Invasion of the Overworld

by Mark Cheverton

  “You see what is meant for you to see,” the Mayor answered. “There is still much about Minecraft you do not understand. But you will learn; the Crafter will teach.”

  “And he’s down there?”

  The Mayor nodded. “He will answer your questions and tell you of your destiny.”

  “My what?”

  The NPC gestured to the ladder and nodded; there was a look of excitement and fear painted on his blocky face.

  Gameknight swallowed, trying to suppress his fear, but the more he tried to ignore it, the more real it felt; a feeling of dread pulsing through his veins. Stepping carefully up to the passageway, he mounted the ladder and started to descend, moving slowly downward one rung at a time. Looking upward, Gameknight saw the bright opening gradually get smaller and smaller as he progressed down the shaft. He could see the Mayor looking down, watching his progress, but then suddenly the opening grew dark as it was filled in with a new piece of cobble, the tunnel sealed from above. Apparently he was on his own.

  Continuing down the ladder, Gameknight proceeded slowly, moving carefully so as to not risk falling, the end of the tunnel still lost in the distance; a fall would likely be fatal. For a while, he counted the blocks as he descended but soon lost track of his progress at around thirty, so instead he counted the torches, each placed to provide some light within the shaft, casting a circle of illumination to push back the gloom yet positioned far enough apart to leave small dark spaces in between. He continued, moving from one torch to the next, his hands and feet pumping in a repetitive rhythm that seemed to move automatically of their own volition, allowing his mind to drift. Where was this leading? Who was this Crafter? He had so many questions and desperately needed answers, but the clarity of his thoughts seemed to get blurred as he progressed down the ladder, his fear growing with the depth and beginning to overwhelm his mind.

  Finally, Gameknight could see the end of the ladder start to materialize in the distance, the passageway seeming to stop its vertical descent and then turn horizontally. Accelerating his progress, he reached the end in a few minutes. Glad to be off the ladder, his fear eased a bit. Being on a ladder always made him a little nervous; it was a difficult position from which to defend oneself. He liked the open where he could see an enemy coming at him, targets that he could shoot at from afar with his enchanted bow. His bow . . . how he wished he had that with him now. Well, no sense spending any time longing over that, wishing for something that he couldn’t have. It was lost on some other server within Minecraft.

  Sighing, Gameknight999 turned and faced the task before him: the dark horizontal tunnel. Looking back up, he could see the torches extending up into the distance, the end of the ladder he’d just climbed lost in shadows.

  “Glad I brought some torches with me,” Gameknight said aloud, his voice filling the emptiness with echoes.

  Looking into his inventory, Gameknight saw that he had only two torches remaining. The others had been placed in the ground around the village during the battle.

  “Well, two will have to be enough,” he said, hoping his voice would buoy his spirits and drive away the tickling sense of fear in the back of his mind.

  Placing one torch onto the wall, Gameknight looked around. This tunnel was cut through stone with no blocks of dirt visible in the small circle of light. Moving to the end of the illumination, he placed his second torch, then moved back and dug up the first, darkness enveloping him. Moving quickly to the circle of light ahead of him, he moved past it until he hit darkness again, then placed his other torch into the rocky wall, creating a second circle of light. Proceeding in leapfrog fashion, he moved slowly through the tunnel, keeping a torch in front of him and always retrieving the one that trailed. Gameknight had learned long ago that darkness was your enemy in Minecraft, shadows hiding pits or pressure plates or trip wires . . . or monsters.

  His progress was slow, having to continually double back to retrieve the rear torch, but he’d rather move slowly and carefully than move quickly and end up dead. Time seemed to get lost in the darkness of the tunnel as he moved from one circle of light to another, shadows passing over him like ghosts, an unrelenting movement of forward-backward, forward-backward, his uncertainty and fear growing with the length of the tunnel.

  What was he doing here? What was going on? Where was this tunnel leading? Questions burned through his mind, eroding away his confidence and patience. Maybe I should just turn around and go back to the village, he thought, but just as he was about to head back, he started to see something in the distance. It looked like some kind of chamber, torchlight from within illuminating the end of the tunnel. The presence of light made Gameknight want to hurry, but he knew that haste meant danger when underground so he kept to the plan: plant one torch, then retrieve the last and position it ahead . . . follow the pattern, be cautious, and stay alive.

  Finally, Gameknight reached the end of the dark tunnel, the light from the chamber spilling into the passageway. Putting the torches back into his inventory, he drew his sword and moved cautiously toward the opening, body tensed, ready for battle. Leaning around the tunnel opening, he was surprised to see a large chamber ringed with many torches, their dancing flames bathing the room with a warm golden glow. At the center of the chamber stood a single person, an NPC by the look of his long, bulbous nose, but with both arms free to move, not connected across his chest. The NPC looked old, with long grey hair covering his blocky head and flowing down his back, his bright blue eyes reminding him of the sky in Minecraft, pure and full of life. He wore a long black smock that reached nearly to the ground, a wide grey strip running down the center from the neck to hemline, with his square feet emerging below. And oddly enough, he was humming some melodious tune as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Well, this is interesting,” the old man said with a scratchy voice.

