One of those questions, a big one, was repeated in the dream I had that night. I hadn’t dreamed in a while, or at least, I hadn’t remembered them. Isn’t that the case with dreams? You have them every night but don’t remember most of them? I did with this one, parts of it anyway. The images were hazy, colorless. I was seated at a screen. Tapping away frantically and, I think, gliding another device across a flat surface. Was I working? Playing a game? Both?
I woke up even more anxious, even more curious than when I went to bed. One question was rising above the others, one that connected to both the dream and King Graham.
“Where do you think we are?” I asked Summer a few minutes into our trek. We were back in the Nether, heading in the opposite direction of our hunt for the small collection of glowstone. We were following the quartz-marked trail, on the watch for ghasts, heading to the fortress called the “Ice Cube.”
“Eh?” Summer didn’t seem very interested. Her mind was, as usual, focused on what was in front of us.
“Where do you think we are?” I continued speaking to her back. “This world, I mean? Do you think it’s another planet? Another dimension?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Summer replied, as easily as if I’d asked her how to craft a wooden shovel. “We’re in a videogame.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “You think?”
“Of course,” Summer shrugged. “Haven’t you had the dream?”
The words hit me like an invisible hammer. “Which one?”
She chuckled. “The screen-typing-computer one, of course.”
“Ohmagod, yes!” I hopped next to her, bouncing with excitement. “Just last night! That’s why I’m asking you now! I think I had that dream after looking at your paintings—our paintings, because I have some of the same ones back on my island.”
“All the more reason for it to be a game.” Summer’s voice hinted at boredom. “How else could we come up with the same pictures? And it would explain everything else. The look of this landscape, up there and down here, and the physics of the world. Doesn’t it all feel like a videogame to you?”
“Definitely,” I started to answer, but with just a tad less enthusiasm. Something was knocking at the wall between the back and front of my mind. “But that’s just a feeling.”
“It has to be.” Summer’s tone was practical, inarguable. “Somehow we were pulled here, against our will, like that ‘dude,’ as you’d say, in the old movie you’re always talking about where they fight with glowing Frisbees.”
“Hm,” I muttered, remembering the movie but forgetting the title.
“Or,” Summer expanded, “we might have volunteered. Game testers, or designers. That could be us. We found some way to wipe our memories when we, I don’t know, plugged our heads right into the system.”
“Can we do that?” I asked. “Plug our heads into a computer?”
“No idea,” sang Summer, “but if you can remember every piece of technology from the other world, do tell.”
I couldn’t. And I couldn’t argue that the idea was sound. Game designers. Or testers. Or both. It did fit with our mutual dream. We’re both sitting on some kind of laboratory beds back home, next to each other, or on opposite sides of the world, computers wired into helmets or, as Summer thought, directly into our heads. Ouch. The logic was sound, no doubt.
“But,” I said, still wondering, “could the answer be something else?”
“Like what?” Summer challenged.
“Well…” I hesitated, unsure of my own gut. I thought about just agreeing with her and letting it go. We had a big day in front of us, and was an argument the best way to start it? But…
Friends aren’t afraid to be honest with friends.
“What if it’s a world, a real world, that’s just made to look like a videogame for us.”
“Eh?” Back home, a round, human Summer might have cocked her head. “How do you mean?”
“I’ve just been thinking,” I began, “and I’ve thought about this a lot. What if this world was created for us…for people like us…to, well, learn stuff. Learn about ourselves, learn how to survive back in our world—”
“Why on earth would someone go and do that?” Summer balked. “And why on earth would it look like a videogame if it isn’t one?”
“Simplicity?” I offered. “You know, the basic nature of it—less of everything from plants to animals to even the type of ground below us, or,” I continued, glancing up, “above us on the surface. Not that much to figure out, when you think about it, which gives us more time to think about ourselves.”
“But why the videogame look?” countered Summer. “The whole blockiness of everything. Why make it look and feel like we’re in a videogame instead of creating just a simulation of our world with, as you say, less of everything?”
“I’ve thought about that too,” I continued, which got a sarcastic “Now that’s a surprise” in return.
