Jason reached for the power strip. But as his fingers touched the switch, the monitor flickered. And in that flicker, reflected in the dark glass, he saw the train simulator window open itself again.

He’d downloaded a “CPY” – a cracked, copied version of the Pacific Surfliner Expansion Pack from an abandoned forum, a relic of the mid-2000s internet. The file was called PSurfliner_CPY.rar . The readme was just a string of angry uppercase letters: "NO CD REQUIRED. NO ACTIVATION. I HATE DRM."

But Jason wasn’t playing the original CD version anymore. Not since his disc got scratched.