Leo wiped the condensation off his third can of Jolt Cola and stared at the blinking amber light on the HP ProLiant DL380 G4. The rack groaned behind him, a choir of forty-seven fans spinning at 10,000 RPM. Outside the window, the Chicago skyline flickered with early November rain.

And its ISO — the perfect, slipstreamed, 32-bit Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition image — would sit on a dusty external hard drive in Leo's basement until 2024, when his daughter would ask, "Dad, what's a 'boot sector'?"

"IsoBuster sees the boot sector," Maya murmured. "It's the real thing. Volume label: WR2E_EN_32 ."

Leo nodded. "The Smart Array 6i wants drivers that didn't exist when this server was born. We're slipstreaming tonight."

The spin-up whirr filled the silent lab. Then the click of the laser seeking. Then the familiar, beautiful sound of a disc being recognized.

"Press any key to boot from CD or DVD..."