His eight little gateways, restored.

He refreshed. Nothing. He closed the tab and opened a new one. Still nothing. It was as if Chrome had developed a sudden, cruel amnesia. The browser remembered his bookmarks, his history, his passwords. But it had forgotten what mattered .

Leo held his breath and opened a new tab.

He tried the first: disabled his ad blocker. Nothing. He tried the second: signed out of his Google account and back in. A flash of hope—then, blankness again.

He searched forums. “Chrome most visited sites not showing” yielded a graveyard of desperate souls. Solutions ranged from the absurd (restart your computer three times) to the invasive (disable all extensions).

There was (top left), Google Docs (middle), his beloved Reddit - r/coffee (third row, first column), and the BBC News tile he clicked out of obligation. It was a map of his mind.