He smiled.

“Welcome to Panau. Population: 1. You.”

He blew up a bridge using only a rubber band and the concept of momentum.

“You have liberated Panau. Total disk writes: 0. Actual game data: none. You imagined everything. But wasn’t that more fun?”

And somewhere, in the compressed void, a tiny Rico Rodriguez grappled a star and laughed.

At 4 a.m., he reached the final mission. The screen displayed: “Kill Baby Panay. File size: 3KB.”