AN: This chapter's beginning is a little different from all the others so far. I don't plan to include many more of this type of note, but you can expect at least 2 more like this one, written by an Ana Dane. It should be more interesting than this one, because it's a bit wordy and I was digging deep to make it make sense.
Chapter 21: Isn't it Enough?
Excerpt from Understanding Non-Natural Entities and Their Relationships to Humans, published online by Benjamin D. Pond in 2023.
The non-natural entity that most humans are familiar with is the Tulpa. These creatures, for they fall under no specific category, have their roots in ancient Buddhist beliefs. One of the earliest accounts is of a group of priests who successfully created a Tulpa in the form of a golem. According to some records, the creature destroyed most of the surrounding village before it was stopped. Given this unfortunate beginning, most people stopped trying to create Tulpas in the next 50 or so years.
So what, exactly, is a Tulpa? In the simplest terms, it is an imaginary friend. If a child, possessed of certain psychokinetic abilities, creates an imaginary friend, and said friend begins to move objects in the child's room, then that child has created a Tulpa. Of course, for adults, it isn't quite so simple. What people put into a Tulpa is what they get out of it, so while a child's Tulpa is generally harmless and playful, a Tulpa created by one or more adults or adolescents can take on sinister characteristics.
An excellent example is the killer clown scare of 2016, when all across the United States of America, people became convinced that clowns were trying to kidnap and kill their children, or, in some extreme cases, kill the entire family in their homes. Even though the scare lasted a relatively brief space of time and was proven to be a hoax, ever since there have been reports of a red-haired clown skulking near playgrounds and at the edges of woods. This creature is the worst kind of Tulpa, as it subsists off fear and pain, and as long as people keep seeing it and reports keep coming in, it will never die.
Other professionals in the business will insist that in order to create a Tulpa, one must meditate on a symbol specifically designed to create one. The truth of the matter is this: a symbol is needed, but it need not be an ancient Buddhist symbol in the middle of a Mandala in order to work. There must simply be a symbol. In the case of the Killer Clown, the symbol was the iconic Pennywise, who everyone knows and is terrified of. This, again, is the perfect example of what exactly not to to with a Tulpa. The other restriction is that one cannot use their own face as the symbol, as the resulting creation will be their exact equal and opposite, and a doppleganger may be formed.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that a Tulpa can be created by not only a singular person, but many at once. Indeed, if a group of people larger than 1000 or so believes that something exists completely for longer than 5 minutes, and those people all have a common image in their mind, they will create a Tulpa without fail. Unfortunately, it is very hard to convince most adults to play make believe for so long, and children rarely have the attention span. It is only in intense fear that this kind of Tulpa is created and only fear can sustain it unless it is changed by an equally large force of belief.
Herobrine opened his eyes. Immediately he knew two things. First, it had been at least three weeks since he was last awake, but not much longer than that. Second, and more importantly, he was back in his cell.
He jumped out of the bed and raced around the room. He did two circuits, one looking at the ceiling, one looking at the walls, and then admitted defeat. The bedrock cage was still as solid as ever. There was no way he was getting through the stone anytime soon.
He walked again, more slowly, this time making sure he had food and water and all the facilities in the cell were in order. They were. His desk in the corner was intact, if a little dusty. The bookshelves were still full or works of fiction from long before and empty notebooks for writing in.
There were still chests full of food by the furnace and crafting table, the makeshift counter was still intact. Everything was in order.
Except usually when he woke up there was someone here to tell him what they needed.
"What will it be this time?" He said aloud, "need me to save some idiot? That's what you had me do before."
The system spoke to him, in the way that Herobrine knew no one else could hear, "Your task is the same as before. You are to accompany 4979."
"I can't do that if I'm stuck in here, now can I?"
"Be patient," said the other voice, the quiet one.
Herobrine seized the chair from the desk and threw it across the room. It broke, the legs skittering in four different directions. "I'm done being patient!" He yelled.
He didn't usually get this angry this fast, the person behind the voice knew that. Herobrine did not like being cooped up.
He stalked across the room and gathered up the pieces of the chair. He would repair it later by hand, slowly. He had a suspicion that he was going to be stuck here for a very long time and he would need something to keep him busy.
And he really should be pushing Player in the right direction.
Herobrine went to the food chest and removed a rabbit, which he placed on the counter, followed it with carrots and potatoes. As a general rule, He did not like to cook, and he would take bread over most anything else if given a choice, but he figured if he was going to be trapped that he should at least eat well. It was going to take some experimenting to get things right.
He was eating a bowl of stew, which, he had discovered, was the default outcome to anything involving rabbit and vegetables, when the figure flickered into existence in the room.
Herobrine waved at it with his spoon, "Go away."
She stepped forward into the light, tall and slim, half-dark. "Like coffee with a little too much cream in it," the color had once been described to him. He had thought it was a little over the line, considering he tanned almost the same color if he stayed in the sun all day, but after actually seeing coffee and tasting it, decided it was a drink he was okay with being compared to. It was delicious. He sighed and put down the bowl of stew.
She was blinking and looking around in a befuddled kind of way.
"It's very...lifelike," she said to no one in particular.
"They can't hear you," Herobrine said, "unless they're watching, in which case they can't talk back anyway."
She turned to him. Her eyes were dark and hard, intelligent.
She chose not to respond, which was unfortunate because Herobrine really felt like getting into a good fight. Maybe not a hitting fight, but a yelling fight. That would be fun.
