The program didn't open a window. Instead, my monitor flickered to a dull, fluorescent hum. The desktop icons didn't vanish; they just seemed to move further away, as if the screen had gained physical depth. I reached out to touch the glass, and my hand didn't hit a surface. It kept going.

A sprawling shopping center where the storefronts had no names and the fountains ran with silent, stagnant water. The "Exit" signs all led back to the same food court.

The zip file wasn't a game; it was a bridge. I walked through a series of interconnected spaces that felt aggressively familiar yet completely wrong: