Leo didn’t believe in curses. He believed in benchmarks.
And in the corner of his new, slow, noisy, bloated desktop, a notification popped up. It wasn't from Windows. It wasn't from an app. It was just… there. windows 10 ghost spectre 1709
Inside was a single text file, timestamped from the exact second of the installation. He opened it. There was no text. Just a single, recurring hexadecimal string that filled the entire notepad window: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 . Leo didn’t believe in curses