Remember, back on the island, when I talked about my first week of routine? Well, if you don’t, it was the first time my random adventures had finally settled down into a predictable pattern.
That’s what happened here. Only instead of a week, it was a whole month. You know how when you’re watching a movie, and they compress time into quick shots that last a few seconds? What do they call that? A montage? Picture that. Me getting up every morning, meeting Summer for breakfast, then loading up on arrows and potions before heading down into the Nether for more glowstone.
We always headed in one direction: down the quartz-marked path to the intersection, then a sharp turn to the land of “Low-hanging fruit.” Glowstone was everywhere, bunched in luminescent clusters. Sometimes we’d build a ramp. Sometimes we’d just climb a natural slope. Sometimes one of us would build a “jump tower,” jumping in place and stacking netherrack beneath us, while the other one kept watch for ghasts.
And there were plenty of ghasts!
I think, looking back, I must have bagged at least ten of them in all. Mostly without any trouble. Sometimes completely on my own. I got pretty good at getting the drop on them, listening for the approaching chirp, sweeping the pink mist with a drawn bow. And when it came to hitting the target, I began to master the fine art of long-range ballistics. It’s not easy, at first, to predict where the floating, bobbing bombers are heading. But after enough practice I really did get the hang of it.
I also got the hang of what it was like to live with someone else. Summer might have still refused to admit that we were “friends,” but our “partnership” sure did fit the bill. We adventured together, ate together, swam in that ridiculous arctic river together. I didn’t complain too much. I didn’t want to upset her, like when I occasionally brought up what we’d do or where we’d go after leaving the mountain. Those times always earned me a terse “Can we just focus on the here and now?” I figured she was just being practical, so I kept our downtime conversation to stories about my life on the island. I know I talk too much, as you’ve probably figured out by now, but I tried to keep my stories short and funny. I loved to hear her laugh. I never could have guessed how important something like that was for survival. Comfort. Strength. I hadn’t been this happy since that first quiet week on the island.
And the happier I got, the less I thought about moving on. I can admit that to myself, and to you, now. I wasn’t really aware of it at the time. I hadn’t intended it to be that way. In the beginning, everything we did, every new skill I perfected, got filed into that book in my brain labeled “Helpful Hints for the Journey Ahead.” That book was always in my thoughts, along with dreams of what was waiting out there. The other taiga beyond the forest, and the jungle beyond that. And then the great unknown. New lands, new possibilities. And hopefully, as always, the chance of a way back home.
But as time went on, and each reassuringly routine day rolled into the next, that book got smaller and smaller. It might have disappeared altogether if what happened at the end of that otherwise monotonous month hadn’t occurred.
We’d just come back from a particularly lucrative haul. We’d gathered enough glowstone to finish lamps for the workshop. We’d worked all day and through the night (according to Summer, whose internal clock was way better than mine), and so when we got back the next morning, both of us were craving sleep.
“Too bad the world won’t let us turn in before nightfall,” said Summer, dumping her glowstone in a workshop chest. “But I know the perfect way to perk up!”
“Aw c’mon,” I moaned, as she took off running for the front door. “C’mon!”
I knew where she was going, and I was definitely not in the mood.
I’d gotten reasonably used to the heat down in the Nether, the constant thirst, feeling like I was slow-cooking under my armor. I’d even gotten used to both bad smells: rotting, bacon-y zombie pigs and, well, the other, constant stink of you know what. So, I really didn’t see the use of an ice-cold river plunge, and Summer knew my feelings well.
“Oh don’t be such a baby!” she taunted, as the click of the lava switch filled the entrance hall. “You know you love it!”
She knew I didn’t. Leaping through the freezing air into even more freezing water. If I hadn’t been so tired, I would have just watched from the bank. But I went along with her, and the chill did invigorate me.
I was about to get back out for a hot shower when I felt something wriggle past my leg.
I yipped, splashing out of the way. I expected to see a squid; they were rare but not unknown in this river. Instead I caught sight of what could only be a…
“Fish!”
“Pardon?” Summer had ceased her splashing just long enough to hear me. “What are you on about?”
“Look!” I pointed to the small, swimming life-form. “Look, a fish!”
“Several,” she corrected. There were at least three more, all swimming ahead of the one that’d brushed me. They seemed reddish, despite the blue of the water, and roughly the shape and size of the salmon I used to catch.
“Are there fish here?” I asked, wondering if I’d somehow missed them during all our other swims.
“Never.” Summer had that flat, emotionless tone I recognized as her thinking voice. “Never here.” Her eyes followed them under the ice. “I’ve never seen one anywhere unless it was at the end of a hook.”
“Me neither,” I added. Until this moment, I’d only seen squid below the surface. Fish had always been invisible until I’d caught them with a pole. Now, here they were—along with something else!
“Whoa, check out the plants!” My fist shot to the wavy green clumps growing along the river bottom. “These were definitely not here before.”
Summer didn’t reply, but bent down to try to scoop up a disintegrating handful.
In contrast to her even keel, I was positively beaming with excitement. “The world!” I exclaimed, realizing the bigger picture. “The world’s gone through another change!”
