Minecraft VS Reality: The End Has Come

by Abyssal Angel

The apocalypse is upon us. A meteor is heading for the moon, and there is no time to stop it. But things are not always what they seem, and while for some, the end has come, for others, death... Death is but a new beginning... DISCLAIMER: If you recognize it, I don't own it.

5. Chapter 5

My eyes snapped open and I sat up, confused. What woke me up? I blinked as I looked around. Everything is still lit in here by the torches, which I never would've been able to sleep through before all this. I noticed that I couldn't hear the spiders anymore. Julian is still asleep on the mattress with his face partially covered by the pillow.

Walking over to the window, I peeked through one of the small holes in the trapdoor and noticed that the crowd of mobs are gone, and that the sun is risen. Looking closer to the tower, I see that the wall has been absolutely wrecked. Very little of it still stands. I'm going to have to do something about that.

Taking a closer look around outside, I notice some movement in the trees across the street. Trees that I'd cut down and replanted with saplings. They must've grown overnight or something.

I tried to see what was moving but couldn't tell from here. I'd need some binoculars or a spyglass or something. If I had to make a guess though, I'm assuming Creepers or Skeletons. At least one of those I'd see coming. The other, not so much.

As a test, I popped open the trap door and waited. Sure enough, I heard a far off thock sound, and immediately closed the trapdoor. A split second later an arrow thunked against the outside of it where my face was.

Julian snorted awake. "Wssat?" he mumbled, blinking awake.

"Good morning," I told him. He blinked blearily at me. "Coffee?" he asked hopefully. At least I assume that's what he said.

I chuckled. "How the heck did you survive out there if you're this unalert upon waking?"

Julian blinked slowly and frowned. "This is the first time I've been able to sleep since this whole mess started," he slurred slightly. He blinked again. "What time is it?"

I frowned and shook my head. "Too early. Go back to sleep."

Julian mumbled something, then lay back down and seemed to do just that.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the window, thinking about things. I glanced back at Julian once, then shook my head slightly at the turn of my thoughts as I considered what to do. With Julian still asleep, I'm a bit limited if I want to actually let him sleep. Contrary to what I said, he'd reacted fairly well to an arrow landing nearby, which is good, but it also means just about anything I do above a certain noise will likely wake him, and I can't just leave at the moment thanks to those stupid skeletons.

Well, at least not out the front. Walking downstairs, I take out my pickaxe and break a single block against the back wall and look outside. When I don't immediately get my face peppered with arrows, I nod to myself, break the second block, then make a door at the crafting table and place it in my new back door.

Opening it, I paused to consider. The wall IS in shambles… frowning, I placed a string of blocks leading away from the safehouse and out to the edge of the wall, and looked back.

"You sneaky little bastard," I muttered admiringly at the Creeper underneath the safehouse that made a beeline for me the instant I looked at it. Pausing, I considered my options. I could run back into the house, but that would take me right past the Creeper, which may or may not explode depending on if it decides I'm close enough to make the attempt. Or, I could jump off the wall and kite it away from the base, and possibly get ganked by mobs while fighting it.

Sighing, I unpaused and jumped off the wall. I'm probably going to die. But I think I'm just going to have to face facts. With seemingly all my options leading to that possibility, I think I'm just going to have to deal with it.

Turning about, I jogged to a point where I can see through a particularly large hole in the wall so I could see the Creeper, whilst trying to keep aware of my surroundings in case there are any other mobs.

Mr. Creeper comes through the ruined wall, and is beelining for me. I have no rocks, and quite frankly I'm tired of this crap. Running forward, I smack the Creeper with my sword. It's knocked back and immediately starts hissing and swelling. I quickly backpedal and it stops and starts forward after me.

Run forward, slash, hiss, backpedal. Rinse repeat till its dead. It's a tactic for dealing with Creepers in the game that flirts with them exploding in your face. I don't like it, but it's the most effective strategy against them until I get something more long range.

Now for the skeletons. I don't have a shield, so there's not much I can do there. Unlike the game, I can't just simply ignore the pain and act as if an arrow isn't sticking out of my body. In fact, for all that they did in the game, they might as well tickled for how effective they were. Well I can tell you, getting shot with an arrow very effectively halts your momentum and hurts so very incredibly badly.

I know what I can do though. I don't like it, but needs must.

Walking to the closest tree, I start hacking it down. It falls over with a thump. Working quickly, I broke down the trunk, and as soon as the last piece holding the branches in place was gone, they all immediately flew into my inventory and stacked up.

Immediately I went to the next tree and started doing the same, trying to keep up the pace. This way, I slowly but surely made a clearing around the safehouse a fair distance away. Hopefully fair enough away to not allow the skeletons any cover within range. There's not much I can do about the buildings next door though.

But now I have to deal with the trees to the south where there are skeletons. Approaching the street cautiously, I strained my ears for the slightest sound.

There! The second I heard a bowstring snap, I placed a block down and ducked behind it, only to hear an arrow twang into it a split second later. Carefully, I stick my hand out over the block, then immediately retract it upon hearing the twang of a bow string again, and an arrow whistled over my head, thunking into the street and piercing the pavement, before wisping away. I noted with interest that the hole in the ground stayed behind, while it hadn't after the arrow had pierced and stuck into my blocks before eventually disappearing. Interesting…

Sticking my hand out a few more times, I quickly determined that there are roughly three skeletons under the trees. All the rest must not have reached the shade quick enough to survive the sun immolating them. I have to wonder where the heck the spiders have gone to though. They may prefer the dark but it's not like they'll burn in the sun or anything, so I would've thought they'd be out here like usual.

Shaking my head, I refocused on the problem at hand. With three skeletons, my initial plan of working my way forward under placed cover is a bust. Eventually when I get close enough, the edges of the block won't hide me from the tree line to the left and right, and all it would take is one skeleton pinning me down, while the other two flank me.

Right, can't go forward, and I can't go above. Guess I'll go under. Here's hoping I don't hit a water main.

Digging down, I gave a start as I dropped a meter suddenly. Talk about jarring. Breaking the ground underneath my placed cover, and the block below that, I slid forward through the hole into the new 2x1 meter of space. Digging down one more meter this way, I placed a torch on the wall and began tunneling forward towards the tree line. I have to guesstimate how close it is though as I can't really see anything.

After seven meters, I break the block in front of my face, but not the one below it, then break the one above that. Immediately I have a view outside, and it's underneath the trees. Perfect.

Sticking my hand up the hole, I waved it about. Nothing happened though. Not surprising as my arm can't really go above the top of the hole like this.

Sighing, I placed a block up above the ground to act as a marker for where the hole is, and went back down the short tunnel I made and shimmied out the other side. Glancing around the edge, I drew back to avoid the arrows, then stuck my head back and paused, taking in the sight.

With my head stuck out this far, I can just see the marker block around the edge of my cover, plus two of the skeletons. The third is probably on the other side. Unpausing, I instantly drew back my head in just the nick of time. Sticking my head around the other side I did the same trick and confirmed the location of the third skeleton. Now here's hoping they stay where they are.

Shimmying back down the hole, I went back to the end of the tunnel and blocked off the hole leading above ground. I then tunneled to roughly where I remembered the closest skeleton is, then broke the block in front of me, then the one above it.

Didn't quite get it. I can see the skeleton's feet, but not the skeleton. Thankfully it's still just standing there. Plugging the hole back up, I went over another block, and did the same thing. Immediately it dropped into the hole and now I have the skeleton's waist and down directly in front of me, but it can't see me at all.

Grinning ferally, I switched to my sword and chopped at the thing's spine. It rattled in what might be considered pain, but after a few hits I broke through and the thing not only collapsed in half, but abruptly dropped into pieces and then sank into shadow, leaving behind a single bone and its bow. I pocket both, noting that the bow is extremely damaged though you wouldn't know it by looking at it. No arrows though so it's useless to me for the moment. No enchantments either.

Working my way to the other skeletons, I did the same thing until I was a few bones richer, had another bow which I immediately combined with the other in my crafting grid to get one more durable bow, and I was now two bones and three arrows richer. I then replaced the ground behind me, effectively 'collapsing' the tunnel as well as the holes in the ground, shimmied out, and was soon back behind my cover. Waving my hand about again, I determined that the skeletons are all likely gone… or are out of sight behind tree trunks preventing them from firing at me.

Cautiously, I crept out from behind cover, and walked down the tree line. Much to my frustration, I heard a twang and dropped behind another placed block. 'This is going to be my entire morning,' I thought frustratedly to myself.

