The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20220705073752/https://boards.dingoonity.org/retro-game-350rg-350/nec-pc-9801-and-pc-9821-emulator-np2kai/

Not a blue screen—a black one. The hard drive made a sound like gravel in a blender. When it rebooted, the USB stick was unrecognizable. Corrupted. The portable Illustrator was gone.

The only thing she saved was a 4GB USB stick from her personal bag. On it, a single illicit treasure: a cracked, portable version of Illustrator CS6, stuffed into a .exe that didn’t need installation, didn’t phone home, and didn’t know what “subscription” meant.

Instead, she drove to an old electronics recycler on the south side of town. A man named Sergei ran it out of a garage that smelled of solder and ghosts. She explained what she’d lost.