The whirring of his cooling fans rose to a scream. His room began to glow with an intense, unnatural ultraviolet light emanating from the tower. Elias backed away as the air grew heavy with the scent of ozone.

The installer didn't ask for a directory. It didn't show a License Agreement. Instead, his monitor flickered once, twice, and then went pitch black. "Great," Elias hissed, hitting his keyboard. "Just great."

He looked at his monitor. It wasn't showing his desktop anymore. It was showing a live feed of a stadium—but not any stadium on Earth. The players were titans of chrome and glass, moving with a fluid lethality that defied physics.