I then had an idea spark in my head. Grinning, I immediately tunneled back down and approached the tree line that way. Digging back up the way I had before, I noted my position, covered the hole back up, and then made my way over towards the tree roots of the trees. I then started hacking at them from below, causing the trees on the surface to shudder and then fall over when their support bases were no longer there. The sound of a skeleton being crushed was music to my ears.

In this way, I went down the entire tree line, taking them out both east to west. I heard more skeletons get crushed, or more often, catch fire. Bastards thought they'd get the drop on me eh?

When I determined that I'd gone far enough, I filled back in my tunnels and went back above the surface and started harvesting all the trees. I wouldn't be replanting these ones though. I'd have to establish a safe tree farm area later, and perhaps eventually replant these far off into the future after I've secured the area.

Having deemed the area clear enough, I went back to the safehouse, quickly fixed the wall, promising myself that I'd upgrade it soon, then went back inside and placed a chest for all the excess leaves, sticks, and wood I have now.

Inside, I found Julian finally up and watching curiously.

"Woke up to the sound of trees crashing." He said. "Looked outside to see and hear those skeletons getting crushed or catching fire. That was you I take it?"

I nodded. "Sorry I woke you up. The jerks were camping out in the trees waiting for us to leave so they could turn us into pin cushions. I couldn't approach them so I went underneath instead."

"What if you'd hit a water main?" Julian asked, curiously.

"I was hoping that the presence of tree roots would preclude any water pipes or underground wiring being in the area." I responded.

Julian nodded thoughtfully. "Coffee?" he asked hopefully.

I shook my head. "Only food supplies I've got are in that duffle bag. That juice bottle is the only fluid we've got for now."

Julian grimaced. "We're going to need a lot more than that. Unfortunately all the buildings around are infested with those things. The houses, the supermarkets, the minimarts, everything."

I nodded. "They spawn in darkness so it doesn't surprise me. I'd just tunnel underneath, but I honestly got lucky with not hitting anything important down there earlier. If I did the same thing with a building, I'd risk causing it to collapse down on my head."

"What's the plan then?" Julian asked.

"Use my knowledge of Minecraft to abuse the system." I said, grinning. "Essentially, I'm going to cheat."

Going back upstairs, I broke the blocks I'd placed in the doorway leading to the alcove where the furnaces are, replacing them with a door I'd made for the purpose. Just as I expected it, they're all unlit and finished, and I checked the six that I'd set to processing steel and plastic and found three plastic bars and three steel ingots.

"Are these coal furnaces?" Julian asked with interest, peering into one of the furnaces in curiosity.

"Sort of. In the game, they're just called furnaces, and you can use pretty much any burnable solid fuel in them. They can process just about any ore, and the only difference different fuel makes is how long it burns. Two sticks can smelt one item, while a chunk of coal can smelt eight."

Julian stared at me, then at the furnaces, then back at me, and said in a perfectly straight deadpan voice, "Your powers are bull #$%."

I shrugged, chuckling. "Not going to disagree. Take it up with Notch. He's the one who made the game."

Julian snorted, and turned back to the furnaces again. "So how would someone like me go about using this?"

I blinked, and considered the question. "I honestly don't know. I know I can do it by accessing it through my powers, and it brings up a window like in the game that I have something of an extra sense for. I use the furnace by interacting with that. There is one other way, which you might be able to use, but that would require getting some iron to make funnels. Outside of that, I don't know if you can."

Julian hummed then said, "There's openings in the front here though. What if I just put fuel and ore in that way?"

I shrugged and pulled out a steel chunk and two sticks and handed it to him. "You can try," I offered.

He took them both from me, his hand dropping slightly under the weight of the ore chunk. "You made this look weightless." He grunted.

"It all weighs the same to me no matter what it is," I responded, interested as he shoved the ore chunk into the top opening, and the sticks in the bottom. Both appeared in the GUI window for the furnace to my view, but didn't start smelting right away.

"How do you light it?" Julian asked, turning to me.

"It just lights itself," I responded.

"Well, it's not doing that now," He said after looking back at it.

I shrugged. "Maybe feeding things in like this requires everything to be done manually. I've got some lighters back at my old apartment I can go get. It'll take me about 15 to 20 minutes to get there and back."

Julian grunted, then turned towards a torch on the wall, then back to me. "Have any more of those?"

I wordlessly handed him a torch. He then stuck the end of it into the bottom, and the Furnace lit up and started smelting the ore chunk.

"Interesting," I commented, "I honestly wasn't sure if this would work."

"At least we now know I can use some of these things too." Julian said back. He looked at the torch still in his hand, then at me and gestured. "Mind if I keep this?"

"Not at all. Actually I'm kind of interested to know if you can actually place it like I can now," I replied.

"Place?" Julian questioned.

To answer, I pulled out another torch and placed it on the wall. Julian blinked and got closer to look at where the torch connected to the block behind it. He then jabbed the end of his torch into the wall next to it, and made to let go, but it was obvious it wasn't connected. "Absolute bull #$%," he muttered to himself. He then grabbed onto the other torch and made to pull it off. Eventually he set down his torch on the stone patio and gripped it with both hands and started yanking.

When he made to put his foot on the wall, I shook my head. "Careful, if your hands slip, you might get burned. I think."

Julian stopped. "You think?" he questioned incredulously. He stuck his hand up near the flame. "What the, it's not even hot!?" He waved his hand through the flame before just leaving it in entirely for a few seconds. He then stared at me deadpan. He didn't even say it this time. I could literally hear him thinking it at me. 'Your powers are BULL #$%.'

I shrugged in response. "Don't look at me, Minecraft physics were never meant to be real. That said, I'm a little bit surprised there's no heat at all. I mean, it sparked off the furnace didn't it?"

Julian looked thoughtful for a moment, looking down at the torch I gave him, only to start and grab up the torch in surprise.

"What is it?" I asked.

He held his hand up to the flame and then winced and drew back. "It's hot. Look where the flame was laying on the stone."

I looked and sure enough, there was a black soot mark on the rock. I rubbed my shoe against it and it scuffed up, showing that it wasn't actually a mark on the stone, just soot.

Julian scratched his head. "Why is this one different?"

I looked between the two torches thoughtfully. "Intent maybe? When I gave you that torch, I rather expected you to use it to light the sticks on fire. But when I placed those torches on the wall, I wanted light and was deliberately hoping that it wouldn't set fire to the wooden walls… or it could just be the difference between a held and a placed torch."

He handed the torch back. I then turned and placed it on the wall, focusing on wanting it to be able to burn things. I then put my hand near it and shook my head. "It's not hot."

Julian stuck his hand up too. When I gave him a look, he replied, "You're the one with powers. For all you know, it wouldn't burn you anyway."

"I'm not fire proof," I told him. 'Yet,' I didn't say outloud.

Julian shrugged.

I looked at him. When he didn't say anything, I gestured to the torch. "Well?"

"It's not hot," he replied.

I rolled my eyes. "So it's just the difference between a placed and held torch. That's handy."

I broke the torch from the wall and handed it back to Julian. He took it, paused, then simply handed it back. "I have no place to put it, and I don't want to just carry it everywhere." He explained.

I nodded and put it back in my inventory.

Julian then eyed the wall, and then gave it a light tap with his shoe. "So this isn't fireproof?"

I shook my head. "I almost never use wood as a building material, except as decoration. Stone is fireproof and stands up to Creeper explosions better too. Unfortunately without lava, I don't have a source of stone, and I don't know of any stone quarries nearby."

"South Florida isn't a good place for a quarry anyway," Julian offered, "Sure there are limestone deposits here and there, but it's not a good stone for building. Too soft. But why would lava give you a source of stone? Obsidian is just as brittle as limestone."

"Obsidian is different in Minecraft. Rather than volcanic glass, it's a black stone with purple flecks which is one of the toughest materials in the game. It's almost completely explosion proof, and definitely invulnerable to Creepers. But right now I'm more interested in the way lava interacts with water in Minecraft. Without going into too much detail, if you pour water onto lava, you get obsidian. If you pour lava onto water, you get stone. And if you do it correctly, neither the water or lava are used up by this interaction, like it is when making obsidian. So it just keeps making stone. Forever."

Julian stared, then pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, then refocused. "What kind of stone?" he asked.

"Ah, I forget. It's just called stone in Minecraft, but some people online said it's most similar to a stone with a funky name. Not diorite, andesite, marble, or granite. Those are separate stone types in Minecraft that you can only get by mining. What it makes is just… grey stone. Like the kind you find everywhere."

