Minecraft: The Island

by Max Brooks

  “If there’s a reason for me being here,” I asked Moo, “then what is it?”

  Just saying it out loud made me uncomfortable. I could feel my neck muscles tighten, my stomach churn, and any peace I’d rebuilt with the new house evaporate like dead-zombie smoke.

  Sensing my growing discomfort, Moo ventured a questing “moo.”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, at that moment despising those three terrifying words. “I don’t know why asking these questions is making me feel so…small and scared? I mean, haven’t I been working toward answering them all along? Wasn’t that the reason for the grand strategy? The whole point of nailing down food, shelter, and safety was to give me the space to concentrate on the really big questions, and now that I’ve done all that, now that the moment’s here…”

  I suddenly felt like I was standing on a cliff, like when I’d almost fallen into the lava of the underground canyon. And just like during that terrifying ordeal, I backed way up into safety.

  “Now that the moment’s here,” I said, pivoting into desperate denial, “I deserve to enjoy it! Right?”

  Moo just looked at me.

  “After all,” I continued, “those questions’ll still be here tomorrow, or next week, right? I’m entitled to take a moment to smell the flowers, or enjoy the sunset.” And looking out at the appropriately setting sun, I concluded with “Which is the perfect time to test my new hot tub.”

  Walking back to the house, I could swear Moo’s call sounded like “Wait, we gotta talk about this.”

  “Sorry,” I said, practically skipping away. “Time for some me-time.”

  I’d rebuilt my hot-water luxury over the foundation of my former chicken coop. Not only was it a heck of a lot safer than keeping live lava in the house, but the ocean breeze, and now the rain, made it a perfect location.

  Soaking in the steaming water, watching the sun dip between the clouds and the sea, I tried to enjoy this near-perfect moment. But it wasn’t absolutely perfect; the questions had followed me into the tub.

  Who? Where? Why?

  I tried to close my eyes, to focus on the breeze and the rain. I tried concentrating on the chores of the next morning, like tending the replanted garden and repairing my armor and tools. I tried to imagine some new decorations like rows of flowers or maybe a fountain.

  Nothing worked. Questions, I realized, don’t stay put; you can’t just walk away from them.

  Not that I didn’t try. For the second time in ten minutes, I got up and left. “Time for bed,” I told myself, even though sunset had become my favorite time of day. I walked up to the house, ready to spend my first night in my newly finished masterpiece. I hoped that a good night’s sleep and a morning of comforting routine would keep me focused on the here and now.

  That’s when I noticed the torches, or lack thereof. I only had one on the top floor and one on the bottom. I’d used all the others to light the island.

  “Oh that’s bad,” I said, shaking my head dramatically. “That’s really bad.”

  Looking out through the bars of my bedroom window, I called down to Moo, “See that? Too dark! I gotta get more torches and more coal. I gotta get mining again.”

  “Moo,” came an answer that I took as “You know you’re just making up excuses.”

  “No, seriously,” I countered. “What if one torch isn’t enough to keep mobs from spawning?”

  Again came a long, scolding, will-you-just-deal-with-what’s-bothering-you-already “moo.”

  “Hold that thought,” I said, reaching for my armor and tools. “We’ll talk later.”

  Pickaxe in hand, sword and shield on my belt, and a healthy ration of bread and carrots in my pack, I made my way back down below the earth.

  Surveying the underground canyon made me realize how thoroughly mined-out it was. Glittering ore caches had been replaced by gaping holes. The walls actually looked like some hungry creature had taken huge bites out of them, which I guess wasn’t that far from the truth.

  The side tunnels had been equally ravaged. Previously dark tubes were now well-lit passageways. And, of course, the well-lit part was what I didn’t want to think about. If I was really after coal for torches, I could have grabbed some ready-made ones right off the walls around me.

  For a moment, I seriously considered doing just that: taking a few torches, heading back home, and trying to find another way to avoid answering those really big questions.

  “Gaaahhh.”

