Chapter XXXVII: Where Did the Water Go?

As a result of everything that was happening, I made a plan.

That Friday night, when we all gathered in the house in Futures, I announced everything that was going on. I told everyone about the messages that I found ("FLYWITHJOHAN", "CLOUDCULT", "DONTBEAFTER", "CHILDREN", and "CANCER") and pretty much explained how clueless I was. Even they couldn't figure out what was going on at this point. Anon was hinting us these things, but not providing enough freaking information. Blackfield decided to hear me out on my plan.

The plan went like this: that weekend, we'd go and we'd deal with Rapture. Once that would be over, we would view the home movie and wait another week before dealing with Grief and, possibly, Anon. That week would provide me with enough time to look over everything we had up to this point. I had the feeling that whatever the next home movie, which I thought would appear whenever we defeated an NPC, contained would help us. We knew about Johan now, and we knew he was somehow connected to Notch.

Good news was that Conner was back to normal. Having to see his mother like that must've been horrible. It would hurt anyone, I thought. Anyway, we all prepared to head up the mountain. It was still early morning in game, so we wasted no time. We were good on supplies, so we went on ahead.

When we reached the mountain, we went back to the black void where we had defeated Aeon and found it to be completely different. No longer was it only darkness or whatever; now it was this sort of haven full of grass and animals. There were even trees and stuff. The gray light was actually coming form this hole in the ceiling. The place was serene. It was beautiful. But we couldn't get sidetracked. We looked around to see if anything was left behind, but found nothing. We finally decided to up and leave. There was nothing left for us there. We had to deal with Rapture now.

We crossed the bridge to the next mountain, expecting to find a cave of some sort. Instead we found a massive lake full of clear water. It was hyper realistic, too. The water seemed so freaking real. We looked over to the next bridge, which led into this cloud of fog. Was the giant we saw on the other side of that fog? Perhaps that giant was Grief? Maybe Anon? I didn't know. Rapture was what we had to deal with first.

We just waited around for some time, expecting to see Rapture jump out at us angrily or whatever. I didn't know what to expect since Xanadu and Aeon were so different. Xanadu was calm yet chaotic. Aeon was calm but mind numbing. Would Rapture be calm and something else? Who knew? No one, that's who. All we could do was hope we didn't die. That sorta made me wonder for a second: who should die next? Not really should, but if someone was to die, who would it be?

"What's down there?" Solstice asked.

We all just sorta looked down at the water, expecting to see something at the bottom. Like a passage or something.

Instead all we saw were our reflections. I sorta stared at mine, a bit confused. Was this in normal Minecraft? Could you actually see your reflections in the normal game? I didn't think you could. What could this mean? I didn't really think too hard about it. I had a bad feeling. A feeling that Rapture was somewhere around us.

Then I got an email. From Anon, of course.

Wes,

The world is your enemy.

Anon.

The world is my enemy? What the hell did that mean?

After telling everyone about the message, we all turned out to the horizon. We couldn't really see the land below us; all we saw was fog or clouds.

Then we turned back to the next bridge.

"Is the giant over there?" Conner wondered.

I didn't know. Then a thought came across my mind.

"Is the end over there?" I said.

No one could respond since we all got distracted. The water in front of us, in that massive lake, began draining. It sorta just went into the ground and completely disappeared. We gazed back into the lake, or what was a lake, and saw a black abyss below us. It definitely reminded me of The Logic System, or the black void from before. It was an odd, ominous feeling. Then I got this great feeling. I felt alive and in love. At the same time, though, I felt fearful. I turned to everyone. They were just gazing around now.

"Rapture must be down there." I said.

They all seemed to unanimously agree. There were these sort of stone blocks sticking out of the sides that we used as steps. I went first, followed by Blackfield, and then Conner, and then Solstice. We descended into the darkness, bringing back more memories of Xanadu and Aeon. They were definitely things I didn't wanna have to deal with any longer. Should I have just left? Would that have made everything a lot easier? No, that would leave the other three, and they needed me.

At the bottom was a strange place. It was like another world, sorta like the black void from before. It was this platform surrounded by just air. You know, nothing but clouds all around us. Was the server below these clouds? We didn't know anything. We just sorta stood around, gazing like a bunch of dumbasses. More importantly, though, where did the water go? It disappeared and all, but that was it. I mean, not really disappeared, but... I dunno. This was more bizarre than the black void. At least to me.

Was Rapture somewhere down here? Was he watching us, examining our every move? At this point there were endless possibilities. There could be any possible meaning to any of this. To Johan, to Notch's involvement, to the NPCs, to Anon's emails and whatnot... I swear, this was becoming rather stupid and redundant. We were sorta just going in circles now.

"We're going to have to wait it out," Blackfield said, "Rapture is somewhere around here, I just know it. We must wait for it to show up."

And so we did.

Howard Answers:

AkatsukiLivesForever: Sorta, I guess. In the end you'll see his reasoning for not releasing Ancient Minecraft publicly.

WildSmilingPasta: Actually, Hospice isn't Confusion, nor does Confusion exist in this. You'll see things work their way soon, though.

Godskeybladewarrior: Again, Ancient Minecraft wasn't advanced enough to take humans in and make them NPCs. You're getting on the right track, though.

Chalkolatedragun: Sorry if I might be making this more complicated than it must be. I'm going to make a "review" chapter soon to sort of catch people up.

manaphymajic1999: Really? What was in the book?

Guest (CreepersDebuggingMinecraft): Sounds bizarre, dude. Those letters, though. They seemed to go like:

Rapture

Aeon

Grief

Anon

Xanadu

Notch

O

Johan

That's all I got. I dunno what O could mean.

Why: I'm sorry, you're actually being more cryptic than Anon or any of the NPCs.

Fantasmic: You know, you're getting rather close. Keep thinking, though. Maybe Johan isn't really as related to Conner's mother as you might think?