Calvin creates a new invention out of a rotary telephone: the Realiphone. It can warp reality, and each of it combinations create something different. Unfortunately, there are trillions of combinations, and Calvin doesn't want anyone to use the Realiphone until he's got them all written down.
Calvin then spends most of his time in the attic testing out Realiphone combinations, and incidentally annoying Hobbes and Socrates, who were playing cards in his bedroom. The MTM is also very jealous of the Realiphone. However, all this comes to an end when Dr. Brainstorm (who installed a camera in Calvin's attic) sees the Realiphone in action, and takes it for himself.
Dr. Brainstorm then proceeds to make it rain soda cans in his lab, among other things, when he tries to test it out. Calvin eventually comes to take it back, and after that lets the MTM destroy the Realiphone, which makes the MTM very happy. However, no one notices that the remains of the Realiphone have disappeared...
Tropes
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Realiphone. It can do almost anything, but you need to know the code for it, and the Realiphone has trillions of options.
- Butt-Monkey: Dr. Brainstorm, as usual. He ends up on the wrong end of the Realiphone's Awesome, but Impractical nature and gets hurt in funny ways.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: The MTM, although he's mostly passive-agressive.
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: In-universe. There are twelve buttons, and every possible combination will produce a different effect. Calvin originally thinks that there are 144 combinations, but Hobbes then points out that what he's thinking of is 12x12, while the real number of combinations is 12 to the 12th power. The actual number turns out to be 8,916,100,448,256.
- Innocuously Important Episode: It seems like a mostly self-contained episode, as the Realiphone is destroyed by the episode's end, but then there's that Sequel Hook...
- Reality Warping: What the Realiphone does.
- Sequel Hook: Where did the fragments of the Realiphone go?
