Then he saw the thread:

The game opened not to a menu, but directly into first-person view. He was standing in a perfect replica of his own bedroom. The lighting, the posters on the wall, the cracked mug on his desk—it was all there. Even his laptop was on the screen within the game, showing the same desktop wallpaper.

Leo tried to move the mouse. It didn’t respond. He tried to Alt+F4. Nothing. He reached for the power button, but his fingers passed through it—because his fingers weren’t real anymore.

His laptop fans went silent. The screen flickered once. Then the game showed a progress bar: “Uploading consciousness: 1%... 2%...”

Leo stared at the flickering cursor on his ancient laptop. The hard drive had only 15 GB left. On the gaming forum, everyone was talking about 171 , the new open-world survival horror game. The official version was 80 GB. Leo’s potato PC would choke on it.

The forum post updated automatically: “New update available. Download now. One player already inside.”