustin his paper clips back and walked out of the office.
Ryan was playing a game on his Playstation when Peter walked in the room. Ryan had been playing that particular game for about ten minutes, and he had already earned over 300,000 points. Peter decided to have some fun and used his powers to control the game. Suddenly the game continued playing on its own and Ryan lost, resulting in the “game over” message appearing on the screen. “WHAT!!??” Ryan shouted, looking at his game controller. He thought something was wrong with it, when he heard Peter started to laugh out loud behind him.
“Aww Peter!! You MESSED UP my game!!” the muscle boy cried out loud. He turned and looked at Peter with sad eyes, to the point where he was about to break out in tears and cry! “I’m just teasing, Ryan! Don’t cry! Here, I’ll get you your score back!” Peter said. He then concentrated on the Playstation, putting the game back on the screen. Suddenly, the score changed from zero to 400,000. Then Peter allowed the game to start. “There you go, now you have more points then when you stopped. Have fun!” Peter said out loud. “Wow! You can change the scores of the video games! That’s so cool! Thanks!” Ryan said, feeling happy that he could continue playing his game!
Peter decided to go outside and to walk by the neighbor’s house. He looked through one of the bedroom windows and saw Evan, the next door neighbor, typing stuff on his computer. He was surfing the internet and he was writing a paper for school. Peter just stared at the computer screen, and the browser suddenly changed the page and loaded the Google home page. Evan looked up and wondered why he was at that site, and he clicked the back button on his Internet Explorer web browser. After a few moments, Peter instructed the browser to go back to Google again! At that moment, Evan turned around and noticed Peter standing outside his window. He just grinned, for he figured that Peter was probably controlling his computer from a distance.
Peter thought that Ty had given him the coolest ability with his wish and he wondered what else he could do or where else he could go and to put his new talents to the test?