The Shipwreck: An Official Minecraft Novel

by C. B. Lee

  It also never really gets dark in Los Angeles; the faint orange glow of the city twinkling away, the red-and-white gleam of cars trapped on the freeway. Stars, if you can see them, blink through the muddle of the night sky, trying to glimmer through the haze of light pollution and smog. Sometimes he dreams of a star-filled night, clusters of galaxies so far away and larger than he can fathom.

  Once, his class went to the California Science Center and watched this movie in a circular theater; the whole place lit up with stars, and the narrator explained how big everything was. It freaked out a lot of the other kids, but it made Tank feel good. Safe. That the universe was so big that it didn’t matter what he did, it was going to keep on going. Nothing he did would change it or stop it or affect it; he was just a small speck. It was comforting, knowing that.

  The whole presentation did have one part that unnerved him. It wasn’t the stars or the planets or the way the universe was expanding, but that notion of the dark, what scientists didn’t understand. It was deep and unforgiving, a darkness that could only exist beyond the realms of imagination, darkness that was so far away and impossible that he couldn’t even begin to understand it.

  He doesn’t usually bother with caves and stuff in Minecraft because Viv tackles them, always lighting the way with torches or exploding things or charging headfirst into some danger. Tank prefers to stay above ground where he can always see what’s in front of him.

  He doesn’t like this dark, this endless hallway with only a bit of flicker on the other end to show that there’s even an end to it in the first place. It makes him nervous, this setting where he can’t affect the environment, where he doesn’t have anything to defend himself with. It reminds him of that endless darkness that he’d thought he’d forgotten about until he started walking down this hallway, thinking about the universe and all of its unknowns.

  He doesn’t like the anonymous Wizard person who stole all their stuff and took them on a wild goose chase in the first place.

  But it was fun, a small part of him says. Figuring out the puzzle, spending time with Jake and Emily.

  It’s been weird, playing Minecraft with people who aren’t Viv. Tank’s come to appreciate Jake’s steady and levelheaded logic, the practical way he stops to empty out his inventory and remind Tank to do the same before they head somewhere dangerous. Emily’s no-holds-barred aggressive combat style unnerves him, but it works for their group dynamic. He feels like part of a real team.

  “Come on,” Emily says.

  Tank takes a deep breath and keeps trudging forward. The few minutes in the dark seem to stretch out forever, but finally the flickering torch is in front of him. It’s barely enough to light the small room the hallway opens out into. Unlike the ruins they were teleported into, this room is bare of detail and design. A simple cobblestone floor, surrounded by more cobblestone walls—wait, no. There are five doors embedded in the walls surrounding them, and the single torch flickers against a stone column with a chest sitting at the foot of it.

  “Weird,” Jake says. “I can’t affect anything in this room, either.”

  “I bet these doors open to something interesting,” Emily says, pacing in front of them. Above each of the doors, an item is framed on the stone wall: a bottle of green potion, a bucket of water, an apple, a sword, and a bucket of lava.

  “Don’t open any of them yet, we don’t know what’s behind them,” Jake warns. “What if it’s lava?”

  Tank opens the chest. The creak echoes in the room, and then the foreboding music starts.

  “What’s in it?”

  “A book,” Tank says. He opens it to read the contents aloud, growing more and more confused with each line.

  RIDDLE THE FIRST

  I am both life and death. Feed me three things and I live. Give me one drink and I will die.

  You must defeat me to move forward.

  “It’s the first clue,” Jake says, bouncing up and down. “I told you! We’re at the start of the game.”

  “The answer must be one of these doors,” Emily says. “So first, what is the thing? And what is the thing we need to kill it?”

  Tank has no idea. He punches experimentally at the ground, but it doesn’t budge. He tries the chest, which does give after a few punches, so he tucks it away in his inventory for later, watching Emily pace back and forth.

  “That’s poison,” Jake says, pointing at the door with the painting of the green potion.

  “Great! Poison will kill anything. Let’s go!”

  Emily opens the door.

  For a second, nothing happens, and Tank can only see another hallway full of darkness—and then the darkness moves, moves right into their room, with eyes and legs and—

  “SPIDER!” Tank yells, leaping backward instinctively and raising his weapon, but he’s got nothing in his hands except the stupid chest—

  Emily screams and starts punching at it. Jake is fighting, too, but there’s another spider, and another—

  Tank turns around and runs, even as he knows it’s too late.

  RoxXStarRedStone has died in battle

  MCExplorerJake has died in battle

  TankFarms has died in battle

  They respawn back on the stone dais with nothing again.

  “Okay, the answer clearly wasn’t the poison,” Jake says. “Come on, and don’t open any of the other doors until we solve this.”

  “Process of elimination!” Emily protests.

  “I hate spiders,” Tank offers. “Let’s not go through each door and keep dying.”

  “I mean, we could, four more times,” Emily says.