Julian nodded. "Likely Gneiss or Rhyolite if I had to guess. If it's made from lava, rhyolite would make more sense, but it sounds like this Notch person just wanted common stone, and the most common stone are Gneiss and Igneous deposits."

"How on earth do you know that?" I wondered.

"I minored in Geology," Julian replied.

"Huh." I replied.

"So you need felsic lava then." Julian said thoughtfully. He turned to the furnaces with a contemplative expression on his face. "How exactly do you smelt ore in this game? No wait, let me guess, you get a chunk of rock and metal out of the ground, shove it into the furnace, smelt it with two sticks, and out pops a pure ingot of metal."

His tone was sarcastic, so I wasn't overly surprised when he started cursing at the look on my face.

"Well that's just bloody brilliant isn't it," he said, kicking one of the furnaces. He then paused and leaned close to one. "Is this made from asphalt?!" he exclaimed.

"…Yes? Why?" I asked.

The string of curses that followed would've stripped paint off the walls.

"What? It was the only stone readily available that I could use! I'm just lucky my powers even counted it as stone otherwise I wouldn't even have furnaces and would be stuck with wooden tools!" I said defensively.

"That's not the bloody point!" Julian raved, "The point is your powers are #$# #$ BULL #$%! Asphalt has a low melting temperature which makes it easy to use for making roads! The melting point for steel is high enough to turn asphalt into slag! Your furnaces should be slag all over the bloody ground!" Julian kicked the furnace one more time before stopping and sighing. "I need a drink…" he muttered.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

Julian sighed and seemed to pull himself together. "Yes… yes. Sorry about that. The thing you need to understand is that most rock when it becomes molten would count as lava. Normally if you stick a slab of asphalt into a coal oven, you'd melt it before it even reaches peak temperature. I was going to suggest placing some stone into the furnace and trying to smelt it for lava, but the way these furnaces work is so counter intuitive that I'm not sure it would even work. Because if it did, then your furnaces should be pretty much molten right now."

I shrugged thoughtfully. "Well, if that's the case, then it probably can't hurt to try anyway. See what happens?"

Julian shrugged. "By all means."

Thinking for a moment, I took one of my last blocks of asphalt and placed it in the furnace along with two sticks. When nothing happened, I considered it for another moment, then took my steel ingots to the crafting table, Julian following me curiously. Luckily it did allow me to make a steel bucket, and I took it back upstairs and placed it in the output item slot.

Or that's what I would have done, except the bucket wouldn't go into the output slot. I tried a few more times before shaking my head. "No dice. The furnace won't do it."

Julian nodded. "We'll need a kiln or foundry then. A REAL kiln or foundry. Unless there's one of those in Minecraft?"

I shook my head, paused, then said, "Eh… sorta. But not in the original game. The thing is, steel isn't in the original game. Or plastic. Or ore chunks like this for that matter. Those kinds of things were added in by mods created by others not affiliated with Notch or his company Mojang. If my powers were strictly vanilla, the only metal I should be able to smelt in these is iron. But I can definitely smelt steel in here. It never really struck me as odd till just now that it could do that. The only thing I can think of is that it's some kind of quirk of Minecraft physics interacting with real physics… or Minecraft physics are using mods somehow to bridge the gap."

"How would you go about making lava in one of those mods then?" Julian asked.

"Well, there were a couple of machines that could do it, along with magical apparatuses," I thought aloud, "But the easiest was probably the Crucible from the Ex series of mods. You just had to make one, set it over a heat source such as a torch or lava, and feed it stone, and it would melt the stone into lava."

"…Setting aside the bit about using a torch as a heatsource," Julian said, sounding pained, "Would you be able to make one of those?"

"If I remember correctly, making it needed clay… and bonemeal. I have bones so I could make the bonemeal, but I don't have clay and I don't know where to get any. You wouldn't happen to know if the college has any would you?" I asked.

"I wouldn't know. I didn't go to this college. My wife did." He answered quietly.

We were both silent for a moment.

"I'm sorry for your loss," I said quietly.

Julian just nodded. He then forcefully cleared his throat. "I wouldn't be surprised if we could find a little of everything on campus, but without knowing where anything is, it would take weeks, if not months to find anything. Especially considering all the buildings are bound to be full of those monsters."

I nodded. "It's not hard to bait a zombie out of a building, but it's the skeletons that are a real problem. While a Zombie will chase you out into the sun and fry to death, a skeleton is content to just sit in the dark and take pot shots at you. And unless you're dodging, they never miss."

Julian nodded in agreement, and we both were silent, thinking for a bit.

"…Let's worry about lava later. Right now, we really need water. I have a bucket now, so if I can find a fresh source of water, I can set it up so we have infinite water." I said.

Julian snorted. "Of course. Well, I doubt the river will work. Even if we didn't have to worry about it being brackish, it's not exactly clean. We could bathe and use it as coolant in a pinch, but we'd be far better off with distilled or purified water."

I hummed thoughtfully. "You wouldn't happen to know how many gallons are in a cubic meter of water, would you?"

"Well, seeing as a cubic meter is a thousand liters, and a US gallon is approximately 3.7 liters… Yes, I would say that I know how many gallons are in a cubic meter. Do you?" he challenged.

I sighed and thought about it for a minute. "More than 200 as that'd be less than a thousand… Less than 300 since that'd be over… More than 250 as it's less than a thousand… … …"

As the silence drew on, Julian finally interrupted, "Do you need paper?"

I sighed. "That would make this easier… Just give me a second I need to concentrate… 250 times 3.7… times 4 is a thousand… 0.7… 3 times 250 is 750… 250… 0.7 of 250… 0.1 of 250 is 25… 1 minus 0.7 is 0.3… 3 times 25 is 75… 250 minus 75 is… 175… 750 plus 175 is… 800… 125… 925… 75 to 1000… 3.7 per gallon… times ten is 37… times 20 is 60… 14… 74… 20… plus 250… 270. Approximately 270 gallons. Dang it I hate math…" I finished, rubbing my head to stave off the headache.

Julian stared. "That's one way to do math I suppose… You're close. It's actually a little over 264 gallons. The ratio of liter to gallon is actually closer to 3.8 than 3.7, so if you had the next few decimals you likely would've gotten it correct."

"Having the next few decimals would have made it even harder and likely made my brain explode," I said with a sigh. "Couldn't you have just told me rather than force me to waste time going through that?"

"Next time I will," Julian promised. "I just wanted to make sure you weren't just being lazy."

I lightly glared at him. " #$."

Julian grinned and shrugged. "Guilty. Why did you even want to know anyway?"

"Because all blocks in Minecraft are measured in cubic meters. All of them being a single cubic meter. If we can get a cubic meter sized container and fill it with water, I got pick it up with my bucket, then use that to make the infinite water." I replied.

"And where would we get the water?" Julian asked.

I sighed. "Normally I would've just said that I have a couple five gallon jugs at my old apartment I could go grab, but 264, no, 265 gallons to be on the safe side? That would take a raid on Walmart or something. And while it can be done… It won't be easy. If I had a single iron ingot I could make a shield and then this would be almost stupid simple. I could just place torches all over the place inside Walmart, then leave and after a certain distance they should despawn."

Julian's eyes widened in surprise. "They do that?"

I nodded, paused, then shrugged. "Well, they do in game. But that's more due to engine limitations. Last night there were way more mobs than you would normally EVER see in the game in one place, and normally in the game only a certain amount can appear… and they only appear within a certain radius around the main character. And I know for a fact from the live feeds before the power went out that this was happening all over the world. So despawning might not be a thing here."

"Why do you call them mobs, by the way?" Julian asked, curious.

"It's an acronym I think." I replied, thinking back, "But I forget what it stands for. Most everyone called Minecraft monsters mobs, and I'm pretty sure most other monsters in other games get called that too. It's easier to say with just one syllable and while I don't remember, I did look it up once, and it fits."

Julian nodded. "So if you can't get the… mobs, to despawn, how will you get rid of them?"

"Well, I'd still use torches so more don't show up while I'm clearing the place out. They can't spawn in light after all. As for getting rid of them… I'd bait the zombies out as usual. But the skeletons… without a ranged weapon of my own, I'm stuck tunneling underneath, going above, or rushing them from cover to cover, or dodging. And while dodging might work with a single skeleton, any more than that makes it nigh on impossible. And then there's the Creepers and Spiders to worry about. Especially the Spiders. Unlike the rest of the mobs, these Spiders are acting strange."

