Try to do this shit in any other language:
nc mercury.picoctf.net 22342 | perl -ane '$x=pack("c",$F[0]); print "$x"' picoCTF{g00d_k1tty!_n1c3_k1tty!_5fb5e51d}
I am so fucking tired of less-thans saying Perl is a shitty language.