“Alright,” Greg said to the empty room. “We’re fixing this now.”

He unpinned the useless Microsoft Store icon to make room. There. Perfect.

He moved the mouse down to the Chrome icon in the taskbar—the one that was currently just a ghost of the running app. He right-clicked it. A small menu popped up.

The screen flickered. Then— darkness . Not a crash. Worse. A full system freeze.

He logged in. The desktop was clean. Too clean. The taskbar at the bottom of the screen was a barren wasteland—just the default Windows icon, File Explorer, and the Microsoft Store (which he had literally never opened).

No Outlook. No Slack. No Spotify. And worst of all… no .

The icon shimmered for a second. Then something beautiful happened: a small, grey divider line appeared next to it. The icon locked into place. It was permanent now. It had roots . It sat there, bold and reliable, right between the Start menu and File Explorer.

“Come on, buddy,” he whispered, stroking the aluminum casing. “Just one more slide.”