“No, hear me out,” I said with growing confidence. “Did you play videogames back home?”
“Definitely.”
“A lot?”
“Definitely.”
“Me too. In fact, I think it’s kinda like a common language back home. Like eating or music, or maybe sports.” I couldn’t remember if I ever played sports, but that didn’t matter right now. “What if whoever designed this world did it in a way that we, castaways like you and me, can re-create later in our world?”
“Agaaain”—Summer stretched the word—“why, in either world, would someone want to do that?”
“As a teaching tool,” I breathed, really getting into the swing of my thoughts. “A life-lesson teaching tool wrapped up in a fun game.”
Summer was silent for a moment, no doubt accepting the mind-blowing power of my insight.
It made so much sense. It couldn’t be anything else. A world created to teach us how to be a better version of ourselves, which we could then re-create on computers for everyone else to play. How simple. How perfect. In the few seconds it took Summer to answer, I pictured myself as one of those historical figures from long ago. You know, the kind wrapped in a sheet sitting on a rock while other sheet-clad dudes sat at his feet saying, “Ah, you are a genius, please tell us more!”
“No,” Summer responded flatly. “You’re wrong. It’s a videogame.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It has to be.”
“But you don’t know!”
“Neither do you.”
“But I will!” I declared, wishing I could shake my finger in the air. “When we escape, when we leave this world for ours, I’ll be able to prove that I’m right!”
“And until that day,” Summer chimed back, “we’ll both have to just respect each other’s beliefs!”
“Respect each other’s beliefs,” I repeated, mentally checking off another friendship lesson. But that fresson suddenly took a backseat to my shout of “Whoa!”
I stopped in my tracks, forcing a huffing halt from Summer. “What now?”
“Do you know what you just said?” I asked.
“Something that won’t delay our mission, I hope?” Summer quipped.
“You know…” I grasped for the thought, as elusive as an attacking ghast. “I think you just summed up a really important lesson about our world!”
“Here it comes,” Summer sighed.
“No, really.” I waved my arms. “I think what you said about respecting each other’s beliefs, a belief you can’t prove until you cross from one world to the next…I think”—I exhaled deeply—“folks back home don’t do that, or don’t do it enough. In fact, I think that some believe what they believe so violently that they’re actually willing to kill each other over it.”
“You really think so?” Summer asked. “You think people back home are that mad?”
“I’m not so sure,” I said, head swimming with ideas. “But I think I remember something like that from back home. Don’t you?”
“I try not to think too much about back home.” Summer shrugged, which should have prompted an entirely new, and really critical, conversation. Summer tried not to think about back home? Why?
That’s what I should have asked next, if I hadn’t been so caught up in high-minded notions about beliefs.
“I think…” I continued.
“You certainly do,” sniped Summer, turning to continue our hike, “and when we get back to the mountain, you can think and ponder and philosophize all you blo—”
She stopped. Words and motion. She was a couple dozen steps ahead, frozen at the top of a small rise.
Flp.
The sound answered my unasked question.
It was coming from beyond her, somewhere on the other side.
Flp-flp-flp.
A mushy, squishy sound getting closer by the second.
I rushed up next to Summer, scanning the rusty, uniform landscape before us.
“There.” Summer pointed to a distant cube that appeared larger and darker than the rest. And crooked.
Crooked?
I was about to ask what I was looking at when the crooked cube moved. Not far, not fast—just a short, shallow hop in our direction. And on the second hop, I could make out what looked like eyes.
“Magma cube,” said Summer. “The Nether’s version of a slime.”
Slime?
I thought I might have skimmed over a passage about slime in my island’s monster manual. But if they were a real threat, I’m sure I would have read deeper.
And as if to complement that thought, Summer continued, “Not very dangerous, not like ghasts, but this one is in our way.”
“I’ll handle it,” I boasted, reaching for my sword. She might dismiss my philosophical revelations, but she couldn’t dispute my warrior skills.
“If you wish,” said Summer, “even though it might be safer with a bow.”
“You’re worried about safety?” I snorted. “With that bopping bag o’ jelly?”
