Minecraft: The Island Read online

  At the crest of those moments, like waves on a stormy sea, were thoughts I’m still a little reluctant to talk about. They were thoughts of backing out. The garden’ll be ripe soon. Zombie flesh isn’t so bad. There’s no proof whatsoever that this world will let you make a fishing pole. These are only some of the excuses I came up with to try to justify staying safe. As the day wore on, I could feel my nerve cracking, my will starting to give way. If this world had regular, twenty-four-hour days, I probably would have surrendered to cowardice.

  As night fell I retreated to the bunker, got into my bed, and prepared for another recharging sleep. I didn’t get it.

  BANG BANG BANG BANG!

  The clamor of zombie fists jolted me out of bed. A ghoul had come calling. “Get outta here!” I shouted, wishing this world would let me craft earplugs. “I gotta get some sleep.”

  “Guhhh,” the zombie groaned, teasing my terrified heart.

  “Yeah, well…” I won’t tell you the last part of what I yelled. It wasn’t my finest moment.

  What I really should have said to the zombie was “thank you,” because after a day of trying to make up reasons not to fight, I’d just been reminded of why I should.

  Each punch of the putrefied fists helped batter my anxiety into resolve. “If I didn’t have to save my only arrow,” I growled at the grumbling ghoul, “you’d be a midnight snack.”

  By dawn, I was more than ready for battle. I watched the sun burn my would-be home invader into a smoldering chunk, which I washed down with a bucket of Moo’s finest.

  “No more waiting. Now or never.” Bow in hand, I marched out the western door, and stopped short at the sight of a spider sitting just within the shade of the woods.

  “Now or never,” I whispered again, creeping slowly across the exposed, open field. The arachnid didn’t notice me, or, true to my theory about daylight, didn’t seem to care. It even turned away as I inched to within a dozen or so blocks.

  Heart pounding, skin tingling, mouth dry as sand, I drew a short breath, and drew back my bow. The arrow rocketed skyward, thunking down into the spider’s bulbous body.

  And it did not die!

  “Rsss!” rasped the eight-legged killer, eyes whipping around to lock squarely on mine.

  “Oh…” I gulped.

  I sprinted back for the safety of the hill. Hisses rang in my ears. Cold, jagged fangs ripped down my back. I fell forward, stumbling, gasping, running for my life as more bites tore at my exposed flesh.

  No amount of adrenaline could push me past the slicing fangs. No amount of hyper-healing could counter their continuous blows. A third strike knocked me against the side of the hill. I kissed dirt, felt my front teeth crack, and saw that I’d never make it to the open door.

  “Sssp!” hissed the exultant arachnid, crouching for its final leap.

  “Enough!” I shouted, grabbing the stone axe from my belt. I spun, swung, and caught my attacker in midair. Crude stone slammed into crimson eyes, throwing the spider back and buying me enough time to run. Only I didn’t run. I charged!

  Snarling like a zombie, I struck the spider again. It hissed. I hit. It leaped. I chopped. A final rasp, a puff of smoke, and my first standup battle was over. And to the battered, tattered victor went a length of thin, white silk.

  “Moo!” called my congratulatory friend, along with a few celebratory “baas.”

  “Thanks, but…” I huffed, grabbing the sticky twine. “I just hope it works.” Slouching painfully over to a crafting table, I placed my sticks and string. I coughed as my hyper-healing tried, and failed, to rejuvenate me on an empty stomach. “Gotta work…”

  And it did!

  Three diagonal sticks and two vertical lengths of silk later, I was showing off my new invention to Moo.

  “Look!” I cried, then collapsed into a hacking fit. “No…no more zombie flesh.”

  My creation looked pretty much as you’d expect: a long wooden rod with a short line at the end. The crafting table had even given me a hook and a little red and white mini-square bobber. At least I thought it was a bobber. It suddenly occurred to me that I had no memories of fishing. I must have seen the bobber in pictures or heard about it from someone else. That’s probably why I hadn’t considered another important fishing aid until now.

  “Don’t hooks need some kind of bait?” I asked Moo nervously. “Or a lure?”

