He pressed 'W'. The pedaling animation was unnervingly smooth. As he rode through the neighborhood, he realized there were no NPCs. No cars, no birds, no wind. Only the rhythmic click-click-click of the bike’s freewheel.
When Elias downloaded and extracted the 400MB archive, the first thing he saw was the DOGE.nfo . Usually, these files contain installation instructions and ASCII art. This one was different. Under the "Notes" section, it simply read: The path is long. Do not look back at the dog. Bicycle.Rider.Simulator-DOGE.rar
The dog spoke, not in audio, but in a system dialogue box that popped up in the center of his monitor: He pressed 'W'