The sun filtered through the edges of his blackout curtains. Chris woke up later than usual, a bit groggy. For a moment, he lay perfectly still, listening to the quiet hum of his computer. He still had some lingering feelings on his midnight excursion, a strange mix of residual guilt for sneaking out with the family SUV and the satisfaction of a successful resource run.
He sat up, the worn sheets pooling around his waist. The first thing he did, an act now as instinctive as breathing, was check his HUD. The sleek, white text glowed in the dim light of his room, visible only to him. He navigated to the [QUESTS] tab.
[Quest: Scavenger Hunt]
[Objective: Acquire all necessary resources to create [Self-Propelled Lawnmower (Gasoline Model)]]
[Reward: 150 XP, +1 Crafting Skill]
[Progress: Refined Metal (Steel): 8.5/15kg]
A small, satisfied smile touched his lips. The progress bar was more than half full. He had made progress. He had faced the darkness of a downtown street at midnight and had emerged victorious, laden with the spoils of a defeated pothole. It was a small step in his quest, but it felt like a giant leap for his own personal agency.
His second act, another deeply ingrained habit, was to grab his phone from the nightstand. His thumb, moving with a will of its own, swiped through the lock screen and navigated to the familiar blue icon of Facebook. He was morbidly curious. He had to know if his clandestine operation had left any witnesses. Had anyone reported strange blue lights on South Kanawha Street? Had there been any complaints about a low, buzzing sound? He had to see to see if he'd left any evidence.
He opened the "Upshur County Community Forum" page. The feed was a familiar tapestry of small-town life. A lost dog near the high school. An ad for a yard sale with blurry pictures of old furniture. But at the very top of the feed, pinned there by the sheer velocity of its engagement, was a new post. It was from a user named "Gary L." Chris recognized the name instantly. It was the same man whose original, angry post about the pothole had served as Chris's initial lead.
Gary L.'s new post, however, was not angry. It was written in the confused, excited, and slightly unhinged dialect of all-caps.
[Gary L.]: "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS. I'M SERIOUS. THE GIANT POTHOLE ON SOUTH KANAWHA STREET IS... GONE?? IT'S PERFECTLY PAVED. DID THE COUNTY ACTUALLY DO THEIR JOB OVERNIGHT?? IS THIS A MIRACLE??"
Chris's heart gave a little thump against his ribs. It was a tiny jolt of panic. He's been discovered.
But as he read the post again, the panic began to subside, replaced by a sense of bewilderment. Gary wasn't accusing anyone. He was celebrating. He thought it was a miracle.
The post included a new photo, taken in the bright, unforgiving light of the morning. It showed the section of road in front of the old movie theater. And there it was. His handiwork. The flawless, black patch of asphalt where the crater used to be. It looked even more professional and perfect in the daylight. It was a patch job so smooth, so seamless, it made the rest of the cracked, faded road around it look shabby by comparison. It wasn't just repaired; it was perfection.
He scrolled down to the comments, his thumb trembling slightly. The initial reactions were exactly what he expected. The first comment, from a user with a cartoon frog as a profile picture, was a single, dismissive line.
"Nice Photoshop, Gary."
The next was from a familiar town cynic, a man who seemed to exist on the forum solely to complain about property taxes.
"The county road crew doesn't work that fast unless a politician lives on that street. This is fake news."
Chris felt a small wave of relief. Skepticism. Good. Skepticism was his friend. As long as people thought it was a joke, he was safe. He continued to scroll, watching the digital drama unfold.
"I'm telling you, it's real!" Gary L. had replied, his all-caps fury now redirected at the non-believers. "I DRIVE THAT ROAD EVERY DAY FOR WORK! IT WAS THERE YESTERDAY, AND IT'S GONE TODAY! ARE YOU CALLING ME A LIAR???"
But then, the tide began to turn. A new comment appeared from a woman who worked at the bank downtown.
"Wait, I just drove by there on my way to work. Gary's right! The hole is GONE! I almost didn't recognize the street."
Another user, a teacher at the middle school, chimed in a minute later.
"Can confirm. I had to slow down this morning because I thought I was seeing things. The patch is better than the rest of the road! It's, like, perfectly smooth."
One by one, other residents who used that route for their morning commute began to add their voices to the conversation. The story was being confirmed by multiple, independent sources. The thread rapidly gained momentum, the number of likes and comments climbing with each refresh. Chris watched, mesmerized, as the narrative shifted from a single man's strange claim to a verified, town-wide mystery.
