Let me tell you something about being a security guard.
It's not like the movies. There are no car chases through crowded city streets. No femme fatales slipping through laser grids in tight dresses. And definitely no terrorists taking over the building and forcing me to crawl through air vents with a machine gun and a bad attitude. Whoever wrote those scripts never worked a real night shift in their life.
My job at Green Meadows Residential Complex, which was a fancy name for twelve identical buildings arranged in a square around a patch of grass the HOA called a "park," consisted of exactly three responsibilities. First, stare at a wall of CCTV screens that showed absolutely nothing happening. Second, write parking tickets for residents who couldn't be bothered to park between two painted yellow lines. And third, try not to fall asleep before my shift ended at six in the morning.
That was it. That was the glamorous life of Ray, Security Guard Extraordinaire.
Tonight was no different from the three hundred nights before it. I leaned back in my creaky office chair, the one that made a sound like a dying cat every time I moved, and propped my feet up on the metal desk. The CCTV monitors glowed with their usual scenes of empty driveways, motionless hallways, and one particularly brave stray cat that had claimed the complex dumpster as its kingdom. I had named him Chairman Meow. He was the only interesting thing on my screens most nights.
I flipped through channels on the tiny TV mounted in the corner of the security booth, the one I had brought from home because management refused to pay for cable. An infomercial about nonstick frying pans played, hosted by a man with teeth so white they looked radioactive. A rerun of a cop show followed, where the detective solved everything in exactly forty two minutes and never had to do paperwork. Then a nature documentary about deep sea anglerfish appeared, showing their gaping mouths full of needle teeth illuminated by that creepy glowing lure.
I settled on the anglerfish. At least they were interesting in a "I'm genuinely grateful I don't live at the bottom of the ocean" kind of way. The narrator's smooth British voice explained how the female anglerfish absorbs the male into her body until he's nothing but a pair of gonads attached to her side.
"Relationship goals," I muttered to no one, reaching for my cold coffee.
That's when the remote slipped.
It clattered off my knee and skittered under the desk, disappearing into the dusty darkness where dust bunnies went to die and where I was pretty sure a family of spiders had established a small civilization. I groaned, the sound echoing in the empty booth. This was already the most physical activity I had done all night, and I had not even stood up yet.
I bent down, my lower back protesting with a sharp twinge. I was twenty three, but my spine apparently thought I was sixty. My hand fished around blindly under the desk until my fingers brushed against something plastic. I grabbed it, pulled myself upright, and immediately realized I had made a mistake.
This was not the TV remote.
The object in my hand was old. Not "found in my dad's garage" old or "picked up at an antique store" old, but genuinely ancient. The kind of old that belonged in a museum behind bulletproof glass with a small plaque describing its historical significance. The casing was made of a strange metallic material I did not recognize. It looked almost like copper that had been exposed to something which turned it a deep, iridescent blue black. Strange symbols covered its surface, not quite like any alphabet I had ever seen, and they pulsed with a faint glow that seemed to beat in rhythm with my own heartbeat.
A small rectangular screen sat at the top of the device, currently dark and lifeless. Below it, arranged in a circular pattern around a large red button in the center, were smaller buttons with more of those strange symbols. And at the very bottom, worn smooth by what must have been centuries of handling, one word was etched into the metal.
NEXUS.
I turned the remote over in my hands. It was surprisingly light for something that looked like it had survived multiple civilizations. No battery compartment. No screws. No manufacturing stamps or serial numbers. It was either a very elaborate art project or something that had absolutely no business being under my desk at three in the morning.
"Huh," I said, because my brain was too tired to come up with anything more profound. "Someone's weird hobby project. Or an ancient alien artifact. Probably the first one."
I should have put it down.
I should have called my supervisor, or at least waited for Old Bill. He was the senior guard who had worked this complex since before I was born and seemed to know the origin story of every weird object that ever turned up in Green Meadows. He had once told me about a toaster someone left in the lobby that turned out to be a CIA surveillance device. Or maybe he was messing with me. With Old Bill, it was impossible to tell.
But I did not put it down. Because I was bored, and tired, and the anglerfish documentary had moved on to the mating habits of something called a "vampire squid," which was somehow even more depressing. And right there in the center of this mysterious ancient device was a large red button, practically begging to be pressed.
I pressed it.
BZZZZZT.
