Chapter 1:

Immersion

I was passed out, in complete darkness. I heard someone screaming at me, and then painful liquids splashed against my entire face. I opened my eyes and flung out of my resting position to face my torturer and give him what for.

It was my mother, with a now empty glass of orange juice.

"WAKE UP!"

I quickly rushed to beat in my captor's face in with the nearest object I could find. I found a plush-like object and used it to attack the one who poured the acidic substances on my head.

"DROP THE PILLOW, AND GO TO SCHOOL."

I was quickly flung out of my holding cell with a bag of books and thrown out the door. Today was the first day after the first weekend of school. That means relationships that started during the first days of school, are now forming together, and many people are talking about their weekend.

I, however, did not form any relationships. Sad as it may seem, I'm not the one to fear social interaction and cower away from any organism that remotely looks like a human. In fact, I love social anythings. Except, no one wants to return the favor. It's not that bad, I've got friends. Penny, Chip, and Used Napkin.

Jokes aside, I have one or two friends. I have a friend named Guilson who likes to mock me about my social life, and more so about my love life. You can probably guess how I am with the ladies.

The other friend, is probably going to have to be Alex. Alex is a great stand-up guy, but he hasn't shown up to school, being home-schooled and all. I'm sure he's having fun with it, but he used to be my best friend, and even a mentor of sorts.

The school bus doors opened, and I waltzed in as fabulously as possible. I heard people snickering as I walked passed, but I ignored them. I sat down next to Guilson, who immediately started to make the newest sex joke of the day.

Wait, I haven't introduced myself yet, have I? I'm Tal. I'm pretty unique around here. I guess. What did that one book say about socializing? Oh yeah, I have to tell you some things about myself. I like girls, and Minecraft. I haven't played as much as I should've. Team Fortress 2 takes my time away. Why am I talking about Minecraft when I barely play it anymore? Well, Minecraft has become rather important lately, and I fear I am changing because of it. Mainly because Guilson made a private server for me and him to screw around on now.

But that isn't the whole reason. It's the main reason I am talking about Minecraft, but it's not why it's important. We'll get to that in a second.

School finally ended after a long period of time, and it was so mind numbingly boring that I was unable to write anything of it. I do think some chicks looked at me though. I am fearing the worst as I type.

Maybe some Minecraft will take a load off, I think. I'm not sure. Am I ever sure? I'm not sure. What I am sure of though, is the fact that I am madly in love with my newly built computer, and Guilson likes cheese balls better than Cheetos.

I rushed through the door, threw my bookbag on my bed and dove to my chair butt-first and booted up Steam. None of my GMOD or TF2 buddies were online to play, and neither was my Counter-Strike team. I decided to check my email, and what happened next, is out of the ordinary.

Spam.

No, really. Spam. That's not common for me. I've only used throwaway emails for most things, and reserved my real email for contact with friends and the things that needs my money. I've rarely recieved more than the usual penis enlargement pill ad, and even then, I've set email rules to block those emails. So, no more than a spam ad a month comes in.

This particular spam decided to come more times than one. In fact, it came into my email every day for a week now. I've set rules and kept it out, but it hasn't gone away. Usually, opening some emails and allowing the images to come in, also lets in various viruses and malware. But this email was totally blank, and came with only a text file.

Upon downloading the text file and opening it, all of my desktop shortcuts and folders disappeared, leaving a new wallpaper on my computer. It was a single grass block from the famous voxel-based survival game, but nothing like any wallpaper I've seen before. It seemed to glow, even more so than my actual screen brightness. There was a sense of unrealness to it. Maybe even surreal.

The text file read as follows:

"Dear Tal.

If you are reading this, you have gotten my letter: SEVEN, times. This letter is automatically sent on a daily basis until you read this to the fullest. I have an important task for you, an experiment of sorts. It's going to sound implausible, maybe even impossible, but I have finally made it work. I can finally send people inside any computer program. Not just that, I have been able to jury-rig a fully functional Minecraft game, that is in many ways different from the actual game itself. However, I will not tell you these differences, for it is up to you to find them out yourself.

Probably the most fun and scientific research I can get out of this is having more than one person in. For your benefit, I am adding one more person in on the third day. For your extra benefit, it will probably be a girl you know, probably not. It could be any girl. You'll have to trust me on this. The only other details I can give you is that she will be spawning on the exact same time and spot as you do.

Speaking of something I can't have from you right now, I also can't have your person in the game without your permission, which is something I can have right now. If you are willing to spend a majority of your time in a video game (which I am sure you will), please type the 'Y' key, if not, type the 'N' key, and no more emails will be sent.

In fact, type it here, actually. Right here: [ ]"

That was the email. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go in a video game, I was doing pretty well in school and all. But then again, was I ever sure? Probably not, but what I am sure of right now, is that I'll won't get a better chance than this.

[Y]

As soon as my finger left the 'Y' key my computer monitor shot a thunderbolt so loud and bright, my ears started ringing and my vision was completely white. After a second or two, I felt my body being raised from my chair and being pivoted so I was facing down at the ground. My ears were coming to, but my vision was still white as snow. I could hear gibberish from my computer speakers, and the speakers were about to break from the sound of it. My body started slowly moving forward as tentacles came out of my screen and...