She was getting control of herself. She walked around the room, turning her back to him deliberately as she touched the walls. "It's bedrock," she said to herself, "unbreakable."
Herobrine said nothing.
She looked at the furnace and crafting table, the desk and bookshelves and the bed. There was no table, no chairs except the broken one. Herobrine was sitting on top of the crafting table, one leg crossed under the other. Finally she simply turned to face him.
"I'm Dr. Janus Dane," she said.
Herobrine smirked; she was just like her mother.
"And you are?"
"I'm Herobrine," He said.
She waited a second, like she was expecting him to elaborate, "That's it? Herobrine?"
He nodded.
"No, 'I used to be called,' or 'I don't remember my real name?'"
He shook his head.
She seemed to be mentally taking notes for a moment.
Herobrine stood and retrieved his sword from its item frame. He took a cloth from the chest beside it and returned to his seat. He started polishing the blade.
Janus looked very nervous, "It's odd that you remember nothing else."
Herobrine glanced at her, "Herobrine is all I've ever been. Isn't that enough?"
"Yes, of course, but-"
He pointed the sword at her, "You don't get it yet. All you've seen are old interview videos. That's no substitute for the real thing."
She bristled, "That's why I'm here!"
He shrugged and went back to the sword.
Janus breathed deep, composed herself. "I'd like to ask you a few questions," she said.
"I might not answer."
"That's fine."
Herobrine looked up at her, "I want ground rules."
"Whatever works."
He sat up, held the sword across his legs, the tip extending out over the knee of the leg folded beneath him, the grip resting on the thigh of the one hanging over the edge of the furnace. "First, if I don't answer a question, you don't get to push me. No coercing, no blackmail, no torture. Compile a list if you want, I don't care if you do that."
She nodded, "May I re-ask the questions at a later date?"
Herobrine considered this, "Yes."
"Very well. What else?"
"You need to let me have entertainment down here if you're going to keep me awake. Nothing too taxing, but I'll need sharp things, knives and swords and other things, to cook and work on projects." He stopped, reading the confusion on her face, "What I mean is: don't try to take away everything dangerous. It doesn't work in a game like this."
She nodded, "the first time you try to hurt me, that deal is off."
"I couldn't hurt you if I tried," Herobrine smirked, "even if I killed you, you would just wake up in your normal body."
"You killed someone a few weeks ago," she pointed out, "he died just fine."
He looked down and away to hide the warm glow he felt at the memory. It was the first person he had actually killed. He had killed many avatars, a million players, but Gaimon had been the first real human he had killed. It had been a rush that, before then, he had only ever heard described.
"Why did you do it?" Janus asked.
The light from Herobrine's eyes illuminated her face as he turned back to her, "He deserved it."
"What gives you the right to judge that?"
He shrugged, "I was there. You should have heard what he was saying."
She didn't respond to that. She obviously didn't think he was correct, but something in her wondered what the boy had been saying. What would provoke a killing blow?
"Okay, second question, how did you do it?"
Herobrine thought about that for a long time, weighing his options. He was acutely aware of how many people were in the game, 4978 exactly. It was not nearly enough, compared to how the game had been at its peak: millions and millions of players in infinite combinations across thousands of servers. They spoke every language, sometimes made up their own, built cities and towns and castles across infinite worlds. It was not fair to burden these 5,000 people with what millions had neglected to deal with.
"I'm not going to do it again," Herobrine decided, "so don't worry about it."
Janus's brow creased, "Why not?"
"Because 5,000 people are going to have a hard time doing what they need to do anyway, and killing them is only going to make it less fun for everyone."
"That logic seems to be the exact opposite of what people like you usually think."
Herobrine smirked. She didn't know. "That logic is exactly what people like me believe. I can only fulfill my purpose as long as players are present."
She dropped that line of questioning with a little sigh of relief. Doubtless she had not been thinking at all about people like Herobrine. More than likely it was a different breed of monster she had been thinking of. The human kind, the ones that went along hurting children and burying bodies in their backyard.
In Herobrine's opinion, he was far less terrible than these monsters.
"Okay." Janus took a breath, "Here's one you should be able to answer properly: what are you?"
Herobrine stopped rubbing at the edge of the sword. He looked down at his hand, turned it over so he could examine the calluses on the palm. Finally he said, "I don't know"
"Honestly?"
He shrugged, "I wasn't for a long time, and then suddenly I was. I have no other explanation."
"Fully grown? You didn't grow up?"
"No."
"That goes against everything in the records, you know."
Herobrine shrugged, "I've never seen the records. Why should I care what they say about me?"
She had no response to that.
Herobrine looked at the clock on the wall before she could get her bearings again. It really wasn't helpful, as it had no numbers, only a sun and a moon to indicate dawn and dusk. Even so, he knew how long she had been there.
"You're almost out of time," he informed her, "much longer than half an hour and your brain will start to approach this world as if it were the real one. Then you'd be stuck here as well. You wouldn't want that, would you?"
She looked alarmed, and Herobrine hid his delight. Of course her mind would be just fine no matter how long she stayed in the game, but if he could spook her into spending less time here, that would work just fine.
"I'll be back soon," she said, her hand moving in the air, evidently logging off.
"There's no hurry," Herobrine waited until she was gone. When she was, he stood up and put the sword back into its item frame. The desk was on the far side of the room from the bed, but he had just broken the chair, so he took a blank book and quill from the shelf and sat on the bed with his back against the wall.
If his purpose was to assist Player, there were some things he should write down.