The Shipwreck: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 13

  Tank boots up the computer next to Jake, turning to watch him more closely as he waits.

  Jake trudges around his perimeter wall and gathers more wheat before stopping to make bread for his next journey, and now feels more than a bit self-conscious because this basic cobblestone-and-dirt house and starter farm isn’t representative of his best work at all. This isn’t actually his base, just a waypoint on his way to solve the next riddle in this strange, mysterious server. If Tank plays Minecraft, maybe he’d be interested in it, too.

  Would it be weird to ask if he wants to join him? Tank already said he wasn’t interested in talking, just doing the community service as is. Jake’s trying to figure out the best way to ask if he wants to play together and check out the server, but Tank’s already pulling up one of his own worlds from some other server.

  Tank cracks his knuckles. “I’ll show you a farm.”

  The screen expands into a lush green paradise. Neat rows of pumpkins cheerfully line plots of carrots, wheat rustles gently in the wind, walkways and waterways line the paths in tidy little plots that go as far as the eye can see. Potatoes, beets, tall stalks of sugar cane—Jake isn’t even sure what kind of vegetable that is over there. And are those…beehives?

  Beyond a lake surrounded by bamboo and sugar cane, there are fields and fields of color. Jake can see a gentle path curving through a blue field of cornflowers, and behind it, lilacs and rose bushes and other colorful splashes of flowers.

  “Wow,” Jake says.

  “Don’t look at my flowers,” Tank says. “Here, just know that water only reaches four blocks, so as long as you line the bed with—”

  “Oh, I knew that,” Jake says breezily. “I mean, this was just a temporary setup. See, I was in the middle of this epic puzzle—”

  The door creaks open.

  “What are you two doing?”

  “Farming,” Tank says. He jerks his head at Jake’s screen. “Farming badly.”

  “Hey!”

  Emily grabs a chair and pulls it up to them, leaning backward and sitting on it precariously, balancing all of her weight on the back two legs. “Minecraft?”

  “Yeah,” Jake says. “Do you wanna play?”

  “Sure. More fun than cleaning, anyways. Scoot over, Tank.”

  Tank raises an eyebrow but shifts aside to make room for Emily and her chair at the last computer. She boots that up as well, and then whistles at Tank’s farm. “Pretty. You do a whole Wizard of Oz reference there?”

  “I just like flowers,” Tank says, a tinge of red surging on his cheeks.

  “Let’s start a new game so we’re all on the same level,” Emily says cheerfully. She glances at Jake and his rudimentary weapons. “Not that you’ve progressed super far. How long have you been in this world?”

  “You play Minecraft, too?” Jake asks. He’s in shock. Now he feels really dumb for getting killed by a zombie in front of her. He absolutely doesn’t want to admit he’s been here doing a few hours every day for the past two weeks. He just started mining diamonds but he doesn’t have them here on this rudimentary base out in the middle of nowhere. He’s been trying to buff his character up and get what he thinks he’ll need to solve Riddle the Eighteenth.

  Emily doesn’t answer his question, just logs in to her account and pulls up the multiplayer screen, looking at him expectantly. “So. New world?”

  Jake looks back at his level twelve character and the progress he’s made solving the mystery. “Um. That sounds fun, but uh, this server I found on the local network—it’s actually really cool. The person who made it left these riddles I’ve been trying to solve—”

  “Hmm.” Emily’s computer was already listing the servers. “Which one?”

  “Bella Beta 7. It’s a game on the local network. You should be able to see it.”

  “Huh. Sounds kind of familiar. Wait, I’ll be right back.” Emily heads out of the room and returns with a dusty notebook. “This was in that office room. Thought it was some weird coded journal, but it makes more sense now.” She flips it open to show them pages full of cramped, tiny handwriting.

