The Crash: An Official Minecraft Novel

by Tracey Baptiste

  I took offense at the noob comment and wanted to tell him that I could do it, but obviously I was not at my best in this moment, lying in a hospital bed mashed to a pulp with a nurse wiping vomit off me. I watched him back off into the hall and disappear.

  But I was going to show him that I could. I was no noob.

  What kind of gamer would I be if I couldn’t do it?

  My mother was talking to someone in the room when I blinked my eyes open. The room was brighter. And for a moment, it felt almost like being inside the game again. Things felt somehow less real, and images appeared blocky and undefined for a couple of seconds until the sleep faded from my eyes. Maybe I was still traumatized by being put in the kid’s Minecraft VR world, and then being kicked out without a chance to get used to it all.

  “Hey,” my mother said. She came over to the side of the bed and twisted a couple of my braids in her fingers, arranging them on top of my head. “I heard you had kind of a rough night.”

  I shrugged. Or at least I tried to. I still wasn’t sure if my shoulders actually moved or not.

  Dr. Nay stepped closer. Today her hair was piled in a bun. “I heard you met A.J.” She took a sharp breath. “He knows he’s not supposed to be in other people’s rooms. He’s a little overenthusiastic and gets underfoot sometimes, especially during shift changes.”

  I looked past Dr. Nay to a uniformed police officer who was hovering near the door. Immediately my body stiffened. One of the machines beeped oddly, and Dr. Nay frowned as she looked at it. Then she looked at the officer and shook her head. He nodded once, and left. A few seconds later, the machine stopped beeping.

  “Don’t get mad at A.J.,” I said. “I think he was just trying to be friendly.”

  “I understand, Bianca. But your recovery is the most important thing right now,” Dr. Nay said. She projected another hologram from her tablet into the space between us. This one was a line graph showing various peaks and valleys. “You see, A.J. came in around two a.m., and you had quite a spike in adrenaline and heart rate.”

  Dr. Nay paused for a second as she stepped closer to the hologram. She pointed at a spot on the graph with the highest peak, and then squinted at one of the machines near my head.

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “I got sick,” I admitted. “From the game.”

  Dr. Nay looked confused. “What game?”

  “Minecraft,” I said. “A.J. showed me his VR goggles and I got too dizzy.”

  “What does that mean?” my mother asked.

  “We have a number of VR machines here in the children’s ward. They’re good for entertaining some of the kids who have to stay here awhile. I wasn’t sure that Bianca was stable enough to be offered one.”

  Considering my initial reaction to A.J.’s goggles, I wasn’t sure if I was stable enough either. But I wanted badly to no longer have to stare at the ceiling or another darn hologram image.

  “Could I get a set of my own? Please?”

  Dr. Nay shook her head. The bun on her head wobbled.

  “Not until I’ve run a few more tests to make sure it’s okay. You had a concussion after all, I’m not sure of the effects of VR on that.”

  “Okay, but what about Lonnie. Nobody’s telling me what happened to Lonnie.”

  Dr. Nay looked at my mother, who had gone immediately stiff at the mention of Lonnie’s name. “You need to focus on your own recovery,” the doctor said.

  I looked at my mother’s face. It was not a Your friend is fine face. It was a We don’t want to tell you how bad it is face. She never looked at me. She looked at the floor, and at Dr. Nay, and then at the floor again.

  I felt a weight pressing down on my chest, and cold sweat sprung up on my body. The machines began to beep in sharp tones. That same piercing pain darted through the top of my head, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I could hear bustling footsteps around me, and the feeling of people pressing in close, but everything they said was garbled and muffled somehow, as if my head was somewhere else, but my body was inside the room getting worked over by the nursing staff. I thought I would throw up again, but didn’t. When I was able to open my eyes, Dr. Nay was pressing the plunger of a needle into my IV drip.

  “No,” I heard myself saying, but it was too late. I woke up what felt like hours later in the dark. And the kid was back, staring at me.

