Chapter One: Sounds in the Dark
Brief A/N: When it doesn't have an A/N before it, bolded text is for the chatlog or the Console.
Out of oblivion, there came a forest.
David would have thought this was a welcome change, if he had been able to perceive the oblivion, but by nature of being oblivion he couldn't, and so, he didn't.
Instead, he thought, "gods, it's bright out."
Then, he sat up. "Well, shit me," he muttered, "it was a portal."
He stood up and looked around. He was surrounded by a number of strangely short trees about a meter across each. The ground was mostly flat in this part of the forest, but in the far distance he saw it climbing up into a hill. He was lying in a small clearing, with a small dip in it. He turned to look at all of his surroundings.
He was met with a tree. It was incredibly thick. He looked up the massive trunk, and saw that it extended upwards for what looked to be hundreds of meters. It made him dizzy. He turned around and walked away from it, looking for something he could relate to that wouldn't make him throw up.
He realized that he had a backpack on. He opened it, and suddenly, words appeared in out of thin air, hovering just in front of him and slightly below the middle of his vision. The backpack was pitch black inside and he couldn't make out the bottom of it.
Welcome to Minecraft. My name is _Console. I will help you survive the first night.
David's eyebrows moved up and down on his head. He came to a sudden and profound realization upon reading those words, but only after the second time through because the first time he had been astonished by the fact that there were words appearing out of thin air in front of him.
Another set of words appeared, replacing the first:
Look in that chest. It contains an axe. Hit a tree with it.
He looked in a chest, which had appeared as _Console said (typed? Displayed?) those words. It did indeed contain an axe that was perfectly balanced in his hand. It felt very right to hold it, as though it had been tailored based on his mental preferences.
It has been tailored to your exact subconscious preferences for tools.
He blinked. Had _Console read his mind?
Yes.
He began to feel rather invaded.
It's okay, I'll only do it once.
He shrugged, and went to hit a tree with the axe. To his astonishment, the first strike caused a large crack to appear in the wood. He hit it again. The crack widened and spread throughout the tree. He hit it a third time.
The tree exploded, and the trunk shattered into several large cubes of wood which shrunk and fell to the ground, creating a neat little pile in front of him.
Put them in your backpack. It can store many things. It's nearly infinite in size, on the inside.
He dropped them in, and only after the fact wondered how the hell he was going to get them out. He put the backpack down and glanced inside. It hadn't gotten any heavier when he put the wood in, was pitch black inside and seemed to extend for miles down.
To retrieve something, all you have to do is think about the item and quantity of it and, if your pack has it, it'll fly out.
One wood block, he thought. A small block of wood flew out of the pack and landed neatly in his hand. His eyes boggled.
Now, make some planks. Hold a wooden log in your hand, and concentrate. It'll vanish and four wooden planks will appear in the backpack, which you can retrieve.
He held the wooden log he had retrieved from his backpack in his hand and concentrated on the image of a wooden plank block. The log vanished, and a small "pop" indicated to him that four fresh wooden planks had appeared. He thought four wooden planks, and four wooden planks flew out of his backpack, only one of which he caught.
Now, you should make a crafting bench. Place the four wooden blocks on the ground in a 2x2 formation, and focus on the image of a crafting bench. One should appear on the ground, which you can pick up with your axe like you did with the tree.
David followed these instructions, placing the blocks on the ground. He focused, and after a brief flash of light there was a crafting table, about a meter by a meter, in front of him.
He had to sit down, as his mind raced.
Now, let's make a pickaxe. Put three wood planks in the upper squares of the table, and make some sticks and put them in the handle formation. I sense you understand how this works, though, so I won't walk you through all of that.
"Yeah, underscore console. I get how this works, I can probably figure out the rest from here." He looked around, and felt a bit silly that he was talking to midair, but it didn't really matter. He was alone.
Okay! Goodbye, David_Thompson! Watch for creepers! There's a typepad in your backpack you can use to look at the chat history and talk to other people from afar! Goodbye!
_Console left the game.
"Um, shit."
He looked around, suddenly at rather a loss as to what he should do. The sun was sinking forlornly low in the sky, and had begun to cast a red pall over everything.
David came to a sudden realization. This was Minecraft, he assumed, which meant that horrible things were going to assault him at night. He hastily began constructing a shelter out of the wood he had collected, and very shortly realized that it was shit and he had no torches. The tiny shack was about three meters tall and four wide on either side, leaving a small space in the middle for him to wait out the night.
It was getting frightfully dark now.
He broke a hole in the shack and placed a door in it. The door was little more than a thinner wood panel on some hinges, but it would do. For now, at least.
He went inside, made a sword out of wood, made himself comfortable, and tried to get some sleep.
After what seemed to be minutes, he was woken up by a knocking at the door.
He sat up. The knocking was relentless, and upon closer listening sounded more like desperate banging. He picked up his sword, which suddenly seemed very inadequate.
He placed a hand on the door.
Another hand smashed through the door and grabbed his. Cold, clammy flesh met warm, soft flesh, and hungered for it.
David wildly swung his sword, and the zombie's head spun from its body. The now dead corpse stumbled backwards before collapsing on the ground to twitch like a dying insect just after being fried by a magnifying glass. David fumbled with the door and slammed it with shaking hands.
He collapsed onto the back wall of the shack and shivered violently to himself for a while. All sorts of horrible thoughts flew through his head and left nasty little packages in his mind, and he became horribly aware of how dangerous this game was.
He wasn't even sure it could still be called a game at this stage.
He threw his sword away from him, and it hit the wall of the shack two meters away and fell to the dirt floor, leaving a small mark and a row of bloody dots on the wall.
Noises could be heard outside. Inhuman noises; or, more adequately as it seemed, formerly human noises. Moans, a dry clanking like someone hitting two femurs together, gentle hissing, and the sound of many legs swarming over the dirt.
Most of these sounds were actually just the wind blowing through the trees or leaves skittering along the ground, but to David's shocked mind they were the sounds of death.
He fell back into slumber, his head lolling off and his hand going slack, after what seemed like an hour of sitting and shivering at horrible sounds in the dark.
A/N: Chapter One! Did you enjoy it? I did. No reviews yet, :(. I trust you lads to really get that stuff going, I can't just be publishing at a blank wall. Where's my feedback?