  “It must have belonged to whoever made this server,” Jake says. “Oh wow. They made a ton of versions.” Each page is headed with a date, and it’s clear to see that the creator worked on the server for years. He takes the notebook and scans through it quickly. A few phrases jump out at him, like debug avatar skin scales and recalibrate Leviathan sequence and music cues, but most of the notes don’t make sense to him, they’re all referencing some programming language. “That’s neat. They must have lived in this apartment complex. The server is really cool, though, the creator added all these riddles and things, and it’s, like, all a piece of a bigger puzzle. Wanna check it out?”

  “Sounds cool.” Emily spawns on the same rocky shore that Jake did when he first started and immediately starts heading into the forest.

  “I’m over here.” Jake writes down his coordinates and hands them to Emily.

  “Oh, that’s not too far. I think I can make it over to you in a few days in-game,” Tank says. A quick glance at his screen shows Tank’s already hard at work chopping wood and getting first-time essentials.

  “Oooh, I found a cave. I’m gonna check this out,” Emily says. “Hey, Tank. Nice avatar.”

  “My sister designed it,” Tank says. “She’s the smart one.”

  Jake bites back a chuckle. From Emily’s screen it looks like Tank is some kind of anime character with blue hair and glasses. She leaves him quickly behind as Tank starts gathering supplies, and Jake turns back to his own screen to focus.

  “We can meet up in the middle. I’ll come back toward you two and I can show you the riddles and stuff and what I’m working on.” Jake starts gathering all the supplies he’ll need for the days’ worth of travel, his heart pounding with excitement.

  This is new.

  This is terrifying.

  This is going to be awesome.

  * * *

  —

  First nights in Minecraft in a new world are special. Jake has a plan, he has a system on how to be as efficient as possible: gather wood, build tools, create a shelter before night falls.

  This? This is madness.

  “What are you doing?” Jake says, aghast.

  Emily isn’t gathering any supplies or building anything—well, no, she’s got a sword already, which means she had enough wood to do that, but why not a pickaxe or a shovel? Her avatar runs right into the cave Jake passed on his first day, where he carefully noted its location as something to explore once he’s prepared. She’s just—she’s charging ahead, grinning wildly without any fear of the mobs inside, no protection, no armor, nothing.

  “Cave,” Emily says cheerfully. She points to her screen as if it’s obvious.

  Caves are good. Caves have coal, which is necessary eventually, but on the first night one doesn’t really need coal; it’s better in Jake’s opinion to be safe and wait for the next day. “I think I have a stash of coal and stuff nearby there. Go east a bit and you should be able to find it.”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “The sun’s already setting!”

  “Oh. Yeah. No worries,” Emily says. “In a cave.”

  Tank glances over at her screen with a cursory nod of approval as Emily starts throwing bricks of dirt to block the cave entrance, closing it to the outside.

  “What about the creatures on the inside?”

  Emily keeps putting bricks of dirt up until she’s completely closed herself in the dark.

  “You don’t even have a bed!” Jake always tries to get the essentials first: wood, for a crafting table and for basic tools, then sheep, so he can at least pass the time between pockets of safety.

  “Don’t need it. First night, still got plenty of health.” Emily grins. “Gotta mine, get ore for armor.” She j
erks her head at Jake’s screen. “What are you doing?” she scoffs.

  “Waiting for sunrise!” Jake glances back at his screen, where he expects it to have skipped to the next morning, but nothing’s happening. His avatar’s blocky feet are just lying in bed, and he’s still there.

  Tank, next to him, shakes his head. “It won’t skip if other players are still awake.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to be here awhile.” Emily slaps a torch on a wall and whistles as she delves deeper into the cave.

  Jake’s nerves jump to attention as soon as he hears the familiar plink plink of arrows. Emily’s taking a lot of damage, her health dropping dangerously low, but she just heads right for the skeleton, stabbing mercilessly until it disappears. “Sweet, got a good vein of coal and a whole bunch of other stuff here if you wanna come over. Could be a good place to build a base.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jake says. He’d taken one look at the deep chasm and the river below and the fissures that dotted the cave and knew that it’d be a prime place for mobs to form. He doesn’t want spiders or anything spawning near his home base. “Just come toward me, I already have a nice spot started. If you want to make something new we should find like a nice grassy field or some plains, someplace near sheep and cows, something flat so we don’t have to terraform it.”

