The Ghost

How to unlock The Ghost in Cheevos. Open a tab and close it again within three seconds. Worth 10 XP.

The story

Partner. A tab existed. For three seconds. Then it didn't.

Cache tries to log everything, but some things move too fast even for him. You opened a tab. Something in it started to load. Before it finished, before Cache could get a good look, you closed it and moved on.

He got what he could. A URL, mid-request. A shape without a finished picture. He filed it anyway, in a part of the Stash he calls the GHOST RECORDS, reserved for the things that passed through too quickly to fully catch.

The turn: Cache used to think an incomplete record was a failure. Now he thinks it is its own kind of honest. Not every tab is meant to stay open. Some are opened just to check, and closed the instant the checking is done. That instinct, quick and decisive, is worth keeping a record of too, even a thin one.

The catalog entry

INSTANT TAB CLOSURE Acquired: Opened a tab and closed it within 3 seconds. Condition: Gone. Left almost no trace. Rarity: Common. Cache's Notes: A tab that exists for three seconds. Cache tried to log it. He got most of the data. The URL was loading. Then it was gone. He added what he had to the GHOST RECORDS section of the Stash. The entry is mostly empty. He considers this a minor tragedy. But he kept it. He keeps everything.

Spoiler: how to unlock it

This one happens naturally the moment you open a tab just to peek at something.

  1. Open a new tab, whether by clicking a link, using Ctrl+T, or middle-clicking something.
  2. Let it start loading.
  3. Close it (Ctrl+W) within 3 seconds of opening it.

Tabs in modern browsers start requesting a page's resources the moment they open, even before the page finishes rendering, which is why closing a tab quickly can still leave a partial record: a DNS lookup, a partial download, a favicon fetch. Browsers also often preconnect to likely destinations, such as the top autocomplete suggestion in the address bar, to make navigation feel instant, which means some of the loading you triggered may have started before you even pressed Enter.

Where it fits in the Stash

The Ghost lives in the GHOST RECORDS, the thinnest folder in the Stash and, in its own way, one of Cache's favorites. To learn why an incomplete record still counts, read the story.