Arthur Lester knew that drinking that second bottle of whiskey might not have been his brightest idea, but even then, he certainly did not expect to wake up to the sound of sirens and gunshots echoing in his room.
He was pretty sure he had gone into a coma from drinking too much in his old family house in the countryside, very, very far away from police cars and guns. Sure, it certainly wasn't the first time he'd blacked out, but even then, nothing seemed to explain this.
And so he opened his eyes to a ceiling he did not recognize, on a bed he did not know, in a room he didn't remember, and he instantly did what everyone in his situation would attempt to do.
He went back to sleep immediately. Whatever craziness was happening was either a dream, in which case sleeping was the best solution, or reality, in which case he would probably need even more sleep to deal with it.
Three hours later, when he woke up again to the same ceiling, on the same bed, and in the same strange room, he knew then that this wasn't a silly dream.
And so he sat up, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. The room was quite big: a big bed in the corner, upon which he was sitting; a large wardrobe beside the bed; a desk with some school books and a laptop on it; a table with a clock on it beside the bed; and a single chair in a corner of the room.
'Well, this seems like a lovely room to sleep in, but seriously, what the f*** am I doing here?'
Slowly standing up, he glanced at the clock on the bedside table, which showed the time as 11 in the morning. Beside the clock was an old phone and a wallet.
Taking the wallet, he opened it to find a student ID from Empire State University. On it was his face, his name, and his correct age, 19. Even his birthday was somewhat the same, with just the year having been changed from 2007 to 1992. What a weird thing to change.
Realizing that obsessing over the weirdness of the wallet would not get him anywhere, he continued his assessment of the situation as best as he could.
He took the phone in his hand and started looking for the power button on the old model.
'And... of course, it's f*cking dead.'
Being on the verge of a panic attack from not knowing where he was was not making his life any easier, so he sat back down on the bed and started going through breathing exercises.
'Inhale... exhale... inhale... exhale...'
"Fuuuu."
Once he had calmed down enough, he once again looked through the room to try to find something, anything, that could give him a clue as to where he was, why he was there, and how he had ended up there.
While examining the wardrobe, which appeared to be full, a glowing white letter on the desk started calling for his attention.
And once his eyes locked onto the letter, he physically could not move them away. Taking slow, hesitant steps toward the desk, he finally reached for the object of his unnatural concentration.
Slowly taking the letter in hand, he almost dropped it when he realized it was warm to the touch. Taking a deep breath, he unfolded it and began reading through it.
'Hello, Arthur.
I am absolutely delighted to inform you that you have been chosen by yours truly to partake in a multiversal effort to entertain myself.
I know what you are going to want to say to that: "But God, I am not worthy of your attention. I am nothing but a lowly, pitiful, inferior, plebeian human who has absolutely nothing to entertain you with." And you would be absolutely right. You have nothing, and that's what makes it entertaining for me.
But, well, I want entertainment, and you have the honour of having been chosen by fate to serve that role.
Now, while fate certainly wanted you to have absolutely nothing but your name and the clothes on your back and watch you quickly burn, I would not have found it entertaining to watch you die in five to seven days because of your nonexistent strength. It would have been so boring that it really would have made me want to kill myself.
And we obviously can't have that, so as proof of my benevolence, I chose to give you a gift to help you entertain me.
The gift is a power, or a skill, that will help you during your new lease on life. It is overpowered, but certainly not in the way you might have been expecting. But, well, I will leave the experimentation to you.
The power I bestowed upon you is the following:
____________________________________________
"Fading":
Allows the user to make the universe forget him.
Think "FADE" to activate.
Think "SHOW" to deactivate.
____________________________________________
How you choose to use this power is completely up to you and your mind. I trust your intelligence to make something of yourself.
The world in which you find yourself is yours to explore.
My entertainment will be to watch you live in this world. I am sure it will be a blast for me.
Lastly, I will not give you any missions or objectives or anything like that. Do whatever you want and can; burn the world, create a new world, do absolutely nothing, kill whoever you want, save whoever you want, rape, destroy, create, invent, be yourself, and live your own life.
Good luck.
God.'
"Well, fuck."
"FUUUUCKKKKK!!!!"
'Shit, shit, shit, shit.'
And the panic attack came back with a vengeance. Arthur immediately passed out, too stressed and overwhelmed to deal with everything.
1 hour later
When he woke up, he immediately wished he hadn't. Passing out on the floor was not especially comfortable, but remembering why he had passed out was way worse.
His third panic attack of the morning came immediately after.
This time, he didn't immediately pass out, so there's a win.
'Inhale... exhale... inhale... exhale...'
"Fuuuu."
"Okay, Arthur, you are capable of this. You will survive."
After going through his breathing exercises and pep-talking himself for a solid ten minutes, he finally managed to calm himself enough to continue thinking about his situation.
'So, the power is good, and I'm pretty sure I can make something useful with this one, but it totally depends on which world I'm in.'
"But before thinking about the power, let's see what kind of shit I'm really in for now."
He walked toward the window to see what kind of world he would have to deal with.
'Probably some kind of modern world, given the phone and the laptop, but, well, that's not quite precise enough for me right now.'
Outside his window was a city, with streets and buildings stretching in every direction without a clear end. In his peripheral vision stood multiple skyscrapers, and just two or three blocks away from his building stood a gigantic tower with a big STARK sign on top of it.
'Well, fuck.'
_____