Holding his breath, Leo ejected the e-reader from his PC, navigated to the "Comics" folder, and copied the file over. He turned off the lights, settled into his armchair, and opened the file.

A progress bar filled in under a second. A cheerful ding! echoed from his speakers.

The problem was the format. His e-reader, a clunky but beloved hand-me-down, didn’t speak the language of modern devices. It refused to open the neat, orderly parade of JPEGs he had so carefully named "page001," "page002," and so on. All it wanted were CBZ or CBR files—digital comic containers, like ZIP or RAR files in disguise.

He dragged his Tintin_in_America folder into the box. The program listed every JPEG: page001.jpg through page189.jpg. He selected "CBR" and clicked the red button.

Leo hesitated. Downloading a random executable from a dead thread felt like drinking milk found behind a radiator. But his back hurt from the laptop hunch, and the e-reader’s plastic case was gathering dust on his nightstand. He clicked.