“Oh, by all means,” Summer giggled, “save the day.”
I hesitated. “What’s the matter?”
“No, nothing”—Summer stifled another giggle—“unless you’d like a little help?”
“Puh-lease,” I sneered. “I got this.”
Can’t be too dangerous, I thought, striding purposefully across the crunchy, speckled ground. I mean, if I can take a ghast, what can this dopey hop-rock do?
The “hop-rock” must have seen me coming, because its next bounce brought those eyes level with mine. “Come on then,” I said, trying to imitate Summer’s accent. “Give it a go.”
I stepped forward to swing just as the magma cube bounced…right on top of me!
“OW!” I yelped, reeling from the burning impact. Honestly, it wasn’t too bad, no different than a zombie’s punch. But the blow to my pride, especially when I knew I had an audience, was enough to send my sword to work.
“Ha!” I yelled, as the diamond blade sliced through living lava. The cube flashed red, falling back in silent pain.
Rushing forward for a second, hopefully fatal blow, I shouted over my shoulder, “No problem!”
The blade connected, but the creature didn’t die. Instead, it split into four—no fooling, four!—smaller versions of itself.
“ ‘No problem!’ ” called Summer, as the hopping quartet attacked.
“Eee!” I squealed, getting knocked and burned by the cubes as I swiped wildly around with my sword.
“You got this?” asked Summer with a slightly more serious tone.
“I got this!” I insisted as the blade swished a sweeping slice across all four cubes.
“About…” I began, but bit down on “time.” They’d split again! Four into eight!
Hop-bounce-burn!
Surrounding me, pouncing.
“Ow-jee-aw, c’mon!”
A well-placed chop turned one into smoke.
At least they stop dividing at this level.
Two more at my back, another three on either side. Leaping for my face, searing through my armor.
I got this! I kept repeating to myself through swipes and singes. I got this!
Bouncing and burning. So many, too many. What was that movie I’d seen once, that phrase that had been funny then…
I got it, I got it, I got…I AIN’T GOT IT!
“Summer! I need—”
“Help,” said the calm voice behind me. “I figured you would.”
Another blade at my side, dicing the…living dice. “You go right, I’ll go left.” The feeling of Summer’s shoulder against mine. Comforting, secure. A minute or so later, we were standing in silence with a few red and yellow balls hovering at our feet.
“Magma cream,” said Summer, swiping up the first of two. “The prime ingredient for fireproof potions.”
“You know, Summer,” I said, as hyper-healing fixed everything but my pride, “I wasn’t calling you ’cause I needed help or anything. I just thought, like, you shouldn’t be missing all the fun.”
“Of course.” Summer handed me a ball of magma cream. “And just so you know, in the future, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.”
Fresson fifteen: Friends shouldn’t be afraid to ask friends for help.
“Onward then.” Summer led us back onto the quartz trail, down into a narrow, flat ditch. Here we had limited visibility, and I noticed Summer swinging her bow back and forth.
“We should probably fill this in tomorrow,” she said, looking up and listening for ghasts. “It’ll make the final stretch to the Ice Cube easier to see.”
“Why do you call it the Ice Cube?” I asked. “Is it the color?”
“And the mod-cons,” Summer answered, “which you will definitely thank me for building.”
“You built it?” I asked, now thoroughly confused. “I thought it was the fortress we were going to explore.”
“Dear me, no.” Summer chuckled. “That’s my forward base, so to speak—my home away from home. A place to restock, catch our breath in safety, and, above all, cool down.”
“Say what?” I couldn’t have heard that right. “You mean, like, emotionally cool down, not physically change your temperature.”
“Not at all,” said Summer as the terrain began to rise. “I couldn’t manage these deep-range missions if I didn’t have a place to cool down. Overheating saps too much strength, clouds thinking. I’ve made too many mistakes down here, lots of them life-threatening, to not appreciate the importance of beating the heat.”
“I get what you’re saying, but how did you—”
“With that.”
As we crested the ridge, Summer gestured ahead. “Behold the Ice Cube.”