Minecraft: The Island

by Max Brooks

  Heart racing, I swam around to the meadow. The red river was coming, destroying everything in its path. Soon it would reach the open field and then the forest. The trees! All that wood! Where were my…

  I could see the cow and sheep family, all still grazing as if nothing were wrong.

  “Run!” I shouted. “Go, go, go, go!”

  They continued munching, oblivious to their peril.

  “Don’t you see it!?” I hollered, pointing to the roiling tide. “You gotta get outta here!”

  They glanced at me dimly as if this were just another monologue.

  I had to stop the lava.

  Build a wall? Nothing to build with…

  DIG!

  Frantically, I tore into the earth with my bare hands, trying to cut a trench between my friends and a fiery fate. Blocks of earth flew into my belt as the lava reached the meadow; another two squares and it would be on me. Scorching my hair, baking my face.

  Popping, bubbling, laughing heat. Here I come.

  Made it! I jumped out of the trench just a half step ahead of the flaming flood. The ditch filled and held, and for a second, I thought I’d saved the day. Then a spark popped from the barrier onto my skin. Recoiling from the sting, I backed right into Rainy.

  “Hey, what are you—” I began, but stopped as the sheep ambled right past me.

  “NO!” I shouted pushing it back. It was like the lamb couldn’t see the trench, didn’t know that certain death was only a few steps away. “Get back!” I roared, shoving the deluded animal.

  “Help me save your baby!” I shouted to its black and white parents. In a gut-punch of irony, I saw that the parents were also casually meandering over.

  “What’s wrong with you!?” I yelled, trying to jostle them back. I was just pushing Cloud into the tree line when a sound turned my stomach to stone.

  “Moo.”

  Eyes flicking across the meadow, I saw my cow, my conscience, my best friend in the whole world, on her way to a flaming execution.

  “Moo!” I screamed, sprinting over to bodily bounce her away. “Please, you gotta understand!” I begged. “You’re gonna die! Don’t you get it!? You’re gonna die!”

  She wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t stop.

  “Please, Moo!” I pleaded, racing back and forth between her and the sheep. “Please, please, just listen to me! All of you, listen! Pleeease!”

  At that moment I heard a sickening “B’geck!” and turned to see one of the chickens stepping into the fire-filled trench. A bloom of orange and red, a flash of feathers and cooked carcass, and then it was all gone.

  “Look!” I screeched through hysterical tears. “Don’t you see!?”

  They didn’t. Something in their brains, in the rules of this world. A fatal blind spot. A cruel joke.

  “Stop it, Moo!” I thundered. “You stupid, bloody hamburger!” My fist shot out, socking her square in the face.

  With a flashing red “moo!” she ran from the flames.

  “I’m sorry,” I cried, punching the sheep away. “I had to!”

  They ran to the safety of the trees, stopped, and, to my throat-closing horror, began slowly walking back. I couldn’t keep punching them forever. Another blow might kill them. And I couldn’t keep pushing all of them back. Eventually one, or maybe all, would end up fried in the ditch.

  I had to extinguish the source. I had to cool that lava!

  Looking up at the hill, I saw my one slim ray of hope: the rest of the hot tub, including the water, still sat above the fiery gusher. If I could just smash the glass between the water and the lava below it…but how to get there? The stone tower was still standing. Maybe I could use the dirt blocks in my hand to make a bridge.

  I took off running for the southern slope, the one spot that still seemed clear. I tore up the incline as fast as my rectangular legs could carry me, then stopped as if hitting an invisible wall.

  From the summit of the hill I could now see that a seething river lay between me and the tower. Worse still, lava was actually surging into the tower itself so even if I got there, I’d still be cooking myself for dinner.

  A sudden, crazy idea sprang from the paltry dirt cubes in my hand. It was a reckless plan, a hopeless gamble, and when it came to self-preservation, a completely unnecessary risk.

