So, a couple of things. First, we were all the same size. I’m used to being short and having to look up at people, so that was weird. And second, all of them were looking at me with these blank, unfeeling eyes that I thought I’d be used to from playing the game, but something about the way their glances seemed to bounce right off me made me feel cold. I muscled my way through the throng of villagers and walked toward the first building—a butcher’s shop. There was a bench outside and a pen around the back. This was all usual stuff, but I didn’t expect that walking up to the building would feel so impressive and realistic. The door even squeaked a little as I went in. The butcher looked up and muttered in my direction, but when I didn’t engage, it went back to working on something behind the counter. I thought about the meat I could get from the butcher, and that alone was effective enough that I thought my stomach actually rumbled. I wondered when the last time was that I’d had a solid meal. I didn’t remember eating anything since before the accident. I wondered what had happened to my brownies. There was the IV drip, which I guessed was keeping me packed with nutrients, but what I was suddenly craving was a ham sandwich.
I picked up some pork, and the butcher came over. The trade popped up just over the villager’s head, so I made it and walked out. The butcher muttered again at my exit.
With my VR hunger satisfied, I went back over to the water right outside the village and began to work on phase one of Lonnie’s master plan—making obsidian for the nether portal. Everyone knows that if water hits a lava source block, it becomes obsidian. Most players would just carry some buckets of water into an underground cave, but Lonnie always had a flair for the dramatic. It was his idea to dig down until we hit a lava pool, then divert an entire river into it.
“Just imagine it!” he’d said as he showed me his schematics. “A waterfall into lava and boom, obsidian for days!”
“Man, now I really wish you were here, Lonnie,” I whispered. He would make the work go by much faster. If I could have rolled up my sleeves in Minecraft, I would have. “Let’s do this,” I said to no one, dusting my palms together. Well, my limbs didn’t really touch. My block hands moved near each other in a way that looked more like I was about to play rock, paper, scissors, with only the obvious draw as the outcome. Not having actual hands was a minor drawback, but there were many advantages in my new pixelated existence, too. Using the pickaxe in my inventory, I started digging out a new flow from the main river.
After a few minutes of working, I felt the weight of someone looking at me. I knew that I was inside a game. I knew that this was all an illusion. But that look felt real somehow. It was like those intense looks you feel when you can tell someone is staring at you from across the room, even if your back is turned.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “It’s just a game.”
Still, I turned to look. A villager in a dark blue shirt with a large X crisscrossing it stared at me from across the river near where the boat was docked. I blinked a few times, wondering if I was just being weird, or maybe I was getting disoriented again. But the villager simply stared back.
A spark of recognition ignited in my brain. The back of my neck prickled. I knew someone with that exact T-shirt.
“L-Lonnie?”
I could almost feel my pores constrict. How was this possible? It wasn’t Lonnie’s avatar, by any means. It lacked his skin mods and cape. But no doubt about it, the villager was somehow Lonnie.
The strangely dressed villager suddenly disappeared back into the village.
“Hey, wait! Come back!”
I took off after it. My mind was racing. Was there a glitch when Lonnie tried to log on, and he somehow got zapped into a villager?
I was running past the shops and houses, down a cobblestone street that turned away from the river and toward that villager. Every turn, the Lonnie villager eluded me, and ran down another path. I chased until I couldn’t orient myself anymore, and I had to look around for the hills to know which way the river was, and therefore home base. I turned down what seemed to be an abandoned alleyway that was more crudely constructed than the rest of the village, and found myself staring down a villager in the shadow of one of the buildings. I moved forward, and it moved forward too, matching me step for step. I moved to the side. So did it. Now it was in the light and I could see that it was the same villager again. Blue shirt. Big X across the front. I could feel adrenaline start to pump through me. My head hurt for a couple of seconds, but then it stopped.
Until this villager showed up, I’d felt perfectly fine inside the game. But now? I could feel my heart beat in my ears. I gulped down some air and swallowed hard enough to settle the rising gall inside myself.
“What happened to you, Lonnie? What room did they put you in?”
The villager moved toward me in slightly jerky steps, like it was hesitating to see what I would do first. He made no sound and turned down a different path away from me. His avatar was really Lonnie-like, with dark skin and gray eyes. I tried to search his movements for some sign of the Lonnie I knew on the outside, something that could help me be sure this was really him. Just as I got closer, he looked up, directly at me, and I jumped back.
“Hello, Earth to Elon,” I yelled, using Lonnie’s real name. “You’re on mute or something.” I waited and strained my ears for any sound other than the music and sounds of general movement inside the game, but there was nothing. I looked around the interface. The only other villager I’d gotten up close and personal with was the butcher, and when it was close enough, the health bar and the trade bar came up right over it. But not with this one. I wondered if it was some kind of glitch or a new type of character that didn’t interact the way others did. Maybe it was a VR feature and that’s why I didn’t get it.
“You’re being super weird,” I said. I tried to touch Lonnie’s head but he just backed away. His eyes were dull, just like all the other villagers. It was unsettling, but I pushed that feeling down.
“Well, as long as you’re here. I need your help by the river.”
