He looked back at the board. He was winning, or so he thought. He moved his Queen to check the King, expecting a standard block. Instead, the screen glitched. For a split second, the chess pieces weren't wood or plastic; they looked like grey, weathered stones. The computer moved its Rook. Checkmate.

Arthur reached for the power button on his tower, but his hand stopped. On the screen, the reflection of his own face in the glossy monitor looked different. His eyes were wide, and behind him, in the digital darkness of the chess game's background, he saw the faint outline of a shoreline.

The download bar crept forward like a glacier. He watched the green line, thinking of the grandmasters—Kasparov, Fischer, Alekhine. He imagined a sleek, modern interface, but what he got was something else.

When the file finally unzipped and the executable ran, the screen didn't flicker with high-definition graphics. Instead, a window opened with a low-bit depth, the colors slightly bled at the edges. The music was a haunting, MIDI-loop of a cello that seemed to vibrate in his teeth. He clicked "New Game."