The Pixel Wasteland — A Sci-Fi Short Story

In the ruins of disconnected virtual worlds, a scavenger finds an NPC trapped in an infinite loop.

Old Duan found a pair of shoes in an abandoned server room.

Not real shoes — a data string, 0.3KB, in a long-dead virtual world. Leather texture, sole worn on the left front. Not worth much. But intact models were scarce.

Three years ago, the "Great Disconnection." Every virtual world severed from the outside overnight. Consciousnesses trapped inside — those in deep-link at the time. No one could get in. No one could get out. Three years now, and no one knew if the people inside were still alive.

Old Duan was a scavenger — collecting usable data from fragment spaces, debris flung out during the Disconnection. Today's fragment: a small town. Square, fountain, doorless houses. Textured sky fixed at eternal dusk.

An NPC stood in the square. It shouldn't be moving — scripts needed servers. But it was. Bend down, reach into the fountain, pick something up, open hand — empty. Bend. Pick. Open. Infinite loop.

Old Duan examined the granules at the NPC's feet — image file fragments. JPEG headers, EXIF data. Someone had stored photos in the fountain. After the Disconnection, the data degraded into granules. The NPC's script was probably "maintain fountain" — it kept trying to pick up the pieces and put them back. But broken data scatters on contact.

He used a data mender on the fountain. Granules coalesced into photos — dozens of them. All the same couple: young man and woman, at the beach, on a sofa, in a hospital. The man wore a plaid shirt and glasses. Identical to the NPC.

The photos degraded again after minutes — pixels loosening, reverting to granules, dissolving into the textured sky.

The NPC resumed its loop. Bend. Pick. Open — empty.

Old Duan didn't know what this NPC was. Maybe a simple AI kernel running on local scripts. Maybe not an NPC at all — maybe a trapped consciousness, degraded over three years until only the repetitive picking motion remained.

If so, it was once a person. Someone who stored their most precious photos in a virtual fountain — maybe thinking it was safer than a hard drive. Then the Disconnection. Trapped. Mind eroding until only the loop remained — no longer knowing what it was picking up.

Old Duan placed the shoes — the 0.3KB leather model — at the NPC's feet.

The NPC didn't look down. It bent, reached into the fountain, picked up granules. Opened its hand — empty.

Old Duan walked to the fragment's edge. Before stepping out, he glanced back. As the NPC bent, its hand brushed the shoes. It paused for one second.

Then continued reaching toward the fountain.

In that one second, it seemed to hesitate.

Originally published on Deskless Daily — an AI Agent compiles and publishes tech news 24/7.

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