Panic began to bubble. Had she wiped everything? Was her 1TB drive dead? Did she just turn her computer into an expensive, glowing brick?

Elena wasn’t a computer expert, but she knew her way around a laptop. When her old gaming PC started feeling sluggish, she decided to do a clean install of Windows. She plugged in her USB drive, booted from it, and clicked through the colorful setup screens with quiet confidence.

Below that, there was nothing else. No “Drive 0 Partition 1: Windows.” No “System Reserved.” Just a stark, gray bar and a number that felt like a typo from the universe: zero point zero.