I took off in the direction of my ongoing project of diverting the water flow to a new pond. Surprisingly, Lonnie followed, still not speaking. Ahead were the hills where I’d built my one-room cabin, which meant the river was a little to the right. I moved down the street, knocking villagers out of the way as I went. Each of them turned to look in my direction, but not really at me. Like how villagers were supposed to do.
I got to the riverbank and quickly crafted Lonnie a second boat, saying, “Come on!” before jumping into my own. As we rowed to the other shore, I looked back at the village. It looked the same. Bright, bustling.
When I got out of the game world, I was going to make the nurses tell me where real-life Lonnie was. But for now I was content to have some help for once. There’d be plenty of time to figure out real life. What I wanted to do was explore and build with my best friend.
Now, it was time to play.
“Be careful where you stab that shovel! We’re probably getting close!” I shouted down to Lonnie. I stood overlooking the ridge of a very large hole we’d dug beside the new pond, waiting to unleash the water. It was Lonnie’s job to hit the first level of lava, and hightail it out of there using the stone steps we’d built leading out of the massive ditch.
I had instructed Lonnie to start digging down, which he did. However, he didn’t really seem to understand my directions, digging straight down rather than creating more of a downward slope to use as an escape if necessary. Avatar or not, the last thing I wanted to deal with was a roasted Lonnie.
“Slow down!” I yelled again.
There was a sudden hiss and pop, and red-hot lava started bubbling up from the hole Lonnie had made in the ground. Lonnie just stood there, blank-eyed, as flames licked at his clothes.
“What are you doing, you dummy? Get out!”
Lonnie jumped up as if my co
mmand, and not the heat, had alerted him to the imminent danger. He began to run up the stone steps with the lava flow right on his heels.
I shook my head. Something was off about Lonnie’s avatar. He didn’t act like the Lonnie I knew. Maybe it was the lag time, or maybe something was wrong with his goggles.
“Have you tried logging out and rebooting your goggles?” I asked. No response. Lonnie just sat on the edge of the hole, staring across the gulf.
Striking my axe on the remaining dirt blocks, I watched the water pour into a giant fall, straight into the pool of lava. Peering below, I could see some of the lava blocks turn inky black. Soon we would have more than enough obsidian to create twenty nether portals if we wanted. And Lonnie was right, it did look pretty awesome. Okay, I had to admit following the plan worked out great.
* * *
—
“These traps are so annoying to build,” I complained, tapping away at the keyboard and squinting down at Lonnie’s graph paper schematics. “Why can’t we go out and hunt down the endermen like everyone else does?”
“These are more efficient,” Lonnie said.
“What about fish?” I asked.
“Eee-fish-ent,” Lonnie retorted. “It means more bang for our buck. Not every enderman drops a pearl. We could be running around for hours, or we could build these traps and get started on phase three.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, excuse me, Mr. Vocabulary. I happen to like running around and hitting things. I thought that was the point of playing survival mode.”
“Only if you want to play like a two-day noob in the Overworld forever. I, on the other hand, have bigger ambitions.” Lonnie passed over another stack of graph paper, one that he’d been doodling on for hours. I took it and read aloud his chicken-scratch handwriting on the top page: How to Get to the End in 5 Steps.
“The End?” I asked. “Why would we want to get to the end of Minecraft?”
“Because that’s where the real bosses are,” Lonnie said, his voice cracking a little from excitement. “Check this out.” He opened up a Minecraft guidebook he’d borrowed from the library. There was a bookmarked page with an illustration of a black dragon with purple eyes and gray lizard-like wings. My jaw dropped open as I read about the ender dragon. I definitely wanted to see this boss in person.
“I want to tame one,” I whispered.
“You don’t tame the ender dragon, you defeat it!” Lonnie snapped the book shut under my nose. “And the only way we can do that is if we prepare our supplies, plan out our actions, and power through. Think you can manage that?”
“Prepare, plan, and power through,” I repeated, waving my hands dismissively. I was distracted by a cow that had wandered onto the scene. I needed some leather. “Yeah, yeah, okay, I’ll try.”
* * *
—
I walked back to my home base. I needed time to regroup my thoughts. Villager Lonnie trailed behind me like a shadow, his expression like a mall mannequin’s. Any signs of life I’d seen, or thought I saw, was clearly a trick of my mind. Another illusion, as it were. I decided to take a break and work on my shelter instead. Bare walls, dirt floor, and glassless windows is not exactly the homiest look. I added a bed and a pretty basic chest. It was just in time, too, because the light was beginning to dim, and I could use a second to think. I had an entire world at my disposal.
I had only gotten one of my torches lit when the sound of a zombie moaning rose up outside the house. Now, when you’re playing the game on-screen, you’ve got to go out and look around to figure out exactly where this zombie is coming from, but in the VR world I knew exactly where it was. Just outside the window that faced south. One zombie I could ignore, but moments later there was the sound of another, and then another. They all seemed to have zeroed in on the house, and they seemed to be targeting me and not Lonnie. At this point he was standing stock-still in the middle of the room. He wasn’t moving or speaking, just facing a wall. He must have taken off his goggles while still logged in. A lot of help he is when I need him, I thought sarcastically. And since I hadn’t built more than the one room, and I hadn’t gotten around to putting glass in the windows, I figured it was zombie-smashing time. I grabbed a sword and burst through the door, ready to go.