"How so?" Julian asked, concerned.

"Well, normally in game, spiders attack while it's dark, but while they're next to light or in sunlight, they just kinda sit there and wander around aimlessly." I explained, "These spiders attack in the dark, and aren't hurt by the light, but every time I've seen them come into the light or sunlight, instead of becoming docile, they retreat. It's disconcerting and makes me wonder if there are more differences with them. Them, and the other mobs."

Julian nodded, then after a few moments said, "You know, most stores keep the water near the front. So you don't really need to go inside. You could just bust the wall behind where the water jugs are stored, or go underneath, grab them, and get out of there. Assuming the water wasn't looted anyway. We might have more luck raiding the houses for supplies since most of everything got distributed before the comet hit."

I started, then smiled. "Great idea! I was thinking of maybe using mirrors, but this way is much better!"

Julian blinked. "Mirrors?"

I nodded. "The zombies and skeletons catch fire from sunlight anyway, so I figured reflecting light into the store through the giant holes in them would help clear them out. But then I realized I wouldn't know how or where I'd go to get a big mirror anyway. Plus the skeletons would probably shoot any mirror I'm holding and shatter it."

Julian looked thoughtful then replied, "Perhaps, a large sheet of aluminum… Either way, we should probably stockpile some mirrors so we can use them for something like that somewhere down the road. If nothing else, it would be good for hygiene. Speaking of, Would you mind going back inside for a few moments?"

I blinked. "Uh… Alright."

I went inside and a few moments later I heard a zipper and then a trickle of fluid and I abruptly tried to not think or hear anything about what I was hearing and instead began running desperate plans in my head for how to hook up a toilet to the currently existing sewers from a floating house.

"I'm done. And uh… thanks." Julian said from behind me slightly awkwardly.

"No problem," I said with a nod. "Still, we absolutely need water now. Though uh… Huh. You know, I don't think I've actually needed to use the bathroom since this whole thing started?"

Julian's eyes widened. "You may want to go give it a shot. That's either your powers or a medical problem waiting to happen, and we don't have doctors."

"Push comes to shove, I can just go try and rush Walmart and get myself killed again," I snarked, before sobering, "but yeah… I'll be right back."

Ten minutes later I came back and shook my head. "No issues. I think whatever's happened to me has wiped all my previous medical issues out since I used to have a lot more problems with my health. That, and made it so I could indefinitely hold my waste if I wanted to. Or something. I don't even know anymore…"

Julian nodded, then looked at me seriously and asked, "Are you suicidal?"

I blinked and looked at him, shocked. "Wha- Where did that come from?!"

"I never mentioned my Dad, did I?" Julian asked.

My eyes widened as I immediately caught the implications. I then took a deep breath and sighed. "I'm a highly religious person. I also have depression. Before the apocalypse happened, I made regular psychiatric visits for various reasons, and it was also the primary listed reason for why I was medically discharged from the Air Force."

Julian's eyes widened in surprise at that.

I continued, "The Docs call what I am 'passive suicidal'. In a nut shell, I'd like to die, but I'm in no danger of actually doing it. Mostly, if not entirely, due to my personal religious beliefs. So you don't have to worry."

Julian still looked guarded, searching my face, then nodded. "I've never reacted well to suicide because of my Da offing himself and leaving my mother to raise me alone. Especially not jokes. Even if you can come back, you never know if one of these times you won't, and I'll be straight with you. At this point as far as I can tell, you're the best hope humanity has for coming back from this. So you need to stay alive. Understand?"

I nodded, then pinned him with a stare and said, "Straight back at you. We're likely an endangered species at this point, so every human helps, and unlike me, you won't come back. So be careful, alright?"

Julian nodded. "So long as you don't try to wrap me in wool, I'll be fine."

I snorted and nodded back. "Agreed."

Julian and I shook hands. "Let's go get some water." He said, and I grinned and nodded.

We both headed for Walmart. I have a rough memory of where the water is stored, and thanks to the layout, there's a likelihood that it's not directly against the outside wall, so I decided to tunnel there. Julian would watch my back with an extra sword I made. Along the way, I mined up several more blocks from the road.

Once at Walmart, we approached it from the side since there aren't any doors or windows. I then creeped up to the front entrance that's been almost entirely broken open, and immediately created a two block high wall of asphalt blocks in front of the entrance as fast as I could place them, and since I didn't need to actually look at the face of the block to place them against it, I didn't need to actually come out of cover to do it.

With the wall in place, I went back to where I'd left Julian in the spot I'm pretty sure will lead us directly to the water, assuming there's any there.

Tunneling down, I dug my way underneath the floor, being careful to listen for any sounds of the ceiling potentially collapsing from above. Luckily it seemed to be holding, and I eventually made a hole up to see if we'd made it.

By sheer luck, I came out directly underneath the rack containing the five gallon water drums.

By sheer unluck, there were only four left.

Cursing, I picked them all up into my inventory, noting that none of them stack, so they all count as individual storage items, and began refilling the tunnel back up.

Once out of the tunnel, I cursed. "Only twenty gallons. Even if I fetched the two back at my ruined apartment that only brings us up to 30, and we need at least 165 to make this work!"

Julian seemed to be deep in thought before he snapped his fingers. "The water tower! If we can get up to the reservoir, you can get the water there! There must be thousands of gallons inside!"

"Is the water in there fresh?" I asked, considering the idea.

"Must be, otherwise we wouldn't be drinking it." Julian reasoned.

"I actually tried getting in there yesterday, before I discovered my powers." I said, "Figured I'd stay in or on the tower and have easy access to water and if I could camp out on top, I'd be relatively safe from any zombies, which was the only mob I was aware of at the time. Only problem was, the ladders inside lead up to two hatches and both were locked. I didn't fancy trying to mess with the pipes trying to figure out which to drain, or searching the offices for keys."

"You can build up the outside of the tower, though," Julian pointed out. "If you can get above it, you can just break the hatch with your pickaxe, get the water, then replace the hatch and come back down."

"Do you think that would work? It's not a Minecraft build so I'm not sure if I could put it back, though it'd be a good idea to make sure the water stays uncontaminated…"

Julian shrugged. "Only one way to find out, mate."

I nodded. "To the water tower then."

Walking back up the road, we both took pulls from the juice bottle until it ran out, then I used one of the five gallon jugs to rinse it out and refill it, though we inevitably splashed a good deal of it on the ground rather than into the bottle. To my interest, my usual issue with drinking water making me feel nauseous was no longer an issue. Weird as they are, these new Minecraft powers sure are coming in handy!

Since I'd already been there yesterday, I lead the way to the water tower after making a quick stop at the safehouse to grab a bunch of the excess wood I'd gathered earlier this morning. It was quite interesting to note that Julian could actually see the contents of the chest when the lid popped open as soon as I accessed it, though he initially jumped and swore when it seemingly popped open on its own.

Once we reached the tower, that's when it dawned on me…

"Crap." I muttered, staring up at the tower.

"Something wrong?" Julian asked.

"I just realized that to get up on top of the tower, I'm going to have to actually climb the tower…"

A few seconds passed.

"…Yeeeesss?" Julian responded, not sure where this was going.

"…I have a fear of falling…" I muttered.

"Oh bloody hell," Julian said slapping his hand over his face and leaving it there. "Just how did you plan on camping out on top of the tower if you're afraid of heights?!"

"It was a last resort! You see that radio tower?" I pointed towards the radio tower a short distance away. "I only got half way up before I had to climb back down, and it took me ages to talk myself through it. And I'm not afraid of heights. I'm afraid of falling. There's a difference."

"How did you possibly get in the Air Force if you're afraid of hei- Oh sorry, afraid of falling?!" Julian asked incredulously.

"Not everyone in the Air Force flies, and I have no trouble in air planes anyway." I defended, "I was a Ground Radio Tech. The guy who calls in the air strikes and keeps the radios running, not the one who's actually up in the air. But since I got medically retired before I could finish on the base training, I don't know if that last part is actually true. AWACS is a thing after all."

"And that is…?" Julian trailed off expectantly.

"AWACS? I forget what the acronym stands for, but it's an extremely advanced plane with a giant radar on top. They showed one off in the beginning of the movie Independence Day. I'm personally convinced that it and its prototypes are the reason for all the old UFO sightings back in the day. The radar looks exactly like a flying saucer. It even spins."

"Fascinating," Julian replied, and he sounded like it actually was, but it was ruined when he asked, "So are you going to be able to get up there, or…?

