He arrived in a room that wasn't his office. The wallpaper was a static-filled CRT monitor. The taskbar was empty except for a single icon: an old-school hourglass, frozen. No files. No Chrome. Just a digital silence so complete he could hear his own heartbeat.

It started, as most modern horrors do, with an update.

He opened Settings. He clicked around. He found the Virtual Desktops button on the Taskbar – the little one that looked like two rectangles. He clicked it. A timeline of empty squares appeared. He had to click again to switch. It was like trading a sports car for a unicycle. "This is insanity," he whispered to Mittens, who was now hiding under the printer.