A terminal window popped open—black as the night outside. Lines of code began to scroll, too fast to read. Elias tried to move the mouse, but the cursor was a ghost, sliding across the screen under someone else's hand.

"Just one click," Elias whispered. He’d ignored the warnings from his browser, the red flags from his firewall, and the nagging feeling in his gut. To him, those were just "system bloat" standing in the way of a faster machine. He ran the executable.

For three seconds, his PC felt like a supercar. The fans hummed a perfect, low note. The desktop icons sharpened. The RAM usage plummeted to near-nothing. It was the "Pro" experience he’d craved. Then, the lights shifted.