And the cursor blinks. Waiting.

The download was a blur of green progress bars. He dragged the DLL into his VST folder, bypassing the firewall warnings. He opened a new track, loaded the plugin, and pressed a single note: E minor.

The laptop fan roared. The room got cold. From the speakers, barely audible under the reverb, came a sound that wasn't music. It was the jingle of a pawn shop door. The clink of a case closing. And a voice, his own, saying, "I'll come back for her."

He hadn't entered his name anywhere.

Miles tried to close the laptop. The screen flickered. The plugin’s GUI had changed. The virtual guitar now had a cracked neck. A broken tuning peg. And written in the dust on the body, one word: "Remember?"

He opens his browser. Types slowly: "How to return a guitar you don't own."

He ripped the power cord from the wall.