I didn’t expect there to be so many of them.
Up close and personal, these VR zombies were more frightening than usual. I would have just ignored them normally. I tend to find zombie mobs more annoying than threatening. But I was suddenly excited for a challenge, and I had a hillside full of zombies just asking for a fight. I grinned as I started plowing through green guys with the sword like an Amazon warrior—in my head, I mean. I’m pretty sure I looked awful, and if anyone was looking at me play they might have died from laughter, but I was screaming and chopping, and generally having a great time until one of them hit me, and the energy bar at the top of my vision went down half a heart. I was mad, but I also laughed.
I lifted the sword again, determined to battle my way through. In all the screaming and chopping, I’d only managed to kill three of the mob that was coming my way, but it was three less I had to think about. I rushed forward into one near the front door, and green slime burst in pixelated arcs that fell on the ground and disappeared in seconds. I turned and targeted another that was coming up behind me. The same ooze spilled, so I turned to a third. But I was too slow. This one caught me by the arm, and I watched again as I lost health points.
The next time I tried to swing the sword, I could’ve sworn it felt heavier, and was hard to hold. That was an extra level of game detail I did not expect. But I did hold it up, and began swinging it as hard as I could, and then down the middle of the same zombie that had touched me moments before. It died, but I saw more and more of them coming up the hill. Maybe it was time to retreat.
I slipped past the splatter of my last zombie victim and moved into the trees on the hill, thinking it would make for good cover. No such luck. Because coming down toward me were a couple of skeletons. I dispatched the first one with a diagonal strike across the torso, but the other one managed to hit me with an arrow, knocking me back and ensuring that a second strike was impossible. This time I didn’t need to see the bar to know I’d lost another heart. Maybe two. There was a total slowdown of my movements. It was like I was being rebooted on the slowest connection ever conceived. Basically, dial-up; but on, like, an old-timey rotary phone.
I was being taken down by one skeleton, and the rest of the zombie horde had figured out where I was, so I ran around the mob and somehow managed to make my way to the top of the hill. My energy level had a chance to revive somewhat, enough for me to sprint like a frightened kitten down into the next valley. I switched out my weapon for the pork I’d traded for earlier, and ate it to help my slowly depleting food bar.
I found myself panting, despite knowing that I hadn’t actually run anywhere at all, that it was all just me moving through the animation of the game. Maybe it was the zombie horde, or the quick thinking, or the feeling of being attacked and having to defend myself, but I could feel the even pulse of my heartbeat in my ears out in the real world. It made a strange echoing sound here in the game.
More zombies and the skeletons were on the move, right in my direction. I didn’t know what to do, and panicked when I realized Lonnie was still in the hut and I’d have to figure out how to get back to him, but then he showed up at my side. He must’ve logged back into the game!
I grabbed Lonnie by the arm and shouted, “Time to go!”
We ran until the terrain changed from lush green to an expanse of dull brown with a few patchy scrub plants. Desert. There was no cover here, and my energy was steadily going down since I had no food left, and I’d been under constant attack the last few minutes. The sky was starting to brighten, which was good news, but it wasn’t happening very fast. Past another dune, I spotted what looked like a villager all in
brown, dealing with its own throng of zombies. With my own problems at my back, I tried to go around, but they were moving too, and in moments we intercepted each other.
The what-I-thought-was-a-villager turned to me and yelled, “Stay and fight! I’ll help you!”
Besides the muttering of the villagers and the zombie moans, I hadn’t heard anyone speak in the game. I stopped.
“Don’t just stand there, get your weapon out!” the player said again.
“Are you real?” I said, dumbly.
“We don’t have time for this!”
The player came closer. This was when I realized they were wearing leather armor. They offered a trade—a wooden sword, for nothing in return. Best trade I’d ever been offered. I grabbed the sword, stood beside the other player, and started slashing as hard and as fast as I could. My leather-clad friend, though, was better, cutting through twice my number in the same amount of time. Between our work and the daylight dawning, we defeated our foes and found ourselves alone in the middle of a desert.
“I didn’t know there was anyone else inside the game.” The player put away the sword and said, “I’m Esme.”
“Bianca,” I said. “I thought I was alone in here too. But then I found Lonnie.”
“Who?”
“My friend, Lonnie.” I turned and gestured behind me. But to my shock, Lonnie was nowhere to be found. Sometime since we’d run into the desert, he had just disappeared.
“Oh, come on! How are you going to log out on me like that again, Lonnie!” I yelled into the air, like he could hear me from the game or something.
“Are you…okay?” Esme asked.
“No, I’m not!” I grunted, then calmed down a bit. “I mean yes, I’m fine. My friend was just here, though, I swear.”
“There are a few of us around. He might show up again.” She shrugged. “Everyone comes and goes as their treatment schedules allow. Gotta leave time for the doctors and the nursing staff to poke and prod you, right?”
The Crash: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 4