  The groan actually brought a smile to my flat face.

  “Gaaahhh.”

  Somewhere down here, in some dark spot I’d somehow missed, was a distracting, delaying dead guy.

  Drawing my sword I looked in every direction. I couldn’t see anything at first.

  “Gaaahhh!” These groans sounded slightly different than usual, higher pitched. I listened carefully, thinking maybe it was a trick of the canyon. And then something came flying out of the darkness.

  I blanched as a miniature, halfling, baby zombie raced toward me from a small hole in the wall. And when I say raced, I mean raced. This little imp was fast! Before I could even raise Flash it’d crashed into me like a freight train. Flying back, I barely uttered a startled “oof” before it struck me a second time.

  And it wasn’t just fast, it was tough. I don’t know how many times I’d swung before Flash finally smoked it.

  “What the what!?” I croaked, wolfing down food to heal the pain. Peering into the half-zie’s hiding spot, I couldn’t make out any treasure. No coal, iron, or anything of value. What this opening did present, however, was a chance to pretend that I actually cared about exploring.

  I picked away a me-sized opening and stepped cautiously through. I raised my shield, waiting for the inevitable arrow. It didn’t come. I waited a few extra moments, listening for the groan of a zombie or the hiss of a spider. Nothing but silence.

  Stepping gingerly forward, I thought I saw an object in the light of the tunnel’s entrance.

  It looked like a plant, or at least something plantlike, growing right out of the rock floor. Stepping closer, I could make out three short, stubby, tan-colored shrubs. My foot must have gotten too close to one, because it popped off the stone floor and up into my belt. Looking closer, I could see it was a mushroom.

  “Ew,” I grimaced, thinking that either they were poisonous or would make me see long-dead rock stars. What a change from my earlier time of starvation when I would have literally killed for one.

  That’s when I noticed the other light.

  I figured it had to be another lava pit, although the tunnel ahead was getting colder with each step. Guard up, weapon ready, I marched the last few paces to a sharp descent in the tunnel.

  What I saw took my breath away. At the bottom of a rough, steep slope was a torch—not one of mine—attached to a wooden frame.

  “I’m not alone!” I exclaimed, ironically hearing only my own echo in reply. So many images flashed before my mind: the boots I’d pulled out of the ocean, the questions about what lay beyond the horizon, and, with a sudden, sharp sense of danger, the witch.

  What if this was its home? What if there were more of them?

  Balancing between verve and vigilance, I crept to the bottom of the slope and stared in pure shock down the length of an artificial mineshaft. The walls had been carefully scraped out into a neat four-by-four pattern. Every few steps, the ceiling was supported by wooden crossbeams set on double-high fence posts. I couldn’t tell how far back the tunnel went. Darkness blotted out anything beyond a few dozen paces.

  Who made this? I wondered. And when? And where are they? My head was spinning with questions.

  Had my island once been inhabited? Had there been another individual like me, or a group of people who had come here, built this, then left? If so, where was the surface evidence, like structures and homes? Had the original miners decided to restore the entire island to its natural state before leaving? If so, why hadn’t they taken all the other minerals I’d f
ound up until this point?

  Maybe they’d taken as much as they needed, or—my pulse raced—maybe the island hadn’t been their starting point, but their ending! Maybe this mining tunnel ran under the ocean and out to reality, or a new world, or a different island, at the very least.

  I thought about calling out to whoever might still be here, but then reasoned that they might also be hostile.

  Just because someone looks like you doesn’t make them a friend.

  Once again I came back to the theory of a witch’s lair, and decided not to advertise my presence.

  I noticed that the woodblocks and fence posts were oak, not birch, and since the former had been rarer up on my island before I, well, caused their extinction, maybe all this had been brought in from someplace else.

  I placed a torch farther down the wall and spied another peculiarity in the distance. There were sections of wood and metal crafted to make some kind of track. I followed it hesitantly, placing torches every few steps and listening for any nearby sounds.