  But maybe it was a different kind of self-preservation: preservation of the soul. Losing my friends would drive me crazy, especially knowing that it had all been my fault. And maybe, just maybe, if I risked my life to save them, it could be some slight redemption for the mass slaughter of so many others.

  None of this was conscious. There was no rational decision chain. At the moment, all I could think about was getting up to that water. I sprinted over to the edge of the stream, placing my first dirt block within its molten mass.

  I’d pictured building a raised path all the way to tower, but simple math told me I didn’t have enough dirt. I’d have to stagger them every other square and jump perilously from one to the other. I hopped up onto the first block, then the second block; then turning back to the first, tried to punch it back up. I thought if I could collect the dirt behind me, I could remake it into a bridge from the tower to the hot tub.

  I thought wrong. No sooner had the earthen cube been released from the floor when it incinerated in the lava’s heat. There wasn’t time to reconsider. Every moment brought my friends closer to death.

  Hop, skip, jump, all the while knowing one mistake would be my last. If I hadn’t been grateful enough for the superpower of long-range reach in the past, I certainly was now.

  Hop. Place. Skip. Place. Jump.

  I made it to within a few steps of the tower and placed the last few blocks at its entrance. The lava began to drain, but not fast enough.

  Wait till it’s safe. Just a few more seconds.

  Then, from the meadow, a plaintive “moo.”

  Mind flashing with the image of that burnt chicken, and with that image morphing into a burning steak, I sprang into the tower.

  Just one thin mini-cube layer of lava. That’s all it took to set me alight. With flame-clouded vision, and the agonizing smell of my own roasting meat, I charged up three flights of stairs.

  The tub, four blue cubes across from my open doorway. An island of water in an ocean of fire.

  One chance. Slim chance. To miss and fall…

  “Moo.”

  She was almost to the trench, another few steps and…

  “Yaaaaaa!” I launched, trailing smoke and cinders. Arcing up…leveling off…down…down…Time slowed. Eternity in flight. Too long? Too short!

  Miss!

  SPLASH!

  Cool, quenching relief.

  Hit!

  “Moo!”

  Don’t rest! Don’t stop!

  Bare, burnt fists smashed at the glass floor.

  CRACK!

  Water rushed out, smothering the lava, turning it to blackstone, but blocking it from reaching the hill!

  Keep going!

  I shattered the clear walls and, once again, was flushed away.

  Carried down the hill on a ramp of new, steaming cobblestone, I landed softly in the trench, and right at the feet of my friend.

  “Moo.” Thank you.

  But I didn’t notice her, or the other saved animals, or anything else except the image of what had once been my beautiful home. Nothing was left standing but a suspended waterfall in a skeleton of hanging windows. It was all gone; all of my accomplishments, all of my work. All of that time and energy and thought and wealth. All gone.

  And what did I feel at that moment?

  Nothing.

  I was numb. No anger, no grief; I was as empty as the ruined shell before me.

  Failure.

  The word closed in like nightfall. I’d failed. I’d ruined everything.

  I was a failure.

  I don’t know how long I watched the ruins. I’m guessing the better part of the day. I didn’t feel the hunger or the half-healed wounds. I didn’t fe
el the nudges of my friends, didn’t hear their calls. I didn’t want to listen, or feel, or think, or care. I didn’t want to be.

  The sun set, warm rays fading to evening chills. I didn’t move. Still and silent. Detached. Over.

  “Guuuggg!”

  The blow struck me hard in the back of the head, knocking me literally forward and figuratively back into the here and now. Spinning, I saw the looming ghoul, and without thinking, I said, “Thank you.”

  Running into my observation bubble, now nearly submerged in the waterfall, I slammed the door behind me. The zombie didn’t follow. It couldn’t. Through the window I watched it enter the trench, hit the water, try to push through, and get knocked back in over and over again.

  “You just keep going,” I said through the glass. “You’ll never stop.”

  I thought of that first night, cowering in a pitch-black hole, hunger gnawing at my insides while an undead predator lurked within arm’s reach. How far had I come since that vulnerable, terrifying ordeal? Even now, with the ruins of my home still smoking on the hill above me, I could not deny my progress. I was safe in my well-lit bunker, with all the hard-won skills I needed to completely rebuild my life.

