The Pacific Surfliner was already moving. The throttle was at 8.

And then the track ended.

Then came the glitch at MP 207.4.

Jason sat in the dark of his room. The monitor glowed: Microsoft Train Simulator has encountered an error and needs to close. He tried to delete the PSurfliner_CPY folder. Windows said the file was in use by another program.

Inside was a face made of low-resolution noise—jagged polygons, missing a mouth, but somehow still grinning. Its eyes were two tiny circles: and P and Y , repeating like a stuck key.

He ended the task. The process vanished.

At first, it seemed glorious. The F40PH locomotive loaded in under three seconds. The cabbage car’s textures—faded Amtrak red, white, and blue—rendered with a weird, oily sharpness. He could drive the Surfliner from San Luis Obispo to San Diego without ever inserting a disc.