by Max Brooks
“How can you judge me,” I quipped, turning back for the bunker, “when all you live on is free food!”
“Moo,” she tried to answer as I slammed the tunnel door.
“Debbie Downer,” I grumbled as I got into bed, trying to shove any second thoughts into the back of my mind. “Well, you’re not gonna dampen my mining morning.”
And she didn’t, or the entire week that followed. Yep, I said week. Up till now, I’ve been giving you the play-by-play, day-by-day. Now we can pull back because something awesomely awesome happened: a routine!
For the first time since waking up in this unpredictable world, I had seven manageable, controllable, reasonably predictable days. I got up every morning, slapped on my armor, grabbed my tools and weapons, packed up some bread and fish, and sauntered jauntily underground.
Every day filled my pack with more mineral wealth: coal, iron, and even that arcane redstone. While the last substance still confounded me, the first two kept my furnace humming. I learned how to make both iron boots and pants to match. By the second day I looked like a proper, if battle-scarred, warrior, and by the fourth day I learned how to repair my battle scars.
Ever heard of an anvil? Just like the hearts, I’d only seen them in cartoons—you know, like when one was dropped on a character’s head. Now, after learning how to combine ingots into iron cubes, and after combining a line of cubes with an upside-down T of ingots, I got a thick, heavy, ridiculously useful appliance. Imagine the two slots of a furnace, side-by-side instead of up and down. You place the item you want fixed in the left slot, some extra iron in the right one and bam, good as new.
I fixed my armor, my tools, even my worn-out bow by combining it with the other worn-out bow I’d gotten from a vanquished skeleton. And that bow would come in real handy, because all that iron and coal didn’t come cheap.
The first mob I killed outright was a zombie, and it wasn’t at a safe distance. Day one, I was picking away at a deposit of raw ore when I heard that all-too-familiar growl. “You ready?” I asked Protector. “ ’Cause I sure am!”
As the green gurgler slouched into the torchlight, I stood ready with a sharp iron welcome. “Know what your problem is?” I asked, as Protector’s first slash knocked the growler back on its rotting heels. “You’re just too dumb to be afraid.” Four slices, that’s all it took. Four slices and the zombie was meat at my feet.
“And we’re just getting started,” I boasted to Protector.
I collected a lot of reeking flesh that week, as well as spider silk and skeleton bones. The last trophy fertilized the garden, which got more seeds, which…well, you get it.
Making more and more chickens, and having to chase them all over the island, brought home the need to corral them. Does the term chicken coop mean a fenced-in area, or an actual chicken house? For me, it was the former. I learned how to craft sections of wood fencing and placed them in a square in the meadow. Once I’d lured the birds in with seeds, I closed them up securely with double wooden gates.
I wasn’t collecting any feathers yet. I figured I’d wait until I had more chickens than I knew what to do with. That’s why I saved the few arrows I had for the only enemy I wouldn’t touch with a half-mile pole.
The first time I saw a creeper was on my fifth morning in the cave. I came out of the small entrance tunnel, walked past the ever-expanding border of torchlight, and thought I spied something moving in the gloom. It must have seen me first because the armless, soundless bomb was already sweeping forward.
Fighting jitters, I backed up a few paces, drew my bow, and took aim. The arrow hit the creeper just as it was starting to sizzle. Flying back a few steps, it tried another charge. “I know how you feel,” I said, loosing my next and final shaft.
As the smoke cleared, I saw something hovering in the creeper’s place. It was a pile of little gray granules, and it didn’t take a chemistry lab to deduce what they were.
Fire, tools, and iron—all my discoveries had mirrored the progress of my species. What else could be next but the mighty power of guns?
“This changes everything!”
It didn’t. At least, not at that point.
Believe me when I say that I tried every experiment I could think of. I even tried setting the stuff on fire with a torch, which was not my brightest moment, to say the least. Fortunately for you, the reader, and especially for me, the moron, this world wouldn’t let me blow myself up.