  “What? . . . Where am I?”

  “You’re underground. I would have thought you’d know that,” the NPC said sarcastically.

  “I know I’m underground,” Gameknight snapped, agitation in his voice. “What is this place? Who are you? Why am I here? . . . What’s going on here?”

  “Hold on, hold on.” The old man peered over Gameknight’s head as if reading something, then continued, “Gameknight999, that’s your name, right? I’ll answer all your questions in time.”

  “How did you know my name?”

  “It’s floating over your head, just like all users,” he explained. “All one has to do is read it.”

  Gameknight tilted his head upward, looking for letters, but saw none.

  “You can’t see them, of course, just everyone else can,” the old man said. “My, you don’t know very much. Do you know why you’re here, why you’re different from all other users?”

  “Why I’m different?” Gameknight said, his voice now tinted with frustration. “Tell me, what’s going on here? I came to this village for answers and all I get are questions. What’s going on with me, why am I here?” His voice trailed off, became quieter, sounding almost like a plea. “Help me, please.”

  Lowering his head, Gameknight looked at the ground, feeling frustrated and defeated at the same time.

  “Now, now, Gameknight, all will be answered in time, but first let me introduce myself. I am the Crafter,” he said with a sense of pride. “I am the oldest being on this world.”

  “The Crafter?”

  “Yes, the Crafter,” he explained. “You see, we ‘NPCs,’ as you call us, we are named for our tasks. I understand you met the Mayor upstairs, and also had a run in with Digger.”

  Gameknight nodded, feeling guilty over the sorrow he’d caused, Digger’s wife being killed because of his selfishness, his griefing.

  “I see the regret in you, but you must not get too focused on the past. We need to concentrate on the present,” Crafter explained. “Things are different now and there is much to do before the final battle plants itself at our doorstep.”

  “What?”
/>   The Crafter held his hands up to silence Gameknight’s questions, and then continued.

  “First let me explain how you’re different. You see, all users have a name that floats above them. That is how Minecraft is programmed, with users connected to their servers through their communication thread. We, the NPCs, can see this thread. It looks like a long silvery strand of light that stretches upward into the sky. You’ve seen this, yes?”

  Gameknight nodded, remembering the griefers who came to the village and the long bright line that shot upward from each.

  “The users can’t see the server thread, but we can . . . and apparently you can, too. That’s interesting, but what’s more interesting is that you don’t have a server thread. You appear to be completely disconnected from the server and are a part of this world, yet you have a name floating over your head, like a user.”

  “‘User-that-is-not-a-user,’ that’s what the enderman said to me,” Gameknight explained.

  “Ahh, the enderman, yes, they follow the Prophecy closely, always watching for the one foretold, for you . . . and now they have found you.”

  “The Prophecy,” Gameknight said, “the Mayor said something about that in the village.”

  “Yes, the Prophecy is something that all Minecraft creatures know, from the lowliest pig to the many villagers to the mightiest enderman. The Prophecy is something that is written into the program that forms this Minecraft world, all Minecraft worlds. It says, ‘the appearance of the User-that-is-not-a-user will trigger the final battle for the Source and for all life. If the User-that-is-not-a-user fails in his quest,’ that, apparently, is you. . .”

  “Yeah, I figured that out.”

  “Let me continue . . . ‘if the User-that-is-not-auser fails in his quest, then all life will be extinguished on these electronic worlds. The Gateway of Light will then allow the mobs, with their hatred and malice toward all living things, into the physical world, where they will bathe themselves in death and destruction, until all life is extinguished.’”

  Crafter became silent and let the words sink into Gameknight, the weight of the Prophecy and the responsibility feeling like a leaden blanket, slowly crushing him.

  “But this still doesn’t make any sense to me. What is the Source?” Gameknight asked.

  “Let me explain,” Crafter began. “All of the Minecraft worlds are organized on servers, and the servers exist on planes of electronic existence, with those more frequently used nearer to the top of the pyramid of planes, the individual servers with just a handful of players at the bottom. All of the logic and control for all of these servers comes from the Source, the server at the top of the pyramid. This server controls all the others, providing logic control, software updates to fix catastrophic bugs . . . the Source basically keeps all the other servers working, and without it, eventually, all of the servers would cease to function, destroying all of the electronic life that exists within.”

  “You mean the NPCs.”

  “Yes, the NPCs, but also the mobs, and the animals, and the plants, everything,” Crafter explained.

  “But you’re just a program,” Gameknight objected. “You aren’t alive. No offense.”

  “That’s how we started, just as programs, but as complexity and sophistication increased within Minecraft, the operating system developed quirks and peculiarities unknown to the programmers and developers, allowing us to become self-aware, sentient. By all definitions constructed by users, we are alive, just existing electronically.”

  “None of the users know about you?”

  Crafter just shook his head.

  “We are forbidden to tell any of them. That is part of our programming.”

  “But when they come into your villages and grief or just kill villagers for fun . . .” Gameknight trailed off, his mind lost in the countless raids he’d led against villages, just for fun. His head sank low. “I had no idea,” he said solemnly.

