Six in the morning came way too early, as it always did. But my shift started at seven, and I would get fired after four tardies.

Work, as they say, was work. I cleaned up three beds full of actual human shit, changed two old people, and helped Mrs. Jones take almost two hours to eat what was essentially an Arby’s roast beef smoothie. On the bus ride home after my twelve hour shift, I paid a little more attention to the McCallister Industries billboard. Their logo was some kind of bird inside a circle. Not very helpful. Their slogan, in cool stylized type beneath the bird logo, just said, “Esoteric Developments for Tomorrow.”

Lot of help that was. I snapped a blurry picture of the billboard and fired it over to Chase. Hopefully he would at least check it out. But if not, it wasn’t my problem. I had enough of those on my own to waste time and stress worrying about him.

And fucking hell.

I opened the door… the TV was on. Same damn movie. Same scene of a poorly costumed demon baby eating a guy’s leg.

“What the fuck!” I screamed at the TV. It just kept moving, scene by scene, through an awful plot and even worse script writing.

I grabbed the remote and ripped out the batteries, then quickly realized that the batteries were not the problem and stormed to the TV itself. After fumbling with the side panel a few times, I found the power button and pushed it as hard as I could.

Nothing.

The TV stayed on.

I screamed again at the TV, then pulled up Chase’s number and hit dial.

“Hello?”

“Chase, thank god. I need your tech skills. My stupid TV won’t turn off.”

“Uhh. What?”

“Are you drunk? It doesn’t matter. My TV is fucked. It won’t turn off. What do I do?”

A few seconds of silence passed, and then I heard a toilet flush on Chase’s end.

“Ew. You’re gross,” I told him.

“So… it won’t turn off?”

“Yeah, it keeps turning on to some stupid horror movie from the other night. Deathsaw II: Cutting Floor. What the fuck do I do?”

“Unplug it?”

“God damnit, Chase. I hate you sometimes, you know that?”

I shook my head and sighed, then reached for the cord behind the TV and gave it a hard yank.

Nothing.

“Alright, this is seriously creeping me out. It didn’t work.”

“You unplugged the right one?”

“Remember when I said I hate you? I unplugged the right cord. I’m pulling everything. HDMI, whatever this other one is. There. Everything is unplugged.”

“And it still works? Weird.”

“That’s what I’m fucking telling you! Why won’t it turn off!”

Suddenly, the screen flickered black for a few seconds, then shifted like it was about to reset or something. “Wait, maybe it worked…”

The screen went black, completely unreflective. Then a series of white words in a plain typewriter font scrolled from bottom to top like a Star Wars intro:

You have been selected to join the Hanseatic League. Do you accept?

I read the words aloud to Chase. “Is this some kind of prank? You’re the only one I know smart enough to pull off something like this and hack my TV. Just tell me now.”

“I don’t know, Steph. I have no idea. It wasn’t me, I swear. Maybe Doug? Didn’t he go to community college for graphic design or something?”

“No, it wouldn’t be Doug. He’s too nice. What the hell does the Hanseatic League mean?”

“Sounds historic. I don’t know. Let me look it up… Uh… A confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in central Europe. Looks like a union from the fourteen hundreds or something. What did you do to your TV?”

“What in the actual fuck, man. If I find out you’re fucking with my TV, I’m going to kill you.”

Chase yawned, somehow not only keeping his heart rate under control but managing to be sleepy while I was on the verge of a panic attack. “You try smashing the screen?” he suggested.

“Yeah, like I could afford to replace my—”

The screen flickered again, and I saw the faint afterimage of the word ‘yeah’ appear and disappear at lightspeed. Then another white prompt appeared on the screen:

Congratulations! An escort will arrive in several minutes. Please wait outside, Stephanie.

The phone fell from my hands. The panic attack I had so far been containing boiled over, and my chest tightened like it was caught in a vice. My breathing came in ragged gasps, none of them actually moving oxygen into my lungs, and my vision quickly blurred.

“Steph? Stephanie?”

The phone was too far away. I reached for it, but my perspective was all wrong, and my fingers only hit the side of the couch. How the FUCK did it know my name?

Finally, I managed to claw back a few shreds of my sanity and took a deep breath. I used to get panic attacks back in elementary school and hadn’t had one in years. They sucked back then, and nothing had changed in that department. It felt like I was high, dizzy, seasick, and being crushed by boulders all at the same time. But the panic attack couldn’t last forever, and I remembered the calming techniques the school counselor had taught me. Breathe in, breathe out. One at a time. Count something. Ceiling tiles, carpet fibers, your own fingers. Look away. Don’t close your eyes, but look away.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I picked up my phone, but the call was disconnected. I had a text from Chase:

You alright? What happened? Get it fixed?

I fumbled with the keys, my eyes still adjusting and my fingers still shaking.

Asjnbd0p-w :(

It didn’t make sense, but at least I managed to send a frowny face. Maybe he would understand. I felt my crummy nursing home dinner rising in my chest and reached for the trash can next to the TV, but nothing came up, only dry heaves.

I opened the window to get some fresh air. Or I tried to open the window, but it was so old it only rose a few inches before coming to an immovable halt. I sucked in the air like a girl drowning, my eyes fixed on the dark parking lot below. There were half a dozen street lights and even a police call phone thing, though two of the lights had long ago burned out.

The police! I needed to call the police. Someone was fucking with me, and they could be hiding in the apartment or waiting for me to run outside to stab me.

I fumbled with my phone again, and on the second try correctly dialed 9-1-1.

