His avatar rendered. It was magnificent. The purple helmet, the amber eyes, the star collapsing behind him. But then the avatar moved . Its head tilted. It looked out of the screen. At him.
His PSN friends list repopulated with ghosts. Accounts banned in 2018. Profiles of people who had moved away. A kid named "Rad_Dad_88" who Leo knew had passed away two years ago.
For thirty minutes, he was a god. The sliders were his commandments. The color wheel his infinite palette. He mixed a background—a collapsing star from the Cosmic Horror pack—and layered a border of cracked code, a freebie from last year’s Watch_Dogs event.
Leo sighed and launched the Avatar Tool.
He, Leo, was a ghost.
Then it typed one last message before the connection crashed: And the PSN store, for the first time ever, displayed a new item for sale: