Piko - Where every story finds its reader

The hunger hit at hour two.

Not his real stomach_hat was safely unconscious in his apartment, slumped in a black-market neural rig with enough sedatives in his system to keep his body from moving for seventy-two hours. This was the avatar's stomach, and it cramped with the insistent, nauseating clarity of actual pain.

[ENTITY_NEEDS: DECLINING | HUNGER: 67/100 | THIRST: 82/100 | FATIGUE: 34/100]

Jax leaned against the timber fence at Millhaven's edge and systematically tested every interface function he could remember from the launch promotional materials. Friends list: [SOCIAL_SYSTEM: NULL]. Guild menu: [GUILD_INTERFACE: NULL]. Quest log: [QUEST_SYSTEM: NULL]. Skills tree: [SKILL_DATABASE: NULL].

Every system returned the same cold error.

Around him, launch day continued like a festival. Players shouted about leveling zones and drop rates. A group of six ran past in mismatched starter gear, laughing about forming a guild called "First Wave Legends." A Level 3 mage showed off a new spell to admirers in the town square, her hands crackling with rendered lightning that left no actual scorch marks on the cobblestones.

They saw a game. Jax saw [SPELL_EFFECT_ELECTRIC_ARC | DAMAGE: 15-20 | MANA_COST: 25 | PARTICLE_EMITTER: ACTIVE].

His corporate handler persona_he professional who'd done eleven extraction jobs without leaving a trace_ractured like bad code. His hands shook. Real shaking, or the avatar's physical simulation of panic? He couldn't tell anymore.

He had no backup plan for being trapped in a virtual world with a seven-figure payment deadline and no extraction protocol.

The sunset began its scripted cycle. [WORLD_TIME: 18:47 | SUN_ANGLE: 23_DEGREES | AMBIENT_LIGHT: DECREASING]. Jax felt the temperature drop against his skin_erfect sensory immersion, the kind of detail that had cost OmniCorp three billion in R&D. He could feel exhaustion creeping into his limbs like weight.

He needed food. Water. The basics.

Jax approached a starting zone NPC merchant stationed near the village well_ rotund man in an apron labeled "Merchant Hal" with [NPC_MERCHANT_HAL_01 | LEVEL: NULL | FACTION: MILLHAVEN_NEUTRAL] floating above his programmed smile.

"Welcome, traveler!" The NPC's mouth moved with uncanny valley precision. "I offer basic supplies for" The merchant's eyes locked on Jax's nameplate. His speech stuttered. "_or... I... I cannot process your... request. Please contact... [ADMIN_SUPPORT_TICKET_SYSTEM]..."

The merchant's eyes went blank. He turned ninety degrees and walked directly into the stone well, his pathfinding broken, and began walking in place against the obstruction.

Three players nearby burst into laughter. "Dude, you broke the tutorial NPC!"

Jax backed away, his code-vision showing the merchant's AI stuck in an error loop: [NPC_STATE: EXCEPTION_THROWN | DIALOGUE_TREE: CORRUPTED | PATHFINDING: FAILED].

He watched other players approach different NPCs. The interactions worked flawlessly_uest text appeared, starter equipment was distributed, dialogue options branched naturally. His [NULL_CLASS] status had locked him out of every progression system the game offered.

Desperate now, hunger at [ENTITY_NEEDS: HUNGER: 51/100 | STATUS: UNCOMFORTABLE], Jax noticed a discarded wooden stick near the training dummies. Some player had dropped it for better equipment. He picked it up manually_o inventory screen appeared, but his hands closed around solid wood.

The code-vision didn't just show labels anymore. It showed structure. He could see the damage calculation formula, the durability decay rate, even the memory address where the item's data lived in the server's RAM.

His interface chimed. A message window from Fix appeared_endered as a semi-transparent parchment scroll because even exploit backdoors had to maintain fantasy aesthetics:

"No progress detected. Mission parameters unchanged. You have 70 hours remaining. Failure means no payment and full exposure to OmniCorp legal. They have assets in forty-seven countries, Cipher. There is nowhere you can hide if you burn me."

Jax's jaw clenched. The mission was impossible. He had no abilities, no access to game systems, no way to even approach the auction house without being recognized as an error.

Movement caught his attention. Thirty feet away, a Level 2 warrior named "Ironclad" fought a boar near the forest edge. The boar landed a critical hit_he warrior's health dropped to zero. The player's body collapsed in a choreographed death animation, and his avatar became [PLAYER_CORPSE_LVL2 | ENTITY_STATE: DEAD | LOOT_TIMER: 60s].

But Jax saw something else: [PLAYER_CORPSE_LVL2 | ASSET_STATUS: FLAGGED_FOR_DELETION | TIME_TO_PURGE: 120s | GARBAGE_COLLECTION: QUEUED]

A countdown. The game was preparing to delete the corpse asset to free server memory.

He stared at the deletion timer, mesmerized. [TIME_TO_PURGE: 117s... 116s... 115s...]

His code-vision responded to his focus, highlighting the deletion flag with a pulsing red outline. A prompt appeared_omething that shouldn't exist in any player's interface:

[INTERRUPT_GARBAGE_COLLECTION? Y/N]

What would happen if he

The corpse despawned naturally at zero seconds. Ironclad respawned at the village shrine, already running back toward the forest, shouting in voice chat about revenge on the boar. The moment was gone.

Jax cursed under his breath. His hunger escalated to [ENTITY_NEEDS: CRITICAL | HUNGER: 34/100 | TIME_TO_STARVATION: 4.2_HOURS].

He stumbled toward the Millhaven tavern, where players celebrated around wooden tables laden with rendered food. A Level 4 rogue left a bread roll unattended while arguing about stat builds with his party. Jax grabbed it.

The theft was manual_o inventory prompt, no consumption animation. He had to physically bite into the bread like eating in the real world. The taste was perfect: yeast, salt, a hint of honey. OmniCorp's sensory engine was flawless.

[ENTITY_NEEDS: HUNGER: 52/100 | STATUS: STABILIZED]

A notification appeared: [MILLHAVEN_REPUTATION: -5 | STATUS: SUSPICIOUS | NPC_FACTION_RESPONSE: DECREASED]

The bartender NPC glared at him. Two guards by the door shifted their patrol routes to include more frequent passes near his position.

Jax left quickly, stealing two more rolls on his way out, accepting the reputation penalties because virtual social standing meant nothing when he was trapped and starving.

He found a barn at the village outskirts_ hay storage building with no NPCs and minimal player traffic. The hay was rendered with individual strands, each one a physics object that compressed under his weight. He lay down in it as night fell completely.

[WORLD_TIME: 22:14 | AMBIENT_LIGHT: 0.02 | TEMPERATURE: 14_CELSIUS]

Players logged out around him_heir avatars vanishing in blue particle effects as they disconnected safely, returning to their real bodies with the simple press of a menu button. Jax's [LOGOUT_FUNCTION: NULL] mocked him from the corner of his vision.

He had sixty-eight hours until Fix stopped paying and started destroying. He had no abilities, no allies, and no way out.

But he had seen something no other player could see: the deletion timer. The garbage collection protocol. The fundamental infrastructure that cleaned up data the game no longer needed.

If he couldn't log out, he'd learn to exploit the corruption itself.

Jax closed his eyes in the virtual darkness and made a hacker's promise to himself: if the game wanted him to be an error, he'd become the kind of error that broke everything.