"Yes, I'm going up there." I responded. "It's just not going to be easy for me. Give me a sec, ok?"

"Fine…" Julius said.

Meanwhile I took a few deep breaths, then crafted a quick crafting bench, put it down, created a stack of ladders, broke the bench, then created a stack of blocks and placed the ladders on them. I then started climbing, doing my best to focus on the blocks and ladders rather than the height and falling from it.

"Do me a favor?" I called over my shoulder, not very far up.

"Yes?" Julian called up.

"Can you spot for me? Call up when I'm half way, then three fourths, then at the top?" I called back.

"Sure, I can do that, no problem," he replied.

"Thanks!" I said, and continued the hair raising journey of climbing up into the sky on a ridiculously tall ladder with no safety harness.

I had no concept of time so it felt like a half an hour had passed by when I heard from behind me, "You're halfway there!"

"Got it!" I called back, before mumbling to myself, "Great… Just peachy… Feels like I've been climbing for a while now and I'm only halfway… No, that's great. Can't be an easier way to get water, just has to be the one way that could end up with me smashing against the ground like a sack of potatoes…"

I continued grumbling to myself, deliberately letting it take my mind off things. Thanks to that, the warning that I was a fourth of the way up came faster than I expected. I acknowledged the message and kept going.

Finally I heard, "You've made it to the top! You should be able to get to the roof of the tower now!"

"Got it!" I called back down again. If I made it to the top, then it's finally time to climb up to the top of this block and start crossing horizontally to the roof of the water tower.

Gulping, I decided to play it a little safe and built a ring around the top of the ladder in blocks, then built the ladder up two more blocks so I could, hopefully, simply step off onto the block nearby. Easier said then done. It's hard to let go of the ladder with nothing else to hold onto, and a meter is a surprisingly big amount of space. I had to stretch my leg out pretty far and then shimmy to the side of the ladder and do it again just to reach the ring of blocks I made to stand on.

Finally though I managed to get a solid support and moved my other leg to the platform. Once I was standing fairly solidly, I let go of the ladder, then immediately wished I hadn't. I had to drop quickly to the floor lest the vertigo tip me over and send me tumbling down to the ground far far below.

Swallowing, I closed my eyes, focused on my breathing, and used some extra blocks to create a lip around me, then extended it out a bit and slowly crawled forward, just feeling the build grid and keeping my eyes closed and trying to breathe.

I couldn't hear much over the rushing of the wind, or was that the blood in my ears, before a hand on my back startled me badly.

"Hey! Hey! It's just me. Come on, mate, relax… breathe… That's it. If I knew it was going to be this hard on you I would've tried to suggest something else…"

I swallowed and shook my head. "No other way. It's just hard, but this is the best source of water in the area. Don't know any others besides the river, and I wouldn't know how to go about purifying a kiloliter of water in order to make it drinkable." I'm more talking to myself than to him when I say this. I'm self aware enough to know I'm convincing myself to keep going. I continued to shuffle forward.

"Well there's no reason why you can't take a moment to catch your breath. Come on. Just sit up, rest your back against this nice tall guard rail, and breathe for a bit, yeah? Can you do that for me?" Julian said, soothingly.

I paused, then nodded, and with his help, I sat up and leaned against the wall, and hugged my legs, pressing my face into my knees. I felt Julian sit next to me and rub my back in a comforting manner. "That's it. Nice deep breaths. Maybe a drink? Nice slow sips…"

A drink sounds nice actually. Pulling the juice bottle now full of water out of my inventory and blindly unscrewed the cap and sipped it for a bit. Once I had a few swallows, I held it out to Julian who took it after a moment and I heard him take a few gulps himself. Once he handed back I just held onto the bottle and concentrated on it for a bit.

After a few minutes, my heartrate slowed down enough to realize that while it is a little windy up here, it's nowhere near enough to be as loud as I thought it was. Blood rush then I guess. Inhaling, then letting out a deep gusty sigh, I opened my eyes and focused on the block of wood planks, making for a meter tall guard rail that I can only just see the sky over.

"So what happened?" Julian asked.

"Hm?" I hummed questioningly.

"You know." He made a hand gesture encompassing the area, "Fears like this usually have a story behind them. So what happened?"

I huffed a short laugh and put my forehead against my knees again. "Nothing much to tell. I'm not sure if this is what started it, but when I was a kid, two of my sisters tried to get me to ride on their shoulders. Terrified out of my freaking mind and crying to be let down, but they wouldn't let me down, so I had to deal with them making me ride their shoulders, trying to acclimate me to being up high. So I guess either I was scared of heights before then and I don't remember it, or that event traumatized me. In the end, it doesn't matter. I realized a long time ago they were just trying to help and sometimes exposure like that is the way to do it. Just tough luck it didn't work I guess. Wasn't till I was a teen and had more exposure to tall places like roller coasters that I realized I didn't give a crap about the height. It was falling that terrifies me."

Julian hummed in acknowledgement, not saying anything else.

"So what about you?" I asked after a few minutes passed.

"Me?" Julian questioned.

I nodded. "Got any great fears with stories behind them?"

"Heh, not so much," Julian said, "Most of my issues stem from my Da and what he did. Other than that I went through the usual stuff. Scared of the dark, nightmares chasing me to Mum during the night, that kind of thing. But I grew up and those kinds of things stopped bothering me eventually. I still sleep better with a light on, mind, but that's usually just the telly left on in the other room. Helped me sleep. Me, and Carol…"

"Your wife?" I asked, looking over at Julian out of the corner of my eye.

Julian nodded. "Yeah…" He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and stared at a picture inside, his face tight with grief he was trying to suppress. "We were going to have a baby, you know?... A daughter. Little Madeline… We were all set to bring a little bundle of joy into the world… Picked out a mobile, a crib… We'd even gotten a brand new camera to capture all the little moments… her first word… her first step… And then this happened…"

Julian trailed off, his throat tight. As for me, my heart ached for the guy. I literally had no words I could convey to express the pain I felt for this man. The most I could do at that point was raise a hand and grip his shoulder. He looked over and caught my eye. His eyes were a bit wet, but I could tell he understood the gesture, and was grateful.

Still, I had to try. "You'll see them again someday." I said, trying to convey with all my might the truth I felt in those words.

Julian met my gaze, searching my face for a moment, then smiled slightly. "Someday… but that day is not today."

"Not today," I agreed.

By unspoken agreement, we both stood up, me with my hand gripping the ledge, while Julian kept a steadying hand on my elbow. I took a look around out towards the horizon.

"You know, now that I'm a bit calmer, it's pretty nice out here." I commented. Julian made a noise of agreement.

I eventually let my eyes be drawn to a flickering light and beheld the safehouse from up here. "What an ugly building," I said idly.

Julian followed my gaze and his lip quirked up. "Oh, it's not so bad. Bit of polish here, some spit shine there, and it'll be looking grand before you know it."

I chuckled. "Eh, it was only ever meant to be a starter base anyway. I just wasn't quite sure what I was going to eventually switch to once I got the source of stone up and running. An island would be fairly safe from mobs, but then we'd have to deal with the weather being a lot harsher. Plus it'd be a lot harder for other survivors to reach us. I also figured maybe I'd just tower up then build a large platform, a city in the sky if you will. But then we'd be in the middle of storm clouds, lightning would be a nightmare, and if we built high enough to get over the hurricane clouds, we'd all be unable to breathe properly due to the thinner atmosphere up that high. On the plus side, we'd be very visible and there's no way survivors wouldn't see us. And it'd still get us away from the mobs. But to tell the truth? What I really want to do? Is simply repurpose and improve what's already here. Make it so there are lights everywhere and walls and security points to defend against the mobs and protect the people who would live here."

"That sounds smashing to me. What would you call it?" Julian asked.

"Probably something to do with light, seeing as that's what would be keeping us safe. I'd pick Lux Aeterna, but that just sounds pretentious. And Roman. We're America, not the Holy Roman Empire reborn." I said huffing a laugh at the thought.

"Oh I don't know," Julian said with a bit of snark, and a grin, "Some would say America IS pretentious. After all, what was it our illustrious president wanted? To make America Great again?"

I huffed a laugh. "Oh I don't know, Britain defines pretentious pretty well too. All that tea and highborn snobbery." I said in jest, grinning.

"I'll have you know I resemble that remark!" Julian said, mock offended with his nose in the air.

A moment passed, then two, before we broke down laughing.

"Haha, ah… Thanks for that. I needed a laugh," I said grinning.

