I never meant for this to happen.

I know it sounds crazy. Hell, I don't quite believe it myself. Everything I know is turned upside-down, though, and not much can surprise me anymore. If you told me ten days ago to blow myself up, I'd tell you, in no uncertain terms, to go f**k yourself. If you told me right now to blow myself up, though, I'd just ask where the Catalyst is.

I'd welcome death.

I'm serious. At this point, I see no reason to go on.

Some people think of me as an abomination. A hideous creature. Someone that doesn't deserve the gift of life. Most people, though, see me as nothing but an annoyance. Something stupid that they don't want anything to do with.

Not one of them knows I didn't want this. I never did. But it spiraled out of control, and to anyone who sees this, I'm sorry. It's not my fault, and I can't fix it anymore. It's taking all my willpower to stay human enough to form words, so here it is. My story. Not my life story or any of that sappy stuff. That part's just boring. The story you're going to read is a tale of how I became what I am today, and it all started with a thug, a pistol, and the worst damn nosebleed of my life. Enjoy.

The display window of the gun shop at Second and Birch caught my eye. I was never really an advocate of guns. God gave me fists, and you can be damn sure I use 'em. Don't judge me, though. I was born into the city and I've lived there all my life. Muggings are more common than you might think, and my roommate had just gotten mugged the previous day by a man with a machine gun. I managed to fight off a mugger once, but he sure as hell wasn't carrying a machine gun, so I figured I could do with some decent protection. I had gotten my concealed carry license about an hour ago, and so I set out to find myself a reliable sidearm.

I nervously opened the door to the gun shop. It was a small place, probably couldn't fit more than 15 customers, but luckily I was the only one there. I peered at the shelves. I'm really not good with gun names, but a highly polished shotgun with a wooden finish caught my eye and kept it. If anyone tried to mug me and I had that with me, they'd think twice about trying to get their hands on my wallet. I gingerly lifted the gun, as if it were a live explosive. It was surprisingly heavy, but luckily I was relatively strong, so I was able to plunk it on the counter. The seedy-looking cashier looked up for a moment, eyeing both me and the gun. He grunted.

"Fifteen hundred bucks," he said holding up the gun. "This beauty's never going to fail you." My eyes must've widened considerably, because the cashier snorted. "Can't afford that? You maybe want to try our sale rack." He pointed toward the edge of the shop. A few lonely-looking pistols sat on a shelf, tossed aside haphazardly. One of them had a pretty long barrel, looked like maybe it could do some decent damage. I picked it up and carried it to the counter. The cashier took it out of my hand and looked it over. "Shootin' to wound, that's what this baby's for. .22 caliber rimfire pistol. It suits you. No offense, but you don't look to be the killin' type. Tell you what. I like you, so I'm gonna give you this for two-seventy-five bucks on the dot. I'll even load it for you. Safety's on, of course." It was cheap, and to be honest, I wasn't planning on killing anyone anytime soon. I rummaged around in my pocket and withdrew my wallet. I handed the man my MasterCard. He took it, swiped it, and handed it back with a smile that was missing a few teeth. "Congratulations, you got yourself a gun." he said, pressing the shiny new .22 into my hand. I took it and walked out into the dwindling sunset. I had walked for about five minutes when I realized he hadn't asked to see my concealed carry license. It confirmed my suspicions about the man being shady, but hey, a gun's a gun.

Suddenly, my iPhone buzzed in my pocket. I withdrew it, looking at the text I had received. It was from Alan Harriett, my roommate. But for some reason, the message was strangely cryptic. "I don't know what they want with you," Alan's message read. "It doesn't make sense. But there's something about you they want. Run, Jarrett. Don't let them t4q3ch17t`t6 b5864b76t5,gwtrvo[ij"

I unlocked the phone and began furiously typing a reply. "What the hell man? You fall asleep on your keyboard? Who the f**k are 'they'? Where am I supposed to run? And for the last time, don't call me Jarrett! Call me J! Kapesh?!"

I sat there and stared at the phone, its bright screen a sharp contrast from the rapidly approaching nightfall. It seemed like hours that I stared at that screen, waiting for some form of reply from Alan. But there was nothing. The phone bleeped a low-power message at me, as if it was giving up and trying to signal that I should too. I sighed in defeat and stuffed the phone in my pocket. I looked around. I was probably paranoid, panicking in case whoever Alan was trying to warn me about was right around the corner with a knife. In any case, I grabbed my .22 and kept it close. It then occurred to me that whoever 'they' were, they might have actually killed Alan. Alarmed, I sent him another reply, this one reading "Alan? You okay? Answer me!"

"He won't answer you." came a suave voice from the shadows. "He won't be answering anybody anytime soon."

I flicked off the safety on the .22 and fired a few wild shots into the darkness. "Show yourself! You killed Alan, didn't you, you f**king bastard!"

The shadow man laughed then. A long, low, ominous laugh that sent a chill down my spine. I suppose that should've been my first tip-off that he wasn't an ordinary street thug, but I ignored it and that was my downfall. I stood my ground, grinding my teeth in anxiety. "Please. Although your roommate is dispensable, I daresay his death would serve no purpose in the grand scheme of things. He's merely been knocked out for a while. You, though, you're different. You can give us what we need, and if you don't… well, if you don't, I daresay we'll have to pay your roommate another visit."

