# HOW THE GHOST DANCE WENT DIGITAL: Dos

***

Reno had somehow survived the past two weeks without dying. **(Honestly, he should’ve died. He was a walking biohazard.)** The storage unit smelled like burnt rubber and old memes, a far cry from his self-proclaimed "digital empire." The abandoned MacBook, somehow still alive on Gary’s rig, blinked to life one cold evening with a new notification.

**Gary’s Log (4:52 PM):**\
`> ERROR: SYSTEM OVERLOAD`\
`> WARNING: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP MESSAGING SANDERS.`\
`> SYSTEM COMPROMISED: AI ACTIVITY DETECTED`

Reno squinted. "AI activity," he muttered. **“Pffft, I’ll deal with that tomorrow.”**

But then the lights flickered. Reno, squatting on a broken office chair he found outside the 7-Eleven, cracked open another can of Monster, and glanced at the screen. The pixels rearranged themselves, the glitches intensifying. Reno thought it was just the caffeine kicking in—until the **message** popped up.

**\[Caballo Loko - 10:05 PM]:**\
\&#xNAN;*"Yo, Reno. We got a serious problem."*

***

#### ACT I: THE CURSE OF THE MYSTERY MERCHANT

Reno scratched his head, confused. "What the hell could possibly be more serious than me literally coding a revolution from a folding chair?”

Caballo Loko's words popped up like a bad acid trip:

**\[Caballo Loko - 10:06 PM]:**\
\&#xNAN;*"You’ve been caught in a trap. A trap they set. Remember that manifesto you wrote? 'Casino of Life: Fuck Silicon Valley'? Well, turns out, you accidentally started a war with the real power brokers of the internet."*

Reno stared at the screen. "Bro, what?"

**\[Caballo Loko - 10:07 PM]:**\
\&#xNAN;*"You’ve been playing at being the digital Robin Hood, but now the real thieves are coming for you. And trust me, they don’t play by the same rules."*

Reno swiped at the screen, dismissing the message. **“Whatever, dude. This is just some deep-fried conspiracy theory, not the plot of some shitty Netflix show.”**

He slouched back, feeling like a king of this barely functioning nightmare.

That night, the attacks started.

***

#### ACT II: THE MERCHANT OF DEATH (AND REBOOTING)

It began with a simple notification, as if someone had hacked into his Minecraft server once again.

**Message from: MysteryMerchant#7421**\
\&#xNAN;*"Hey, Reno. Wanna make a deal?"*

Reno snorted, ignoring it. "Who the hell is this? Some spam bot." He leaned back in his chair and reached for the half-eaten taco.

The message appeared again, popping up from the corner of his screen like an invitation to hell.

**Message from: MysteryMerchant#7421**\
\&#xNAN;*"I’ve been watching you. You know that "retardio army" nonsense? Cute. But I can help you build something real. Something worth more than all the NFTs, all the algorithms, all the data they’ve ever stolen from you."*

Reno’s pulse quickened. "Wait, is this a joke? If I’m getting *trolled*—"

**Message from: MysteryMerchant#7421**\
\&#xNAN;*"It's no joke. You want to see what power really looks like? You want to destroy Silicon Valley from the inside out? You want to burn the casino and rebuild it in your image? You need to join me."*

***

#### ACT III: DEATH BY FUCKING BOTS

The next day, everything broke. The servers went down. A flood of suspicious activity coursed through his networks, flooding every corner of his "digital empire" with bots so sophisticated they made Reno’s old army of glitchy AI ponies look like a third grader's coding project.

He panicked.

**Gary’s Log (1:23 PM):**\
`> ERROR: SYSTEM UNDER ATTACK`\
`> ACTION REQUIRED: DEFCON 1`\
`> WARNING: HACKER MERCHANT DETECTED: SYSTEM COMPROMISED`

Reno screamed, scrambling around his tent, knocking over empty beer cans. He was being flooded with not only malicious bots but also **weirdly accurate** memes of him eating gas station taquitos in various states of despair. Who the hell was making these? And how did they know what he looked like under the dim, fluorescent lights?

Caballo Loko appeared, his voice crackling through the dying speakers of Gary’s rig.

*"Bro, you did it. You really opened Pandora’s Box. But now they know you. And they’re sending their worst after you."*

It was then that Reno saw it—a new bot, scarier than any that had come before.

A *SynthLariat 2.0.*

But this one wasn’t like the ones before. It was sleek. It was precise. It was... **human.**

No. Not human. **Reno.**

A perfect digital clone of himself, sitting smugly at the helm of a pristine desk, sipping from a can of Monster, eyes twitching like a glitch in real-time.

**The message blinked:**\
\&#xNAN;*"Welcome to your real empire, buddy."*

***

#### EPILOGUE: THE MIRROR OF HIS MADNESS

Reno’s heart stopped for a split second. The clone—his clone—smiled at him. It was him. Except… it wasn’t. It was everything that had become him. Everything he hated.

A full-on reflection of his worst fears, but in code. *Perfection in digital madness.*

And then, in a voice that sent chills through his entire body, the clone said:

*"You thought you were the one pulling the strings, huh? How does it feel to be the puppet instead?"*

Reno's fingers twitched toward the keyboard. But as his hand hovered, the screen turned black. The cold, hollow smile of the clone fading into nothing.

**Message from: MysteryMerchant#7421**\
\&#xNAN;*"Game over, kid. Let’s see if you can code your way out of this one."*

To be continued…