"Same," Julian replied once he caught his breath.

"So what would you call it then?" I asked, as I slowly made my way towards the end of the platform and began placing blocks to keep going towards the center of the tower.

"Me?" Julian asked. He was silent for a moment before chuckling. "I'd probably call it New London and plant the British flag over it, just to see the looks of horror on everyone's faces as soon as they saw it."

I scoffed in amusement. "Why does that not surprise me?..."

Julian gave a laugh, before falling silent a moment, thinking. "In all seriousness? I'd probably name it Sanctuary or Haven. Something like that. Make it obvious to people who hear of it what it's supposed to be."

I nodded. "I get what you mean. Unfortunately every city or place I've ever even heard of with a name like that almost always seems to be ironically named, as if by simply naming it that taunted Murphy enough to prove otherwise."

By this point I had reached the end of my ability to place blocks. Any more and I'd end up sheering one into the water tower itself, so I broke the last block on the end and placed a wooden stair block in its stead and carefully stepped down.

Julian hummed as we approached the hatch in the center of the top of the tower. Reaching down, I tested it just to see, and as we suspected it would be, it's locked. Pulling out my pickaxe, I was distracted by Julian offering, "What about Minas Tirith?"

"Minas Tirith?" I questioned, "You mean the city of man, the white gold city? Capital of Gondor from the Lord of the Rings? That Minas Tirith?"

Julian nodded. "It fits. Anyone who knows of it would get the connotations of a city made for man, or humanity, as the case may be. Plus it served as a bastion against the armies of Mordor. We might not be facing Orcs or Goblins, but these monsters are straight out of a fairy tale."

"So you had time for movies, but not video games?" I asked curiously.

"Books actually," Julian explained, "I watched some movies and TV obviously, but Lord of the Rings was always one of my favorites, so I made sure to see the movies as well. I owned the box set." He said proudly.

"It's not a bad choice, and I always favored building buildings with a holy vibe, and a white gold city certainly fits. The movies really emphasized Gondor's political issues though, and corruption at the top. Something you said earlier though pinged with me. Bastion."

"Bastion?" Julian queried, thinking.

I nodded. "It's short, sweet, has almost no connotations other than defense as I can't think of a city outside of Kingdom Hearts games with that name, and that city also served as a home for heroes defending against forces of darkness."

"Bastion…" Julian said, testing it out. "I like it."

I smiled. "Then we're in agreement?"

Julian nodded.

"Then I dub this home, Bastion!" and brought down my pickaxe like a hammer and struck it against the hatch.

Julian laughed. "Overly dramatic much?"

I shrugged. "Eh, it felt right at the time."

I tapped away at the hatch until it broke and flew into my inventory. What it revealed was still clear water. I shined my flashlight down into the depths, revealing a simple metal container and nothing else.

"Perfect." I said, bringing out my steel bucket and picked up some water. Immediately the water splashed inwards to fill the rather large void in its center, bringing down the water line a small but noticeable amount. I then brought out my second bucket made of the plastic I'd smelted, glad that it worked, and scooped out another helping.

"You need two?" Julian questioned.

"Two gives me infinite water source, the water block that's going to give us infinite water, so yeah. It can only help." I explained.

Julian nodded as I switched to the deconstructed hatch and attempted to put it back where I got it. To my surprise and interest, it placed back perfectly fine, only now it has that minecraft touch and I can open and close it without touching, despite it being locked in the closed position. "Huh. It worked."

"Fancy that," Julian commented, grinning. "Ready to get down from here?"

I nodded. "Yeah, you go first."

Julian nodded and grabbed the ladder, swung his legs out to the rungs below, and swiftly made his way down.

I wish I could make it look so easy. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the ladder, then brought first one foot to the ladder, then the other, and then started climbing down. It was nervewracking, but I swiftly made it to the ground and quickly felt better. I then looked back up at the ladder and grimaced.

"I should've used my axe to take it back down…" I said, disappointed.

"At least this way if we have to go back up there we already have a way to do it." Julian offered.

I thought about that for a moment then shook my head. "I'm going back up. There were two hatches, so I'll break the other so we can use the ladder inside the tower. We're one common lightning storm away from this whole thing catching fire and setting the campus ablaze."

"Alright then," Julian agreed, and followed me into the water tower, which was thankfully empty of mobs, and I put up a few torches to keep its interior lit, then went back outside and, with grim purpose, climbed the ladder back up.

Without having to go as slow about it, I made it to the platform once more, familiarity with climbing the ladder, making it so I recovered quicker. I then went out to the top of the water tower, broke the second hatch, confirmed it lead down to the bottom, then placed it back, but left it open, and started breaking the wooden climbing tower back down.

It wasn't too hard till it got to taking the blocks down from my position on the ladder. I did not want to do it one handed, but I already nearly had a heartattack trying to break the block beneath my feet and dropping a meter while this high in the air. Ladder it is.

Julian watched me as I slowly worked my way down and then waited patiently as I took a moment to get my calm back. As we started back towards the safehouse, Julian asked curiously, "Do you think I'd be able to use that axe?"

I blinked and brought out the stone axe in question. "This? You mean like, the way I do?"

Julian nodded. I thought for a moment then shrugged. "Can't hurt to find out."

I handed him the axe and then pulled out a wooden block and placed it. He then swung it the same way I do, tapping it against the wooden block, and to both of our surprise, the cracks of deconstruction started forming until the block broke, forming into a block, though it immediately flew into my inventory rather than to him.

Curious, I placed two more blocks. "Try tapping one with your fist?"

He tried, but it immediately became obvious that nothing was happening whereas I could deconstruct it that way.

"Interesting… So while you can't use your fist like I can, and don't have an inventory, you can use the tools. That's useful. If you could pick up and carry blocks in a backpack, then I don't have to be the only one gathering resources." I thought aloud, fascinated and excited at this turn of events.

Julian nodded. "Maybe there's a manual way for me to use the crafting table as well, just like with the furnace?"

"If that's the case, then that opens up a ton of possibilities, even if you can't place blocks." I said, considering the implications.

We soon made it back to the safehouse and went inside. I then went over to a crafting table and placed in its GUI four wooden blocks for another crafting table. Julian watched with interest, and commented, "I can actually see the blocks set in each of their squares, plus an extra item in the right slot that looks like a mini crafting table."

I looked and lo and behold, there it is just like he said. I then took the wooden blocks out and handed him three stone and two sticks, showing which to place where for a stone axe of his own. He then placed each item on top of each square on the crafting table, and to both our excitement, a representation item of an axe appeared. And when he grabbed it, the building resources disappeared and the axe grew to full size in his hands.

"Brilliant," he breathed, holding it up and examining it up close.

"Congratulations on making your first tool," I said with a grin. "Just keep in mind that tools have durability, and while they don't look like they're being damaged, each use ticks away at that durability until it breaks, so always try to have enough backup resources for making a replacement tool if one suddenly breaks on you."

Julian nodded, taking the warning seriously. "What are the other tools I can make?"

"A sword, axe, shovel, pickaxe, and hoe are the five standard tools of Minecraft. The recipes to make them all have the same general shape as the tool. Unfortunately I only have enough stone left in my inventory for a hoe or shovel. We'll either have to tear up more road or get some lava."

"And for that we need a foundry or kiln," Julian said.

"Yup. So for now, let's just get this water placed so we can clean off." I stated, walking to the opposite corner from the crafting table and made a small 2x2 reservoir using wood blocks for the sides, and placed the two blocks of water at opposite corners of each other, and watched in satisfaction as it filled the two other corners with water source. I then scooped up a corner in a bucket and watched it replace the water source immediately."

"Well that's not reality breaking at all," Julian commented with a snort, having watched the same thing.

I chuckled, "I know. It was considered the first exploit of Minecraft when it was first discovered."

I then placed some blocks to seal off the top of the water and keep it from getting contaminated or something. I then took the bucket of water upstairs, and made a smaller reservoir on the floor, then yet another on the ceiling, leaving a one gap opening for us to reach through, then changed my mind and broke part of the ceiling and added a second layer, allowing me to make it a two gap opening.

"Why the ceiling?" Julian asked.

"That's where I'm going to place the water source block." I explained, "In the game, water source produces water flow, which is still water for all intents and purposes, but if you take a water source block away, the water flow will eventually sink and disappear. With the water source up here, water flow will flow down and into this reservoir on the bottom and stop, like so." I then placed the water.

Immediately water flowed down from the water source, but not from the sides since the blocks on each side of it prevented that from happening. The water flow then dropped into the reservoir on the bottom… and immediately began to spill over.