“Maybe it’s part of a bigger process,” I told Moo, collecting the hovering pile. “Maybe I need to make the gun first.”
Setting the gunpowder aside, I tried combining wood and metal in every conceivable way. All I got was a rehash of everything I’d already built, and an exasperating reminder to be grateful for what you have.
Not like I really need it, I thought, finally calling it a night. I got plenty of armor and weapons and I’m getting pretty darn good with both.
So why didn’t I stop, you ask? Why didn’t I just gather up all the coal I’d mined to light the island to keep the monsters from spawning? The answer is I needed the coal to fuel the furnace to smelt the iron for all my armor, weapons, tools, and anvil to repair everything. But, you might say, I wouldn’t need to smelt all that iron if I’d just saved the coal to light the island.
Well, for starters, there was the carrot.
Yes, carrot. For a while zombies had been dropping more than just their flesh. Sometimes one would leave me an ingot of iron, or a worn tool, but one time, I think around the end of the sixth day, my latest kill dropped a small, pointed, green-topped root I recognized instantly.
“Ahhhh,” I said, picking it up. “What’s up, Doc?”
What was up was a new source of food. Replanting it in the garden and sprinkling it with a little bone meal allowed me to soon have a whole new row of crops, which meant I could divert even more wheat seeds to chicken farming.
And then there was the bluestone—at least, that’s what I’m calling it. It’s this blue stone—hence the name—you get from rocks like coal or redstone, and as with the latter, I couldn’t find a use for it. But the idea that there were even more minerals down there made me wonder what else might be waiting to be discovered.
So yes, there were practical reasons for going on, and that should be enough for anybody. But the real reason, the one I wouldn’t even admit to myself back then, was that for the first time since landing in this crazy, scary world, I finally felt in control!
I knew what I was doing and I knew how to do it. Racking up win after win made me feel strong and powerful. You have to know what that feels like, especially after feeling so weak and powerless. Would you give all that up?
I might have never stopped if the world hadn’t chosen to stop it for me.
I knew something was wrong the moment I opened my eyes and noticed that my left hand felt tingly. Had I slept on it wrong? No, that couldn’t be the case. This world doesn’t let me sleep on my side. Or does it? Could I roll over after falling asleep?
I tried shaking out my hand, walking around the room, dressing in iron, having breakfast, doing all the things I normally did, but the tingling wouldn’t leave.
It wasn’t a painful feeling like the kind of needles I had in the other world when my hand had gone to sleep. This felt slightly more sensitive, more alive. I didn’t like the new feeling, though, for no other reason than that it was new.
I liked normal. Finally, normal was on my side. When everything was going my way, the last thing I needed was change.
I went down into the mines, just like I usually did, got out my pick, and started searching for another cache of minerals.
Mining went smoothly, and for a while I forgot about my left hand troubles. And then I heard the zombie moan.
“First of the day,” I told Protector, as the ghoul slouched into the light. “Let’s get this over with.” I raised my blade to strike. And that’s when I knew Mr. Normal had checked out. No more easy, four-strike kills. This meatbag took at least
twice the punishment before going down, and not before giving me a few really painful punches in return.
I reeled back in surprise, shaking as the zombie turned to smoke. “Maybe it’s just a one-off?” I asked Protector nervously. “Some kinda rare super-zombie?”
“Think again,” answered the world, in the form of an arrow whistling past my face. I pivoted to see the arrow’s owner, and since there was only one skeleton, I decided on a conventional charge. I took a few hits, winced at the healing wounds, and soon found that this new bonehead was just as durable as the zombie.
“What’s happening!?” I blurted out, as my seventh or eighth strike finally turned my attacker to fertilizer.
Like a long-lost friend, panic arrived and drove my feet back onto the ground. “Something’s up. The mobs are harder to kill. Everything’s changed!”
Moo just looked at me calmly, and uttered her signature answer.
“Well, at least you’re the same,” I said, feeling a little relieved. Moo might not have been the most stimulating of conversationalists, but her steady, even demeanor was a tonic for my nerves.
