His finger paused.
What if the power went out? What if the file was corrupted? What if this turned the router into a brick—a paperweight with blinking LEDs?
The router’s power LED began to blink amber. Then green. Then amber again. The Wi-Fi LED went dark. The LAN LED flickered furiously, like a heart in cardiac arrest.
He opened a video on YouTube—a 4K nature documentary. It played without buffering. He walked to the farthest corner of the house, the bathroom at the end of the hall. Still full signal.
The screen went blank. The router’s lights danced through a startup sequence—power, LAN, internet, Wi-Fi—each one lighting up in a slow, deliberate wave.