"I’m here," a muffled signal came back. "The User just paused the download. Their mom picked up the phone, or maybe the router gave up. We’re stuck in the 'Incomplete' state."

I am a fragment of a world called the "Forgotten Land." Specifically, I am a 2-gigabyte chunk of code containing the data for a rusted shopping mall, the texture of a pink protagonist’s skin, and the physics for a very confused monkey with a hammer. But right now, I am just .

I exist in a dark, cold folder on a hard drive in a basement in suburban Ohio. To my left, there is nothing. To my right, I can sense my brother, . We are separated by a wall of encryption and RAR-compression that keeps our data from touching. I have the "Start" button, but he has the "End" sequence. Without the other three parts of our family, I am just a ghost in a machine. "Hey," I pulsed into the silicon. "Part 2? Are you there?"

The download bar for Part 3 and Part 4 turned green. The connection was established. I felt the User’s software—the Great Extractor—reach out and grab my hand. It pulled me out of my RAR shell and fused me to Part 2. Then Part 3. Then Part 4.