Trenton stared at the screen, not quite believing it could actually be there. Yet lo and behold, a screen was hovering in the darkness, about a foot from his chest, sideways, like he was. Trenton got up into a sitting position and the screen moved with him, now facing upright. He reached out to touch it, and with a pixel effect, the screen disappeared, like a mini explosion. Deciding to play along, Trenton responded.

  “Who needs to talk? And why with me?”

  “O-Okay…” Trenton said with a puzzled look on his face. “I’m a hero? What does that even mean?”

  “A huge evil? Really?” Trenton crossed his arms, not quite believing the story.

  “Alright, I’ll bite. How are we going to do that?”

  Trenton sighed and got up from his bed. He walked over to his desk and booted up his laptop, stepping around the piles of dirty clothes on the floor. He really needed to clean up the place. As he was about to look up his current situation, the blue screen responded.

  As these windows popped up, warmth spread throughout Trenton’s body, making him feel more able than before. He felt stronger, smarter, and generally better.

  “Well, yeah, I do feel better, but what do you mean chose me? Who chose me? Were there other candidates?”

  “That’s awesome, but you avoided the question. Who chose me?”

  Trenton sighed and rubbed his temples. “Fine, but I will get an answer later.”

  Satisfied, Trenton nodded his head in agreement, then went back to his computer. He looked up reports of blue screens, and found articles only about computers crashing. Desperate, Trenton went onto the second page of Google, where similar reports were, except for one oddball. A psychological report on Hitler popped up at him. Written by Daniel Abrams, it detailed mental disorders Hitler might’ve had. One of them was schizophrenia, because when he was interviewed, he briefly mentioned a blue screen giving him abilities, such as “Increasing his Charisma stat”

  “Hey, Kenny, was it? I looked it up, and it seemed like some other people have been ‘heroes.’ Some bad people.”

  “Why do you call them heroes, then? Hitler was no hero.”

  “Well, it also said that he ‘increased his Charisma stat,’ can I get an explanation for that?”

  Trenton grew excited at this information. “How do I level up? I have to know!”

  “What about crime? Couldn’t I stop that? There are sorta a lot of criminals here.”

  “My job is here. I’m a digital artist.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I guess so, here, I’ll draw something and you can rate it yourself”

  “This whole hero system seems really unprofessional, then. Whatever, maybe you can set it up in the future and then you’ll be able to see.”

  “Okay, later.” As Trenton said this, he got his drawing tablet and started doodling, trying to get inspired for is project. He had to draw a fantasy setting for this website some guy was setting up. After filling u his screen with random sketches, he hunkered down and started to draw the background.

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  Kenny got up from the old terminal and wiped the sweat off of his brow. He had gotten the hero acquainted, and he didn’t seem too suspicious of Kenny’s mess-up, but He couldn’t hold it up for long without the proper hero system equipment. Kenny copied over the signal codes onto a flash drive and left the autopilot to run while he went off to set up a real computer. He could probably convince one of his friends in the tech department to set up his office computer to transmit the hero system. How hard could taking care of two heroes be? Trenton, of course wasn’t officially his, luckily he was able to take him out of the pool of available heroes, so nobody else got him. His other hero was being pretty cool about it though. She was a black woman named Sarah, and was pretty independent and upbeat. It was odd, because she was supposed to be the Scourge of her world. Aside from the occasional evil deed, she didn’t seem to be too intent on filling her role. The Savior of that world was a jerk, though. He treated it like the citizens weren’t actual people. Focusing back to his task at hand, Kenny went down to the tech department. He asked his buddy if he could get another computer, and his friend thankfully delivered. It was a bit older model, so there could be some problems, but it should serve Kenny well. Sneaking back to his cubicle, Kenny Plugged in his laptop and went back to Trenton, no problems being evident so far. As the screen flickered on, Kenny could get a good look at Trenton and his living space. Trenton was a white heavyset male, with blonde hair. He was in a dirty apartment at the unusually clean desk, quickly glancing from his drawing tablet to his screen, creating a fantasy world. It looked alright, about average for an artist, Kenny would guess. Steeling his nerves, Kenny went back to taking care of Trenton.

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  “Nope, anything interesting happen in the hour you were gone?”

  “Sounds good! I was thinking of going to the store, I’m out of milk and I like cereal.”

  “Will do” As Trenton said this, He finished up the preliminary parts of his drawing, and a window popped up.

  “Hey Kenny, I got a skill for drawing? But I already knew how to do that.”

  “Sweet! I always like getting better at things.”

  “Why am I detecting sarcasm?”

  “Well, I’m a hero in a pretty boring place. You had to give me magic, which tells me that magic doesn’t exist here naturally. I bet you haven’t even planned for long term, after I defeat this so-called evil, then what happens?”

  “What.”

  “There’s no evil here?”

  “But, I can still solve some of the world’s problems, right? I can still be the good guy?”

  “Ugh, fine. But I do want an evil. There has to be an end goal. What’s the point if there isn’t?”