Jake whoops from the back seat. “We’ve got a shot! I can’t believe it!”
“How did you know talking about the game would work?” Tank asks.
“I didn’t,” Emily says simply. “I just had a hunch.” There were little nods in Isabella’s office that made her think she’d appreciate the mystery of a game: the pixelated swords hanging on the wall, the figurines on her desk, the giant twenty-sided die paperweight.
Isabella arrives at Pacific Crest Apartments before them and is already waiting outside, clacking her heel impatiently, when Carmen pulls into the lot.
“You all have weird hobbies,” Carmen says, rolling her eyes.
“Thanks.” Emily laughs. “I’ll see you at home.”
Isabella lifts up the caution tape and strides into the fenced-off construction site like she owns the place. Which she does. But still. The presence.
Jake pulls out a chair for her and lets her sit at the center computer. Emily’s come to think of it as Tank’s, even as the one on the right is hers, the way it’s right next to the plug where she charges her phone, and the left one is Jake’s, right next to the aisle so he can keep getting up to go to the water fountain once in a while like he does. Emily isn’t sure when she started thinking of the lab as theirs. Now that there’s someone else in it, she feels protective of it.
Isabella sits gingerly at the computer, touching the stickers on the monitor. Emily used to wonder about those; she thought they were just left over from some kid and Ellen would junk the computer like everything else in the building. She wonders now if this used to be Isabella’s computer, if those were her seashell stickers.
“So these are riddles we’ve solved so far,” Tank says. He pulls up the folder where they’ve been saving the screenshots. Emily’s saved other grabs there, too, and she realizes as she looks at the sheer number of images that they aren’t just of the riddles and clues that they said this folder was for in the first place. There are shots of the impossibly gorgeous mountain that is shaped like a wolf, a beautiful setting sun. Tank’s detailed farm. Jake’s intricately decorated library and organized chests, his avatar standing proudly in front of them. Her own collection of swords. Jake’s and Tank’s avatars trapped on top of a tree. The zombie that got stuck in their sheep pen. The automated inventory sorter Emily built. A million little in-jokes and moments from the time they’ve spent here.
Emily at first feels embarrassed at how many pictures she’s saved, but her images aren’t the only ones. There’s her avatar, too, bedecked in diamond armor, that first time she got the full set and ran around the base all excited and thrilled. Jake had laughed at her, but she had no idea he was saving this. And then there’s a shot of her diving headfirst into the cave filled with spiders, Tank right behind her.
“It looks like the three of you have had a lot of fun in this game,” Isabella says slowly.
“We didn’t build all this,” Emily says, gesturing to the images. “Look, redstone is one thing, and I’m decent at it, but this is advanced computer programming!”
“I think it’s sweet that you kids are really attached to this game. I get it, I really do. I used to play Minecraft, too, and of course you don’t want to lose your progress—”
“Did you play with your mom?” Jake asks.
“Yeah, a little. She got really busy, though, with work.” Isabella sighs. “I shouldn’t have come here, it was a mistake to think…”
She trails off, staring at the screen.
Tank has an image of the shipwreck open, and he’s zooming in slowly on the side of the ship. Emily’s not quite sure what he’s doing with the blurry image—it’s not a great shot to begin with. Jake was trying to catch the mermaids swimming around in it, and he doesn’t quite have Tank’s eye for framing and aesthetic. Emily likes Tank’s photos best, the way he can capture the right amount of drama and beauty in one shot. Jake tends to just shoot whatever he’s looking at.
Tank stops, gesturing at the screen.
On the side of the ship are letters, barely visible in the zoomed-in frame, but there.
BELLA.
Emily hadn’t even noticed it had been named in the first place.
Isabella goes still.
“How long has this server been here?” she asks after a long moment.
Jake shrugs. “I dunno. I mean, years, probably. From the amount of work that went into them, and how many versions there are. There’s tons.”
“Show me.” Isabella takes a set of wire-rimmed glasses out of her purse and puts them on. She ties her hair back and watches as Jake brings up the multiplayer screen. “This is all just on the LAN?”
“Yeah. That’s why we can’t connect to it from anywhere else. And if you get rid of the community center, it will all be gone.”
Isabella scans the list of the server names, her mouth pressing into a severe line. She looks back at Tank’s computer, her face unreadable as she flicks through the images: the mermaids swimming around the shipwreck, the ocean monument looming amidst the depths, the stone pathway leading to the underwater kingdom, the Leviathan rising up from the ocean floor.
“Do you want to play?” Emily asks suddenly. She recognizes the look: Isabella’s fingers twitching, the way she’s taking in all the images.
“Yes, I do,” Isabella says, her voice suddenly small. Emily can see the hints of the little girl who put seashell stickers on her computer.
Emily logs in for her. The world loads, glittering and full of promise.