By the third day, the city was a sprawling neon megalopolis. Skyscrapers pierced the clouds, and the transit network was a masterpiece of subterranean clockwork. But Elias felt a strange chill. He looked at the faces of his citizens—tiny, pixelated dots moving along his perfect paths. They weren't people anymore. They were data points.

His finger hovered over the Meteor Strike icon. Just as he was about to click, a notification popped up on the in-game social feed from a citizen named 'Aris'.

The download bar for sat frozen at 99.8%.