As the call connected, the most expensive car I’d ever seen came to a gentle stop beneath one of the working street lights. It wasn’t a limo but close to it. The kind of car that diplomats or rockstars would be shuttled around in by a driver in a fancy suit and gloves. In short, it was the kind of car that had absolutely no business being at my apartment block.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

“Uh, yeah, hello. My name is Stephanie Loffel. I’m at one thousand Magdalenian Avenue, apartment B3. Someone is sending me creepy fucking messages on my TV.”

“Are you in danger?”

“Yes! Did you not hear me?”

“Ma’am… do you need mental health assistance?”

What the FUCK! “No, I need the police. I need the police right now!”

“Ma’am… is anyone in the apartment with you? Is there someone you can talk to?”

“Jesus, lady. What in god’s name do we pay taxes for. I need the POLICE! Someone has hacked my TV, and they’re threatening me! I am in danger!”

The woman was quiet for a moment, and I heard the soft sound of clicking like long fingernails on a keyboard. “Ma’am… have you tried unplugging the television?”

I screamed and threw the phone into a couch cushion. Whatever was happening, I was on my own. No help from the police. My head whipped back to the window, and the same fancy black car was still there, completely unchanged.

Then a pound—not a friendly knock, a violent pounding—on my door nearly sent me flying out of my skin. I ran to the peephole.

Three tall men stood outside my door in black suits as expensive as the car outside. They were expressionless, like blonde haired, blue eyed statues. The lead man pounded again, and flakes of ancient white paint rattled off the doorframe.

“Go away!” I screamed. I felt like Neo in the first Matrix movie. It was one of my favorites, and I had watched it dozens of times. Agent Smith was right outside my door, and I was about to be implanted with some kind of nightmarish mechanical insect.

The door exploded inward. I screamed again and scrambled to get over the couch. Somewhere in the tumult, one of my blankets wrapped around my feet, and I crashed through my cheap IKEA coffee table. My phone was nowhere to be seen, likely buried under a cushion.

I pulled myself to my feet and turned. The three Agent Smiths just stood there, completely motionless. In unison, they took a step forward, and then the lead Agent reached for my arm.

“Wait! Stop!” I shouted. Surprisingly, they did. “I’ll… I’ll go with you. I get it. I’m being kidnapped. Just… there’s no need to beat me up and kidnap me. I’ll go.”

The thought of being pummeled by one of the stoic monoliths who just bashed in a door with barely any effort was more than enough to get my feet moving. I took a hesitant step, and the three Agents didn’t react. When I reached the door, they fell into formation around me like some kind of perverse bodyguard retinue.

“Do I need to bring anything?” I asked, quickly feeling like it was a stupid question.

As expected, none of the Agents responded. I wished I had my phone, but the huge bodyguards blocked my door, and they didn’t strike me as the kind of abductors who would let me hop in the shower and brush my teeth before throwing me in the back of their van.

But it wasn’t a van. The trio led me down to the parking lot, and one of them held the door as the other two got into the front seats. The interior of the vehicle was just as plush and ultra luxe as the exterior. A gentle pattern of LED stars was sewn into the lining above my head, and the seats were made from such soft leather that my skin practically melted into them.

Had I not felt like I was being driven to my death by creepy captors who hacked my TV, it would have been luxurious.

The rear passenger compartment was partitioned off from the driver just like a limousine. There were four seats, and one of them was already occupied. A woman sat in a rear-facing seat wearing clothes that didn’t quite look right. She was dressed to the nines, but not in any kind of fashion that I had ever seen before. Actually, she kind of reminded me of Trinity from The Matrix mixed with maybe some kind of futuristic priest. And she was beautiful. Perfect brown hair with all the right highlights, big soft eyes, flawless caramel skin, and curves to make Heidi Klum jealous.

I sat diagonal from the woman and reached for a seatbelt, but there wasn’t any. I assumed I was too poor to know how rich people seatbelts worked and resigned myself to flying out a window in the event of a collision. The door closed, and the car instantly rolled to life. It had the telltale whimper of an electric car and reminded me of Taylor and Julia in their white Tesla.

“Hello?” I tentatively asked.

The woman turned ever so slightly to regard me and smiled. It was the most perfect smile, like someone had programmed in a set of facial muscles to produce the quintessential human smile.

It didn’t work. I was still being kidnapped, and a nice smile from a beautiful woman would do nothing to change that. The Agents in The Matrix could turn into beautiful women in red dresses, after all.

“Hello? Uh, what am I doing h—”

“Hello, Stephanie! It is so good to meet you. Thank you for joining the Hanseatic League! We are excited to have you as a new member.”

“Okay, but what even—”

“Here is your membership card.” The woman produced a thin credit card from a pocket on her dress and handed it to me.

It was matte black with my name in gold across the top. Beneath my name was an indent for a thumb. I flipped it over, but the back was blank. “Alright, what the hell is—”

“Your membership card may be activated by pressing your right thumb into the indent on the front.”

“Are you a damn robot? Do you listen to anything I say?” I wanted to yell, but I was still terrified of the Agent Smiths in the front two seats, so I did my best to keep my voice down.

“Once you activate your membership card, you will gain access to the Hanseatic League Guildhall. New members receive an activation bonus of four hundred credits. We’re excited to have you in the League, Stephanie!”

“God, you are a robot. What in the hell is happening to me… This is either some elaborate YouTube prank where some idiot teenager gives me a thousand dollars at the end or I am asleep. Or tripping absolute balls.” I brushed my thumb over the indentation. It was dimpled on the bottom like it would scan my fingerprint or something. “Fine. I’ll do your stupid YouTube prank video. But I do not consent. I have been kidnapped, and I will be suing you. And you owe me a door.” I looked in every corner for cameras, but there was nothing.

With a heavy sigh, I pushed my thumb into the imprint.

Instant blackout.