He had tried everything. He’d pleaded with Windows Update, rolled back system restores, and sacrificed a USB cable to the tech gods. But every time he plugged the little blue box into his laptop, Windows would chime a cheerful bong of failure.

Sound. Clean, real, his sound flooded the headphones.

He hesitated. Then, with the reverence of a priest handling a relic, he plugged the cable into the left USB port.