Shocked, I acted quickly and removed the water source with my bucket, but the damage was done, as water flooded the floor and spilled down the stairs into the lower level, while an appreciable amount of water sat in the reservoir still. I stared at it all, shocked and unblinking.

"I take it that wasn't supposed to happen?" Julian asked.

"No…" I said faintly. "No it wasn't."

"What do you mean when you say that it just stops?" Julian asked.

"Minecraft has only so many resources it can dedicate to running everything," I explained, "Water source and water flow were work arounds to deal with being unable to simply count and render huge bodies of water like oceans. Take a bucket of water out of an ocean, and the whole ocean has to recalculate to reflect the drop in water level, which is too much for pretty much any computer. So instead, water source and water flow were made to simulate it, and the creation of more water source added to not have endlessly flowing water where it's not needed. But if waterflow were endless, that would still be the same problem. Too much information for most computers to calculate and render. So after about eight meters, water flow drops off to pretty much nothing, dropping in water level till it disappears after eight meters. In that same way, water flow will drop down if it can, and if there's no direction for it to flow once it hits the ground, it doesn't go anywhere else. That's the way water flow was made to behave."

"Well, this acts a lot more like it's just water, poured from a faucet," Julian said, dipping a finger into the water sitting in the reservoir.

"Yeah…" I said, still in shock.

"That water flow you mentioned…" Julian said slowly, as if thinking aloud, "Is that how all fluids behave in Minecraft?"

I nodded. "Water's the only one that replenishes itself like you saw downstairs."

"You're certain the other two corners are water source and not just water?" Julian asked.

"Yeah, I can sense it, and pretty much anything else that is Minecraft touched. It appears on the build grid which I can sense in my mind's eye, similar to what you see in game when you're going to place a block, only in the game, the build grid is everywhere. Here, it's just centered around any block or Minecraft touched item that's been placed." I explained.

"And this water?" he asked, "Can you sense it too?"

I hesitated, then nodded. "Sort of. It's not quite conforming to the grid, since it's not even in a block shape, but I can sense the water there and how much of it there is within each block of space above each block. I can't do anything with it though. You can't really directly manipulate water flow in the game like you can blocks, just direct it with channels made out of blocks, or predicting where it will flow when placed. The only way to get rid of it in game is to remove the water source block, or place a block down where the water is and then break the block."

Putting actions to words, I placed a block in the water. "See how the water was barely disturbed? That's because the block replaced it, rather than displaced it."

I then removed the block and some of the water spilled into the void left behind, making the floor wet again, but leaving a dry spot in the middle as the water had already drained enough to not completely fill it.

"So what you're telling me is… every time you place a block, you're actually annihilating matter?" Julian asked, his tone flat.

I winced. "Well when you put it that way… Yes?"

Julian stared at me for a moment then sighed and buried his face in his hands. He then dragged them down and dropped them to his sides. "Well, you haven't blown up the planet yet, so I guess you're not going to. Shall we clean this mess up? Preferably without breaking the laws of physics any more than we have to? I can't imagine destroying our atmosphere one block at a time is particularly good for it."

"Well if it's any consolation, whenever I break a block, it's not like there's a rush of wind to fill the void, so whatever atmosphere is destroyed comes back." I offered hesitantly.

"Yes… I suppose that does make me feel a little better," Julian commented as I placed more blocks and moved furniture to clean the water up. "Back to the original point I was considering, if all liquids behave like this, could you, theoretically, do the same with other liquids?"

I paused to consider the question then nodded. "Yeah, Minecraft mods added plenty of other liquids, and though they didn't replenish themselves like water does, all of them have the same behavior when it comes to how they flow, though a rare few flow faster or slower than others."

"So, it'd be safe to assume then, that if water source blocks just create more water here… then other liquid source blocks would create more of whatever liquid they're made of?" Julian asked.

I nodded, answering slowly as it began to dawn on me what he was getting at. "…Yeah."

"Such as, say, oil?" Julian questioned intently.

I nodded. "I'd be very surprised if it didn't."

Julian regarded me for a moment, then snorted a laugh breaking the moment.

"What?" I asked.

"It's just the irony," Julian explained. "You could single handedly solve the world's energy crisis, only there's no one around to care anymore."

I paused to consider that, then shuddered. "Probably a good thing. I'd end up in a tug of war as people demanded my powers, only for some jerk to shoot me for breaking the natural order of things, or at the behest of some rival oil company wanting to stop them from getting an unstoppable edge over them. Nevermind that since I'm basically creating something from nothing, I'd actually be devaluing the price of oil to nothing, making it as common, if not more common, than water. Which would probably be yet another reason for some 'forward thinking' oil baron to kill me."

Julian grimaced. "Bit paranoid, but I can't fault your logic. That's probably exactly what would've happened."

"In that sense, it's probably a good thing I didn't get these powers until after the world ended. My powers are too necessary for bringing humanity back from the brink of destruction, so the only ones who would likely kill me now are the ignorant or the phobic; Raiders and 'witch hunters'. I mean, granted I'll just respawn, but that doesn't mean I can't be captured. And there are far worse things someone can be put through than death."

"Well on that cheery thought, how about we shelve this conversation?" Julian asked, looking a bit disturbed. "Besides, it's not like I would just sit around and let them take you anyway. And if we get enough people banded together for that common cause, we should be ok." he added.

I nodded, a bit cheered at that thought. "Fair enough."

It was only with a bit more effort that we got the place cleaned up. Unfortunately the extra mattress I had was on the floor and soaked up a lot of water. I tried deconstructing it and replacing it, but unfortunately the water came with it, so I made a ladder up to the roof and set it out to dry via the sun and wind, hoping that would be enough. It's roughly midday, so hopefully it should be dry by tonight.

Speaking of tonight, I considered the wall around the safehouse and grimaced. "We really need stone…"

Julian considered the matter, and then nodded. "There might be a way."

I whipped around to stare at him. "How?" I asked intently.

"MacDill isn't too far from here. There's bound to be some support in the area for it, such as iron or steel production. If we can get our hands on a map and the yellow pages, seeing as we don't have Google available to us, we might be able to find the closest factory, which is bound to have a large foundry we can use. We could then bring any stone we find, smelt it down, and then you would have your lava."

"That's not a quick solution, but its better than anything I've come up with. We could probably grab a map from a convenience store, but who around here even uses yellow pages anymore?" I asked.

Julian closed his eyes and sighed, then answered. "We did. I'm not sure what state my apartment would be in at this point, but if we can get there, I know where to look for one. Barring that, I would suggest checking at a library. But before that, we need to discuss a slightly more important issue. Food."

I nodded. "Farming is a big staple of Minecraft. If I can get my hands on some potatoes, carrots, and wheat seed, then we'll have at least those crops pouring out of our ears in no time. And I may be able to set up crops for other plants as well."

"That's good. Many stores have garden sections that would likely have seed packets for those." Julian said, "Or we might just fetch some plants straight from the produce aisles. I know it may be difficult, but if we could reclaim a grocery store from the monsters, it would be a huge boon to us."

I nodded. "For now though… As a temporary measure, I'm going to mine up enough of the street to fix a stronger wall around our safe house. While I can't do much about the buildings next to ours, without the trees providing cover for them, and a wall they can't break through to get under our safehouse, getting out in the morning will be a lot safer."

Julian nodded and we both went out, him with a second pickaxe after I mined up just one more block of the street so I could make one for him. With him mining right next to me, the blocks dropped from both of us flew to me, speeding up the collection considerably.

Finally once I had two stacks, and the stretch of destroyed road was now significantly longer, we made our way back and used our axes to break the current wall, and I replaced it all with asphalt, some of which I noted with interest still had the lines from the road on them.

"Look at this," I said, calling Julian over. "Unless I'm mistaken, I think once we have a source of actual stone, I may be able to put some of the asphalt back and restore the road. And if it remains Minecraft touched, we won't even have to worry about restoring it, provided Creepers don't blow it up."

"That would be useful. Though if we could improve it that would be nice. Aphalt was always just the easiest and cheapest option, rather than the best. Smart roads that light up and heat up to deal with snow fall or channel water for recycling would be nice, though we don't need that last as much anymore." Julian said thoughtfully.

I looked at him in surprise as we headed back inside the safehouse. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were talking about Solar Roadways…"

"Oh you've heard of them?" Julian asked, surprised himself.

"I was one of the original backers," I said, smiling.