  “Welcome to the Iron Age, baby!” Emily croons, wielding a new iron pickaxe.

  “Nice,” Tank says. Over on his screen, Jake can see the beginnings of a wheat farm already, neat little plots of seedlings next to water sources and tall stalks of sugar cane. There’s a decent little dirt house with a door, too. Tank’s busy outside, chopping trees even as it starts to get dark outside the ring of torches he’s set up outside his house.

  “Why are you planting wheat? I thought you were coming toward me.”

  “You said you were coming back this way.”

  “I said we could meet halfway,” Jake says, shaking his head. “Never mind, you already did it. Having more hideouts is always good, I guess.”

  The moan of zombies gets closer, and Jake shudders. This is the scariest part, he doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s why he prioritizes finding sheep so he can make a bed. Passing the night without one is terrifying, when the mobs come and you can just hear them right outside your hideout.

  Jake realizes with a start that the zombie is actually coming from Tank’s screen.

  “Tank, watch out!”

  Tank moves quickly, running into the house and shutting the door just in time. Outside, the zombie groans, plodding mindlessly into the door.

  “Thanks, man,” Tank says, and it sounds sincere.

  The inside of the house is simple enough, but it’s got a lot of good stuff already. Tank’s been busy. There’s a crafting table and two chests.

  Jake watches Tank sort through his inventory for a few minutes as he meticulously organizes seeds, wood, and other supplies into neat rows by block type. “Oh, neat. You’ve got some wool, you can make a bed.”

  “Good idea.” Tank crafts a bed and throws it in a corner and hops into it immediately.

  Jake exhales a sigh of relief. “Nice. Emily, if you disconnect we can skip to morning—”

  “No way, I’m finding way too much good stuff here! You two can sleep if you want to.” Emily’s picking away at a vein of iron, humming to herself.

  To Jake’s horror, Tank isn’t even sleeping anymore but back outside his house, creating a perimeter wall around his farm.

  Jake scowls. “Forget this.” He’s not going to just sit here and watch other people play. He can do that on YouTube anytime. Tank’s coordinates look close enough. He sits back down in the dusty seat, wakes his avatar up, and gathers his supplies. He punches a hole into the dirt hideout and leaps into the night.

  * * *

  —

  Tank’s new base isn’t too far from Jake, but it’s a terrifying run as he speeds through the landscape. A blocky crescent moon slowly makes its way across the sky, and stars illuminate the forest as he runs. He’s faster than the zombie pursuing him, but only by so much, and he can’t keep this up forever. In the distance, something tall and spindly lurks—an enderman, Jake realizes with fear, and he quickly looks away, hoping it didn’t lock on to him. The groans multiply. Great. A whole slew of zombies, perfect. He’s going to die here and lose all his stuff and respawn super far away and what kind of people don’t build a bed the first night? Granted, you can’t always find sheep but at least you should hide. Finally he spots the gleam of torches in the distance, a bright beacon against the night. That must be Tank’s camp. Jake takes a hard left, the zombies in hot pursuit. He presses on his keyboard harder, angling forward as he speeds toward the light.

  “Aaah, open the door, open the door!”

  “Where are you? I don’t have a door in the perimeter wall yet, just—”

  Jake punches the dirt wall out of panic and keeps running.

  “Okay, don’t step on the plants, dude—”

  Jake barrels right through the wheat field and jumps into the house, slamming the door shut on the mob of zombies. “That was close.”

  “Euuurgghh.” The zombies plod uselessly against the door.

  “I said don’t step on the plants,” Tank says, turning around to glare at him. “What’d you do that for?”

  “In case you didn’t notice, I was running for my life!”

  “And you broke my wall.”