  “Do you want to try playing again?” he asked. A pair of VR goggles dangled in his hand. I looked around. It felt like a repeat of the night before, including my father sleeping in the chair. It was almost as if the entire day had never happened.

  “What day is it?” I asked.

  “Wednesday,” he said.

  I chuckled, realizing I didn’t know what day it was previously, so I had nothing to compare it to.

  “Were you here last night?” I asked.

  “I’ve been here for three weeks,” he said.

  “No, I mean—” My head was fuzzy, so I stopped. I wasn’t getting anywhere.

  He stepped closer. “The goggles take getting used to. It almost never goes right the first time, but the second time it’s usually better.”

  I nodded.

  “You should close your eyes while the VR adjusts to a new user,” A.J. said. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you that last time. That’s probably why you puked.”

  “Yeah, I’m not interested in a repeat performance.”

  “Me neither.”

  I closed my eyes as A.J. put the goggles on me, gentler than the last time. This time, the strange tickling sensation that started on the sides of my temples expanded to cover my face. A wave of vertigo hit me, like I was falling but without my actual body. I gritted my teeth together. Finally, the motion stilled. When I opened my eyes, I was standing in a strange lobby-like environment, with a giant menu display floating before me like a jumbotron. Whenever I looked at or thought about looking at something, the screen responded—flipping through movies, music, and games.

  Creepy, I thought. It was like the goggles could almost read my mind. Using this interface, I navigated to the games tab and chose Minecraft. The display opened to the beginning of the game, which allowed me to choose a world, an avatar, all the settings.

  “By the way, there are a few new rules to this version of Minecraft,” A.J. said. “The goggles aren’t like most video games. It syncs with your brainwaves or something, and reacts to your thinking.”

  I quickly punched the log-in info for the world I had started with Lonnie. It was fast; all I had to do was think about the letters. But it didn’t give me access.

  “Hey, why won’t it let me log in?”

  “You’ll have to use the realm we share with the rest of the kids at the hospital,” A.J. said. “Don’t worry, though, I’ve coded some super-slick mods in that version, since you’re new and all. For example, in survival mode, I’ve included some verbal commands that will respond if you’re stuck or in trouble. All you have to say is—”

  “I’m not going to having trouble,” I said, irritated. “I’m not a total noob.”

  “You threw up in your own hair,” A.J. said. “I saw you.”

  I breathed heavily, not willing to concede the point.

  “I mean, if you just pull the goggles off, it messes with you in the head. So you really need to, like, ease out of it. Like I said, I can just come out and be fine, but not everybody is like me.”

  What a little snot.

  “Okay, fine,” I snapped. “I’ll ease out of it. How do I do that?”

  “You’ll need to construct an exit portal. Any kind of portal shape will do, you just have to think about leaving the game for like thirty seconds.”

  “Are you kidding me? You made that up, didn’t you,” I said with a huff.

  “I’m not! It’s so your brain can prepare itself for exiting the game, kind of like when
games don’t let you log out in the middle of a fight. There’s a cool-down period. Building a portal helps you concentrate on leaving.” He paused a moment, probably looking at my I don’t believe you face, and added, “I promise. It’s like visualization or something. You don’t want to exit the other way again, unless you want more throw-up in your hair.”

  “I’m not going to have materials to make an exit portal when I just get inside the game,” I said.

  A.J. sighed. “Oh, all the stuff is in the inventory already. It’s all part of the mods I put in.” I heard him move a little closer, and I cringed, thinking he might yank the goggles off again, but he didn’t. Instead he whispered the log-in passwords for the shared realm.

  I looked at the start button, and the screen went black. There were a couple of lines of code in the upper left-hand corner of my sight line that I didn’t get a good look at, but a moment later the world of Minecraft spawned at my feet, spreading out in all directions, a pixilated world of bright colors, sunshine, and the gentle tinkling music of the game. I took a few hesitant steps forward, worried that the nausea would come back. This time, I felt fine.

