The progress bar didn’t move for a full minute, then suddenly leaped to 99%. A single window popped up:
He looked at the progress bar again. It now read: sxyy.7z
The screen didn't flicker; it vanished. For a heartbeat, the room went pitch black, the hum of the cooling fans silenced. Then, a single line of text appeared in the center of the void, written in a font that looked less like pixels and more like woven silk. “SYNESTHESIA PROTOCOL X-YY INITIALIZED.” The progress bar didn’t move for a full