  “I’ll fix it tomorrow,” Jake grumbles. “Wait, where are you going? We should sleep!”

  “Why are you so obsessed with sleep?” Emily says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. A quick glance at her screen shows her deep in her mine, plinking away at a vein of gold ore.

  “Because it’s nighttime! It’s not safe!”

  “Got things to do,” Tank says. He crafts a new pickaxe and roots around in a chest before heading down a hallway at the back of the dirt house.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Can’t go outside now that you brought a ton of zombies here. Might as well go down. Come on, we can explore. I started a mine here earlier. Didn’t get too far, but it seemed promising.”

  Tank’s already disappearing from Jake’s sight.

  Jake’s fingers twitch. He’s not going to just sit here and wait. “All right, I’m coming,” he says. He takes a quick moment to drop all the extra items he was hoarding in one of Tank’s chests: seeds, pumpkins, feathers—stuff he’ll want later.

  He scurries to catch up; the hallway leads down, down, down into the depths of the earth. Tank’s blue-haired avatar is already disappearing out of view. “One of these levels has a lot of iron in it,” Tank says. “Hm, I think it was—yep, this one!”

  “Emily, what are your coordinates again?”

  Jake does some quick math. “Oh, I wonder if this will connect. Tank, let’s head east.”

  Tank’s level opens up into a cavern, and it’s got plenty of ore veins as he said. Jake gets to work, mining when he sees iron or coal, plinking away when he hears Tank suddenly yelp.

  “Gahh! Spider!” Tank slashes at it with his wooden sword. “No, no, I’m gonna—”

  “I got you!” Jake shoots an arrow directly at the charging spider, whose beady red eyes are now focused on Jake. “C’mon, let’s go!” He slays the spider easily and picks up the silk string it drops. “You okay? Want some food?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Tank shudders. “I hate spiders.”

  “The worst. Come on, let’s go this way. I think we’re close to Emily, she’s got a lot of cool stuff near her.”

  “All right,” Tank says.

  He sounds a little nervous, which is weird considering how big and intimidating he actually is.

  “I’ve got an iron sword for you, here.” Jake hands him the extra weapons. “Here, take my armor, too. I’ve got more heal
th than you.”

  Tank follows close behind, and Jake feels a strange new surge of confidence as the two of them fight their way through the cavern together. Time stretches and collapses as they collect iron ore and coal, and finally he can see Emily’s avatar—a sixties-style aviator pilot—wave at them from a cliffside chasm next to a steaming pool of lava. Jake is impressed and terrified by the deft way she’s building a one-block bridge across the dangerous substance.

  This whole cavern is spectacular. Jake would never have gone this deep on his own.

  Rivulets of lava flow into a quick-moving river. Above Emily, the night sky is barely visible through the gorge, and the interior of the cavern is open to what look like endless caves and chasms, an eternity of exploration.

  “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!” Emily calls out, bouncing impatiently up and down.

  He takes out his sword and follows his friends into the unknown.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EMILY

  Emily whistles to herself as she slays skeleton after skeleton, watching her experience go up. Ugh, the beginning is always so slow. She’ll need more levels if she wants to enchant, and she’s so tired of these basic weapons and armor.

  Her pickaxe breaks with an annoying plink and Emily sighs. “Anyone have sticks on them?”

  Jake tosses a pile of logs at her. “How are you going through so many tools so fast?”

  “Gotta mine, gotta buff up,” Emily says simply. She crafts a new set of tools quickly and gets back to work.

  “Okay, not that this isn’t a good find—nice work, Emily—”

  Emily finds herself grinning. This is kind of nice, she realizes. Playing with Viv was really fun—they had similar styles of exploration—but Jake’s never-ending commentary and Tank’s taciturn one-word answers or confused questions is kind of hilarious. Not that she’d admit it.

  “—now that we’re all together, I can show you this cool thing. There’s, like, a whole seaside village that was, like—”

  “Cool, we can trade with the villagers, where is it?”