Jacob Hemlock was twenty-seven years old, and in the eyes of the world, he was a ghost. He had no girlfriend, no job, and a list of former friends who had long ago dismissed him as a boring recluse. His parents saw him as a disappointment, a failure to launch, who was simply too lazy to apply for college or too unmotivated to keep a job.
They were wrong about the motivation. Jacob was not lazy. He was just optimized for a different reality.
Inside the climate-controlled stillness of his bedroom, Jacob was a titan. He sat motionless in his chair, but in the digital expanse of Farm Online, he was currently negotiating a complex export deal for three thousand tons of genetically enriched soybeans.
This was not a casual game. It was a second life. Reiscore Games had built the simulation with a terrifying dedication to realism. The company founder, Anthony Kerin, had poured his own tragic history into the code. Kerin had lost his real-world family farm to financial ruin and fled to the city to become a programmer. He used that pain to ensure Farm Online was unforgiving.
There were no shortcuts here. To succeed, a player had to understand soil chemistry at a molecular level, engineer irrigation logistics, and master the volatile commodities market. There were tutorials and online forums, but ultimately, the success of the farm relied on the player.
Jacob understood it all. He was ranked on the global leaderboards, commanding one of the most profitable agricultural empires in the server.
He tapped a sequence of commands, adjusting the nitrogen levels in his eastern fields. If he were this competent in the waking world, he would be running an R&D department or managing a supply chain. He had tried, of course. He had landed jobs before, and the work itself was easy. It was the people who were the problem.
In the real world, you could not simply click a button to optimize a conversation. Real people were irrational and messy. When a coworker made a mistake, Jacob told them so, bluntly and efficiently. In Farm Online, pointing out an error to an NPC resulted in a predictable dip in reputation that could be gamed back to maximum efficiency. In the real world, it resulted in a visit to HR and a termination letter.
So he retreated here. There was no HR on the farm. Just the soil, the market, and the math.
Jacob blinked, his eyes stinging. He had been online for thirty hours straight. The immersion of the VR headset was total, but his body was beginning to scream for attention. A sharp, undeniable pressure built in his bladder.
He ignored it for another ten minutes, finishing his harvest rotation, until the physical need became painful. He groaned and pulled away from the console. He did not want to fully disconnect. The market rates were fluctuating, and he needed to be back in two minutes.
He stood up on stiff, trembling legs. He began to navigate the short distance from his desk to the ensuite bathroom by memory, his fingers fumbling to loosen the headset straps. He was rushing. The urgency of his bladder overtook his coordination.
He shoved the bathroom door open and reached for his waistband. He still had the headset half-on, the display obscuring his vision with a translucent overlay of corn futures. He wasn't quite over the toilet yet.
The stream started before he was ready.
Warm liquid splashed against his bare feet and the slick linoleum floor. Jacob cursed aloud, realizing his mistake. He shuffled to the left, trying to correct his aim, but his foot landed squarely in the puddle he had just created.
Thirty hours of sitting had left his equilibrium shot. His heel slid out as if he were on ice.
There was no time to grab the sink. No time to scream. Jacob fell hard, his weight driving his upper body down toward the porcelain rim of the toilet bowl.
The impact was a thunderclap in the small room. The porcelain shattered under the force of his skull, creating a jagged, razor-sharp edge. As he collapsed downward, his neck slid deeply against the broken ceramic shard. It acted like a makeshift scalpel, slicing cleanly through his right jugular.
He hit the floor.
Jacob did not feel pain. The blow to the head had knocked him unconscious instantly. He did not feel the warmth of his own blood pumping rhythmically out of his neck, soaking the bathmat and painting the walls in a gruesome spray. He did not feel his life ending. He simply ceased to process data.
The simulation continued without him.
His parents found him the next morning. They had knocked, received no answer, and even sent in-game messages that went unread. When they pushed open the bathroom door, the smell of copper and bodily fluids hit them first.
Jacob was curled next to the broken toilet, his pants around his ankles, and the expensive VR headset flung casually next to his pale, cold body. His parents looked down at him, but the overwhelming emotion in the room was not heartbreak. It was a dull, heavy pity. It was the resignation of seeing a prophecy fulfilled. They had always feared he would end up like this.
The funeral was a quiet affair because there was no one to invite. To save on costs, his parents purchased a basic pine box and placed him in the cheapest available plot.
No friends came to say goodbye. No guildmates from Farm Online held a vigil. The seasons in the game changed, his crops withered, and his digital empire was slowly reclaimed by the server's algorithm.
In the real world, his marble headstone was left untreated. Within a few years, the weather wore down the engraving until it was impossible to read, erasing the name of Jacob Hemlock from the earth just as completely as he had been erased from the server.