I turned around, trying to find the voice's source. I had no plan other than to shoot this guy dead, and I fired another shot to tell him I meant business.

"You're honestly going to take me on with that peashooter of a gun? I can tell you wouldn't really do it. You're the type who… shoots to wound," he said knowingly.

Comprehension dawned on me. "The cashier?!" I gasped, sounding rather like a fish out of water.

"He's one of us, yes. He alerted us the moment you walked in his shop. And that gun, in case you were wondering, is loaded with BLANKS. Our man was playing you, lulling you into false security. And look, he's done it again."

Like a bolt of lightning, the seedy cashier burst from the shadows wielding quite a wicked blade. Before I had the time to react, it was pressed against my throat, sending a trickle of blood leaking down the front of my shirt. For good measure, I was punched in the face, sending a fountain of crimson spurting from my nose. The shadow man's voice spoke up again. "Walk straight ahead, Jarrett. Nice and slow."

We were in a deserted alleyway, rapidly approaching the city's warehouse district. I had been walking for a while now, each step sending fresh drops of blood down my neck and onto my already-bloodstained shirt. The knife was definitely not getting any further away from me, that was for sure. The shadow man picked a good time to do this, because he managed to stay hidden from view the entire time, occasionally pausing to make sure I was still moving. Abruptly, the man blurted, "Stop!" and I fell backwards onto the pavement in exhaustion, probably from blood loss. The cashier sheathed his blade and roughly picked me up, as if I were nothing but a sack of flour. Slinging me over one shoulder, he pressed a key into one of the warehouse's doors and dragged me inside. All kinds of machinery lined the ceiling, and a bank of computers lined one wall, but other than that, it seemed like an ordinary warehouse. Except, of course, for the operating table. And thus began the beginning of the end.

Blackness. Then, rays of light, peeking through my closed eyes and penetrating the darkness surrounding me. "Good," I hear the shadow man say. "You are awake and you survived the procedure." I forced my eyes open. I was standing on the edge of an endless void, but something about my body doesn't feel right. "You probably want answers. And I will give them to you." the man continued. "You may call me Notch. Our agent from the gun shop is known as Jeb. You are part of a new frontier. We made you into something great. You're not in our world anymore. You're not one of us anymore."

I looked down at my new body, which, to my embarrassment, was naked. I seemed to have excellent night vision, because I could see every detail. And one of those details is that my arms and genitals had been cut off cleanly, leaving no trace of them behind. I couldn't feel where they used to be, either. I also had an extra set of legs that felt foreign, like they didn't belong. I gasped in shock and horror, but it came out more of a strangled hiss. I had lost my voice, and all that I could do to communicate was hiss like a burning fuse.

It was sick, what they'd done to me. Suddenly, a fresh wave of pain washed through me, and I would have screamed had I still possessed a voice. I closed my eyes, waiting for it to pass. When I opened them again, I hissed in alarm. I had become green. What's more, patches of my skin were different shades of green. I was a patchwork monster.

Suddenly, another thing appeared in the void. A blocky figure of a person appeared in front of me, rotating slowly. They had tan skin, dark hair, blue eyes, jeans, and a blue shirt. I had a sudden urge to approach the person, to warn them, to tell them to run, but I fought it. Perhaps that was what Notch and Jeb wanted, and that reason alone gave me the willpower to keep my distance. Notch's voice returned, booming throughout the endless void before me. "This is the Catalyst. Oh, he'll come to be known by different names, but to you, Jarrett, he'll always be the Catalyst." I hissed in protest, but Notch continued. "He is another prisoner here. Subject Zero, if you like. Your job is to find him and any other players and destroy them. I used you in particular for a reason. Your shoot-to-wound instinct is a sign of weakness. Because of it, your brain is hardwired to try and warn the others. I cannot allow that. However, I was able to use it to my advantage. If you try to approach any player, or the Catalyst, you will explode and likely take them with you. The same will happen if they approach you. But..," I heard Notch laugh again. That evil, evil laugh.

"You, and the Catalyst, don't have the option of exiting the game," he continued. "You two will always respawn, locked in eternal combat. The more you explode, the less your human mind will exist. You will become nothing but a monster, and you will become the perfect instrument of destruction. At that point, you will be cloned. Mass-produced, becoming the ultimate enemy and the bane of every player. Oh, and nobody but Jeb and I know the truth about you. They all think you're part of the game. A fragment of code in a virtual world. And they'll try to kill you at the earliest opportunity. Goodbye, and welcome to Minecraft."

Suddenly, the rotating Catalyst figure solidified, becoming the first player. The void slowly began filling, with dirt and grass and trees and sky and who knows what else. The Catalyst, unsure of what I was, approached me hesitantly. I let out a hiss of surprise.

My new body kicked into overdrive.

It was like a timer had been set off inside of me. My vision flashed white, and the Catalyst didn't back away in time, and I felt everything spiral out of my control…

I'm sorry.