I've spent the last five years trying to escape the town I started my journey in. And I simply wasn't able to leave. I thought that life was lived more fully in places like San Francisco, NYC, and Miami. But it turns out, life is just lived faster in those places, and they are trying to make everyone live at their speed.
When I realized that, I decided I didn't need to leave town and become the hero. I just needed to open a shop in my town that had the equipment necessary for the next hero to be able to make it out alive, because they'll need to return to protect us from the darkness that is coming.
Now, I'm assembling my party online so I can become an NPC shopkeeper in my town, turning them into main characters online that have the ability to impact the world in meaningful ways.
What happens when a superpowerful AI decides to retire to become a bodega cat? Apparently, he recruits a hitchhiker to the future to open a bodega in a half-dead mall in small town Ohio. And that hitchhiker asks the internet for help.