The faint hum of a gaming laptop filled the dimly lit room, its glow casting flickering shadows across a chaotic landscape of empty pizza boxes, crumpled snack wrappers, and a half-full ashtray perched precariously on the armrest of a sagging couch. Eli Turner, self-proclaimed master of doing absolutely nothing, lay sprawled across the cushions, one arm dangling lazily toward the ground, a half-burned joint smoldering between his fingers.
"Five more minutes," he muttered to himself, though there was no one around to hear. The screen in front of him displayed the paused menu of some RPG he'd been meaning to finish for weeks but couldn't quite muster the energy to play. The clock in the corner of the screen flashed 2:47 AM.
Eli sighed and took another puff, letting the smoke curl around his head before dissipating into the stale air of the room. Life had settled into a comfortable monotony—a never-ending loop of gaming, snacking, and avoiding anything remotely resembling responsibility. The outside world felt distant, almost irrelevant, as if it existed solely to intrude on his meticulously crafted bubble of apathy.
Until tonight.
It started with a flicker. At first, he thought it was his laptop acting up again. The screen glitched, lines of distorted code flashing for a split second before the game disappeared entirely. In its place was a blank, black screen. A single cursor blinked in the center, pulsing like the beat of a tiny, digital heart.
"Great," Eli groaned, sitting up and fumbling for the charger. "Don't die on me now."
The moment his hand touched the cord, the screen sprang to life. A message appeared in bright, pixelated letters:
"DO YOU SEEK ADVENTURE? Y/N"
Eli blinked, his hand frozen mid-reach. The question stared back at him, simple and absurdly ominous.
"What the…" he muttered, leaning closer. He tapped the trackpad, but the cursor didn't move. No response to his keyboard either.
"Weird glitch," he muttered, and reached for the power button. But as soon as his finger grazed the plastic, the text changed:
"DO NOT IGNORE THIS MESSAGE."
Eli laughed, the sound sharp and humorless in the silence. "Okay, laptop, you win. Let's see where this goes." He tapped "Y" on the keyboard.
The screen flashed, and for a moment, Eli thought the whole thing might have short-circuited. But then, a vivid, glowing image materialized—a swirling vortex of colors that seemed to stretch beyond the boundaries of the screen. The air in the room grew heavy, charged with a strange, electric energy. The portal, because that's what it had to be, pulsed and shimmered like something alive.
A new line of text appeared beneath the swirling colors:
"STEP THROUGH TO BEGIN."
"Step through?" Eli scoffed, looking around as if expecting to find a hidden camera. "What am I, in some kind of prank video?"
But the portal didn't fade. If anything, its glow intensified, the colors deepening into shades he couldn't quite name. Against all logic, it felt… inviting. Like it was calling to him.
Eli hesitated, his rational brain screaming at him to shut the laptop and forget this ever happened. But there was another part of him, the part that had spent countless hours immersed in fantasy worlds, slaying dragons and looting treasure chests, that whispered: What if it's real?
He stood, his knees cracking from hours of inactivity. The portal seemed to expand as he approached, its light washing over the room in waves. He reached out a trembling hand. The surface of the screen felt warm, almost alive, beneath his fingertips.
And then, with a soundless whoosh, the world around him vanished.