  “Let’s just solve the riddle!” Jake triggers the pressure plate and opens up the hallway. This time, he opens the chest and reads the riddle again slowly. “You must defeat me to move forward.”

  “What if behind each door is a different monster that we have to defeat?” Tank asks.

  “No way, we have no weapons. It would be a stupid game if the Wizard wanted us to fight something like that right away,” Emily mutters.

  Tank wouldn’t put it past the Wizard, who seems like someone who would find that funny.

  “We have to pick the item that will defeat the thing in the riddle,” Jake says. “The sword seems the obvious choice, or the poison, but we know it’s not poison…”

  Tank takes the chest again, and tries to grab the torch for good measure. He’s pleased to see it does work, even if he can’t affect the stone column behind it.

  “Hey! Tank, put that back! I can’t see anything,” Emily says.

  Tank holds the torch aloft. “Better?”

  “Feed me three things and I will live,” Jake mutters. “I feel like the answer is staring me in the face, and it’s going to be really obvious or something.”

  Tank follows behind Emily with the torch so they can see each of the paintings in clear detail.

  “Well, the most obvious answer would be the fire,” he offers. “I mean, since the torch was in the middle of the room.”

  Emily stares at him. “Three things—that’s it! Oxygen, heat, and fuel. The riddle is about fire!”

  “So—” Jake pauses at the door marked with the bucket of water.

  Tank opens the door. Behind it is dark, but it’s not the suffocating finality of the hallway—it’s the open rustle of the night and the wilderness.

  “Yes! We did it!” Emily cries out exuberantly. She runs to the nearest tree. “Yes! I can punch things again!”

  “Awesome,” Jake says, clapping Tank on the shoulder.

  Tank blinks, and everything comes into focus: the three of them sitting in this dingy computer lab, Emily whooping as her avatar punches a tree, Jake grinning excitedly at him.

  “Thanks,” Tank says, and means it.

  “Oh, it’s four! I have to go,” Emily says. “My mom wan
ts me to go grocery shopping with her.” She shakes her head and sighs, disconnecting from the server. “It’s like ever since I’ve been grounded she’s been bringing me everywhere with her on errands and stuff, like it makes up for not having any apps on my phone.” She makes a face. “She made Carmen change the password to all of my accounts, so I can’t even access them. It’s really annoying.”

  “That sucks,” Jake says, following suit. “We can pick this back up tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good,” Tank says. He guesses if he leaves now he’ll get to Mr. Mishra’s early. He hadn’t realized they’d stayed this late already.

  Tank waves at Jake, watching him leave as well. The afternoon light softly filters through the windows, dust motes swirling in the air. Tank shakes his head; it’s still the same old computer lab, but now there’s something to it. He turns off the computers one by one, running his hand along the monitors and letting the warmth seep into his fingers. He wonders what’s going to happen at the end of the service project, when they don’t have to be here anymore. Emily and Jake—they’re here because they have to be, like him. They’re just passing the time with this game, like he is.

  It doesn’t mean anything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  EMILY

  Emily sees it first, the irregular shape at the top of the plateau. It could be just a rock formation, but it’s a little too regular, edges too uniform. Too small to be a structure, but definitely not a natural part of the mountain. In fact, it looks almost like the signs she used to make to differentiate between caves or areas she’s explored. She went through a phase where she’d give places fanciful names plucked out of storybooks, though she stopped doing that a while ago. If she still did it, though, she’d name this place Mystery World.

  And Emily can’t leave a good mystery alone.

  She climbs the mountain face, looking for an easier route and finding none; it’s too steep to find a regular rhythm, and she has to carve steps into the rock and throw down blocks of dirt and cobblestone to make the way easier. Emily pushes forward, getting closer and closer to the top.

  From here she takes a moment to admire the view: the deep valley and the river pulsing through it, leading toward the faded horizon and what she knows to be the sea just beyond. To the west, the torches on the edge of their base are just visible. Movement in the east—that must be Tank and Jake, herding sheep back to the new base they started today.

  “How’s it going?”

  “They move so slow,” Jake complains.

  “Be patient. If you go too fast you’ll get out of range and they can’t find you and your wheat,” Tank says, whistling. A quick glance at his screen next to Emily’s shows Jake running off after his sheep as Tank’s own three sheep wait idly at his feet.

  “I found something,” Emily says. “A sign. I think it’s a clue.” She looks through their basic new inventory and sighs. “Come on. It’s not too far from here.”

  She leads them away from the plains where they’ve settled and up the mountain face to their immediate north. Sign are stuck into the center of the plateau.

  RIDDLE THE SECOND

  My soul is empty until you begin to walk. I’ll show you a vision of forests with no trees, oceans with no waves, mountains without rocks, and the place of your next clue to the greatest treasure of this world.

  Bear northeast a thousand paces and find me below the thicket with no roots.

  “The greatest treasure of this world,” Emily repeats with interest.

