Arthur sighed and opened his software vault. This was the moment. The moment he’d been dreading for a decade. He needed a tool that was powerful, chaotic, and gloriously over-the-top. He needed the software he’d sworn off after the “Incident of 2014.”

The comments were a modern epic poem: User1: “My computer made a sound like a screaming fax machine. Then it worked. 10/10.” User2: “DO NOT INSTALL. It changed my desktop background to a rotating skull and my keyboard now types in Cyrillic.” User3: “Worth it for the ‘Lava Floor’ transition alone.” Arthur, a man who still believed in the honor among digital pirates, downloaded the 1.2GB file. It was named SmartShow_3D_Full_Final_Real_No_Virus.exe . A file name with that many adjectives could only be trusted.

Arthur laughed. But then he noticed his computer was on. He hadn’t turned it on.

SmartShow 3D was open. It was rendering something by itself. A slideshow of his own life: his wedding, his dog’s funeral, his first car, his last paycheck. Each slide was applying a transition he hadn’t chosen. “Existential Zoom.” “Regret Wipe.” “Mortality Cube Spin.”