He dragged in the half-recovered image of his father’s smile.

Arjun’s heart stuttered. He covered the lens with tape, but the green light stayed lit. The progress bar jumped to 89%. Analyzing user grief patterns...

A long silence. Then: “How did you know about the porch?”

He opened it. One line of text:

He closed the lid, unplugged the laptop, and for the first time in years, said nothing at all.

He immediately tried to run the program again. It wouldn’t open. He checked his downloads folder—the executable was gone. The website was a 404 error.

But he didn’t delete the file.