  And I would rebuild.

  That night, locking eyes with the indomitable zombie, I told him, “You don’t stop, and neither will I. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll craft new tools, plant new crops, build a new house, and come out of this experience stronger and smarter!”

  The ghoul gurgled back.

  I said, “Thank you for knocking some sense into me. Thank you for making me see that it’s not failure that matters, but how you recover from it.”

  “Ya know,” I said to my friends the next morning, “losing that house might be one of the best things that’s ever happened to me on this island.”

  “Baa,” said Rainy.

  “Yes, really,” I continued, “ ’cause it just added another ‘P’ to my Way.”

  The lamb looked at me quizzically.

  “Sorry,” I said. “You weren’t born yet when I discovered the Five P’s: Planning, Preparing, Prioritizing, Practice, and Patience. And now”—I held up a theatrical fist—“Perseverance, which is just a fancy way of repeating my first lesson of not giving up! But when you put it with the other P’s, it makes a cube!”

  At that point they all turned away.

  “How fitting,” I told their butts, “in more ways than one. ’Cause if you laid all these P’s out on the ground, you could fold them up into a cube, which is what this whole world’s made of.” I took a moment to let this profound epiphany sink in, and took from their munching sounds that they were as impressed with me as I was with myself.

  “The Way of the Cube,” I said grandly, striding among them with outstretched hands, “and the perfect philosophy for my next project.”

  “Baa,” said Cloud.

  “Oh no,” I told my pale companion, “not a new house, not yet. Not before finally tackling the reason I lost the first one.”

  Looking up at the burned-out, waterfall-filled ruin on the hill, I asked, “How long ago did I realize that torchlight prevents mob spawns? And how many times did I plan to light the whole island? But I never did it because I got distracted by other projects, and, to be honest, it seemed boring. And look at the price I paid for it. No more. That house-destroying creeper taught me yet another priceless life lesson: Ne—”

  Turning back toward my friends, I saw that they’d all walked away in the middle of my monologue.

  “Never put off the boring-but-important chores!” I shouted after their retreating forms.

  And so I went straight to work on lighting up my island. I used up all my coal and most of my wood to make enough torches to carpet the land. I placed them on trees, on grass, on the beaches, even in the middle of the lagoon on a single column of cobblestone. I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Yes, I know, I’d promised to leave that part of the island exactly as I found it, but I reasoned that if I didn’t mob-proof the environment with torches, then I risked damaging it further with more mob attacks. Sometimes you have to compromise an ideal in order to save it.

  I’m glad I did.

  “Not one mob,” I said to Moo, standing in the midnight meadow, watching the torches blend with the stars. “Not a single spawn from one end of the island to the other.”

  “Moo,” she answered agreeably. I looked up to the stars on their slow, straight journey west. “I could stare at them all night.” And then on that thought, I added, “In fact, why do I need a house anymore?” I imagined my bed on the bare summit of the hill, with only the stars for cover. “The island’s safe and the temperature’s always mild. Why do I need a roof over my head?”

  And at that moment—and this really happened—it began to rain. And not those little drizzly showers that came every now and then. This was a full-blown storm, with ground-shaking thunder and cracks of white lightning.

  “That’s why,” I said, sheltering under a tree with Moo.

  Just thinking about being struck made me shiver. As much as I’d like to sleep out under the stars, I’d also need a roof over my head.

  And it wouldn’t be a wooden roof this time. In fact, the whole structure would be fireproof. Remember that story of the three pigs? I did, right down to the exact detail of using bricks.

  No reason substance can’t have style, right? I found that bricks were just as strong as cobblestone, and they also looked really nice.

  I dug up all the clay from the lagoon’s underwater pits, but after replacing the bottom layers with sand, I put that top layer right back in order to restore its natural beauty. I was lucky to have enough clay to make plenty of bricks for a cozy cottage.

