Rajesh opened his email. He found the license key from 2021. He clicked “Import license” from the Help menu—a menu he found by matching the Japanese character for ヘルプ (Herupu) to the icon of a life ring. The dialog box blinked. The gray grid refreshed.

He closed WinRAR. He reopened it from the Start menu. The gray grid returned—still in Japanese. He tried again. Language menu. English. OK. Restart. Japanese. He rebooted the entire laptop. Japanese.

Nothing happened.