The ghosts panic. Sasappis tries to calm everyone, but his voice becomes a robot monotone. "EVERY-THING. IS. FINE. THIS. IS. FINE."

Sam finds a free trial of the "SuperMax Pro H.365 Codec" — a notorious piece of software that once crashed a NASA livestream. She installs it.

Jay hands her a glass of wine. "No more 'free.' Ever."

"A codec ? Is that a French revolutionary? Or a type of painful intestinal blockage?"

The house groans. Lights flicker. For one awful second, all the ghosts freeze into a single, compressed JPEG artifact — a mosaic of Isaac's wig, Thor's beard, and Flower's tie-dye.

Sam explains her plan to Jay: she’s going to use an open-source codec. Specifically, OpenH264. It’s free, it’s legal, and it’s backed by Cisco. What could go wrong?