As the progress bar crawled forward, Leo imagined himself as Booker DeWitt, soaring through the sun-drenched streets of Columbia. He could almost hear the barbershop quartets and the mechanical roar of a Songbird. But as the file finished and he hit "Run," the music that filled his room wasn't a 1912 remix of a pop song. It was the frantic whirring of his computer’s cooling fan, spinning up like a jet engine.

The screen flickered. A command prompt window sprinted through lines of code too fast to read.

Suddenly, the desktop icons vanished. In their place, a single image appeared: the face of a Handyman, its metallic eyes glowing red. But this wasn't a game asset. A text box popped up over the creature’s chest:

He pulled the plug, the screen went black, and for the first time in an hour, the room was silent. Columbia was gone, and his computer was a brick. Some things, he realized, are worth the retail price.

He realized then that he wasn't playing the hero saving Elizabeth. He was just another citizen of a falling city, realizing too late that the "prophets" promising a paradise for free were usually just looking for a way to lock the doors behind you.