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Dark night covered the wood. A glitched form of the AI appeared, its outlines glitching in and out several times, before plopping to the ground. The form of a human male lay for a bit on the ground, dazed by the strange pulling and falling sense he had just experienced. The sensation swiftly receding, the man slowly pushed himself to a sitting position. Lifting away his hand from slightly aching eyes, he looked up.
His mouth and eyes opened a bit in rising wonder.
Massive, dark rocks towered above him, stretching away higher and higher into the mountain sways covered with mist. Clouds drifted silently across the night sky and countless stars brightly shone above.
A rustling to his left made him turn and look to the tall, green grass. His eyes searched there before falling to the intricate web between the two nearest bushes, where clear beads of dew shone in the moon light.
In the distance of towering mass of green woods, more sounds called to each other, echoing.
The man hesitantly got up, his chin lifting as he looked up to the sky, an expression of awe settling in his features. A step forward and he paused again, looking down at the small rocks and grass that prickled the bottoms of his bare feet. Before, the floor had always been even and smooth. Cool wind passed across his skin and stirred his dark, brown hair in a pleasant way. Pulling in a deep breath brought awareness of yet another new flood of information as a multitude of unnamed scents rushed in.
Another movement in the bushes nearby drew his attention again and blue eyes held sharply on the place from where the sound came. A mouse scurried out from that spot and lifted its body, standing up on its hind paws, its beady eyes considering the interloper as its small whiskers and nose moved about in the air. Both beings considered each other with curiosity, and then the tiny being vanished back into the grass.
Another movement distracted the man and he gazed at the swaying branch where another small being leapt up, its long, fluffy tail flying behind it. It, too, vanished among the other branches. The man stood, still looking up where it had disappeared. It was hard to make sense of all the new data his senses were sending to him. A little overwhelmed, but excited rather than scared despite memory warning him that some new things could cause discomfort, the being proceeded ahead at a slow, cautious pace.
Only a short distance later, he reached the side of a cliff where he stopped on the edge of a protruding ledge. From there, he gazed with wonder at the vast valley that stretched below him. A river ran across the plains and vanished in the heavy woods of evergreens mixed with enormous, ancient oaks. More mountain crags rose around, growing steeper and steeper further from the center.
Behind him lay more woods and then cliffs rose high, forming an intimidating, sheer wall that blocked horizon from view. And to the left extended a small clearance, where dark entrance to the cave gaped. Entranced by the new experiences, the being stood, listening and feeling with all his senses, even closing his eyes so he could pay better attention to individual details. Gradually, the world around him resolved into details he could comprehend.
Opening his eyes, he looked at the sharply dropping off ground before him and then stepped back, not daring to test whether the fall from such a distance would bring even more discomfort than he felt when he fell earlier from a far smaller height. His eyes held on the blue band of the river, though. Was that water? He was starting to feel thirsty. Was there another way down? The man looked around himself again, seeking for a feasible way of descent. His eyes held on rising cliffs behind him and then found the cave entrance.
After another moment of hesitation, he stepped toward it. Darkness lay within and much cooler air. A strange flicker ran across the man's eyes. In his mind, patterns appeared, coloring the space ahead of him in stark white lines which curved around the contours. With greater certainty, the easiest pathway established, he stepped into the cave and started the long descent down branching tunnels.
...
"What was that?" One of the developers frowned at the strange lines of code that briefly ran across the screen before getting pushed further down by other data.
The man next to him sleepily yawned. "What?"
The first developer scrolled up again and pointed at the lines, where his associate wearily squinted.
"… Kind of looks like a log in attempt." He concluded.
"How?... Oh... When did we get Multiplayer functions?"
"Yeah. Greg's team did it. A couple of days ago?" The second developer smiled a bit, glasses askew on his sleepy face.
"Ah. OK. Maybe they should run a full system check. In case it was a hacker or something."
"I'll tell them." The second developer yawned again. Fixing up the glasses on his nose, he turned his gray eyes to the multiple screens and curiously looked at the programs running there. Some of the windows showed the different sections of the vast and complex world that their team had been working on for the past month and a half. Pleased, the developer surveyed the forest covered trails and vast fields, partially hidden in creeping fog. In the world before him, the sky was slowly lightening as morning cycle approached.
