The familiar bright blue ocean of Raft appeared, but the music was gone. No upbeat tropical guitar, just the sound of actual wind whistling through his headphones. His character stood on the usual four wooden foundations, but the shark circling the raft wasn’t the cartoonish "Bruce." It was a hyper-realistic shadow that didn't just bite the wood; it seemed to watch him through the monitor.

The progress bar didn't crawl; it jumped in erratic stutters, sucking bandwidth like a vacuum. When it finished, the file size was impossible—40 gigabytes for a minor update. Elias launched the game.

He steered his raft toward a distant radio tower, but the coordinates on his receiver began to spin backward. The sky turned a bruised purple, and the waves grew tall enough to block out the sun. Suddenly, his character didn’t just pick up plastic and wood; he started hooking memories. A waterlogged wedding ring. A rusted car key. A digital photograph that, when inspected, showed Elias’s own apartment building, partially submerged.

As the virtual tide rose to swallow his raft, Elias heard a splash. Not from his speakers, but from the kitchen. He looked down. The carpet was wet.