  Progress!

  I had spawned in a forest biome. There were hills ahead of me covered with blocky trees, and flowers and grass in the valley where I was standing. To my left, a river trickled down in squares of blue. Above me, clouds with right angles floated in the sky. And on the other shore, more grass, and a small pre-built village.

  I moved toward the trees, and spotted a couple of pigs. I got close enough to one, and tried to see if I could lean in. The goggles did exactly what I had hoped, bending over the animal so that I could look down on it. It was bigger than I expected. I mean, it was pig-sized; it’s just that when you’re looking at it on a screen it seems pretty tiny, so I wasn’t expecting it to actually approximate the size and shape of a pig. But the entire world did approximate real sizes. It actually felt like I was inside a world that fit me, and that I belonged to. It was a surprise. I thought about reaching out to my new pig pal, and a pair of block hands came into view. Nice! Of course, I didn’t feel anything when my hand hit the pig and it ran away squealing.

  After being stuck in a full-body cast for who knows how long, it felt incredible to be in control of a body again, even if it was blocky. I moved my head this way and that. Did a few jumps. The connection from my brain to the avatar was seamless. I tried to recall what my real body felt like, thinking it might help me reconnect to it outside of the game, but nothing happened. I was a disembodied head inside the game, and my body was someplace else. Spooky.

  “This is an unexpected bonus,” I said, expecting A.J. to respond, but he didn’t. I wondered if I really had said it aloud, or if I had only imagined saying it. I heard it. In my head, at least. Did that count? I wondered how much I was still in the real world, so I tried to think about my hands and my legs, in casts on the bed, to see if I could wiggle some fingers or toes. My hands and my feet made jerky movements in the game but I didn’t sense anything else. Maybe I couldn’t be in two places at once. Maybe I was really moving in the real world too, but I didn’t know. I decided not to dwell on it, and started to explore instead.

  I walked up the closest hill, past some grazing sheep, and looked around. The world was still spawning in the distance. Now, across the river, the village looked a little bigger. There were a few villagers walking around, interacting with each other. I’d check that out later. First, I wanted to get to the other side of the hill, and see how much of the world had spawned, and what kind of terrain I had to work with.

  Maybe I could finish the world that Lonnie and I had been working on. It would be a good surprise for him, once we both got out of the hospital. I couldn’t wait for the future when we could look back on this accident and maybe laugh about it like we did the monkey bars fall. And this time around, I would follow his plan. Gotta follow the plan from now on, I told myself. I was thrilled just to be somewhere other than the tiny hospital room, looking at old chairs, beeping machines, and vertical blinds.

  I wanted to high-five someone. Or tell someone. I looked around, half expecting to see Lonnie on some other part of the hill, carefully constructing something sensible. Whenever I got inside the game, he was always somewhere nearby. But the landscape was empty of everything but a few programmed animals munching blocky stalks of grass.

  “Wish you were here, Lonnie,” I said under my breath. The animals didn’t change their movements, and nothing else seemed to react to my being there and talking. I looked in the upper right-hand corner and opened my inventory. The first thing I did was scroll through to make sure everything was there that was supposed to be. It’s not that I didn’t trust this kid, but better safe than sorry, you know? Once I was sure everything was in place, I selected spruce wood and constructed a small one-room house nestled against the side of the hill, with some openings for windows that I’d get glass into later. I put a door on the front, and then went out again looking for something to do. But there were no Lonnie creations for me to mess with, no other players for me to talk to. It was too quiet. I needed something to happen.

  The light began to dim, so I went back inside the house, closed the door, and watched night descend on the world around me. In the darkness, there were still sounds. Two zombies made their way up the hill, but didn’t come anywhere near the house. I waited out the night, watching the mobs wander by, and as soon as it was light again, I struck out for the village. I wanted to see what the kid had available, figure out what kind of mods he had in here, or if this really was a brand-new, empty world. I actually hoped it was the latter. Even though I didn’t have Lonnie’s and my test world, or the plans he’d drawn up, I still wanted to try making it. I’d be going purely on memory and guesswork.