  I passed caches of embedded coal, iron, and redstone, which I promised to dig out later. I also passed several blocks of spider webs in the upper corners of the shaft. This last observation sent my anxiety to full alert. Maybe they’ve been spun by some harmless little species about the size of a crabupine. Or maybe their bigger cousins are to blame.

  Still following the track, I saw that the shaft split left and right. I looked left, saw nothing but blackness, looked right, and saw what looked like a metal box.

  Getting closer, I saw that it wasn’t a box but a wheeled cart that held a standard wooden storage chest. Opening the lid, I found a worn iron pickaxe and something that positively blew my mind.

  It wasn’t that it was crafted of diamonds, it wasn’t that the diamonds had been crafted into armor, it was that the armor had been crafted for something that wasn’t human! At first glance, this large protective cover seemed to be made for a four-legged animal. A cow? A sheep? Why would anyone want to protect animals that were ignored by mobs?

  Maybe it’s protection against another monster I haven’t encountered yet, I mused, examining the glittering cover. Or maybe it’s the animal, not the monster, that I haven’t encountered.

  If the second theory was true, then it bolstered my original notion that these materials were coming from someplace beyond my island.

  Should I head back up to the surface to try this suit on my animal friends, or should I press on?

  CLICKETY-CLACK.

  There was my answer.

  Three arrows—yes, three—came whistling from the dark to bury themselves in my ironclad chest.

  I winced, turning to run down the tunnel. Like that very first underground battle. I turned a corner and waited for my pursuers to show.

  CLICK.

  CLICK.

  CLICK.

  I could hear three pairs of bony feet, although it didn’t seem possible. One, maybe two, but I’d never come across that many.

  You’re in for it, I told myself, and I surely was. No chance for a shield-and-strike maneuver here. No way to avoid looking like a wounded hedgehog.

  As the trio of archers came around the corner, I laid in with flashing, diamond-edged determination. You don’t want to know how many arrows stuck out of my body by the end. I sure don’t want to remember it. It was enough to devour the rest of my food and send me straight back up to the surface.

  “Guys,” I called to my four-legged posse. “This fit any of you?”

  I took special care to hold up the diamond armor to both Moo and the sheep. Neither would accept it.

  “So, what do you think it’s for?” I asked them. “A deer? A horse? A water buffalo?” The middle one made the most sense, as I’d seen pictures of armored horses from my world’s “Age of Dumbness.” “I guess the specific animal isn’t as important,” I told Moo, “as the fact that there has to be other land out there.” I glanced out at the horizon, feeling my insides tighten again.

  “Or maybe not,” I chirped, hopping back on the denial express. “This island could be a mountaintop on a world that flooded. Wasn’t there a career-killing movie about that?”

  The animals all stared at me.

  “Whatever,” I said, and headed back for the hill. “Point is, I gotta get back down there. Who knows what I’m gonna find.”

  I still wasn’t ready to listen to what my subconscious was trying to tell me.

  My second expedition into the mineshaft ended almost as quickly as it started. I must have been down there for only a few minutes before I found another one of those minecarts. You don’t need to hear about the couple of zombies on the way. Moan, chop, poof—you get it.

  What matters is what I found in the minecart’s chest. And I don’t mean the few pinches of redstone, or the loaf of bread that still tasted fresh after, what, a thousand years?

  What sent me racing back up to the surface were the two collections of seeds. Neither looked anything like the standard, bright green wheat seeds I’d gotten so used to. The first bunch were small and black, while the seeds in the other bunch were lighter and just a little bit bigger.

  In no time I was back at my garden, digging out whole new rows and scraping off the first square with my hoe. No sooner had they both gone in than I saw how different they’d be.

  Wheat, even carrots, both came up in multiple shoots. Not these. Both had just one thick, green seedling.

  It almost made me laugh to think that, a few months ago, I would have spent days just watching and waiting. Not now. Not with my stockpile of skeleton bone meal.

