It was yet another hard day for Trevor. He had been falling behind at work and the pressure from his boss was making him frustrated and pissed. He could blame the co-workers that constantly took advantage of him because of their relationship with the owner, or the workplace conditions that favored younger people over a nearly washed-up technician that could not move or think as fast as he used to. In summary, he realized it was his fault for not even having the strength to stand up for himself or the guts to quit and find something else.

Sitting on the back balcony of his second floor apartment, he lit up a cigarette and leaned on the railing. His view over the parking lot of the apartment complex was nothing noteworthy. A few people were talking among the parked cars. He was thinking that those people might have the same issues he had, or maybe they didn’t. It was a passing thought, and it just reminded him of his own self pity. Taking a last puff on the cigarette, then dropping and stamping it out with his foot, he walked back into the apartment. He sat on the couch in the small living area. He had no TV, because it was cheaper to use his old laptop and the internet if he wanted to watch something, so the laptop was on an old coffee table in front of the couch.

Leaning over to the laptop, he started browsing, looking at his email and social media account. Basically, all ads, spam, and a few past due notices. He was not badly in debt, but, he was not making progress either. Again, he realized he was not much different from most people, but, he still had to deal with money issues. And other people’s problems were not relevant to him, only his problems were.

Leaning back on the couch, he started thinking about how to move forward and improve his situation. He had pondered all of this before, and came up with one idea after another, but, in the end, took little to no action. He thought to himself if nothing changed after putting in a lot of effort versus little or no effort, might as well do the latter. He was just that kind of guy. He thought he was a realist, but most outsiders would consider him a fatalist or just lazy.

At this point, he started remembering some fantasy novels he had read. Some had the protagonist being sent to new worlds, or developing special powers, like psychic powers or magic, maybe just immortality. He had pondered if these things could ever happen in reality, and came to the conclusion that it would be absurd – mainly because it would make the world “out-of-balance”. Even if they did exist, probably would be better to stay away from such things, but in the end he just did not believe it was possible. Just because somebody has a fantasy does not make that real. There is way too much ground to cover within fictional ideas, and the world is already complex enough with the way it is.

His thinking was a type of escapism, again, dreaming a little bit of what it would be like to be “special.”

“Everybody wants to be Superman – but – in reality if there was one, it would probably be a pain the in the ass! Unless he decided to rule the world and not answer to anybody. Hmm, didn’t I read that premise too?”

As he thought about it, he realized it would be great to be a Superman that nobody knew about. And forget that ‘helping everybody in peril’ crap! Just do want you want! Nothing necessarily evil or bad, but not going out on a limb ever minute of the day to save someone. “I would not want to be a superhero. Just keep a low profile and help people around me. Even that sounds like a pain. Like winning the lottery – everybody you know (or knows you more specifically) would come out of the woodwork to take advantage of you.”

He then thought if he could help people and maybe erase their memories that would keep him out of the limelight. But them there are security cameras, smartphones, and other things that would have to be taken care of.
“This is stupid! I think even if I was offered such powers, I would turn it down. Way too much of a hassle.”
“Does not matter anyway – just a fantasy. But, I feel depressed that I can’t even fantasize without being a realist!”

Trevor then noticed a new message had arrived on his smartphone.
“Hmm. I thought it was drained for the day. Lets see who wants money from me.” He picked up the phone with his right hand and looked at the screen. The screen was black with some greenish-white letters on it. This was strange because the message should not be visible until he unlocked the phone. And the lettering looked like it was being displayed through shifting water – it had a 3D depth and was shimmering.

The screen had X words displayed on it: “Do you want to be ‘special’?’”. There were no other buttons or controls on the screen. Trevor’s was a little put-off. This looks like some malware got on his phone. And there were people listening in to what he was saying out loud and, using that to make fun of him.

“Damn it!”

He tried to get to the home screen, but the system menu did not appear. He was afraid to tap on the screen near the message, so he decided to just shut it down by doing a long press on the power button. As he was holding the button, he was thinking of how he had to start the phone in factory reset mode so he could restore from backup to get rid of this malware, and he was not sure of the steps needed.

“Guess I can use my laptop to find out how to do the reset and restore.”

As he was holding the phone with the power button still held in, he did not notice that a thread of green like a gas snake was curling up his wrist like a bracelet. When he leaned toward the laptop to prepare to lookup the restore steps, he then noticed the green glow expanding up his arm like a spiral.

“WTF?”

On reflex he dropped the phone. His first thought was it was gas from a leaky battery and that the phone could explode or burn him with the caustic gas it was leaking, so he ran to the sink to prepare for a chemical mess. He heard that water was not necessarily good to use to treat chemical burns, but he had to do something. He notice the coil of green gas was still moving up his arm even as he moved to the kitchen sink. This did not make sense to him. He grabbed a kitchen towel, turned on the water, and started rinsing his arm, but, to his astonishment, the water was passing right through the gas, without disturbing it at all! He tried batting and wiping with the towel, first using it dry and then wetting it, but the towel passed right through the green gas. The end of the gas was now approaching his shoulder. Trevor started to panic!

“This gas could be poisonous! What the hell do I do???!”

He was terrified! He decided to find help. He was not really close to anyone at the apartment complex, but he at least knew the neighbor across the hall due to having package delivery mix-ups, so he headed to the apartment door. At this point the gas had already started to circle his neck, and the hand that had held the phone was now shrouded in the green gas, like a glove. He did not feel any pain, but there was a tingling sensation like little electric shocks coming from ants crawling around his hand. As he went to the grab the door handle with that hand, the moment his hand grabbed the handle, the whole door glowed in bright green. The outline of the door then extended towards him, creating a rectangular box, enclosing him in something like a bright green glass case. The gas spiral now wrapped around his entire body, looking like a neon-green spring that just fit inside the green box. The spiral started rotating and the sound inside the box was completely silent. Trevor scream “NO!” but he did not even hear his own voice. The spiral spun so fast it was now a solid cylinder, and the outer box was now fading away. The cylinder flashed a very bright green light, and then, it disappeared. There was no trace of Trevor left behind.