Tales of an 8-Bit Kitten

by Cube Kid

  “I don’t meant to interrupt,” I said, “but I’m starving. Maybe we could talk more over dinner?”

  The other three looked at me as if I’d just asked if they wanted to help build a snow fort in the Nether.

  “It’s not even lunchtime,” Max said.

  “Oh. What can I say? I’ve been living in the Nether. Having no sky kinda messes with your sense of time.”

  Stump retrieved a strange-looking item from his inventory and placed it on to one of the bookcases. It had a familiar scent.…

  I sniffed again. “What is that?!”

  “A stormberry cake,” Stump said. “My finest creation.”

  “See, that’s what I don’t get,” Kolb said. “All this new stuff … it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What do you mean?” Stump asked.

  “Well …”

  Kolb went on to explain that the game server, Aetheria, was drastically different from normal Minecraft.

  Minecraft had changed a lot since it was first created—thirty years and still going strong—yet, the Aetheria server ran a mod, which further altered the game’s rules.

  Stormberries were one of the countless new things the mod included. They grew on leaf blocks arranged to resemble bushes. And these blue and yellow berries could be used to craft a variety of different food items: stormberry cookies, stormberry tea, stormberry rolls and biscuits.…

  “But not cakes,” he said. “That crafting recipe just wasn’t in the game’s code. Someone had suggested it on the forums once, but Entity never programmed it in. Some of us figure that whatever happened during the event not only trapped us inside but also somehow unlocked a beta version of the server. A new update that Entity was working on.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Max said. “All right, forget all that. What about you being a Savior?”

  Kolb took a deep breath. “Entity added these things called quests. Like, you talk to a villager, and the villager asks you to fetch him some lava or something. Boom, you’re on a quest. So you go scoop up some lava in a bucket, give it to the villager, and he gives you a reward of some kind, and the server rewards you with experience points, and the quest is complete. Right, anyway, um, I guess I was given a special quest. Quests come in three different types. First, there’s your ordinary quest. Simple ones like fetching a villager something. Then there are quest chains. You complete one quest, it leads to another, which leads to another. Finally, you have quest trees. They’re more complicated, nonlinear. Me being a Savior is all part of one big quest tree.”

  “And what are you supposed to do?” I asked.

  “I have to re-forge this.”

  He pulled out a sword from his inventory. Its blade seemed to be broken.

  “I recognize that metal,” Max said. “That rainbow effect … that’s adamant, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. This is Critbringer, one of the swords crafted by Entity thousands of years ago. He gave it to me in-game before everything went black, said it was one of the most powerful quest items ever made.”

  Stump didn’t seem too impressed: “If it’s so powerful, why is it broken?”

  “It’s just part of the lore. Entity wrote detailed history for the server. According to the story, Herobrine tried to destroy the blade during the Second War. Now, seven fragments are supposedly scattered across the world. Shards, they’re called. Upon finding one, I can forge it back into the blade by re-crafting it. Each shard added will slightly upgrade the sword’s abilities. Damage and on-hit effects, attack speed, all that. The problem is locating the pieces.”

  “I saw one!” I blurted out. “A few days ago. In the Nether.”

  I told him about Rarg and how he had taken EnderStar’s secret treasure horde.

  The human listened intently. “I have to say, I’ve been too preoccupied with the events here. Perhaps I’ll pay them a little visit?”

  Max opened the huge tome again. “You mentioned something about Herobrine trying to destroy the sword. Look. It’s all right here in this book.”

  “That’s the lore.” Kolb moved over and flipped through the pages. “But it isn’t complete. The full lore is over one thousand pages long. Entity wrote this stuff over two years ago. When he became too busy with programming, he appointed several players as scribes to keep adding to the story.”

  “But you said Entity crafted that sword thousands of years ago,” Stump said.

  “Right. After the event, it’s almost like whatever was written down in the lore became reality here.”

  (Um. Wow. Whenever I level-up, I really need to put more points into Higher Intelligence, because I don’t understand much of anything.)

  As far as I can grasp:

  There was a virtual reality game on Earth known as Minecraft.

  The world was coming to an end, so Kolb retreated into the game to say goodbye to his friends.

  As their final hour approached, the event took place—everyone in the game blacked out and woke up here, and the game mysteriously came to life?

  I glanced at the stormberry cake. “Can I eat now?”

  “Sure.” Stump handed me a slice. “Nothing better than home-crafted food.”

