The Dial

The Dial showed up on my doorstep a week ago.

I noticed it while I was bringing in the mail, spying the small rectangular box tucked neatly on the right side of the front porch through the fog of my glasses, courtesy of my mask. Picking it up, I examined it. The packaging had no name, no return address, and showed no sign of having previously been opened. So I did what any logical 18 year old would do.

I brought it inside and opened it. So what, I’m a nosy guy. Sue me.

Once in the comfort of my own room, I opened the package and was surprised to see a black box with a silver antenna sticking out of one end and a bright red dial in the center. I toyed around with the dial, moving it all the way up, then all the way down, again and again, and again. Nothing happened, besides the wasting of 5 precious minutes of my life. I put the Dial down as I heard my phone begin to ring. Picking it up, I heard my mom on the other line.

“Hey honey, I’m coming home with your sister and a trunk full of groceries, so be ready to help us. We’ll be home in 5 minutes.”

“Got it mom”, I replied and went to grab my coat, keys, and a spare mask that hung on the coat rack.

As I stepped outside, I saw Mr. Garret, my next-door neighbor strapping in his son, Toby, to the passengers’ seat. After getting Toby situated, he saw me and I waved. He came over to me, wringing his hands to the point that they resembled a pretzel. “I think my son might have a throat condition, his voice just gave out”, he whispered to me as if someone were listening in on our conversation.

“Oh...that’s a shame” I replied, not really knowing what to do with the information.

“We were in the backyard, trying to rake up some leaves, and then all of the sudden his voice just kept coming in and out, almost like a radio transmission. I wonder if that’s a new COIVD symptom? Maybe a different strain of the virus?” he said, more to himself than to me.

I slowly took a step back. If it was, I wasn’t interested in finding out.

“Got to go to the hospital. Good to see you, Isaiah”.

“Have a good day Mr. Garret? Hope Toby feels better.”

My mother pulled into the garage just as Mr. Garret peeled out of his driveway and sped off in a cloud of smoke.

“What was that about”, my mother asked once we had brought in all the groceries from the car.

“Something about Toby losing his voice? I dunno but he seemed pretty freaked.”

“Poor boy”, my mother said, putting away the milk, wiping her hands on her light blue scrubs that glowed from the light of the refrigerator. “I hope he feels better. And that it’s nothing serious”.

After dinner, as I sat at my desk, thinking about what Mr. Garret had said about his son, Jasmine took that time to enter the room.

One thing you should know about my 16-year-old sister is that she loves to touch my stuff. Whatever I own, she’ll eventually want to use.

“Hey, can I borrow your Nintendo”, she asked, leaning against my door frame, and while I was not surprised to hear the question, I was surprised that I handed it over so quickly.

So was she, because she looked at me, bewildered, even after holding the coveted gaming device in her hands.

“What?” I asked, tapping my fingers on the table.

“Why are you being so weird?” she shot back, hand on her hip, the other hand clutching the Nintendo.

“Why are you being so ungrateful? I gave you the game, now get out”.

“Not until you tell me what you’re thinking about”

“Jasmine, if you don’t get out…”

“What’s that?”.

I followed her finger and saw that she was pointing to the Dial. I groaned inwardly and picked it up.

“Don’t know. Found it today in a package on the doorstep.”

“What does it do?” she asked

“I’m still figuring that out myself,” I said, playing with the Dial, slowly turning it all the way down

“Well if you-”

Suddenly, it’s quiet in my room. I look up to see Jasmine looking at me, a shocked expression on her face. We both looked at the Dial, and I watched with fascination as her lips moved but no sound came out.

“Huh. So that’s what it does”.

Jasmine was not happy with me after that. “So you’re saying you can just mute people whenever you want?”, she fumed, as she sat on my bed, arms crossed.

“I guess. But I don’t want to abuse it. I don’t even know who sent it. And I certainly don’t want to bring attention to myself.”

“Well, that’s dumb. I’d use it on my teachers, make them think something was wrong with the Zoom link. Then we wouldn’t have to...wait hold on”, she said, jumping off my bed. “How does it work? Do you have to be in front of your target or can you visualize it? Like, think of the person and then turn the Dial?”

“No idea”

“Well let’s test it out! Think of mom, and turn the Dial. I’ll go stand next to her, and then I’ll tell you what happens”.

“I guess…”

She skips out of my room and I take a deep breath. I was wary of using the Dial but I figured what the hell. I bring a mental image of my mom to my mind, her bronze-colored skin that both Jas and I inherited, her curly shoulder-length hair tied in a bun at the base of her neck, her mahogany-colored eyes. I thought about the way she would smile at me when I was younger, run her hands through my curls and tell me that no matter what anyone said, I was beautiful the way I was and I mattered. I brought the Dial all the way down, held it there for a few moments before bringing it back to the middle. I heard footsteps pounding down the hall and Jasmine burst through the door.

“Did you visualize?”

“Yea, I turned the Dial down and then turned it up a few seconds later. What happened?”

“It worked then! She was talking and then no sound came out and then it came back! Isaiah, do you realize everything we can do with this?!”

“Woah woah woah, there’s no “we”. I found it, it’s mine”

“Not a chance dude”.

She made a wild grab for it, which I obviously expected her to do. What I didn’t expect, however, was for her grip to be so strong. Years of hand wrestling for the remote seemed to have paid off.

“Jasmine, give it back!” I hissed, trying to pry her fingers off of the device.

“No! You said it yourself, you didn’t want to use it, so just give it to me!”

“That’s the worst idea ever! You’d probably try to go for world domination or something”

“Hey, that’s not a bad idea. I can picture it so clearly.”

“Jas, let go-”

“Ha!” Jasmine exclaimed as she managed to rip the Dial out of my grasp, turning to run out of my room.

Maybe it was the world punishing us for always fighting and driving our mom crazy, or maybe the world didn’t like the idea of getting taken over by a 16-year-old, but I watched in horror as she tripped on one of the legs of my bed and tumbled to the floor, landing on the Dial with a sickening CRUNCH.

The noise that came after was horrible. The Dial swung back and forth like a pendulum, making everything around us silent one minute, and deafeningly loud the next.

We heard conversations about everything from who forgot to put the toilet seat up, to arguments over who voted for who in the past election. We heard different languages clash against each other, battling for dominance. We heard sirens wailing as they patrolled the streets, ready to whisk people away and add them to the growing death toll. We heard politicians closing crooked deals behind the closed doors of their offices. We heard babies crying, people crying, people screaming, in terror, in anger, in confusion as for the first time in history, the entire world could hear everything and each other at the same exact time. It was chaos.

I looked at Jasmine, who was hunched over, hands over her ears. As we locked eyes, I could see the fear in hers. So I did what any logical 18 year old would do.

I stomped on the dial.

And everything went silent.