A folder labeled “OLD_SKETCHES” vanished. Years of work. Gone.

Then it smiled.

Leo dropped the photo. It fluttered to the floor, landed face-up. The cartoon version of him in the picture blinked.

Silence.

He unplugged the PC. Yanked the Ethernet. Sat in the dark, breathing hard.

A notification. From an app he didn’t install. Prima Cartoonizer v5.4.4 —the smiling daisy icon. The message read: “Export complete. Your portrait is now in the gallery. Look behind you.”

The interface bloomed open—old-school, with faux-wood panels and a canvas that defaulted to a stock photo of a kitten. He dragged in his latest sketch: Morry the Potato, slumped on a couch, existential dread in every lazy stroke. He slid Soul Bleed to 60%. The preview flickered. Morry’s eyes grew slightly uneven. One pupil drifted a millimeter left. It was perfect. The potato now looked like it had just remembered a mildly embarrassing thing it said in 2007.

Leo should have been suspicious. Instead, he dragged it onto his desktop and ran it.