  “What does it mean, an ocean with no waves? Mountains without rocks? These things don’t exist,” Tank says.

  “It’s a riddle. We just have to figure it out,” Emily says. She gives the boys the coordinates and paces back and forth, thinking. Obviously the builder is pointing them toward something that will start this adventure and lead them to the next clue. “Below the thicket with no roots,” Emily repeats.

  “I think we just have to walk northeast from the sign a thousand paces and then just go down.” Tank shows up behind her, switching out his pickaxe for a shovel. “I made us all shovels in case it’s really deep.”

  Jake reads the sign again. “A thicket is just a bunch of bushes, right?”

  “It could be trees, too,” Emily muses. “But no roots. Plants don’t have roots in Minecraft anyways, so it could be anything!”

  “I don’t think we need to know what we’re looking for just yet,” Tank says. “Just that it’s exactly northeast from here.”

  “All right, let’s go, and be careful down the mountain, it’s st—”

  Tank tumbles off the cliffside and groans. “Great. Fall damage already.”

  “I’ve got some food, here, Tank—”

  Emily keeps a careful eye on her coordinates and tries to make sure they’re going directly northeast. They push through the forest, getting distracted when Tank pauses to collect different flower types they don’t have at the base yet. Emily shakes her head but waits for him. She even spots those azure bluets he’s been looking for and adds them to her inventory.

  They get back on track, following the coordinates until they reach the sparkling sea.

  “Um,” Tank says. “We’ve still got a hundred blocks to go.”

  “Right into the water? Do you think we’ll have to dig underground?” Emily shakes her head, thinking of how long it takes to break blocks underwater. They’re going to need to keep coming back up for air, or get all the ingredients to make Potions of Water Breathing again.

  “It’s a map,” Jake breathes. “A treasure map.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, like on another shipwreck? Didn’t you find that already?”

  “Look, the final treasure is all about this underwater city, right? But suppose the Wizard already knows what we know—that we solved riddles seventeen and eighteen, and found the mural, and were working toward riddle nineteen. What if he started the game over, and changed it?”

  “What about the bits about mountains without rocks?”

  “Yeah, on a map you can’t see the individual details, just the big picture,” Emily realizes.

  Jake throws a boat into the water and starts sailing out toward the horizon. “Come on!”

  Ugh, boats. Emily crafts her own, forgetting how much wood she needs, and fumbles until she catches up. Jake’s already ahead, his boat speeding off. Tank watches her, spinning around in circles as he waits.

  “What kind of flowers do you need this time?” Emily teases.

  “Very funny,” Tank says. “I was just waiting for you. Ready?”

  They catch up with Jake and then leap out of their boats, diving into the deep.

  Emily keeps an eye on her health as it starts to drop as the water gets darker and darker the farther they go. They swim past clouds of green kelp, drifting in the waves—oh. The thicket without roots.

  Below them, a shadowy shape on a rock outcrop comes into full focus.

  A shipwreck.

  Emily’s seen shipwrecks before, and the first ship Jake showed them to prove he saw mermaids. But now that they’ve met the Wizard and are in the throes of the game…well, it’s not just a story anymore. This is part of the riddle, part of a game that they’ve been invited to play.

  They’re really here.

  Lilting music starts, and Emily swims forward. Eerie green-blue light from underwater torches swathes the shipwreck in a ghostly aura, and shadows dance all around them.

  Mermaids.

  They’re covered in shimmering scales of blue and green and red and gold, swimming and laughing as they beckon the group forward.

  “Don’t follow,” Emily says to Tank, who’s already swimming after one. “Haven’t you heard the stories about sirens? We’re here for the riddle and the map to the next clue. Stay focused.”

  “Trapdoor here!” Jake announces.<
br />
  Below the deck is a stately captain’s quarters, with bookcases surrounding an enchanting table. With everything underwater, the familiar glow of the miasma floating from the open book in the center takes on a sinister, otherworldly light.

  They take their time investigating what they can in between bouts of returning to the surface for more air. Chests creak open as they look for the map in the riddle’s clue; Emily pockets gold ore and gems and precious items that mean little when there’s a map to the next riddle to be found.

  “Did you find anything?” she asks.

  They’ve searched everywhere. Emily’s running out of air again, and maybe it would be better to come back when they have the Potions of Water Breathing to—

  Wait a minute.

  Item frames decorate the walls, like paintings of food, and Emily remembers something she saw in one of PacificViv’s videos, about where you could put hidden rooms—

  She charges headfirst at each painting, hitting the wall until finally she runs right through the painting of a seashell.

  “Emily? Where’d you go?”

  “The seashell painting—it’s a hidden door!” Inside the plain room is a single chest containing a map. “I got it!” Emily says triumphantly, grinning with the thrill of adventure.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  JAKE

  There’s no way of measuring distance on the map when the pointer is lingering in the margins; the most they can do is just head in that general direction until the pointer actually appears on the map.