The desktop loaded. The mountain’s legacy system was alive again.

The screen flickered. For five agonizing seconds, nothing. Then, a low-resolution gray bar appeared at the bottom of the screen.

He plugged in his USB DVD enclosure. He pressed F12, then F8, then Shift+F10—old muscle memory taking over. The BIOS was ancient, but it recognized the USB drive as a DVD-ROM.

He selected Boot from CD/DVD .

The screen went black.