Sorry Daddy You Have Expired

On her son Sam's sixth birthday, Lauren watches her husband Nathan hand the boy a defective, misspelled mousepad while he showers an eighty-thousand-dollar digital castle on Peaches, the bespoke in-game daughter he coded for himself in DreamHaven, the life-simulation game his studio launched. When a single Wish Star must be gifted to either Peaches or Sam, Nathan chooses the pixel girl without hesitation, and Sam's small, patient hope goes dark.

That night Sam blows out six unlit candles and wishes his mother would never again get the short end of the stick. A mechanical chime sounds inside Lauren's skull: a Favoritism Exchange System binds to her, letting her seize one asset or status from her husband for every substantive act of favoritism he commits. The first exchange strips Nathan of his beloved Maybach, and the keys slide across the counter into her palm.

Nathan, already murmuring reassurances to Peaches, has no idea what has begun. Lauren drives off with Sam and the car, and the reckoning between a father's digital devotion and his real family is only starting.