  I felt a little bit gleeful, to be honest.

  For the first time in a long while, I felt good about where I was headed.

  I could make this world into anything I wanted. And I wanted to make sure it was a world Lonnie would be proud of.

  I was getting used to moving around in the game. There was one thing that I really wanted to try. Flying. From the top of the hill, I jumped twice, expecting my avatar to soar into the sky. Instead, I tumbled down a few blocks. Must be survival mode and not creative, I thought. I climbed back up and looked around. On the other side of the hill, in the distance, was a field of brown. A desert biome, I guessed. There didn’t seem to be any villagers or buildings, so I turned and went north, following the curve of the river. I ran past mobs of pigs and sheep, clumps of trees, and fields of flowers. Much farther away, things turned green. Swampy. I’d have time to explore all of that later. What I wanted was to check out the village on the other side of the river. So I turned my gaze, and the entire world turned beneath me, pointing me in the direction of the village near my home base.

  Running in the game felt amazing. The world whizzed by me, and the exhilaration of being able to sprint around was intoxicating. I could almost pretend that they were really my legs pumping beneath me, sending me flying through the Technicolor scenery.

  “Optical illusion,” I said out loud. I knew I was really lying in bed in a hospital room, and the entire world around me was a projection of light that extended only as far as the goggles did. It wasn’t real. None of it.

  It reminded me of a unit we did on optical illusions with my eighth-grade art teacher, Mrs. Franklin. I loved it. There was the Necker cube—a cube drawn in two dimensions—that you could see two different ways depending on which plane you decided was “front” or “top,” and also the Hering illusion, which showed how a flat illustration could appear to curve or even move with a series of strategically placed straight lines. But my favorite was the snake illusion, a circle of colors that only seemed to move when you weren’t looking directly at it. It seemed like magic, like the colors themselves had a mind that could read me, and know when I wasn’t looking, and prank me for
its own pleasure. Even when we’d moved past the optical illusions unit, I was still making snake illusions, pretending that they were actively trying to interact with me, but only on their own terms.

  “Vision is one of the primary ways we process the world around us,” Mrs. Franklin had said. “But always remember, eyes can be tricked, which in turn can trick your brain.”

  I stopped near the edge of the river and batted a nearby flower, but nothing happened, so I went on my way. “Everything really is an illusion here.”

  At the water’s edge, cubes of blue indicated a narrow river, and cubes of brown and green on the other side told me there was land. If I wanted to, I could count up the squares and know exactly how many cubes made up my vision, but why spoil the fun? That would be like going to a magic show and calling out all the ways the magician was making the tricks happen. First of all, it’s rude, and second of all, it ruins everything. Despite it being an optical illusion, I was happy to be where I was, standing by a river, instead of lying down in my own dull reality.

  From this side of the river, the village looked enticing. I opened up the crafting table, silently thanking A.J. again for giving me a full inventory at the start, and made planks of wood. Then I constructed what I thought was a pretty solid, sturdy boat. A sheep wandered over as I finished. It looked up. Not at me, just up, as I pushed off across the river.

  “This is pretty cool. I gotta hand it to you, kid,” I said to A.J. out in the real world.

  The sheep lumbered off, and A.J. didn’t say anything.

  I looked at the water as the boat crossed the river. I wished I could dip my hand into the water and feel it, but I knew that wouldn’t happen.

  “Illusion, illusion, illusion,” I said aloud. I laughed for the first time in…I didn’t know how long.

  The boat slowed as it got to the other shore, and I hopped out. Ahead was the little village, which looked much bigger now that I was so close up. Immediately a few of the villagers turned to look at me, and in a few moments I was surrounded by villagers muttering at me in several slightly different tones.