With backups safe, he inserted the USB, watched the progress bar crawl, and imagined the router exhaling as the firmware took hold. The process was unceremonious—lines of progress, a final reboot. The LEDs performed their ritual dance and then settled. When he logged back in, the interface was different: cleaner, less chatty. The strange poetic logs were gone; in their place, a neat changelog and status report. It was efficient. It was forgetful.