The world did not fade elegantly like in the movies. There was no gentle dissolve, no shimmering portal, no wise old mentor figure explaining the rules of interdimensional travel. Instead, reality wrenched. My stomach attempted to exit my body through my throat. My vision collapsed into a narrow tunnel of streaking lights. Actual stars streamed past me like I had been strapped to the front of a rocket and fired directly into the heart of the Milky Way. I tried to scream, but the sound got lost somewhere between my lungs and my mouth, swallowed by the impossible physics of whatever was happening to me.
Then, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped.
I landed face first in snow.
The cold hit me like a physical blow, knocking the breath from my lungs and replacing it with air so frigid it burned. I pushed myself up on shaking arms, spitting out a mouthful of ice, and took stock of my situation. Snow. Ice. More snow. Jagged mountains in the distance that looked like the broken teeth of some enormous fossilized beast. And above me, a sky that definitely did not belong to Earth.
Two moons hung in that alien sky like a pair of mismatched eyes. One was large and cratered, its surface etched with the scars of ancient impacts. The other was small and unnaturally smooth, gleaming like polished bone. Behind them, swirling curtains of green and purple aurora danced and twisted, painting the darkness with colors that seemed almost alive. The stars were wrong too, arranged in constellations I had never seen, burning with colors that ranged from ice blue to deep crimson.
I looked down at myself and felt what remained of my composure crumble.
I was still wearing my Green Meadows Security uniform. Khaki pants that were already soaked through at the knees. A navy blue polo shirt with a little embroidered badge over the chest that read "Ray." And a windbreaker so thin you could read a newspaper through it, assuming you had a newspaper and were not freezing to death on an alien planet. The wind picked up, cutting through my pathetic excuse for outerwear like it was not even there, and I felt my body begin to shake uncontrollably.
I was going to die. I was going to die on an alien planet with two moons and a dancing sky, and I was going to do it wearing a polo shirt from a uniform supply company that probably charged extra for stain resistance.
That's when I realized I was not alone.
Kneeling in the snow about ten feet away was a creature. It was massive, easily ten feet tall if it stood upright, and covered from head to foot in thick white fur that made it look like a Wookiee who had visited a very expensive groomer. Its face was somewhere between a bear's and a person's, with a broad nose, a mouth full of flat herbivore teeth, and eyes the color of deep ocean water. Those eyes were currently fixed on me with an expression I could only describe as reverent confusion. It looked like it had been expecting someone significantly more impressive and was not quite sure what to do with a shivering human in business casual attire.
"The Prophesied One," it rumbled.
Its voice was so deep I felt it vibrate through my chest and into my frozen bones. The sound was like stones grinding together at the bottom of a very deep well, ancient and resonant and completely impossible to ignore.
"You have come."
I looked at the strange remote still clutched in my white knuckled hand. Then at the giant fur covered creature kneeling before me. Then back at the sky where two moons and an impossible aurora confirmed that I was very, very far from Green Meadows Residential Complex.
"I just wanted to change the channel," I whispered.
The remote's tiny screen flickered to life. Blue light spilled from it, cheerful and completely inappropriate for my current near death situation. Words began scrolling across the display, crisp and clear as if they had been waiting for this exact moment.
[WELCOME, GALACTIC JANITOR LEVEL 1.]
I blinked. Read it again. Blinked once more for good measure.
[CURRENT MISSION: STOP PLANET THUNDRA FROM BECOMING A COSMIC POPSICLE.]
[TIME REMAINING: 72 HOURS UNTIL PLANETARY CORE FREEZE.]
[SURVIVAL NOT GUARANTEED.]
[REWARD: LEVEL UP PLUS UNIQUE ITEM. PROBABLY SOMETHING WARM. HOPEFULLY.]
"Janitor," I said, my voice coming out high and cracked and entirely undignified. "It called me a janitor. I'm a security guard, damn it. I write parking tickets. I don't even own a mop."
The creature tilted its massive head, sending a small avalanche of snow sliding off its shoulders to patter softly onto the ice below. Its blue eyes narrowed slightly, processing my words with the careful attention of someone trying to understand a foreign language through context clues alone.
"The ancient texts did not mention a mop," it said slowly, the words rumbling out like distant thunder. "Is this a powerful weapon? A tool of your people?"
