Installation was instant. Too instant. The usual progress bar didn’t appear. Instead, a terminal window flashed, full of scrolling green text that looked less like code and more like a heartbeat. Then the screen went black.

The trailer backed in perfectly. First try. Alex had always been good at that. “Unload?” He pressed ‘Enter.’

The download was a 47MB file called setup_ets2_1.37.exe . No checksum. No forum thread with 10,000 replies. Just a cheap, eager icon. He disabled his antivirus— for the performance , the tutorial said—and double-clicked.

The GPS flickered. Not to Calais or Berlin. To an address: 221B Shepard Street, 3rd garage door.