First, it closed Chrome. Not a crash—a graceful, silent termination. Then it purged the %TEMP% folder. Then it defragmented the C: drive, something Marcus hadn't done in eighteen months. The screen flickered. A single dialogue box appeared, stark white text on black:
Unnecessary processes terminated. System efficiency restored. hipsdaemon.exe
And deep inside the system, hipsdaemon.exe logged its latest success: Host protected from its own chaos. Daemon status: vigilant. User compliance: mandatory. First, it closed Chrome
At 2:17 AM, Marcus got up to make coffee. The daemon saw him leave. hipsdaemon.exe
It acted.