The Premise

	The Watterson household was quiet save for the bellowing snores of Richard Watterson down the hall. To all within, though, these regular seismic events served as little more than white noise. Zachary ‘Gumball’ Watterson lay awake as the rest of the house slept, examining the small black rectangle in his hands.

	The Universal Remote.

	He held the Remote out in front of him as he lay in his bed. Robert, after escaping the Void and rewinding history, had smashed the remote to pieces. …Or, rather, smashed a remote to pieces.

	The intrusive thoughts had won. On impulse, he had taken one battery out of the Universal Remote and put it in the remote to the Watterson’s TV, replacing the missing battery with a normal one. Just to see what would happen. One day, when trying to steal the batteries from the remote to power a time-machine (don’t ask), Gumball had disturbed the Universal battery, restoring memories that had been erased. In his hands was, if not a Universal Remote, was close enough.

	He pressed buttons randomly at first. ‘Volume’ did the predicable, as did ‘mute’. ‘Picture Quality’ was an assault on the senses, naturally. Though, curiously, ‘rewind’ and ‘fast forward’ and other such metaphysical headaches didn’t seem to work. Guess all the juice for that stuff was in the other battery?

	Whatever.

	Tentatively, Gumball hit the ‘settings’ button. A window appeared before him with a long list of various boring, stupid, dumb–

	Parental Controls.

	“Oh?” Gumball muttered, careful not to wake Darwin sleeping in a bowl on the bedside table. “Oh-ho-ho~”

	Select.

	The Parental Settings window opened to reveal a series of tabs. The first one read ‘Safe Viewing: Strict’. Gumball selected this and set it to ‘Off’. Next, he went to ‘Rating’, which was presently at ‘G’. He pressed the button, flicking through ‘PG’, ‘PG-13’, ‘R’, ‘NC-17’, and then, finally ‘NSFL’. This final rating brought up the ‘Content Filters’ window, through which he scrolled the seemingly endless list: nearly everything had been X’d out.

	He’d have to do something about that.

	“Lessee here…” he murmured, brow furrowing. “‘Gay’? …what, like old timey ‘gay’ as in happy? It’s a TV remote, so probably. Yeah, let’s max out ‘gayness’. ‘Hetero’? Ooh! Is that an anime? Yeah! Max that out, too! Bi-seks-ual? Is that like a really cool bike? Eh, I’m down. Maxxed. ‘Incest’? Oh, that’s the stuff Mr. Small burns when he’s ‘attenuating to cosmic vibrations’ after class. Max’d. ‘Impreg-nation’? …What is that, like,  a fandom? Eh. Whatever. Max. ‘Mpreg’? Safe diff, right? Maxxed. Jeez this list is long…”

	…Two Hours Later…

	“Alright!” Gumball sighed, heavy bags under his eyes. “What’s left? ‘Guro’… nawp. Sounds like an anime villain. ‘Ryona’. Mmmmaybe anime protag? I’ll put that one at ‘half’ not ‘max’. ‘Cub/loli/shota’? Whatever. Max. ‘Scat’? What, like ‘Imma Scatman~’? Yuck! No! Had that stupid song stuck in my head for weeks! Min’d. ‘Watersports’? Ehh… nah, I don’t like getting wet, but pools are cool. Middle. ‘Vore’? Rhymes with ‘chore’, which I hate. Gone-zo.”

	Gumball sighed as the last of the filters were put in place. He couldn’t even guess what 90% of that stuff was! Still, now he was in the ‘procedural settings’ area. The first setting read ‘horniness’. Gumball imagined himself with a kickass set of horns, like the kind rams or heavy metal album monsters had.
	
	“Rad,” said Gumball, throwing up the horns. “Maxxed. Out.”
	
	The second read ‘Stud’. Stud? That was a good thing, right? He’d heard older kids call each other stud. He selected that one and was presented with a scale that went from ‘20cm’ to ‘100cm’. Gumball paused. What did ‘cm’ mean? Some Japanese thing? Luckily, there was a third option labeled ‘Perfect Fit’. Hey, it had the word ‘perfect’ in it. That one.

	Stud to the max, bro.

	Next was ‘Slut’. Huh. He’d never heard that word before. Must have had something to do with the ‘G’ rating his world had been stuck with. Well, he’d heard guys get called ‘stud’, so ‘slut’ must mean the same for girls, right? Like Stud, Slut had a scale that went from ‘Hurt Me Plenty’ to ‘Hannibal’s Alps’. Whatever. The one that didn’t have the word ‘hurt’ in it.

	Slut to the max, girlfriend.

	After this, a window came up. It read: “Stud and Slut settings unable to coincide. Set interval Y/N?”

	“Y?”

	“Interval cycle 1:1 Y/N?”

	“Whatever,” Gumball said, rolling his eyes. “Y.”

	“Finalize customization? Y/N?”

	“Jeez! Y.”

	“Finalizing…”

	Gumball jumped as he felt a tiny static shock roll over his body, tingling from head to toe as it rolled over him. He looked up into the ‘corner’ of his reality, arching his eyebrow as the normal black box bearing the ‘G’ had been replaced with a black box bearing ‘NSFL’.

	“Huh.” Gumball yawned, tucking the remote down the side of his bed as he rolled over and went to sleep. “Weird.”