Daenerys frowned. “Tyrion assured me it was a high-quality rip.”
Then they reached Episode 6: “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken.”
The screen went black. Then white. Then a single line of text appeared:
“It’s the Dothraki Sea bandwidth,” Daenerys said, sweeping into the tent. She was wearing her usual “I birthed dragons” expression. “It’s terrible this time of year.”
Jorah clicked Extract . A dialog box appeared: “Unexpected end of archive. CRC failed. Do you want to skip this file?”
Jorah slammed the laptop shut. “I’m going back to the fighting pits. At least the violence there makes sense.”
“We can’t,” Jorah growled. “If we skip, we lose the entire Sons of the Harpy subplot. Which, now that I think about it…”
Would you like to send a raven to the developers? [Y/N]
Jorah Mormont, disgraced knight and reluctant tech-support for Exiled Royals, Inc., stared at the screen. The progress bar hadn’t moved in three hours. The file name glared at him like a curse: .
Jorah never spoke of it again. But late at night, they’d find him staring at the laptop, whispering: “Just skip Meereen. Please. Just skip Meereen.”
Tyrion Lannister, leaned against a support pole, sipping what he called “summer wine” and everyone else called fermented goat’s milk. “I said it was a rip,” he corrected. “I didn’t say it was a good one. The file’s been passed through every pirate in Slaver’s Bay. It’s got more layers of compression than the Meereenese caste system.”
Tyrion choked on his wine. “Gods. Even the file knows.”
“Unzip it,” Dany commanded.