The developer considered the work where he had a part, pride settling in his features. This world he saw on the screens looked indistinguishable from videos taken in real life. In fact, it looked better, vivid, with a perfect ratio of contrast and color designed to attract and evoke mood of mystery. Just looking at these images made him want to go out there and explore, seeking to learn what mysteries the place hid./p
The developer smirked and began to pull up more screens, where different sorts of creatures rotated with data printed below them./p
"Going to add more?" The first developer asked, leaning in closer. The second nodded, a grin forming on his lips. He couldn't wait. Among the more traditional creatures, there would be a few of his own, which he was fairly sure no one had ever made before.
"Mobs." He confirmed.
"Already? I thought Notch wanted to finish testing his player models, first.
"Oh, they won't be hostile. Not yet. Besides... Notch wants to scrap the Steves. I think they're going to be zombies, instead."
"Oh?"
"He said that he doesn't want any human based mobs in game." The developer with glasses explained.
"I wonder why. All the other games have them."
"That's probably why. He wants something new."
"Aaah... But zombies and skeletons are not new?" The first developer looked at the sample of creatures, waiting to be added to the game. His associate shrugged and grinned again as he remembered one of his own creatures. No, his model was definitely going to be new. After all, he made it entirely by accident.
"I hope we are going to finish on time. That Multiplayer test is supposed to happen in two weeks!" First man pointed out.
"It will be fine. We're almost ready."
"Well, good luck, John. I'm beat. I'm going to head home."
"Mmmh."
"I guess you're staying till morning?" At the first developer's slightly humorous tone of voice, the second only nodded and grinned, last bits of sleepiness leaving as excitement set in.
The first developer declared and got up, stretching. The screen with the several lines of strange code still remained open behind him, forgotten. Briefly glancing at it, he frowned. "Hey, John. Don't forget let them know about this in the morning, all right?... John?"
"I will, I will, don't worry." The second developer waved his hand, all intent on his current work. Casting him a dubious look, the first man glanced at the strange lines of code one more time, but then shrugged lightly and rubbed his forehead, where a slight headache had been building and pressing behind his eyes.
"I got to get some sleep." He muttered under his nose. "All right, I'm heading out then. I'll see you later tonight."
The door was already closing behind him, having left the small, cramped room full of computer gear, when the other man looked up, becoming aware of his partner's absence. Glancing at the closing door, he hurried to raise his voice.
"Good night, Andrew!" He didn't hear the response, the door clicking closed. "Or good morning." The man glanced at the window, where peeking through the window shades came first early rays of light. Turning back to the screens, he focuses his attention on the running code and images and smiled.
Their game was bound to be a hit!
And now. "Next update…" John grinned and pressed the keyboard to commence the new addition sequence.
...
Something changed.
The man, until then confidently striding along the cave passage, paused. Lifting his head, he frowned, trying to define the sense that he perceived sweeping through the very foundations of the world and his own body. It was like invisible wave, reverberating through code that he perceived making up the world around him. While the feeling was familiar, he tried but could not quite distinguish the details. This place was far more complex than the previous one he had grown used to. His blue eyes briefly flashing with white, he waited until the sense began to diminish.
A movement in the upper left corner drew his attention.
Slowly descending from the ceiling to the wall below was a strange, eight-legged creature of a size just about half of the man himself. He studied it quietly. Brown and covered with sparse dark fur, the creature made faint, clicking noises with its mandibles as it began to explore the place it seemed to have made its home. It completely ignored the being standing below it.
The man watched the spider a bit longer. So, that creature was one of the new things he felt being added to the world. It was interesting.
The man stepped off again, with graceful ease leaping across the fissure that appeared gaping in his path. The last half-hour had greatly increased his skill and confidence of navigating in this strange, new terrains of uneven surfaces and jagged protrusions. He now could tell at a glance which areas would be unstable and which might slide under his feet.
These brown-furred creatures with many legs had not been the only addition, he knew that clearly. But there was so much already that he did not know about his new world and needed to investigate. For now, rising thirst had reached an uncomfortable level that he very much wished to alleviate and that task moved to the forefront in his mind.
Ignoring the spiders, more of whom had appeared scurrying and settling into quickly spun nests above and in the corners of the cave tunnel, the man continued to walk down the incline, which he hoped would lead him out to the place he had glimpsed from the cliffs.
