He remembered the first time he'd used such a tool: a hand-me-down laptop, a cracked hinge, a key missing near the right shift. The machine booted slowly, like an old man waking. Licenses expired, updates stalled, and every hour brought a new watermark across the desktop—a pale accusation. The tool had been a small miracle then: a clean interface, a single click, and the watermark fell away like frost in sunlight. He always told himself the ends justified the means; at night he’d read the EULA like a bedtime fable and then close it.