  “Moo,” responded the even-tempered cow, reminding me that I didn’t need to attract the squid to catch it.

  “Right, sorry,” I said as the flash of panic subsided. “I just need to cast out and snag it, which means I better practice snagging.” Hobbling to the north shore, I whipped the hook out to sea.

  “I’ll say this for spider silk,” I told Moo, “it sure does stretch.” I was about to pull in my line for another practice cast when I noticed the water bubbling. To be more specific, I saw little mini-squares of water popping up on the surface all around my bobber. “Was it always this way?” I asked Moo. “Did I just not notice it before?”

  Moo’s response sounded like “What do you think?”

  “Couldn’t be,” I answered. “It’s gotta be because of the hook. But why?”

  I couldn’t see any squids around. I couldn’t see anything except the water and that new—

  “Trail!” I yipped as a V of bubbles appeared off to my far right.

  “What is it?” I asked nervously, “What should I do?”

  All the fear I’d faced with the giant spider suddenly came rushing back. Was that a squid far below the surface, or a bigger momma squid, or some giant sea monster I hadn’t even seen before? Was it about to grab my hook, pull me in, drag me into its open, tooth-filled…

  “Be brave!” called Moo, forcing me to stand my ground. “Think of all the fear you’ve conquered, all the anxiety you’ve endured, to get to this point! Don’t throw it all away now!”

  “You’re right!” I hollered, amazed at how much wisdom she could cram into one simple moo. “Courage is a full-time job.”

  The water splashed, the bobber sank, and I felt a strong tug on my line. I yanked back hard, expecting to see some subsea behemoth exploding up at me. Instead, a little bluish gray creature, about the size of my hand, flew out of the water and into my belt.

  “A fish!” I exclaimed. “There’s fish in the sea!” I didn’t worry about why I couldn’t see them, or how this one had been attracted to my hook. Immediately I chomped into the soft, smooth skin, and was immensely relieved that my mouth and hand cooperated.

  “Moo,” called Moo, halting my chewing and reminding me of the dangers of raw food.

  “Right,” I told her. “Sushi’s great, but we don’t know if this is sushi-grade fish.”

  Limping back to my bunker, I was relieved to see that the furnace also complied, filling my room with an enticing, familiar smell. The flames turned the bluish fish to gray, and the flesh from a slippery slime to flaky white perfection.

  “Delicious fish,” I mumbled, savoring each mouthful as my hyper-healing roared back to life.

  “More,” I moaned, and stepped outside onto the eastern beach. Just like before, I cast out my line and waited for the seas to boil. It took a little longer this time—who knew fishing required patience?—but after a minute or so, I saw another bubbling V. I waited for the bite, felt the tug, and yanked back hard. This time, a small pink-and-red fish with a pronounced lower jaw flopped into my hand.

  “You look like a tasty salmon,” I told my dinner. “Now let’s see if you taste like one.”

  Turning back for the bunker, my eyes happened to fall on the wheat garden. There were three squares of ripe grain.

  From famine to feast, I thought, plucking up the golden stalks and carrying them over to the beachside crafting table. Three seconds and three vertical stalks later, I was holding a soft, warm loaf of bread. And it tasted great! Light and tangy like a baguette straight from the oven.

  That’s all it took, I marveled, just three stalks to “bake bread
.”

  “Moo,” came a call from the hilltop above.

  “Yes, that’s true.” I smiled up at Moo. “The irrigation ditch must have made the wheat grow a lot faster.”

  “Moo,” she continued, this time with a chastising edge to her voice.

  “If I’d checked on the garden earlier,” I conceded, “I wouldn’t have had to take such a great risk for a fishing pole. But then I never would have found my courage.”

  “Good morning,” I called out to my grazing friends. “Look what I just learned.”

  I held out yesterday’s uncooked salmon.

  “Notice anything different?” I asked. “Exactly! There is no difference! Because I just discovered that this world keeps everything preserved.”

  “Baa,” said Flint, turning with Cloud for another patch of fresh grass.