  After a cautious sniff, I ate the slice in a single bite—and promptly spit out crumbs. “Is … that … really … food?!”

  That was Stump’s tipping point. He was already in a bad mood after I devoured half a stack of his sugar (sugar he crafted using his mom’s special recipe, a family secret passed down through the generations), but insulting his crafting like that? It was almost as if he was a creeper in a villager costume ready to explode.

  This morning, a boy named Bumbi taught me how to build.

  At least, I think.

  My goal was to build a chicken house behind the school. (I think it’s called a “chicken coop,” but Bumbi kept saying “chicken house.”)

  Then he stopped giving me oak blocks. Because he ran out. (Is he really a teacher? Shouldn’t a teacher be more prepared?) Luckily, he had some cobblestone.

  When he ran out of that, he gave me some gravel. When he ran out of that, he gave me some pumpkins.

  Oak stairs are much better for roof building, he said. And when you run out of stairs, well … you’d better use fence. Yeah, that’s it.

  Oh, but wait! Every good chicken house needs a door, right?

  Later on today, I caught up with Breeze again.

  She could sense that something was wrong. She kept asking me what was on my mind.

  And she knew that it was more than just that horrible building experience with Bumbi. She knew it was something serious.

  I wanted to tell her about what I’d learned yesterday with Kolb, but I’d promised not to say anything. Are we really living in a game? Am I just one of its characters?

  If I really am just a so-called NPC, how am I able to think and feel … ?

  And what about my memories? My past life? Endless days just being a playful kitten—are all of those memories false?

  I’m determined to learn more about my existence. I want to know who I am. What I am. There must be a reason for all of this. For this world. For me.

  And suddenly I recalled what Rarg had said to me. Sometimes, he doesn’t feel real. I feel the same way when I’m tired or stressed out. Could it really be that I’m nothing more than … ?

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Just had a … bad day.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  As we wandered through the streets, I noticed that strange old man again. Korbius.

  Breeze spotted him, too. It was pretty hard not to, honestly. He was just ten blocks away, hiding behind some flowers.

  Breeze swiftly moved up to the rosebushes. “Why are you spying on us?”

  The man stepped back, flustered. “What? Me
? Spying on you?! Why no, I was simply … admiring these flowers! Yes! I love flowers! I’m a real connoisseur!”

  “Oh? Then tell me: What color is owl’s eye?”

  “Well, hmm … I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of such a flower. Could it be that I’ve met someone more knowledgeable about flowers than even myself? I find that hard to believe!”

  “Just tell us why you keep following us,” Breeze said. “I saw you at the school. The Clothing Castle, too.”

  (Really? She must have fantastic eyesight, because I didn’t see him then. Although I did get the feeling that someone was watching us.)

  “Merely a coincidence,” he said. “After all, I am a traveling merchant. I’m always moving around!”

  “Whatever. See you around.”

  When she said this, Korbius smiled and said, “Oh, yes. I will be seeing you again. Count on it.”

  Breeze stared at him for a moment, then turned to me. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “What’s with that guy?” I asked. “Was he really following us?”

  “Yes. Listen, I need to go speak with my father. Maybe you can go have a rest now that your training is complete. See you back at the house?”

  “Okay.”

  “By the way,” she said, “my father agreed to let me adopt you.”

  “Adopt? What is that?”

  “It means my house is your house now.”

  “Forever?”

  She smiled. “Forever.”

  Last night, I had horrible nightmares.

  I kept dreaming about what that human had said.

  And Runt. When will I meet him? What will happen once I do?

  I woke up in the middle of the night and tossed and turned on the carpet of Breeze’s room. She was stirring in her bed, perhaps having nightmares as well.

  I’m not sure why, but … I tried using the tellstone again. When I did, a variety of images flashed across the crystal’s surface, from many different people, in many different places.

  Cube Kid is the pen name of Erik Gunnar Taylor, a writer who has lived in Alaska his whole life. A big fan of video games—especially Minecraft—he discovered early that he also had a passion for writing fan fiction. Cube Kid’s unofficial Minecraft fan fiction series, Diary of a Wimpy Villager, came out as e-books in 2015 and immediately met with great success in the Minecraft community. They were published in France by 404 éditions in paperback and now return in this same format to Cube Kid’s native country under the title Diary of an 8-Bit Warrior. When not writing, Cube Kid likes to travel, putter with his car, devour fan fiction, and play his favorite video game.