Hello, and welcome to Another Minecraft Video…
Oops. Wrong channel.
Let me fix that.
Echo. Echo.
Testing, Testing, One Two Three, Testing.
Is this thing on?
No.
Good.
I wouldn't want anyone to hear me making a fool of myself.
So, some years ago, I found myself in a bit of a hole, with nothing but a tin can, and some string, and my identity stolen.
There were actually a number of tin cans, having been to the supermarket at the time, and they were made of Canadian aluminium, not tin, but don't let that get in the way of the narrative.
I had been running around Lawless Town, which was a cesspit of scum and villainy, which Obi-Wan Kenobi had not seen fit to warn me about, located on Demon's Land, Down Under.
Any student of piracy, culture, history, and geography ought to be able to pinpoint that particular location on the map, without my giving the proper names. If you're still confused, then perhaps a little hint may help. Down Under is colloquially referred to as 'The Land of OZ'; it's the ball of string that the cat's playing with, in the name of R&D. Still confused? Never mind. The specific name is not, in fact, important.
I was there in order to build a new life for myself, as one does when one has supposedly finished school, and has managed to successfully annoy both parents sufficiently for them to individually, collectively, and unanimously throw me out of their residences for the sixth time running.
Or was it the third? No, I must not get distracted; numbers have a tendency to balloon all out of proportion, and I've got to get this finished before the character count does the same.
Anyway, I had been lugging around my backpack for about two weeks, and keeping an eye on my suitcase as well, looking for somewhere to rent. My uncles and aunts had seen fit to drop me off in the town, and I had all my paperwork with me to get checked out at the local rental agents, the local doctors, and the curriculum vitae to finally pursue a means of gainful employment.
Unfortunately, I only had two hands: one for my suitcase, one for my backpack, and the other for collecting food, and giving out documents—wait a minute, that's three hands. Oh, and the backpack was cutting off my circulation.
So, naturally, after securing my backpack in a safe location, next to the fire extinguisher, I returned from the supermarket, having gotten stuck in a queue, to find that the resident cleaner had 'moved' the bag containing completely irreplaceable, expensively replaceable, and thus far, inexplicably unprofitable documents pertaining to my person. Oh, and it had gone missing.
Allow me to express seven years of frustration and vitriol in a manner as succinct as possible. My apologies in advance for the vulgarity, but
Fuck you.
I hope you rot in hell.
Again, my sincerest apologies, but there is no way to effectively express what I feel regarding that incident without running out of time or ink; the obscene vulgarity is the sanitized, toddler friendly version.
No. I don't see why I ought to edit that out. That word is in common usage among school children aged eight to twelve, last I checked; it only takes one person to hear it at home and repeat at school. Think about that for a moment.
Alright, in the interest of literacy, I'll be more creative with my invective in future.
But the one's I've already used are staying right where they are.
Seven years later, my grandparents are all dead, my uncles and aunts won't talk to me, and I generally won't talk to them either, we've lost one cat, I still don't have a paying job, my parents are unable to work, I've completely lost contact with my godparents, and cousins, even more records have gone missing, the medical conditions are piling up, and each of us has seen more doctors than we can shake a stick at, but mum, dad, and I are finally living together in the same place again, and we are just one big happy family.
Yeah, right.
Insert the War On Drugs advertisement here.
'Just say 'NO.*''.
*Fine Print: This does not mean nitrous oxide. Saying no offers no guarantee that you will not be given drugs as a form of proscribed medication. Non-compliance with medical advice will go in your file. Please be advised that THE INDUSTRY sponsors your health, and we only have your best interests at heart. We believe 'NO' to mean 'Yes' because we can finance the War on Terror. Non-compliance with the War on Terror may result in your security clearance and your citizenship being revoked. Have a happy, drug-safe day. The War On Drugs will be continued…whilst our best and brightest minds are on drugs.
What, you want me to tone that down for the kids?
…Fine. I am very happy with my lot in life, and after twelve years, my mother and I are finally purchasing our own home again! It's fabulous! Where's the confetti? I'm now part of the community because I finally owe a debt to the bank.
