But so was Clara.

Leo stared at his reflection. The driver had reset. The GPU was talking to the display again. Everything was working perfectly.

The screen had been frozen for three minutes. Not the graceful, snowy static of old televisions, but a violent, neon puke of jagged lines and repeating sound. BRRRRT-click. BRRRRT-click. It was the sound of a dying brain.

Leo didn't flinch. He’d seen this before. He placed his index and middle fingers together, a soft prayer to the machine gods, and pressed a hidden chord on the keyboard.

The screen went black. A single, flat beep echoed from the speakers—the digital heart stopping for a beat.

He sighed, reached over, and unplugged the monitor from the wall. Some ghosts, he decided, were worth more than a stable frame rate.

Then the screen crackled back to life. The taskbar was solid. The icons were crisp. The nightmare pixels were gone.