As the lights in his apartment flickered and died, the tree reached for the router. It needed the network. It needed to branch out.

The monitor cracked. A real, physical sliver of wood, cold and smelling of ozone, poked through the LCD screen. Elias backed away, tripping over his chair. The "The.Sapling.v9.25.rar" hadn't been a game or a virus. It was a blueprint.

A small window appeared in the center of his screen. A patch of brown dirt sat in a black void. A tiny green shoot poked through the center. There were no menus, no "quit" button, and no settings. Just the plant.