Look, this is supposed to be therapeutic. Misery loves company, and therefore, in order to make myself feel better, I must make everyone else feel miserable enough to start giving me more misery from their angle. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm trying to make you feel miserable. Start feeling sorry for yourself.
I'm talking to the computer, by the way. It's more intelligent than me, at this point, so it knows not to answer back, unless it's an emergency, unless it's able to assist me in my research, or unless I've done something stupid and crossed the wires again.
I call my desktop personal computer, by various names, as the occasion demands, inclusive of 'Baronet Murdach Sod Wheedleton' for reasons, which shall remain undisclosed until the end of this sentence.
Okay. Those three reasons I just gave for Murdach to answer back? They cover a lot of ground. My computer runs my life, for as long as I keep feeding her power. I tried calling her a 'he' like Wheatley, but GladOS kept changing the pronouns on me.
Looks like I'm the tin dog, and I'm okay with that.
So, before I really get started in the crazy world of One Piece, which is big enough and ugly enough to contain Fate Stay/Night and Fullmetal Alchemist characters with barely a ripple, let's set my character up properly.
Starting location: England, United Kingdom, British Empire, Planet Earth, The Solar System, Orion Spur, Orion-Cygnus Arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Local (Virgo) Cluster, Laniakea Supercluster, Universe City.
Starting time: Somewhere in the mid-80's, 90's, or early 00's..
Have I got that right? Let's see…there's Government Communication Head Quarters. There's the Chuck and Di show. There's She Who Must Not Be Named, winning an Olympic medal for the horse. And there are my godparents, who were effectively our member of parliament at the time.
Oh, and there's Britain's spy network; wonderful people. Perfectly ready to spill the beans on the royal family right where the entirety of the shire can hear it, and then wonder why everyone seems to know about it, even the infants in their prams. James Bond has a lot to answer for.
Parents: One Dad, serving consecutively in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Police Force, Security Force, Loss Prevention Managerial Force, and Used Car Salesman Force (not necessarily in that order, and probably not in the same country). Hobbies: Cleaning, Driving, and pointing out that is in fact, not the way to do it, Jack.
One Mum, Registered General Nurse, NHS, Clinical Supervisor for Overseas Nurses, Post-Registration Education, passed Canadian Bachelor of Nursing course in eight weeks. Affiliated Organizations, National Trust, Save the Children UK. Hobbies: Renovating, Researching Antique Items of Interest, Gardening…and Fireplaces.
Right, that's all the information you're getting about my parents. Any more information from me, and anyone reading this will have to go to the relevant departments, because quite frankly, I don't remember anything else.
I once had a 'Test Your Knowledge' exercise at school, about my favourite subject, no less. I wrote down the names of the planets, for Astronomy, and that was it. There was nothing else I could write. The rest of the paper was blank.
Speaking of school, let's go through the list.
Um…Australia, Canada, Britain…
Blue Uniforms, Red Uniforms, Green Uniform…
Make that number three preschools, twelve schools, and one tertiary course available offline. Mostly Christian schools, in the primary phase, and mostly government run schools in the secondary phase.
Climactic conditions: cold, wet, and miserable; bloody hot and dry outback, and help, we're snowed in for six months of the year, who thought this country was ripe for a fresh start? Oh, and subtropical, and tropical humidity.
Subjects taken: Advanced Placement Human Geography, Advanced Biology, Advanced Physics (Theory), Advancing Physics (Practical Theory), Calculus, Advanced Mathematics (electives: Decision Maths, Maths Mechanics, Statistics), Canadian History, Australian History, History of the British Isles, Classical European and Mediterranean History, Geography (World), Geology, Art (Practical, Theory), Music (Theory), Computer Aided Design, French, Indonesian, Avoiding Physical Education (Practical), Physical Education (Theory), Religious Education (World Religions), Religious Education (Denominations of Christianity, and Biblical Construction), Woodworking (Practical), Metalworking (Practical), Robotics (Basic Practical), Accounting, Business Management, Drama, Standard Literacy (English), Standard Numeracy, Advanced Chemistry (Organic, Inorganic), Standard Science, Standard Embroidery, Standard Fire Hazard, Unexploded Ordnance, Chemical Spill, Orienteering, Swimming, Drunk Party Van, First Aid, Debating, and Other Safety Training.