  “Yeah, maybe for you that’s no big whoop,” I said, “but in my world, food spoiling is a huge deal. Back in the day we had to dry or salt or…I think that’s why spices were invented. I’m sure I heard that once. Even now, everything’s gotta be frozen or refrigerated or packed with preservatives, which can be just as dangerous as spoiled food. But this”—I gave the salmon a reassuring sniff—“this means I don’t have to waste any time trying to figure out how to store my grub. I can bank as much as I need for as long as I need it, which means I got hunger licked!”

  “Frrph,” snorted Moo, warning me not to celebrate just yet.

  “Right,” I agreed, grabbing my fishing pole from my pack. “The garden’s still tiny and the fish won’t catch themselves.”

  After crafting an outdoor furnace, and breakfasting on rich, oily salmon, I parked myself on the island’s southern shore and spent the rest of the morning fishing. I can see why so many people in my world do it for fun. There’s the anticipation of a first bite, the thrill of feeling something on your hook, and that last moment before you reel in your catch when you wonder exactly what’s on the line.

  That last part really came into play when I discovered how many different things swam in the sea. In addition to the salmon and the little blue-gray fish were two other species that I immediately recognized from home. The first was striped orange and white, and the second was yellow, roundish, and spiky. Like I said, I may not have personally fished back in my world, but I’d seen enough movies or gone to enough aquariums to know that these were “clowns” and “puffers.” Since neither turned out to be cookable—and I wasn’t going to risk poisoned sushi—I packed them away for some possible future use.

  Ironically, my third inedible catch was the exact reason I’d started fishing. Squids are a real pain in the…well…the lower rear portion of my body that this world won’t let me sit on. They don’t come to your hook like fish, and when I did manage to snag one, it kept wriggling free. After several exasperating attempts, I got one close enough to the shallows to hack it to death with my axe. And then, as a final insult, I found out that the little bit of black meat it dropped wasn’t really meat but a gland my mouth wanted no part of.

  “Whatever,” I said with a shrug to Moo, examining the three salmon and half dozen blue-gray fish in my pack. “Maybe just a few more, just to be safe.”

  Whipping the hook out to sea, I waited for the inevitable V. A few minutes later, I spotted one, and braced for the mild jerk of a bite. But it wasn’t mild at all. It was harsh and powerful, as if something much bigger than a fish was at the other end of the line.

  “Whoa!” I blurted, nearly dropping my pole. Was I right about a momma squid, or a giant sea monster? “Be brave.” I gulped and yanked the quivering rod.

  I never would have expected, never could have imagined, what popped up from the bubbling surface. Not a fish, not a monster, but a pair of old, raggedy leather boots. “Are these mine?” I asked Moo. “Do ya think they fell off my feet when I woke up in the sea? Could they have just drifted here with the current?”

  If that wasn’t the answer, then someone else must have made them…and at that moment, the world around me felt much bigger.

  Putting them on, I found they fit snugly over my painted-on shoes. “They have to be mine,” I said, “unless everyone in this world has the same shoe size.” I took a few practice steps. “And they feel pretty good, too, and the extra padding really helps cushion my feet.”

  “Frrph!” scolded Moo, who began to walk away.

  “Yes, I know they’re cowhide,” I argued, following her, “but I can’t just throw them away. I mean, yeah, they’re a little ratty and all, but the extra foot protection…”

  The word stopped me in my tracks.

  Protection.

  A few days ago, I never would have made this mental leap, but now my well-fed, well-rested brain latched on to the concept of safety.

  “Do you think,” I asked Moo, striding over to where she was lunching with Cloud, “this world will let me make more clothes out of other materials?”

  “Baa,” said Cloud, now with a fully regrown coat.

  “No, no, I don’t mean wool,” I told the sheep. “I mean iron. I mean armor.”

  “Moo,” said the cow, voicing a ton of questions.

  “Armor,” I repeated. “Something I can wear over my clothes that will stop a zombie punch or a spider bite.”

  “Baa,” asked Cloud.

  “No, I’m not sure I can do it,” I answered. “I don’t know if this world will let me. But now that I’ve conquered hunger, the last basic need is safety.”

