In the political justice system, crimes against humanity are considered especially heinous. In West Chester University, the left-wing warrior who muckrakes these offenders is an elite socialist known as Bernie Sanders. This is his story (kind of).
The gong chimes twice.
Zyler steps out into the brisk morning air, inhaling deeply, his black Punisher T-shirt rising and falling as fresh air fills his undead lungs for the first time in a decade. He is not human, or at least, he isn’t human anymore.
As a youth in the 90s, Zyler had strolled, full of passion and hope, onto an elevator. This elevator did not take him to the fifth floor, as was his intention, but rather to a floor of nightmares. He had wandered into a room, unsuspecting of the horrors that lay within, his neon colored jacket-vest like a beacon against the surrounding dreariness of that desolate place.
Waiting in that room was a vile creature, a demon of untold power. It fell upon Zyler and took his body, at last gaining a physical form, and turning Zyler’s outward appearance as dark as the soul that now inhabited it.
It is this villainous creature in human form that now surveys the myriad of mortals that stroll to and from class. Much to Zyler’s approval, they all seem to be staring down at what he must assume are small Game Boys.
“Good,” he murmurs to himself. “While these oblivious humans play their little Pokéman games, I shall plot their downfall.”
He sets off to the library, a place the real Zyler had only ever been once, and even then by mistake. With each step, the decorative and edgy chains attached to his pants jingle and jangle. The sound reminds him of the slaves of the underworld, of his home. He smiles at this.
In the completely empty halls of the library, he finds a dusty old book on computers and begins to read it furiously. That is to say, he reads it with a clenched jaw and furrowed brow since it had been a few decades since he had read anything, and he hadn’t been good at it to begin with. In fact, the work was quite slow.
Finally, after what seemed like hours of reading and studying, he finished the first page.
“Ahhh yes,” he said out loud, a bad habit he was quickly developing. “I think I know everything I need to know about these computer things. These wretched humans’ creation will be their ultimate downfall!!”
As he spoke, his voice got louder and louder, until he was almost yelling. This would have been a problem, had there been anyone else in the library, but students these days rarely went to the library willingly. In fact, they rarely went anywhere that had anything as low tech as “books.”
Yet, with the foundation of his plan for global domination coming together, he began to compile a list of required components. Of course, the number one item was an underfoot henchmeaan that he could ramble his evil plans to for the sole benefit of the reader, but that would have to wait. He needed something else first. He needed to visit the IT department.
Pushing aside the cobwebbed desks and chairs that were strewn around the old library study areas, he began to chant an incantation. Wind swirled around the room, blowing books off shelves. A strange whirring noise echoed off the walls, and green flames erupted from the center of the room, resolving themselves in a big circle, inside of which was a door. Zyler walked to the door, and paused a moment, as there was a sign on it:
Underworld IT department is currently experiencing some technical issues. Please wait a few moments, then try refreshing your incantation.
He howled with frustration, then immediately began the incantation again. By the 10th try, the sign was gone, and with no patience left, he barreled through the door, landing, much to his distaste, and to the distaste of one Mr. Skellyskellington, on Mrs. Skellyskellington. She gave a shriek.
“Hey now! You watch where you’re going pal!” yelled Mr. Skellyskellington, “That’s my wife!”
“Fine, whatever. Gosh. It was an accident. Back off, you’re not my dad,” hissed Zyler.
He pushed passed the skeletons and found his way to a help desk. A giant eel monster sat behind the desk, papers stacked high all around it.
“Hi, um, yes, I need one floppy disk drive loaded with a super virus that can infect both computers and humans with concentrated evil please,” said Zyler with forced politeness.
“Where’s your paperwork?” the eel monster wheezed in a nasally voice.
“My what?”
“Your paperwork. I need a virus-630 form, a super-tech-1211, and a valid demon registration or equivalent registration under the purview of the Equal Spook Act.”
“Oh, for the love of Balthazar,” Zyler cried, with enough attitude to make the humble IT demon cringe. “Just give me the paperwork. You want my signature in blood, too?” Zyler spat.
“Actually, yes, I’ll mark where you have to initial in blood,” the eel demon replied.
Zyler took the paperwork begrudgingly and filled it out while making snide remarks about the underworld’s obsolete bureaucratic system. The required paperwork took Zyler a decade in the time of the underworld, which for the ordinary world above was about two hours and change.
“Here you go, sir,” Zyler said with enough sarcasm for the entire decade his vessel was from. The IT demon looked over the paperwork not once but thrice, then went to the back of his office to procure a floppy disk.
“And here we are, one floppy disk with an evil virus to wipe out humanity. You’ll have to do the finer programming yourself in order to create the specifics for your own unique virus, but that should be easy for a demon such as yourself,” the eel hissed in sarcasm to Zyler.
Zyler growled at the demon and swiped the floppy disk out of his tentacle and returned to the mortal plane. He rushed to the nearest PC to upload his virus, but to his surprise there was no place to insert his device of doom.
In a panic, Zyler searched for a floppy disk port on every computer in the nearly abandoned library, but to his dismay, there were none. Zyler rushed to the front desk where luckily a student employee was there to help the few souls that spent their time here anymore.
“Oh my God, is that a floppy disk? I read about those in my history book I downloaded from the Russian internet, that’s so—”
“I don’t have time for your millennial prattling, gosh! Just tell me how to upload the contents of this device to the computers here,” Zyler screamed at the student.
“Okay… you’re gonna have to download the contents to a USB if you want to upload anything like that onto a computer,” the student said.
Zyler looked at his McGuffin, then the student, then at the computers and realized he was in for an ordeal that would last for about eight chapters.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” Zyler howled into the abyss, as he stormed out of the library to regroup. His anger blinded him to the figure of a girl still playing Pokémon Go, keeping close tabs on the punk from hell.
Matt Donahue is a third-year student majoring in physics with a minor in computer programming. He can be reached at MD834123@wcupa.edu.
Conor Killmurray is a third-year student majoring in English writings track with a minor in political science. He can be reached at CK838793@wcupa.edu.