Subjects passed: Look, I don't remember. I got called up twice in front of an assembly to receive medals and a certificate saying things like School DUX, and Honours with Distinction (94.7%) I didn't feel that I'd earned, after skipping ahead two years, and I finished my Year 13 education a gruelling two years behind, having run out of chances to complete the courses properly, and dropping subjects like hot potatoes. I walked out of the final exam room, and never looked back.
I found out later from my parents, I had passed two of my A2 courses on the merits of the work I had done in AS level. That doesn't sound like 'graduated' to me. I went from eight subjects in the Maritimes, mostly Advanced or Advanced Placement courses, to eight standard courses in The Great Lakes, to five A2 subjects, and 90% of those have a big stinking 'Did Not Finish' on them. That sounds more like either some extreme differences in educational standards between regions, or like a student getting brain-damaged somewhere along the way.
Oh wait, I guess that does explain the difficulty I have remembering things. Thank you so much, modern medicine. I really ought to have clued in to the nature of the problem after we were ill from eating the food, catching viruses we'd never suffered before, and reading on the box of tablets which were supposed to cure skin problems affecting the eyes 'May Cause Depression, and Will Rip Your Guts Out, Please Remain On For At Least Six Months Or Until Your Wallet Is Dry'.
What doctors didn't tell me is that it'll take anywhere from six months to two years to recover my equilibrium after I (or anyone else) stops taking the proscribed pills; that's because it's not on the packet. Abominable healthcare in Canada and the US, I must say. It's no wonder there are so many loonies running around.
Where was I?
Oh, yes. Australia. I was getting my identity stolen after two years of half-heartedly volunteering at various charities, and bouncing between mum and dad's places, if I recall it correctly.
Up until about 2009, I'd been a quiet, absent-minded child. No drugs. No swearing. No video games. No pornography. No alcohol. No tea. No coffee.
Wait, no, that's not quite true. Asthma inhalers count as drugs, comic books count as pornography, Irish cream liqueurs contain alcohol, and I made tea and instant coffee for my parents each morning.
Oh, and I had also read the Bible, and Shakespeare, so I knew all about swearing. I couldn't do it without a warm-up, a script in my hand, and some stuttering involved, and as for figuring out what it meant…well, I knew the mechanics, I knew the terms, I knew the medical implications, and I had lived in a farming community, among nurses, and the armed forces, and watched plenty of BBC documentaries.
Of courses, that all changed when I first picked up a video game that wasn't SimCity or Pinball, or Myst, or Syberia, or Zuma Deluxe, Driver, SimCity, or Solitaire, or the Edutainment Eureka Multimedia Kids' Maths Quest, and Spelling Adventure, or the training course for what I later found out was the original Medal of Honour, supplied by a cousin being sent off to Afghanistan or Iraq or someplace,
These previous games were ones in which I had maybe half an hour to play on other people's computers at a time, occasionally even as part of the school curriculum, where I was of course, baffled, because I didn't know how to use any of the controls, didn't have my own computer beyond Microsoft Office, under strict supervision, and YouTube walkthroughs didn't exist.
No, this video game was none of those, and it was supplied by the Canadians, taking pity on the poor fool who didn't know what a video game was, having had their nose buried in a book all the time. Suddenly, I was an evil delinquent, a problem child ready to pick up a gun and shoot my classmates in the event that they turned into zombies.
That game was of course, Minecraft. No, I'm kidding, it was Halo.
I didn't understand it at all. The grunts looked like orange triangles, the soldiers looked like chunks of metal with a floating head attached, and the Elites looked like shiny blobs of energy which appeared just before the main character, who was, of course, a big green alien robot, died, through no fault of my own.
I was more interested in the other game my Canadian friends gave me on compact disc, called 'Homeworld'. Coupled with the British Times 'Atlas of the Solar System'—sorry, that should read 'Dorling Kindersley', the American 'Microsoft Encarta', Redshift 4 and various other computer games featuring interesting worlds, and maps, I had all the tools I need.