  I guess I won’t have to describe what the house looks like to you. Unless, of course, you’re reading a copy of this story or the original’s been moved somewhere else. I’m gonna assume it’s in the same place, though, and that you’ve seen the smaller, C-shaped building that mirrors the natural form of the island.

  You’ve seen the kitchen and workshop wings on the first floor, the bedroom and walk-in closets on the second. You’ve seen the iron front door and the two trapdoors on each wing for ventilation, as well as the iron-bar windows I have at the north and south walls of each upper floor. Doesn’t that sea breeze feel good?

  You’ve seen that I learned how to make a clay flower pot that I left next to my bed, and an armor stand in the closet. And you’ve seen that I figured out how to stain glass blocks in the ceiling and make proper, thin, elegant windowpanes downstairs.

  Most important, though, you’ve seen the paintings.

  Those came about when I was making a new bed. Now that I’m not using flammable wool for carpeting anymore, I thought, why not mess around a little with it and see if I can come up with anything else?

  And I did. A mix of sticks and wool got me the image of a blank white canvas stretched in a wooden frame. It was only when I grabbed it that the real bizarreness began. Experience suggested that this object belonged on the wall, and when I placed it on the naked bricks, the surface suddenly filled with brilliantly colored mini-squares! The sheer surprise made me back up a few steps, and that was when I saw a clear pattern.

  It was a human figure from my world, tall and rounded, with black clothes and reddish hair, standing on a mountain top, looking over a white landscape. “Whoa…” I breathed, feeling truly gobsmacked. This was a whole new level of crafting. Not the basic, generic items like a pickaxe or a bed. This was a clear, specific, unique image.

  “How?” I asked aloud. How had this world decided on what would fill the canvas?

  I punched up the painting, trying to examine it closer. The image went blank. I placed it back on the wall, and saw something completely different. Not only had the frame changed shape, but the picture now appeared to be two black and white figures reaching for each other.

  “Wha…” I whispered, and removed it again. The third time, it kept the same horizontal frame bu
t changed the image to a very recognizable creeper. And that’s when the theory formed. Was the world choosing these images or was I? The first two subjects were real paintings from my world. In fact the very first painting, the man on the mountaintop, had been reproduced on the cover of a book I’d once read, something about a man creating a monster. Was this world somehow channeling my memories? Was this the key to remembering who I was?

  Leaving the creeper painting up as a fitting reminder to always close the door, I got to work on another frame, and placed it on the wall in my bedroom.

  What else will I remember? I thought.

  I gaped at the painting that appeared. At first I didn’t think it came from either world. The subject was of a man, I think, with yellow skin, a red shirt, blue pants, and a triangular, blue and red hat. At first his crude outline looked squarish, but the thin lines just didn’t match up with this world.

  And then it hit me.

  “You’re King Graham,” I said to the picture, “from the computer game King’s Quest.”

  Computers.

  I’d thought a lot about the conveniences of my world: refrigeration, microwave ovens, TV, and AC. All of them were in reference to making my life here more comfortable. But computers were different. They didn’t just help my life, they were my life.

  That’s why I don’t know how to fish, or cook, or tend a garden. I’ve spent my life in front of a screen…

  But who did that life belong to?

  Stepping out of the house, I didn’t think about where I was going, or notice that it’d begun to drizzle. I didn’t even realize that I’d begun humming a song from my world, the same one I’d remembered that horrible first night on the island.

  “You may find yourself,” I said aloud, meandering almost dreamily down the hill. As before, I couldn’t recall all the lyrics. It was like trying to listen to a neighbor’s radio through a wall. All I could come up with was that same one from before.

  “And you may ask yourself,” I sang to Moo. “Well, how did I get here?” And then, looking down at my friend, asked, “And why am I here?”

  It hadn’t dawned on me up until that moment that there might be a conscious reason for my entry into this bizarre, blocky world. I’d either been too busy or, let’s be honest, too unwilling to even think that something, someone, had intentionally taken me.