Tentacles? As soon as that thought processed, I was pulled into the computer at what felt like fighter jet speeds. When my velocity calmed down, another thought entered my head.

Oh my God I'm drowning. I was right. I was pretty sure about it. My eyes came to, but instead of white, it was blue. I could see a bit in front of me, but nothing five feet away in the water. I blew bubbles to see which was up, and started breaststroking to the surface as fast as my crappy legs and arms could pull me. I started fading after half a minute or so. I was really deep in the water. As soon as the darkness creeped in from the edges of my eyes to my center, I felt air. Sweet, beautiful air. I pulled on whatever I could find and heaved myself onto it, and started vomiting water from my lungs.

"I am NEVER, EVER, downloading random shit from spam. EVER. AGAIN." I said, after I regained my breath. Who was I talking to? No one. I knew I was going to get lonely, and I needed to talk to myself to keep me sane. At least until I found a pig or something. It's going to be a while until that girl shows up, if she shows up at all.

It was morning, on a sandy beach next to a huge grassy flat land. The beach was wide enough for miles if I were to walk along it, but I hate sand. I quickly decided that I would get to grass as soon as possible, and find a tree, and punch it. I drew a mental todo list in my head to match.

Find grassy land.

Punch grass until I understand the 'Mining' mechanic.

Find a tree.

Punch it.

Gather enough wood to make a small hovel.

Find coal and iron.

Make torches.

Find sheep.

Shear sheep.

Make two beds.

Neat. A perfect ten. I need two beds and enough space for comfort so me and whoever else is coming can have some rest together. I guess. I'm not too much for being romantic.

I also wanted to see if I was a blocky avatar, like in the game. I walked up to the water that nearly killed me and looked at my reflection. I'm not blocky at all, infact, everything about me was still there. I had the worst clothes possible for the situation too. My red Polo shirt and jeans quickly proved that the school dress policy isn't the best survival policy. But you gotta admit, Polo shirts and jeans look classy. My surfer dude blond hair was fully intact, albeit darker from the water. My incredibly shiny blue eyes were masked by the blueness of the water, but if I looked at the whites of my eyes, I could see it. I don't think there's anything else to say about me. I'm of average build, and just a bit more taller than average. That's it. I don't exercise too much or eat too much, and because of that I'm really skinny.

Eat. Huh. Guess I can't make a perfect ten. Add 'Find food and om nom nom it' to my list.

11. Find food and om nom nom it.

Right. Time to complete steps one through three. I sprinted over to the nearest tree in the grass and sat down beneath it to take any additional breaths that I needed after my near-death experience. I'm not sure if I respawn either. That would suck. I rolled my open hand into a fist and shot it into the grass as slowly as possible, as not to injure myself. The block had a small crack in the middle after I hit it. I felt the block hit my hand, but I didn't feel pain as I would in real life. It was very soft and grassy, not something I would complain about if I had to sleep on it. I punched it harder, and the crack in the middle grew faster and faster the harder I punched it. Eventually, I dug it up into a mini block version of itself, and it shot off into me. A small backpack appeared on my back and had the tiniest hint of something dropping into it come into my nerves from the leather straps on my backpack. If you paid very close attention to it, you would feel it.

Step four. I punched the tree, and I could feel the wooden rough bark against my fist. I estimated that if I gave it my all, a block could be mined faster than the times estimated on the Minecraft Wiki. I grabbed the now mined wood block out of the air before it could rush into my new rucksack and placed it next to my feet. I used more log blocks to estimate my size. Two blocks, but I could see just a bit over the second block. Pretty cool that my size stayed almost constant with the game.

I quickly tore down all the other trees in the area and rested under the floating leaf blocks for a while until some saplings fell. I planted the saplings and took my three stacks of logs to a flat open area. I took my rucksack off and felt inside it for logs, and felt only four blocks. One being the dirt block, and the other three being the logs. Confused, I took the three blocks out and held them in my hand. They weren't much bigger than the palm of my hand. To my surprise, the three blocks had a shiny number engraved on each one. Sixty-four, to be exact. I crossed my fingers and set the tiny dirt block on the ground, and watched it resize to full sized.

I used my finger to write in the dirt a 2x2 grid. I placed a log in and...

Thwpht

Out came a wooden plank with a 4 engraved on it. Neat, again. So I tried to figure out how to get the blocks out, and it took me a while, but I figured it out. Attempting to separate a piece of the block from the other pulled out a duplicate planks from inside the wooden planks of the same size. if that's not cool, I don't know what is. I made a workbench and plopped it down in place of the dirt block. I made myself a wooden pickaxe and threw the pickaxe into my rucksack. Done. Now for the work.

Flicking the blocks also threw them on the ground and resized them to full static blocks. It took me an hour or so, but I managed to flick the wooden planks out of my hand in a way where I could rapidly build a foundation for my house.

I used the time to build a 10x10x5 house, which I assumed was big enough for me and the Girl for the time being. Finishing that, I took the time to admire my work and wipe the sweat off my brow. But then, disaster struck.

I accidentally built a log house instead of a wooden plank house. It was also getting close to night. No, wait, scratch that. It's night now. I could hear lots of growing in the distance, and I didn't want to deal with it. I rushed in the door-sized hole and blocked it up with planks. I rested the dirt block in the middle of the room and used it as a pillow.

Groan...

Clank.

I hate spam mail.