The little boy walks into the room where his father has been sitting for days, seven days, on his reclining chair fiddling with the TV remote. His feet tread softly on the worn carpeting, the silence broken only when he accidentally steps on a Frito that has fallen from a hungry mouth onto the floor.

As he walks forward, his hands stretch up to the father’s chair. His fingers can’t even reach the armrest, but on the tippiest of tiptoes the boy is able to grab hold of the remote control. It’s heavy, heavier than he remembered from the last time it was in his perfect hands. The weight of responsibility and expectations sways under his palms. The boy runs his PB&J stained fingertips over the buttons so that the plastic gives just a little bit. Not enough to make a difference, but just so that he can hear the up and down clicking of 10 buttons at once.

The boy looks up at the father. He looks up at the worry lines that have been permanently imprinted on the old man’s forehead, making deep trenches of concern above his bushy eyebrows. The father’s foot twitches on the recliner involuntarily as he sleepily reaches to scratch around his beer belly. The boy turns to the TV screen directly in front of him where Golden Girls is playing softly, the glow of four old ladies burns across the 16-inch screen as the laugh track echoes inside the wooden confines of the set. The boy, holding his controller in two sticky hands, puts both of his thumbs on the ‘channel up’ button and bravely extends his arms toward the screen before squinting and pushing down with all his might. A change in light pattern glistens against the father’s opened eyes.

‘What are you doing with that?’

No time has passed and he has already swiped the remote from the little boy’s frozen grip and has changed the channel back to where Blaire is getting ready for her date.

‘I,’ the boy is frightened by the father’s omniscience, ‘I just wanted to see what it’s like.’ He says it with a force that he is unfamiliar with. He speaks too loudly and his breath catches in his throat from the shock of it all. The light of the television is captured in a pair of blue eyes that are staring, fixedly, frighteningly, on the man wearing a sweat-stained tank top and boxer shorts that are too small.

‘Son, I’ve told you not to touch the remote. Remember what happened last time?’

The boy unfreezes his hands from where they had been gripping the remote and looks at his palms. Gooey raspberry jelly is dripping slowly from the center of his palms, pooling painfully down the creases of his lifeline and sliding down to his wrists. He licks the jelly off.

‘We wouldn’t want that to happen again, now would we?’

The father watches the remote fall safely on his lap and plops his heavy hand over it for added security. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes to sleep. ‘I don’t want to have to say I told you so again.’

The son drops his head in shame but walks with defiant steps over toward his father’s right arm and climbs up onto the armrest next to where a beer is sitting.

‘I can do it this time, father,’ he squeaks again, again too loudly. ‘I can save the world.’

The father opens his eyes, annoyed, and looks to his right hand where his one and only son sits. The light from the television plays off the little boy’s hair, creating a halo of blonde encircling his ancient face. The boy’s mouth is worried, plastered in a permanent straight line. How beautiful an innocent face can deceive its creator. How many wondrous things those eye have witnessed, how many cries of sorrow those ears have heard, how much guilt and anguish and compassion lies in that quick-beating heart.

The father looks down to his remote and up at the TV. He wonders why the innocent must bear the cross of the many who don’t deserve it, those for whom free will has determined their own fate. He scratches his head with dirty fingernails and ponders the idea of one heart containing so much compassion that it is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, twice, for a world that will never fully recognize it. But the father feels the strain in his shoulders from having worked so hard and for so long. He feels the pressure of the world sinking his eyelids down and he can feel the loving breath of his son gently warming the right side of his neck eager to make all the same mistakes all over again.

The father lifts up the remote and guides it abruptly into the hands of the little boy.

‘So it is written, so it is done,’ are his last words before he falls back into the armchair and allows himself to fall totally and completely asleep.

The son kisses the top of his father’s forehead with grateful lips. He looks at the old man’s resting body and a wave of calm washes over all three feet of his body. With the clicker grasped firmly in both hands, the little boy holds down the big red button.

The remote drops onto the floor of a room where only a man is sleeping, reclined in a La-Z-Boy, while a television sits in front of him playing video of the world reflected.