  “We know.”

  “But why do the mobs attack the villages?” Gameknight asked. “They must know that you are alive.”

  “Of course they do; that is why they attack. Let me explain while we walk.”

  Crafter motioned for Gameknight to follow as he walked to the other end of the chamber. He opened a wooden door that led into a lit tunnel that was at least four blocks wide and six high. “You see, the mobs have their own Prophecy. They believe that they can free themselves from this electronic world and enter the user’s world.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Gameknight objected. “How is that possible?”

  “We’re not sure, but they think it’s through this Gateway of Light that is mentioned in the Prophecy—whatever that is. All we know is that their Prophecy says that when the User-that-is-not-a-user shows himself, then their path to the physical world will appear. Perhaps they will get to the physical world the same way you made it into our world.”

  My father’s digitizer, Gameknight thought. He imagined zombies, skeletons, creepers, and endermen all emerging from his basement, first killing his family, then slowly spreading across their city, then the state, then . . . The thought terrified him. An image of his little sister facing off against a zombie sprang into his mind, those terrible claws slashing away at her . . . slashing and slashing . . . A shiver ran down his spine. If this nightmare was remotely true, then he had to do something to protect his sister, his family, everyone.

  “But in order to get into the real world, they must first destroy the Source,” Crafter explained.

  “But how can they destroy the Source if it’s at the top of the pyramid of servers?” Gameknight asked. “We’re probably on a different server, not the one that sends out all the source code to keep everything running. This server is likely a different computer from the one that holds the Source.”

  They reached the end of the tunnel, an iron door barring their path. No switch or pressure plate could be seen, just a locked door. Crafter banged on the door with his blunt fist. Gameknight could hear footsteps on the other side, many feet approaching. After a minute, the iron door slowly swung open, a moaning, creaking sound coming from the rusty hinges. On the other side of the door were NPCs, maybe twenty of them, each in iron armor, ready for battle, but with their arms still connected across their chests. Crafter quickly stepped in front of Gameknight and held his hand up high, causing the NPCs to back up, opening a path through the crowd for the two to pass.

  The door opened to a gigantic chamber with hundreds of NPCs in front of crafting benches, each furiously crafting items: one making wooden planks, another making minecarts, another crafting tracks, another . . . everything Gameknight999 could imagine was being crafted in the immense cavern. The cacophony from all the activity was nearly overwhelming, like the sound of a thousand hammers all furiously pounding away at the same time. At first, Gameknight had to cover his ears, surprised by the clatter and noise, but then lowered his hands and looked around in wonder. A complex network of minecart tracks wound through the cavern, snaking around clusters of crafting benches and storage chests, weaving over one another in a complex pattern of bridges and underpasses, some of the tracks suspended in midair with no supports. It was clear that the construction of minecart tracks was developed so that the crafters could access the different courses, each NPC able to put his wares into any number of minecarts.

  And that’s what they were doing: craft . . . then deposit in a minecart, then craft again . . . and deposit in a different minecart. Once the minecarts were full, they were pushed down their tracks, all of which eventually led to dark tunnels that carried the carts off to some unknown destination. It looked to Gameknight to be carefully orchestrated chaos, with such a blur of activity that he didn’t know where to look.

  “What’s all this?” Gameknight asked, his voice filled with wonder.

  “All in good time,” Crafter explained, “but back to your question, why do the mobs attack us, and how do they get to the Source? Actually, you already know half of the answer.” C
rafter continued down the path that led along the wall of the cavern, the walkway gently sloping downward, cobblestone steps built into the path. The group of warriors who had opened the iron door followed close behind, ready to protect the Crafter if necessary, though the only weapon they had was to put their bodies between the Crafter and the threat, slowing an attacker to give the aged NPC time to escape.

  “When something is killed, it gives XP, right?”

  Gameknight nodded.

  “If enough XP is accumulated, then it is possible to move up to the next server, one plane closer to the Source. The mobs know this and attack us for our XP,” Crafter explained. “That is what their programming drives them to do.” He stopped and turned to face Gameknight. “This battle has been going on for hundreds of years in server time, the monsters attacking at night, the NPCs hiding in their homes, terrified. It has been playing out over and over for all of Minecraft history. However, something has changed recently. The ferocity of the mobs has become much worse, with more and more monsters appearing on our server. I think the servers below ours have been overrun, and all of those monsters are now on this server, their numbers slowly trickling up through the server planes. Soon there will be too many monsters for us to survive. Eventually they will destroy all the NPCs on this server and gain enough XP to move up to the next plane, and there was nothing we could do about it, until now.”

  “Until now?” Gameknight asked, confused. “What’s different now?”

  “You.”

  “What?”

  “The User-that-is-not-a-user is here now. You will save us.”

  “Crafter, why do you need me to save you?” Gameknight asked. “Why don’t you just fight back?”

  “We are not programmed to fight back,” Crafter explained. “You’ve seen our arms, linked together across our chests. That is how we are programmed; our arms are useless.”

  “But I see NPCs here in this cavern with their hands free,” Gameknight said as he looked about the room. He could see many of them with free arms, their hands a blur as they crafted.