I stared at him for a long moment. The cold was seeping deeper into my bones now, making my thoughts sluggish and my teeth chatter so hard I could barely form words. The absurdity of the situation, standing on an alien planet and talking to a giant furry creature about the combat applications of cleaning equipment, hit me all at once like a wave of hysterical energy.
I started laughing.
It was not a good laugh. It was the kind of laugh that bordered on crying, the kind that came from a place of pure overwhelmed panic. But it was all I had. If I did not laugh, I was going to scream, and I had a strong feeling that screaming would not be well received by a creature who thought I was some kind of prophesied hero.
"I'm Ray," I finally managed, wrapping my arms around myself in a futile attempt to preserve what little body heat I had left. The wind picked up again, driving ice crystals against my exposed face like tiny needles. "And I think there's been a mistake. A big, cosmic, possibly fatal mistake that's going to end with me frozen solid on a planet I can't pronounce."
The creature rose slowly to its full height, unfolding like a mountain deciding to stand up. It towered over me, blocking out a significant portion of the alien sky, and for a moment I was acutely aware of just how small and fragile I was. Then it reached down with one massive paw and gently, almost tenderly, brushed the accumulating snow from my shoulder.
The touch was surprisingly warm.
"I am Koro of the Yutari," it said, and there was something in its voice that sounded almost like hope. "And there is no mistake, small warm one. You are exactly who we prayed for."
I looked down at the remote again. The screen had added a new line of text, blinking patiently.
[MISSION ACCEPTANCE REQUIRED. PRESS ANY BUTTON TO CONFIRM.]
Seventy two hours. Seventy two hours to save a planet I had not known existed ten minutes ago, or freeze to death trying. Seventy two hours to figure out what a "planetary core freeze" meant and how to stop it. Seventy two hours to earn a reward that was "probably something warm."
I thought about my apartment back on Earth. My lumpy bed with the spring that always poked me in the lower back. The stack of unpaid rent notices from Mrs. Higgins that I had been strategically ignoring for the past three weeks. My coworker Max, who would cover my shift without asking a single question because that was just the kind of guy he was. Old Bill, who would probably just nod and say something cryptic like "the universe chooses who it chooses, kid."
I thought about how, for the first time in my twenty three years of aggressively mediocre existence, someone actually needed me. Not needed me to write a parking ticket. Not needed me to stare at a CCTV screen. Needed me to save them.
The remote's screen blinked again, patient and waiting.
I sighed. It was a long sigh, the kind that started somewhere in my frozen feet and worked its way up through my entire body before escaping in a cloud of vapor that the wind immediately tore apart.
"Fine," I said. "Fine. I'll do it. But I'm putting 'Planetary Savior' on my resume when this is over, and I want overtime. And hazard pay. And probably therapy."
I pressed the button.
The remote's screen flashed brightly, and new text appeared.
[MISSION ACCEPTED. GOOD LUCK, JANITOR RAY. YOU'RE GOING TO NEED IT.]
"Comforting," I muttered. "Very comforting. Does this thing come with a customer service number?"
Koro's face split into what I desperately hoped was a smile and not a pre eating expression. His teeth were flat and broad, designed for grinding tough vegetation, not tearing flesh. I chose to find this reassuring.
"Follow me, Janitor Ray," he said, turning toward the distant mountains with a grace that seemed impossible for something so large. "The village is this way. We must hurry. The cold grows stronger with each passing hour, and you are vibrating quite vigorously."
"I'm not vibrating. That's my skeleton trying to escape my body. There's a difference."
Koro tilted his head again, clearly filing this statement away in whatever mental category he used for confusing prophesied one behavior, and began walking. His massive feet crunched through the ice crust with each step, leaving impressions deep enough that I could have used them as foxholes.
I followed, because what else was I going to do? Stand still and freeze into a Ray shaped popsicle?
As I trudged through the snow behind a ten foot tall alien on a planet with two moons, wearing khakis and clutching a glowing remote that had just insulted my chances of survival, one thought kept looping through my increasingly frozen brain.
I really should have just watched the anglerfish documentary.
The aurora swirled overhead, painting the snow in shades of emerald and violet. Somewhere in the distance, something that sounded distinctly unhappy about our presence let out a low, resonant howl. The wind picked up again, driving ice crystals against my exposed cheeks with renewed enthusiasm.
And the remote in my hand, warm despite the impossible cold, pulsed steadily in rhythm with my heartbeat.