No, Minecraft was the in-browser game people were playing on the school library computers, whilst I was busy arranging the books in alphabetical order, and giving advice to people trying to impress me with their laptops such as 'No, I'm not playing a game about blocks unless it has some Rube-Goldberg mechanisms in it', and 'What's the point of playing a game with blocks unless there's some characters or animals or some kind of ecology'. Or even, 'Okay, there might be boats, and falling sand, and hot lava added now, but I'm not touching this thing until there are pistons or winches or pulleys in it, or some way to move blocks around via mechanisms'.
Wait a minute…
No, I'm imagining it.
Besides, the Star Trek community was already busy remaking the Enterprise, and fans of Mario were first on the scene, (behind the people making bridges, and wandering willies making rude gestures with powerful new graffiti). I'm sure plenty of people in the independent games community were making the same perfectly rational and insistent demands that I was to people with fancy laptops waving the paid for in-development arcade survival game in front of my face.
What I'm not imagining is how pissed off the librarian was when she caught us playing games during lunch break. Who said the Canadians were easy-going, and polite? No, I still wasn't playing Minecraft. I was playing Dan-Ball's Powder Game Physics Simulation, and Line Rider Community Maps, in the middle of making my third iteration of my flash animation project trying to capture the magic of Sam Neill's BBC Space in two dimensions. I owned up as well, because there's no point in having people in detention if the sneakier kid gets away with it.
So, having already become a horrible human being that played video games, failed my subjects, ate or otherwise sipped copious amounts of alcohol—at least two tumbler glasses, over a year—took drugs given to me by incredibly shady people on the main street called 'doctors', and was unable to complete a standard student work week without serving other people incredibly addictive stimulants such as tea, and coffee—drug-trafficking, you see—and, of course, reading highly offensive subject matter such as The Bible, and Shakespeare, and spending far too much time in these pornographic hubs called by devilishly innocuous names like 'The British Museum', 'The Moors, 'The Science Museum', 'The Train Station', 'Your Local Bookstore', and 'The Classical Art Gallery' there was, of course, no place for me to go but down.
That's right. I watched anime.
Humph.
Perhaps I'd better back up a little.
Beatrix Potter, May Gibbs, Mary Tourfel, Marcus Pfister, Enid Blyton, Quint Bucholz, L. M. Montgomery, and L. Frank Baum, along with several others, who wrote such stories as Elmer the Patchwork Elephant, and Oliver Twist, are the people who have irreparably and irredeemably coloured my psyche since I was nought but a naughty child who wouldn't brush my teeth properly, Hans Christian Andersen, and the Brothers Grimm by an ignoramus; I still tried to get around my mother on that one, and I failed every time. I get toddlers from India telling me to brush my teeth now. It's a seriously bad habit.
Make a note, me.
Clean your teeth, lest you turn into a zombie, with a nasty bite.
Yes, okay, Links. I have cleaned my teeth. Please stop crashing to desktop.
Uh…okay, that would have been advertising. I understand why you deleted that. No, I'm not going to advertise toothpaste again.
Now, unfortunately, I can't discuss real people, because that would be against the rules, even if those people were long since dead. I can, of course, mention them, but only in terms of 'such and such an author wrote such and such a tale'. This restriction does not apply to discussing Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, because everyone is supposed to know who she is, even if people are on the far side of the world, and especially if they're not following the Rule of Equity, and Noblesse Oblige.
There's a little thing called Trust, and parents are supposed to educate their children about it. It does no good to have a motto in the name of scientific inquiry nullius in verba if there isn't an exception regarding the Commander in Chief. Unlike most political and business enterprises, Her Majesty routinely passes her tests with flying colours. Her word can, in fact, and in deed, be trusted, and it is in our best interests, in all the five eyes handiwork to keep it that way.