Who knows when it had happened—probably sometime while we were in the Nether. It’d been about two weeks since we’d ventured outside the mountain. And in that time, for reasons we still couldn’t understand, the world outside had spontaneously and miraculously transformed.
Now, if you’ve been in this world long enough to witness one of these changes, you know what I’m talking about. If not, try not to freak out, just like I did that first time, waking up and discovering that my left hand felt all tingly. Up until that point, I couldn’t really use my left hand for much other than as an assistant to my right. After that moment, though, it could hold stuff independently—which was great! But that was just the start of the change.
On the downside, mobs were harder to kill. But on the upside, I could now craft a shield to even the odds. I experienced another change later on, my boat suddenly appearing with oars when previously I’d had to lean forward to make it go. But that first change had been the most dramatic, and with it, I’d learned a valuable lesson: When the world changes, you’ve got to change with it. I can’t stress how important that lesson was, and I think a lot of people have trouble with it back home.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I could vaguely remember our world always changing—new machines, new ways of doing stuff, new ideas—and how that change had really scared and angered a lot of people. Maybe they were worried about being left behind. Maybe they were just frustrated at having to relearn skills they thought they’d mastered. That had sure been the case in this world for me. But I did learn, and, as an added bonus, change taught me that I could adapt, that I shouldn’t be afraid of it. When the world changes, you’ve got to change with it—’cause the world’s gonna keep changing whether you want it to or not.
That’s what was going through my mind now, taking in the fish and river grass.
“What else changed, do you think?” I asked, jumping out of the river and running up the bank.
I couldn’t see any difference. No new animals or plants. Nothing but the same frosty nothingness. “Do you think it’s just the water?” I asked. “All water? Should we hike to the coast, check the ocean?”
If the oceans had changed, what else could be out there? What would that mean for my island? “There’s gotta be more on land,” I mused, willing myself to see beyond the snow. “All that other land you told me about. All the places we’re going to explore. We gotta get going! We gotta see!”
“We will,” sighed Summer, holding up two pacifying arms, “after we finish lighting the mountain.”
“What? But”—I fumbled through sleep-deprived adrenaline—“we’ve, like, already done so much. We’ve lit the kitchen, the chicken coops, my apartment—”
“Flat.” Summer tried to correct. “The proper term is ‘flat.’ ”
“Whatever,” I bulldozed. “Point is, we got enough for all those, and the workshop and maybe, like, a couple storage closets.”
“But not the main chamber.”
“But that’ll take forever!”
“But you promised.”
I had. And although Summer’s words felt as cold as the river, I couldn’t deny that friends kept their promises. “You’re right,” I sighed, and looked up to the horizon.
“Guy.” Summer’s voice was softer now, warmer. “I know you want to pull up stakes this instant. I do, too. But it just wouldn’t feel right not to finish what we started. And besides”—a tinge of verve in her voice—“you haven’t seen the Ice Cube.”
“Ice Cube?” I turned back, suddenly remembering the signpost. Our first day, down below, when I’d asked about it. She hadn’t answered then and we hadn’t talked about it since. One thing at a time. “Low-hanging fruit” first.
“I think you’re up for it now,” said Summer confidently. “Exploring a Nether fortress.”
There were fortresses in the Nether?
“I’ve cleaned out a few of them,” Summer continued, “and they’re nowhere as easy as just picking glowstone in the wild.” Summer got out of the river, walked down the bank, and, pickaxe in hand, began chipping away at the ice above the fish. “There’s still one I haven’t explored yet, and now I think you’re ready to come with me.” She paused over the open water, switching out her pickaxe for a regular axe. “Tomorrow, we’ll head out to the Ice Cube.”
She chopped.
I turned away, focusing on what she had in store for tomorrow.
A fortress. The Ice Cube. Clearly there were more Nether adventures I had to have before I could even think about moving on.
That night, after dinner and our standard pre-adventure prep, I did something I hadn’t done in a very long time. I thought about the paintings on the wall.
I hadn’t paid much attention to them in a while, even at first, when I’d been too overwhelmed by this whole new situation. That’s why I’d given them only a passing mention in the earlier chapter, although their significance was practically shouting at me that night. They were the same ones from my house! The creeper, the man standing on the mountaintop, and the skinny-angular, videogame character of King Graham from the videogame King’s Quest.
How was this possible? How could Summer and I have come up with the exact same images? Was this world choosing images for the canvas? Or were they buried memories? I’d bounced between both ideas, and I still wasn’t any closer to either. If the pictures did come from the back of our minds, then it would mean Summer and I had lived pretty similar lives. That would explain the creeper—duh—but also the mountain man and King Graham. Could we have both seen them back on our world? And if that was the case, was it more than just coincidence?
The painting of King Graham seemed to take up most of my attention that night, and I’m not sure how long I stared at it before going to sleep. Why a computer game? And why such a simple one at that? I’d kinda had a breakthrough, back on my island, when I’d remembered that somehow computers were important to me. Maybe for a job, or for leisure, I couldn’t be sure. But I knew they mattered, a lot, and if Summer’s mind had conjured the exact same image, maybe they mattered to her as well.
“So many mysteries,” I said, staring at Graham. “So many more questions to answer.”