I was on my way to the testing area I was told to come to by 5 PM this evening. The instant I saw the email, I knew I was going to go. The email mentioned that they would be conducting a special virtual reality test for a new version of Minecraft, and they would only accept the first 1,000 people in my area. I heard about this kind of test happening before, but the information was really vague and it was never close enough for me to be able to. As I pulled my car into the lot, I inspected the building. It was decently fancy.
"Now if only the high school was designed like this" I said to myself as I got out of my car and approached the door and pressed the call button on the side.
"Name and invitation code?" a voice spoke.
"Mark…" I pulled out my phone and scrambled to get the screenshot of the confirmation email.
"3B4XYUL7."
The door opened itself. "Come in, first door to the right."
Walking into the mentioned room, I was met with someone in a white lab coat, as well as a bunch of hospital beds with computers hooked up to them.
"Welcome Mark. glad you could make it. My name is Dr. Doofenshmirtz, and welcome to the experiment."
I looked around and all of the beds were empty.
"Where is everybody else?" I asked.
"You're the first to arrive. Now we just have to have you sign a few papers, and we can get you started."
"Cool. lay them on me."
The guy handed over all the papers and I signed them without bothering to read them.
"Alright, let's get you settled down on that bed over there."
"May I ask what all the medical equipment is here for?" I asked.
"That's just to take extra precaution. There is no need to worry. Now, when we hook you up to the system, your consciousness will be transferred into the game."
"Sounds cool."
"Will you be playing single player, or multiplayer?"
"Well… considering there's probably going to be other people doing this experiment, put me in multiplayer."
As he was hooking the stuff up, I rested my head on the pillow, putting on the giant helmet on the side.
"You ready?"
"Yup, now… let's sword art online this shit."
Dr. Doofensmirtz flipped a switch located on the side of the computer and sure enough, I lost consciousness soon after and awoke at a welcoming sight… a server selection menu.
Since I didn't really care which server I went to, I figured I'd just pick at random. Scrolling down the list, one of the servers caught my eye. "Anarchy." I decided to join that one.
The connection established almost instantly, and the world slowly faded into view around me. To my left, the doc was in game, but he appeared to be like a hologram.
"Welcome to the virtual world, Mike, or should I call you…" he took a look at the name tag flying above my head.
"xXAssBeater420Xx?"
"Hey don't be judgemental… I made my mojang account when I was still a prepubescent on call of duty…"
"I won't judge. Anyways, this will be your new home for a while, so I suggest you go through the usual daily routine."
"Wait. what?" I asked, confused.
"It was specifically mentioned in one of the papers you signed the parameters of this experiment."
"And those are?"
"Once your consciousness was successfully transferred into the game, you would have the choice of playing in your own world, or joining a server. You picked the server, and you chose "Anarchy" from the server list. The parameters clearly explain that the experiment will go on for a full 365 days before your consciousness is returned to your body."
"Hang on… you're saying…"
"Yes. you will live 365 earth days in this world. That is roughly equal to 26,297.5 in-game days."
"Oh HELL NO…" I yelled. "Get me out of this shit NOW!"
"You signed the contract Mike."
"Nobody reads that shit!" I argued. "You don't see all those middle-aged Karens reading the terms and conditions for an apple watch line do ya?"
"Nonetheless, you still signed the contract, indicating your agreement to this experiment. You have also signed a release of liability form along with that, so we will not be responsible in the case that you are killed while in this server and it results in the death of your human body."
"I CAN DIE IN REAL LIFE TOO?" I screamed.
"It is not guaranteed that death in the game will result in any harm to your body on earth, but there is a chance your real life body could go into shock, which will likely result in death."
"Oh shit… now I know what Kirito must've felt when he joined the game…"
"Well, you're on your own now. I suggest you make some friends on this server. Best of luck."
The hologram disappeared.
"Welp…" I said to myself, opening my inventory and looking at my character's blue creeper hoodie, black sweatpants and black hair. "If I knew I'd be stuck here… I would've changed my damn skin first. I look like a damn 6 year old."
Looking around, I did what any usual minecrafter would do. Look for a tree.