And…I realize this might be a stretch for people who have been told, 'God does not exist'; people in the services need to be informed that the only reason God does not exist for people in the services is because those on the front lines cannot afford to fail. Her Majesty is Defender of the Faith, by Grace of God, and she is Commander in Chief. Otherwise, not only do our nations' financial systems fail to work, but the legal, emergency services, and armed forces don't either.
There's a term in computing, and various other disciplines, which reads 'rubbish input, rubbish output'. Garbage goes in; garbage comes out. If you feed your children junk information, junk food, and sloppy medicine, then quite naturally, except on the rare occasion, our minds turn to mush.
So, over the years, I've paid particular attention to what people are reading, playing, and watching, because I had one question burning in my mind, and but one instruction given to me, and but one unified general example to follow.
I don't know the other people who are doing this. I'm sure there are others. But it really doesn't matter to me if there aren't.
What I'm doing is simply whata any good little child of Britain ought to do.
I am asking the Ultimate Question.
I am following my parents and my educators.
I am going to teach their example, as they have taught me.
The Ultimate Question is not, 'What is the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?'
Nor is it 'What is six tea nine?'
And the Ultimate Answer is NOT: Two For Tea.
Nor is it MATH, because Douglas Adams was BRITISH.
Over here we have MATHS.
The Ultimate Question is:
…
'Am I/Are we doing the right thing?'
…
The ultimate answer, begins with:
'NO'.
It's always going to read 'No'.
But that doesn't mean, that's all the answer I'm going to give.
TIME AND RELATIVE DIMENSIONS IN SPACE.
POLICE BOX (BLUE)
POST OFFICE BOX (RED).
Flag Colours: Red, White, and Blue.
Nationalities: Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and England.
What happened to Green, ladies and gentlemen? What happened to the Whales of Wales? Why is this a little blue planet, when it ought to be emerald green?
Pictland, Albion, Cymru, Eire…
Aha!
There's a problem in Mathematics called the P=NP problem. It's very useful in cryptography, apparently. I'm not sure if I understand it properly, but it seems to read 'Can we know the answer to any problem without having to figure it out ourselves?'
The answer is, of course, no, because that would be cheating.
However, for those interested in checking their work, you'll find the answers in the back of the book.
For those who have in fact, checked their work, and had their work checked, please refrain from giving any more hints to people who are not genuinely stuck.
The point of all of this, of course, is that sometimes I need to check my work. Otherwise, I'm not sure how much I've gotten wrong. Unfortunately, it seems I cannot check my work in the real world, because if I go around telling for example, some foreign power that their currency is of slightly less value than seawater, I would be shot—and if I told my own nation that our currency was the same, I would suffer the death of a thousand needles, because Britannia and Britannica is never a country to let go of a good idea-for a certain value of 'good', and 'goods', of course.
So, the upshot of all of this is that fiction is important.
It is very important to me that I don't get shot, and that the people around me don't get shot either. It is, however, of vital importance that I understand, check, and review my understanding of what my teachers have in fact, taught me over the years. Otherwise, I cannot ask the ultimate question, and cannot receive the ultimate answer.
We're on a tight budget—a shoestring, in fact—and frankly, there's neither time nor space in these dimensions for me to learn. Therefore, I must go to another world, to teach, to express myself, in order to finally go home.
But to do so, I must of course, find the right mirror.
And that is what I have been searching for all these years.
Now, I shall go, and hope to return a little wiser.
I carry the colours of my country-the stories of the five-eye sea.
I carry the currency of my Queen, her Right to Rule, through History.
I carry the teachings of my parents, my teachers, the sisters and brothers to be..
I carry my faith, my belief, in the balance scales, of equity.
And I have my drum. For that is all ye left me.
I have my drum.
And you shall work and play.
CHARACTER CREATION COMPLETED.
CREATING BLIND CARBON COPY…
DESTINATION: UNIVERSE CITY.
Error: Universe City Not Found.
Error: Original Creations Not Found.
Error: New Information Not Found.
Passphrase: 'There Is Nothing New Under The Sun'.
Contacting: Emiya-Tohsaka.
Contacting: Winry Elric.
Contacting: Robin Nicholas.
Rerouting: Destination: Hell Hath No Fury.
Restarting…