I plugged in a USB mouse—a clumsy, tailed creature—and navigated to the depths of Windows Device Manager. There it was: "Alps Pointing-device," with a yellow exclamation mark, like a wounded soldier. The system had tried to replace its soul with a generic Microsoft driver. It never works. Generic drivers understand left-click and right-click. They don't understand two-finger scrolling, the graceful arc of a three-finger swipe, or the pinch-to-zoom that had once made Elara's photo editing a breeze.

The cursor breathed . It moved with that old, buttery precision—no jitter, no lag. I performed a two-finger scroll down a document: smooth as silk. I tapped lightly: a crisp, silent acknowledgment. I pressed the physical button beneath the pad: a satisfying, deep chunk that felt like closing a car door on a German sedan.

I opened Notepad. I centered the cursor. And I typed, with the touchpad alone, no mouse: "The ghost is gone. Write."