Arthur wasn’t a pirate. He was a data archivist for a boring insurance firm who happened to have a nostalgic soft spot for speedsters. He clicked the link, expecting a grainy video file. Instead, his monitor didn't play a video; it began to bleed light.

He didn't know how to use it, but as his bedroom door began to glow with the heat of a breaching torch, he realized he had about 0.0001 seconds to figure it out.

Then, a blur of motion streaked across the monitor—a streak of yellow electricity that shouldn't exist in the real world. A single line of text appeared in the chat window of the media player: