My cursor hovered. Click.
Then a man entered the frame. He was wearing a grey jacket, collar popped, sunglasses at night. He looked like a low-budget movie hacker. He sat beside my on-screen self and said, in perfect, sterile Indonesian:
I closed the laptop. Hard.
My hands were shaking. I looked at my laptop's webcam. A tiny green light was blinking—a light I never remembered seeing before.
A name I didn't recognize.
The man handed over a USB stick. "Just install this. It mines crypto on the side. No one will know. Gampang. Cuan."
By minute 47, my on-screen self was broke, evicted, alone. The hacker returned, took off his sunglasses, and smiled. It was Uncle Arif's face, but wrong—too young, too sharp. Download - Gampang.Cuan.2023.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL....
My chest tightened. I remembered that night. I had been doom-scrolling, avoiding work.