Reddit writing prompt: You receive a mysterious package in the mail. It contains a smartphone with a single app: “Planet Earth Settings”

The tingling is too much to handle. I eye the nearest empty beer bottle. I glance back at the phone, which lay there inanimate and silent. As if it were an explosive — and for all I knew, it could have been — I gently, oh so gently, rise from the couch, reaching for the bottle. I don’t even blink.

My movement triggers a response and the phone chirps merrily, its screen lighting up. I shriek a bit, piss just a tiny bit, and drop the bottle on the carpet. I freeze in place, staring at the phone. After a few moments, the screen dims, then goes black.

“This is ridiculous,” I mutter. I snatch the bottle, toss it in the recycling bin, and help myself to another brew from the fridge. “It’s just a phone. It’s a prank.” A good prank. I don’t want to say that out loud, lest I give any satisfaction to the idiot who sent it to me who’s probably listening on the other end.

Chugging half of the beer, I confidently stride to the couch and snatch up the phone. Sweeping a finger over the screen, it chimes again and that same, single, damned application pulses warmly.

Against all better judgment, I tap it. A brightly colored menu pops up with a long series of alphabetized categories.

“Atmosphere, Axis.. Biology.. Climate.. blah blah, ooh, force fields? Gravity.. Inhabitants? Hmm, interesting. Seasons, size, technological adv.. what?”

Technological advances. I tap it. A simple slider springs up. The only markers are numerals, going from 0 to 6, with an omega symbol at the end. A little arrow was barely a notch past the zero.

“Just a bit,” I say, psyching myself up. “Maybe just..” Trembling, I gently press the edge of my finger on the arrow and slide it juuuust a little bit.

Then, I sneeze.

The arrow goes to “omega.”

…

I am become god.

There is no time.

There is no space.

There just is —

---

Somewhere near Alpha Centauri

“Oh, fuck.” Zirkolb slaps a tentacle to xis forehead. A cluster of eyes frantically scans around xis seat. “My phone. I can’t find my phone.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Gx-larc squints and looks at the clock. “Dude, look how far we’ve gone already, I am not turning this ship around.”

“Dude. Dude.” Panic grips Zirkolb’s ink sac and xe resists releasing it all over the place. A little trickles out. “Dude, you don’t understand, it has the fucking app on it.”

“What do you mean it has the fucking app on it? You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you?!”

“I’m not lying, dude!” Zirkolb’s tentacles flail wildly, a couple landing on the wheel and jerks it harshly. “You gotta go back, we gotta get it before it’s too late!!”

“Think, think, where did you leave it?? Are you sure it didn’t fall out of your purse?”

“Yes! Yes! It was at the taco truck, man! You know me and my stupid humanoid disguises, I don’t know what to do with only two arms. I put it down on some black box with a little fucking red flag outside this house so I could eat my tacos and–”

They feel it, both of them. A shudder through the universe. An awakening that emanated from just about 4.367 light years away.

Zirkolb’s beak dropped open. “Dude. Dude. My dad is going to kill me!!”