  I sprinkled three pinches on the first one and watched the little sprout rise into a brownish-green, waist-high plant. It didn’t have any leaves, or fruit, or anything that I could harvest. And so, since I had two more seeds in reserve, I tried harvesting the stem itself.

  Maybe this is some whole new kind of food, I thought. Something that isn’t just a squarish version of what I found in my world. Or maybe it is something I would recognize, but only after I—

  My musings ended when a couple punches completely obliterated the root.

  “Bing-bang-boom,” I said sarcastically, and began the process of replanting and refertilizing the next handful of seeds.

  This time, however, I waited patiently. I paced a little, checked on the other garden crops, harvested some wheat and carrots, and then came back to the same, stubborn little plant.

  “Okay, fine,” I told it. “I’m gonna go repair my armor or something. And when I get back, maybe I’ll bring Moo and see if you look good to her.”

  As if to answer, the shrub or vine or whatever it was suddenly bent on its side, burdened with a giant, square, light-and-dark-green-striped fruit. “Now, that’s a little more like it,” I said, punching up the suspiciously familiar cube.

  As soon as it was in my hand, the fruit separated into six slices. Inside its thick, green crust was a crunchy, pink, instantly recognizable flesh. If you’ve never had watermelon before, you do not know what you’re missing.

  “Mm-mm-mm,” I groaned between bites, psyched to have yet another addition to my growing banquet.

  “How about you?” I asked the other mystery vine between bites. “Whatchoo got?”

  What I got, at least for the moment, was nothing. “Suit yourself,” I told it. “We’ll talk when I get back.”

  Before returning to the mineshaft, I replanted the other watermelon seeds. Leaving a long row of four vines and one row of the yet-to-be-identified stem, I headed back down with dreams of new discoveries.

  This time, however, my findings weren’t completely positive.

  I was heading down the tunnel past the second looted minecart when three more arrows slammed into my hip.

  “Again!?” I yelped, turning to confront another trio of skeletons. This time, instead of trying to ambush my attackers, I pulled back around the corner and sealed up the space between support beams with extra cobblestone.

  “We’re not done,” I said, hatchin
g a new plan.

  Since mining had become second nature, I thought about digging around to the other side, breaking out behind them, and using the element of surprise to snag another load of clacking fertilizer.

  It turned out to be a total surprise, but not for them. I didn’t get very far before breaking through into a cobblestone chamber and coming face-to-fleshless-face with another pair of skeletons. There was no time for well-rehearsed sword-and-shield combat, no time to do anything except rush right past my attackers and seal the room’s proper entrance before their three buddies could arrive. Taking a few not-so-fun arrows in the back, I threw down some torches, then threw down with the clicking killers.

  Gathering up their remains, I gawked at the bizarre chamber I’d stumbled into. A strange little fire, encased in a strange little cage, burned in the center of the room. It threw no light or heat, and if I hadn’t been so distracted by the storage chests behind it, I might have noticed the little object twirling within the flames.

  But I went to the chests first and, uttering an exultant “Score,” I reached out to open them. “OW!” I belted, as an arrow struck me between the shoulder blades.

  Swinging as I spun, I caught a skeleton standing right behind me. “What the…” I began, wondering how one could have followed me through my tunnel. How else could one have gotten in, right?

  No sooner had I raised my shield than an arrow THOCKED off its surface, and then, to my happy astonishment, ricocheted into the skeleton’s chest.

  “Aw, will ya look at that,” I said, realizing I now had a new combat tactic. If you’ve never tried a Bonehead Bounce, as I now call it, know that it takes a lot of skill. First, you’ve gotta get real close. Second, you’ve gotta aim your shield just right. But when you do, there’s nothing more fun than watching a shooter shoot itself. I completely forgot to wonder how the poor sap had appeared in the room with me.

  Because that’s exactly what happened. It just appeared. I was still ping-ponging arrows back to the first archer—and coming up with all kinds of witty comments after each shot, I might add—when suddenly a second archer poofed right into existence next to it.