Heredity

Author's Notes: This was written originally for the recent 750 word event. Although I contributed another story I wasn't happy with the original ending on this one.

For those readers not familiar with the 750 event, it's an author sponsored event where you try to write an entire story from beginning to end in exactly 750 words. (The minimum the site allows) The last event spawned a record 164 stories. It's something I very much enjoy doing and you'll find a few stories in the 750 format among my offerings.

Please vote and comment, it's the only payment we get. All characters of legal age.

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Eve and Sarah were sitting on a couch in the break room sipping coffee.

"Did you see that convoy of blacked-out vehicles last week?" Sarah asked. "They locked down the building and brought something top secret for Adam. He's coming now, maybe he'll share what was so important."

Eve felt uncomfortable around Adam, their genius circuit technician. She knew he liked her, wanted to ask her out. She couldn't see them as a couple given his huge, rotund body and piggy face.

Sarah went at him when he sat on the couch.

"What was all the mystery about last week, Adam?"

Adam fumbled in his lab coat and displayed a remote. "They brought me a stone fossil. I X-rayed it, then did an MRI. It appears to be some kind of remote control with fossilized fingers holding it. Thing is it's 4.3 billion years old, before there was life on earth. The government wants to know what it does? It has a button labelled EMIT. I can't shake the feeling that I should know something about it somehow. I rebuilt a replica, but I have no idea what it does? Maybe it changes the TV channels."

He aimed it at the TV hanging on the wall with the news feed scrolling across the bottom and...!

Click!

The three found themselves sitting on a couch in the middle of a quiet forest, the rest of their co-workers gone, the building no longer around them.

"Adam?" Sarah wailed, freaked out.

Click!

Parked on the edge of a glacier, looking down several hundred feet into a moraine littered valley with a stream winding it's way through. The vast mountains around them were covered in a blinding, white glare of ice. A bitter, freezing wind tore at them. Instantly, they were shivering violently.

Eve realized something. "Adam, it doesn't say EMIT, it says TIME! Your damn dyslexia got it backwards! It controls time!"

Click!

The huge pack of dinosaurs surrounding them didn't look friendly. In fact, based on the size of their teeth and mouths...they looked...hungry!

Sarah lost it and started screaming, "T-REX!"

With a quick lunge one of the beasts was on her ripping her off the couch. Tossing his head back he let her slide down into his huge maw. With a crunch of severed bones, the other two watched paralyzed and stunned as a huge bulge of meat that had been Sarah, slid smoothly down it's throat. Her muffled screams marked her final descent. One of her severed legs, still spurting blood, landed on Eve and bounced off onto the ground. Unhinged, she started screaming too. Huge, hungry heads swivelled their way when...

Click!

It was warm and muggy. The sun was huge in the sky. They were sitting just off a beach in a few inches of water while gentle waves lapped at the bottom of the couch. There wasn't much wind and nothing moved in the heavens.

The sky looked alien, a god-awful orange in colour. Eve started to feel short of breath, although she was breathing normally. Adam gasped a couple of times then...

Click!

Nothing!

Click!

Again nothing!

Adam's eyes were bulging out trying to catch his breath. He pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and wrote on his hand. "Primitive atmosphere. Co2, Sulphur, No oxygen!"

Eve had no idea what Co2 and Sulphur had to do with it, but no oxygen told her everything. His pounding on the button let her know the battery on the remote was dead.

They were dying!

They staggered to their feet desperately trying to breathe. Without oxygen they both collapsed into the warm waters of the sea. Gasping their last moments out, Eve craved some human contact. Her hand found Adam's. Holding the remote in one hand and her hand with the other, he wiggled over, trying for one last kiss.

'No way, not him!' she thought, revolted.

Blackness overtook them.

Unrepentant, the lapping water started to cover Adam and Eve with sand.

In those sterile waters the bacteria inside their bodies broke them down. Freed into those warm waters they bred, cannibalized each other and exchanged DNA. Then eagerly swarmed into the welcoming arms of the hospitable sea, heading off to explore their vast, new, unpopulated world.

And that, gentle readers, is how a fat, couch potato with his own couch and a remote control founded life on Earth.

So ladies, when your lovable couch potato is sitting there munching and clicking, remember.

It's his HEREDITY!

© 2020 Gordo12

A little note about the 750 word format. Different word processors measure the number of words differently. For instance in Libre Office this cluster of words "mouths...they looked...hungry" measures out as two words instead of the four you see. When ellipses ... join words, they're counted as one word. Other word processors would count it as four. Others would count it as six because they count the ellipses as a word. Also things like separators ********** are counted as words in some editors. So short of using fingers and toes...!

The reason I mention this is because the event authors were aware of the problem measuring the stories. The consensus was that nobody would be anal enough to spend the time counting and then comment. We were wrong!

Author's Note: Please vote and comment, it's the only payment we get.

PS: The favourite story and favourite author buttons are badly underused on this site. If you enjoy my demented little ramblings, click on them too please. The site will notify you on your control panel of new stories.