“Okay,” I breathed, “maybe I’m exaggerating just a little bit. But”—I looked down at my hand—“some things are definitely different.”
Moo gave me a casual glance and ambled away. I followed her, talking all the while. “Do you think that can happen? That this world can literally change overnight?”
I looked around us, checking to see that everything else was the same. “If that’s true,” I began, starting to absorb more of Moo’s serenity, “then what am I supposed to do about it?”
“Moo,” she said matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean, ‘change with it’?” I shot back. “What kind of lame blow-off statement is that?”
“Moo,” she repeated, glancing in the general direction of my left hand.
I held up the tingling appendage, considering the weight of Moo’s words. “Change with it,” I said softly, then mused, “If this world’s just made the monsters tougher to fight, maybe it’s given me new ways to fight them!”
Gun! It was a pipe dream, I know, but hopefully one where the pipe was a gun barrel. “Thanks,” I said, darting back to the hill. “You always know what to say!”
Once again I threw out all the previous day’s wood-and-metal combos. Once again, I didn’t get a gun. I did get something else, however; something that just the day before had been a losing combination.
“Shield!” I breathed, holding up the long, broad board. “Today I can make a shield!” And if that new invention didn’t kill my fear of change, what happened next buried it for good.
Up until this point, my right hand had been for tools and weapons, while the left was for crafting. It had only opened to show me what I could make with materials. But now, did this new tingling sensation mean…?
I reached for the ghostly image of the shield, and gasped as my left hand suddenly opened.
“YES!” I crowed, dancing out to show my pals. “I made a shield, the mob’s fate is sealed, my protection is realed, all thanks to my shield.”
“Baa, moo, baa,” replied my chorus of talent judges.
“Okay, so maybe I didn’t write songs in my former life,” I said with a chuckle, “but at least I got extra protection now, along with Moo’s super-important new lesson.”
“Baa,” said little Rainy, now a full-size sheep. They grow up so fast.
“Glad you asked,” I answered, and motioning to Moo, announced, “When the world changes, you’ve got to change with it.”
Yeah, I was happy for the shield, but dude, did it take some practice!
First off, it’s big and bulky and it blocked my vision. I couldn’t just carry it all the time if I didn’t want to trip over something. Second, once I raised it for cover, I couldn’t go any faster than a crawl. So that meant escaping was out. And third, raising it for cover meant I couldn’t use my sword at the same time. I had to switch between attack and defense, which was a whole new, much more demanding, style of fighting. No more blind bashing. Now I had to think about each blow and calculate the timing of attacks. I guess that’s what real armored warriors must have done back in my world. Like me, they probably complained at first, but like me, they also probably stopped complaining after their first battle.
That battle came after my day of training aboveground. Venturing back underground, I came out into the cave and right into the targeting gaze of a skeleton. It raised its bow. I raised my shield.
BONK!
My hand vibrated with the impact of the deflected arrow. Just a fluke? I wondered, looking up to see the bonehead reloading. Poor aim and a lucky—
BONK!
Another shaft glanced harmlessly off.
“No fluke,” I said, as a third arrow fell to my feet. “No lucky angle or lousy aim on your part.”
Grinning from ear to flat, barely visible ear, I strode slowly toward my foe. “This shield actually works! It totally, absolutely, legitimately…” I stopped pontificating the moment I peeked back up over the top.
The skeleton, still shooting, not only began to retreat, but did so in a side-to-side, kind of frenzied oval. “Are you afraid?”
Unable to answer, unable to do anything more than fire fecklessly against my mobile wall, the bag of bones clacked crazily around. I blocked another shot, waited for it to reload, then swung down hard with Protector. The skeleton reeled, then took another shot. Again I blocked, and again I struck. Back and forth to its inevitable end.
“A hearty thank-you,” I told the new leg bone, “from my carrots and wheat.”