Just as the conversation was reaching a fever pitch of confusion and excitement, a new comment appeared that brought the entire thread to a screeching halt. It was from a user with a profile picture of the official Upshur County seal, a couple of dudes standing by a dirt road. The page was run by the county administrator's office. The comment was a masterpiece of stuffy, formal, bureaucratic language.
[Upshur County Commission]: "To address the speculation in this thread, the Upshur County Road Commission has no record of any scheduled or emergency overnight work performed on the section of South Kanawha Street in question. No crews were out last night. We are looking into the matter and will provide an update when more information becomes available."
Chris stared at the comment, a slow grin spreading across his face. The denial was so dry, so official, so devoid of personality, that it acted like a gallon of gasoline on a small, smoldering fire. The county had not done the work. The primary entity that was supposed to be responsible for this kind of thing had just publicly, officially, declared its own incompetence and ignorance.
The mystery was no longer just a local curiosity. It was now an official, documented, bureaucratic anomaly.
The comments section exploded.
With the county's involvement officially denied, the speculation on the forum ran wild, freed from the boring constraints of logic and reason.
"It was a Division of Highways project," one user declared with absolute certainty. "They're testing a new kind of self-healing asphalt. I saw it on the History Channel."
"No way," another replied. "It was a 'good Samaritan' paving company. Probably a local crew that was tired of the county doing nothing, so they just fixed it themselves out of the goodness of their hearts."
"It's aliens," a third user wrote, simply. "They're fixing our infrastructure as a prelude to a full-scale invasion. Mark my words."
Chris chuckled, scrolling through the increasingly wild theories. He liked the though of being an alien. He was so engrossed in the wild theories that he almost missed the comment that changed everything.
It was from Brenda G. Chris knew that name. Everyone who spent more than five minutes on the forum knew Brenda G. She was a sweet, sixty-something grandmother whose profile picture was a slightly blurry photo of her holding a fluffy, long-haired cat. She commented on nearly every post, her contributions a steady stream of well-wishes, casserole recipes, and the most potent, well-sourced gossip in the entire county. Brenda G. was the central information node of Buckhannon. If she posted it, it became truth.
[Brenda G.]: "This is just wonderful! With all the weirdness happening lately, the talking statues and the backward cats, it's so nice to see something good happen for a change! It's like we have a guardian angel fixing our roads! A Pothole Phantom!"
And it stuck. Instantly.
Within minutes, other users were repeating the name, the alliteration too catchy to resist.
Chris's breath caught in his throat. A Pothole Phantom. The name was so cheesy, so perfectly small-town, so brilliantly ridiculous. It was perfect.
"Brenda's right! It's the Pothole Phantom!"
"I hope the Pothole Phantom comes to my street next! We've got a crater near the stop sign that could swallow a small child."
A new hashtag appeared, and it began to trend within the small, enclosed ecosystem of the forum: #PotholePhantom. The legend had been born. A local folk hero, a mysterious, benevolent entity who fixed roads in the dead of night, had been created out of thin air.
Chris stared at his phone screen, a strange, disbelieving laugh bubbling up in his chest. He was watching his own myth being written in real-time. He, Christopher Day, the thirty-year-old recluse who still had to be reminded to take out the trash, was now, to the citizens of Buckhannon, a guardian angel of asphalt.
His selfish, late-night quest for crafting materials had backfired into an act of celebrated, anonymous vigilantism. The irony was so thick, he felt like he could taste it.
He scrolled further, his initial panic now fully replaced by a giddy amusement. A new meme had already appeared. Someone had taken a famous picture of Batman staring out over Gotham City and had Photoshopped a hard hat and a steamroller into the image. The caption read:
"HE'S THE HERO BUCKHANNON DESERVES."
The praise was wonderful, and the anonymity was a relief. But as he sat there, watching the legend of the Pothole Phantom grow with every new comment and share, a dawning horror began to creep in.
Dozens of people were now praising this mysterious entity for doing what the local government could not. They were celebrating his efficiency, his skill, his civic pride. And they were all, collectively, watching the roads. They were looking for the next miracle. They were waiting for the Pothole Phantom to strike again.
His only problem was that he still needed 6.5 kilograms of metal. And now, every pothole in Upshur County was a potential crime scene, a tourist attraction, a future sighting for his own, accidental superhero persona. He had made his own resource grind a thousand times more difficult. He was a hero who couldn't finish his own quest because he was now too famous to risk being seen.