Spotting a forest to my right, I decided to trek over there and punch some trees down. I quickly crafted a crafting table and made a full wooden set to go with it. As I was mindlessly cutting down more and more trees, I saw something abnormal fly by above me. It was a TNT minecart. Ducking for cover behind a tree, the minecart landed on one of the trees and completely destroyed it.
"What the fuck?" I thought to myself. I decided to build a pillar up in an attempt to see where that minecart could have possibly come from, but I had no luck. It seemingly came out of nowhere. Dismissing it as some freak coincidence, I resumed my wood run and built up a few stacks of oak planks to build a shelter with. Now came time to look for food and coal. Digging down a small tunnel, I used some of the cobblestone I mined to make a stone pickaxe, and continued down. I was digging down for a while before I finally found a chunk of coal to harvest. I decided to dig a little deeper, in hopes of finding something else, or perhaps a mineshaft. A few more blocks down, and I started hearing mobs.
"I must be digging above a cave…" I thought to myself. "Miles will go in for a closer look."
Deciding to dig directly down, I found myself in the middle of a pitch black corridor. I quickly lit up a torch, to my surprise, I had dug into a mineshaft.
"Ooh… I may be able to find something useful here."
Walking around the place, I decided to take some of the minecart rails and fence posts to potentially put to later use. I could hear a zombie nearby, so I pulled out my sword to prepare to attack. Sure enough, when I turned the corner, there was a zombie waiting for me, and I swung my sword at it. I was able to hit it once, but that was not enough to kill it, and the zombie trampled on top of me. My body erupted with pain as I desperately tried to get the rotting corpse off of me so I could stab the ever living shit out of it. Fortunately, I didn't take too much damage from the attack, and walked away scot free.
"I don't remember mobs being able to do that…" I thought to myself, catching my breath. I decided it would be best to go back up to the surface and build a base to spend the night in before time runs out. As I walked up the stairs, I could hear someone screaming behind me.
I decided to head back and check it out. "Hello?" I yelled. "Where are you? Are you hurt?"
"This is stupid…" I said to myself. "Why do I care about someone else in this game anyways, I'll bet half the people here can just disconnect whenever they want to."
I could hear an arrow puncture a wooden pillar in the distance, so I decided to run towards the source of the sound. Sure enough, I saw another player, crawling down the corridor with an arrow stuck in his back.
"RUN!" He encouraged me.
I pulled my sword out. "You're scared of a skeleton?" I remarked as I went into the darkness. My pursuit came short when an arrow flew past me by a hair, startling me. Spotting the skeleton, I quickly ran towards it and slashed at it, making the skeleton miss yet another shot. A few swings later, the skeleton died, leaving its worthless worn out bow as an item drop. Running over to the other player, I put my hand out for him. He groaned in pain.
"He shot my ass man… he shot me in my ass!" He complained. Taking a look at his wound, sure enough, it was really deep in there.
"Man that skeleton got you good…" I replied, looking at his name tag.
"Mr Epicgamer 69? Hmm, nice to meet you. And a nice name."
"Oh, you can just call me Erik." He replied, pulling an apple out of his inventory and snacking on it. "What do you usually go by? Cause there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to call you AssBeater420 and keep a straight face." Erik smirked a little.
"Call me Mike." I responded. "And don't judge the username."
"Or what?"
"Or you're going to wish that skeleton would've killed you before I got to you. Anyways, I'm going to head to the surface."
"Do you mind if I follow you?"
"I suppose." I replied, leading the way up the stairway I dug out. As we reached the surface, Erik took a look around.
"Hey, I recognize this place. This is the server spawn point. Are you new here?" He asked.
"Yea. This is going to sound really stupid, but im trapped here as a result of some weird ass virtual reality exper–"
"NO WAY…" Erik interrupted me. "I got into that whole ordeal too!"
"Wait, so… we're both stuck on this server now?"
"I suppose so."
"So that must mean… there's others."
"I think so. I asked the person at the testing facility I went to and they said the servers were purely people conducting this experiment. So I think every player here is trapped."
"Well, you don't say."