  I took off the boots, gesturing with them to the horizon. “And once I cross mob attacks off the list, I can stop worrying about survival and start asking the really big questions.”

  “Moo,” said Moo.

  “Yep,” I answered, looking at the ground beneath my feet. “Looks like I’ve got a lotta mining to do.”

  Loading up on torches and a couple of spare pickaxes, I headed down the spiral staircase. It was slow, boring work, one gray block after another. I did have a few false alarms, though, when I started coming across other types of rocks. They were all speckled gray, white, and pink. They were also utterly useless, and not even worthy of a name.

  It was almost a relief to break the monotony with a pocket of dirt. Using my shovel, I started scooping, and let out a resounding “aww yeah!” as the last cube revealed a wall of iron ore. “End of the line,” I chirped, not realizing that it was just the beginning.

  Behind the eight orange-flecked blocks, I discovered an entirely new ore. This one was red, and like coal and iron, embedded in standard gray rock. “Now, that’s kinda cool,” I said, as the first strike of my pickaxe caused the small cherry freckles to glow.

  Now, if you know of any similar kind of substance in our world, feel free to add a footnote to this story for any future travelers. But since I’ve never seen or heard of anything close to this red stone, I’m just going to call it “redstone.”

  Later, much later, I’d learn that this was one of the most valuable, useful commodities of this world. At the time though, I was so ignorant that I didn’t even know how to mine it. I tried a few swipes with my stone pickaxe, but all that did was obliterate the entire rock.

  Maybe an iron pickaxe would do better, I thought, deciding to put iron tools ahead of iron clothes.

  After climbing back up to the bunker, I threw the raw ore into the furnace, then carried the finished ingots out to my forest-side crafting table. After making an iron-tipped pickaxe, I tried my hand at anti-mob fashion.

  Ninety seconds later, I had my answer.

  “This world will let me make armor!” I called to Moo, holding up an iron cap.

  Donning my new helmet, I was shocked at how light and comfortable it felt. Wasn’t armor supposed to be the opposite: heavy and hot and really scratchy?

  “How cool is this?” I asked, strutting around the grazing cow. “Comfy and monster proof.”

  “Moo,” warned my ever wary friend.

  I answered with a dismissive wave. “I won’t assume anything until it’s properly tested. On
the other hand, I’m not gonna stop mining while I wait for that test to happen.”

  After another restful, dreamless sleep, I raced downstairs like it was Christmas morning, which it kinda was considering how many presents were waiting for me below. The thought of more iron, and this new mysterious redstone, was enough to lighten my every step.

  I’ll cut to the chase. The iron pickaxe let me mine the redstone out of the rock, but after some quick underground crafting experiments, I wasn’t able to make anything more than a torch. And that dim, sputtering little torch, by the way, didn’t throw nearly as much light as the regular coal-tipped model.

  “Well, that’s a letdown,” I said, pocketing the rest of the redstone. I turned to my new shiny metal pickaxe and said, “but at least I got you now.”

  And what a leap over the stone model that was! Not only is an iron pickaxe twice as efficient, but it can take twice the punishment as well.

  Now the Iron Age has come, I thought, knocking stone after stone aside. Better tools and armor and…who knows what else I can make!

  Half a day later, I’d mined enough iron to craft a chest plate or breast plate or whatever the proper term is for an iron shirt. Just like the helmet, it was light as a feather, and just like the doors and hatches of this world, the arms moved on invisible joints. “Perfectly flexible,” I called out to Moo, waving my stone axe in mock battle. “A few more hauls and I’ll look like a hero from a fantasy novel, or from the real Dark Ages.”

  At that, Moo shot me a curious look.

  “No, it wasn’t actually dark,” I explained, “more like an expression for dumbness. It was this place and time when people didn’t read, and bathed, like, never, and fought a lot because they couldn’t think of anything better to do. And because they fought so much, they had to wear iron clothes and…”

  My voice trailed off. Now that I had the image of a floating, full suit of armor in my head, I saw the natural accompaniment that had escaped me until that moment.