“Uhhh…” came a howling moan, ending my witty, one-sided banter. Looking up, I spied an approaching zombie. Raising my shield, I absorbed the first blow without injury. Just like the skeleton, I told myself, and lowered the shield to strike.
POW!
The punch took me right in the jaw.
“You’re s’posed to pause,” I barked angrily, and raised my shield again. After taking the next blow, I tried another slash.
“Oof!” I breathed through dented armor and bruised ribs.
“Guhhh…” groaned the ghoul, assailing my battered board. Retreating under a torrent of blows, I realized that shields didn’t work in close combat. Whereas the skeleton had been a well-timed dance, this was more of a boxing match. “Just like we used to,” I said, backing up a few paces.
Sliding the shield into my backpack, I shouted, “Time to change back!” and gave my attacker a good slash across the face.
With renewed speed and agility, I tried to keep just a few paces away. “You’re tougher,” I admitted, “which means I gotta be smarter.” Step in, strike, knock it back, then retreat and wait for it to advance.
“Adaptation,” I crowed, giving the ghoul another slash. “Isn’t that what some wise old guy once said? Something about the key to survival not being strength but the ability to change?”
In a fitting response, the lumbering bruiser kept doing the only thing he and his kind had ever done: make a slow plodding path right for me. “That’s why my ancestors conquered my world,” I preached as Protector knocked him back, “and that’s why the sabertooth cats and the giant bears and all the other stronger, tougher killers ended up in museums.”
“Gruhhh,” snarled the zombie, recoiling with another chop.
“And that’s where you’ll all be,” I boasted, raising Protector for the coup-de-grâce, “when I finally conquer this—”
“Gahhh,” gasped the ghoul, as my next blow knocked it out of sight.
“Uh?” I asked, sounding just like the creature I’d slain and taking a step forward to investigate. The zombie didn’t disappear; there was no puff of smoke. This time it’d actually fallen out of sight, downward, and had nearly taken me with it.
“Whoooa!” I warbled, stopping short at the edge of a cliff. I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was going. I’d been too focused on the fight.
The zombie battle had taken me f
arther and farther down the cave, past my torches and around a narrow bend. I didn’t notice that the temperature and humidity had risen, or that there’d been a light up ahead. Only when I’d knocked the zombie over the edge of the cliff did I finally stop and stare.
Before me lay an underground canyon: deeper, wider, and just, well, grander than my tiny island up above. For a moment, all I could do was stare in awe at this subterranean world. Now I saw the source of the growing heat. Streams of red-hot lava poured from several openings in the cliffs. These long bright columns fell into a vast, boiling lake. I could also see water, thin blue lines falling from walls and the ceiling, crashing down into the lava, turning the air into a stifling steam bath. Just looking at the spectacle below made me dizzy, and imagining one misstep was enough to pull me way back.
Venturing a few careful peeks, I thought I could see some dry land at the edge of the lava and water. How could I not investigate? Nothing wrong with curiosity, right?
Of course not, I reasoned, as long as it’s careful curiosity.
I started to dig a descending tunnel just behind the cliff wall. Every few steps I opened a window to get my bearings. I broke out onto uneven but safe ground and stared up in amazement. The canyon made the first cave I’d discovered, which had once looked so monstrous, seem like a rabbit hole.
The heat down here was merciless, tropical. I could actually feel my lungs baking with each breath. I could also feel the sweat collecting under my armor, running down my back into my boots. And yet, as I took a few sloshing steps across this stifling sauna, I didn’t feel the least bit of thirst. Well, at least this world won’t let me get dehydrated, I thought, blinking away stinging drops, and I don’t seem to smell when I sweat, which is pretty cool.
Cool…If only there was a way to beat the heat down here.
I noticed that the nearest waterfall ended barely a few paces from my feet. Maybe dipping said feet for a few minutes could…
“Bad idea!” I yelped as the current tried to wash me into the lava. Half running, half hopping, I got close enough to the fall’s tipping point to contain it with a ring of cobblestone.