"There's a village down that way if you want to spend the night there. The sun's going to be going down soon and I'm sure we won't survive the night out here, the server difficulty for some reason has changed recently and it's abnormally high now."
"Is that the explanation for why a zombie was able to pile on top of me?" I asked.
"Yea, none of the mobs on this server are acting like they should. A lot of them are now capable of stuff they shouldn't be, like what you just described." he started walking in the direction that the aforementioned village would be.
"How long have you been stuck here for?" I asked.
"Um, I lost track of real life days, but I know I've been on this server for at least a week or two in minecraft time." Erik answered.
"Did the doctor or whatever he was make you sign a bunch of shit?" I added.
"Yea, he did. And just like every average kid, I didn't read a single word of it and signed it immediately, and here I am."
I chuckled. "You and me both."
Erik pulled out a small stack of bread and handed it to me.
"You look like you could use some food points."
Taking the bread, I ate just enough to fill up my stamina bar. "Thanks." I said, handing the bread back.
"No, keep it, that's yours now." Erik said.
Sticking it into my inventory, I took a look at the sky. The sun was nearing the horizon.
"Sure hope that village you're talking about is close, seems like we aren't going to make it."
"It's just past this hill." Erik said, going a little bit ahead and hopping up the grass blocks slowly.
As the sky got more dim, I took out a torch so that we would be able to see in the case that we would have to make the rest of the trip in the night time. As he got to the top of the hill, Erik's face was full of disappointment and worry.
"Oh my god…"
"What? What happened?" I asked. "Mobs?"
"No…" Erik replied, pointing to the village. As I made my way to the top of the hill, there was no village. There was just a huge ass crater where it must've stood before.
"Holy shit…" I blurted.
"This village was my home just a couple of hours ago…" Erik said. "And now it's all been reduced to stone."
"How the hell could someone have done this much damage in so little time, and without anyone else in the server noticing?" I asked myself, curious. "Surely, they couldn't have just filled the place with TNT and let it rip."
"Are you familiar with Minecart bombing?" Erik replied.
"Minecraft what?" I interrupted. "Quit talking in polish bro…"
"Minecart bombing is where someone uses a repeating command block to summon a couple hundred tnt minecarts, then pushes them into an obstacle to get them to detonate. They only take around 1-5 minutes to set up and the damage increases with the amount of time the command block is left to run."
"Command blocks?" I replied.
"Command blocks are enabled on this server." Erik added. "I don't know how, but some people have been able to get access to the terminal for them and are bombing stuff for fun, like villages, or player creations."
"So, we are trapped in a server with terrorists. Fucking great." I replied sarcastically.
"I guess you can say that, yes. But what would you expect, they call this server "Anarchy" for a reason."
As the sun set past the horizon, I noticed the potential danger we may be in.
"I have a few stacks of wood." I mentioned. "Why don't I toss you some and we build a place to stay the night here on this hill?"
"Great proposal." Erik said, as I pulled two stacks of planks out of my inventory and tossed them to him.
"And I suppose in the morning we can head down to that cratered mess and see if any of your shit is still intact."
"I'm sure it's all gone by now, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to look." Erik said, as he started placing some planks down.
"Do we need beds?" I asked.
"Surprisingly, no you don't. As long as you're not close to any entities, you can sleep on the ground if you really want to." Erik explained.
"Hmm." I replied. "This virtual reality version is drastically different from real minecraft…"
"I noticed that right away." Erik added. "Perhaps all these adjustments are to make the game a bit more realistic for the true virtual experience."
Thankfully, we were able to finish building the small house without any further conflict, and we settled down for the night. As I laid down on the wood and tried falling asleep, I genuinely felt the stiffness in it. It almost felt as if I was actually sleeping on the floor in my real life house.
"Why does this feel so… real?" I blurted.
"It does, doesn't it." Erik commented, laying down in the opposite corner. "You'll get used to the discomfort of sleeping on the floor in no time. Trust me."
"How?"
"I don't know about you, but I'm already feeling sleepy… night…" And just like that, Erik passed out. I tried to relax a bit. Eventually, I was able to fall asleep.