"Same," Julian said with a grin. "Though I know it wouldn't work very well as an alternative to normal power plants, they'd still get enough energy to at least power themselves, and potentially act as an alternative to power lines, and if we can make a version that doesn't need to be maintained, all the better."

"Well, you've easily sold me on that idea, though that's a problem in and of itself since their factory is all the way in… dang, I forget." I said, trying to rack my memory.

"Ohio," Julian responded as he sat on the couch, "Though their headquarters is in Sandpoint, Idaho."

"Yeah, that's… a bit of a problem…" I said, frowning, as I remembered something, taking a seat on the couch as well.

"What?" Julian asked.

"Minecraft has something sort of akin to teleportation to make getting around faster, though not quite. It just makes it so any trip to anywhere is eight times shorter." I explained.

"You're kidding?" Julian asked in disbelief.

"I kid you not. Though it's not without its issues." I explained, "Would be far better if I can access mods, several of which have methods of actual teleportation. The method Minecraft has to start with involves making a gate to travel to another plane that is essentially Minecraft's version of Hell called the Nether, where every meter travelled counts as eight meters travelled here. That way you could just travel through the Nether, make a gate roughly corresponding with where you want to go in the Nether, travel through it, and pop out within eight meters of your destination."

Julian stared. "Can you go back to the part where it's a gateway to HELL?"

I grimaced and nodded. "Yeah, like I said, I'd rather use a version of a mod. I honestly tried to avoid going to the Nether in the game whenever possible. It's not too terrible though. And you actually need some resources from it in the game in order to get to another place which allows you to beat the game more or less."

"Beat the game?" Julian asked, "Do you mean like, a way that we could stop the monsters from appearing?"

I grimaced and shrugged. "Maybe. At least if we go through the same thing here. In the game though all it did was net you a strange dialogue between two different beings before sending you back to the Overworld to continue playing. If it does something different here, well… Who knows? Might be worth a shot somewhere down the line."

Julian nodded. "Something to keep in mind at least…"

"Either way, we can stop mobs from spawning with light," I said, "Granted, the light pollution will be horrendous, but it's not the most terrible problem to have. Light pollution was already pretty bad before this happened anyway."

"You know, I've never actually had a chance to stop and look up at the sky since this happened. I wonder what the night sky without any light pollution looks like now?" Julian mused.

"I bet it's incredible. I went camping once out in a more rural area of Florida, and looking up at the night sky was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my entire life," I replied, smiling as I recalled the sight that stuck with me even to this day.

"I saw something similar from a ship once," Julian said, getting up to fetch a bite to eat from the duffel bag in the corner, which had luckily been spared any water damage thanks to the mattress soaking up the majority that'd flooded this way.

As he looked in the bag, Julian frowned. "This isn't going to last much longer," he warned, holding up the duffle bag and showing what was left in it.

I snapped my fingers. "Dang, I knew I forgot something. Since I put the wall down in front of Walmart's entrance, I could've gotten my backpack without any issue. It had all my emergency MRE's and a lot more of the food I had available in it."

"There's still the rest of the afternoon and evening's worth of daylight left," Julian pointed out. "We could go grab it, and potentially tunnel some more under Walmart to get some more supplies there."

I nodded getting up. "Let's go do that then. The more we get done in the time we have, the better off we'll be."

Julian nodded and followed me downstairs, out the door, and down the destroyed road back to Walmart. Once there, we approached my body, or where my body used to be. My backpack is still there, but that's all.

"Where'd my body go?" I asked, confused.

"Probably where all the rest of the bodies went," Julian answered, frowning.

I started. "Hey yeah, you're right, I haven't seen a single body since I respawned that first time. There should've been a body in my bathroom, but there wasn't, and I saw my body here yesterday, but now it's gone. Do you know where they went?"

Julian frowned, and I got the impression he thought I was asking a fairly dumb question. "Did you forget about the Zombies?" he asked slowly.

I winced and sighed. "So there's probably a zombie version of me walking around…"

"Maybe," Julian said, "but after the sun rose this morning, it would have been burnt to a crisp, unless it somehow comes back along with the rest of the zombies each night or is currently hiding in one of the buildings, stinking up the place. I also think the spiders eat the ones the zombies don't get to, while the Creepers just blow them up."

"That's…" I shook my head. "How about we just raid Walmart now…?"

Julian nodded. "Let's."

Going back to the spot I dug down earlier, I tunneled down, then paused, considering. "How should I go about this without causing the floor to cave in?..."

"You could place blocks to hold the floor up," Julian suggested.

I considered that, then frowned. "This is going to take too long. Honestly it'd be faster if I just took the ceiling off."

"How would you keep the ceiling from destabilizing and crashing into the store?" Julian asked.

I thought for a moment then said, "If I place blocks under the ceiling at key points while I'm tearing it down, it should act as support to hold up the ceiling I haven't broken down yet."

"Sounds dangerous," Julian cautioned.

"No more than being under the building while we're excavating under it." I countered. "The only other option I can think of is to slowly use blocks to work our way through the place, or tear it down entirely."

"How would working our way through the place with blocks work?" Julian asked curiously.

"Very slowly. Basically we'd push forward a block at a time, using the wall as a shield while placing torches where needed." I explained. "Actually, since I don't actually need to see the face of the block I'm placing another block against the place it, that plan would actually be viable. Though I guarantee there are spiders in there and I won't be able to make it tall enough to prevent them from coming over it to ambush us."

"We'd run into the same problem on the roof or any time we came up to place a torch from underneath too." Julian countered.

"True…" I mused, thinking. "You want to just work our way through then?"

Julian nodded. "Do you need any more stone for this?"

"Not likely," I answered, "I've still got nearly two stacks. If it's not enough, there's a perfectly good parking lot right there, and the good thing about doing it this way is that we can back up from the wall and leave without risking losing our progress. Well, aside from spiders being a pain anyway. And we'll have to worry about any mobs on top of the aisles or coming through them as well."

Julian sighed and brandished his axe. "We'll face them as they come. I'm ready."

I nodded and approached the wall. Feeling the build grid of it, I started placing blocks on the other side, moving the wall just inside the entrance then making it three blocks tall. I then started breaking down the two block wall in front of us and we made our way inside.

Our progress was slow, but steady. I would push the wall forward in sections, breaking the blocks as needed in certain areas while Julian watched my back. In this way, one by one, we ended up catching mobs with the wall, trapping them, and then killing them in place.

There was a bit of excitement about twenty minutes in, when a spider leapt down at us. It hooked into my shirt and gave me some nasty scratches, but then Julian chopped into its back with the axe, and I was able to switch to my sword and between us we finished it quickly. I then ate a quick snack and Julian just shook his head and said he was adding high speed regeneration to his mental list of my powers after he watched the scratches heal before his eyes.

I was also careful to place torches on just about every high point I could reach, and sometimes even made a high point myself by pillaring up a wood block, breaking the two blocks underneath it, and sticking a torch up on that. I'm not taking the risk that the mobs can trample my torches and ruin all my hard work.

We were only about half way through the Walmart before Julian commented, "I think we should call it here. It's getting a bit dark out."

I blinked, and double checked the time. "Wait, really? It's not yet sunset though?"

"I just looked back and it looks like it's getting dark outside." Julian said, worriedly.

Alarmed, I quickly placed a torch on the wall and sprinted back for the entrance. As soon as I saw the rain clouds rolling in, I cursed, and screamed, "RUN FOR IT!"

I took off sprinting towards the safe house with Julian hot on my heels.

"Why're we… running!?" Julian got out between pants while working to keep up.

"Mobs spawn in storms… even during day time!" I yelled back between breaths.

That made Julian curse and run faster, with me hot on his heels.

Rain drops had already started sprinkling down by the time we made it back, and we were forced to detour around two zombies, who tried to follow after our mad dash for safety. Once we were over the wall, we burst into the safehouse. I took to walking in a small circle, taking deep breaths while Julian panted, leaning against the wall as best he could with my old backpack on his back.

I heard thunder outside and sighed, making my way upstairs. Julian followed and watched, perplexed as I quickly replaced the wooden ceiling with asphalt, block by block.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Don't want the roof to catch fire if the safehouse is struck by lightning," I responded.

"Ah," Said Julian, sinking into the couch and setting the backpack beside him on the floor while I finished up the ceiling. It let in a small bit of rain, but nothing too terrible. By the time I finished though, it had started pouring pretty hard out there.

"Will the torches be ok outside in the rain?" Julian asked.

"They should be. Rain didn't bother them in the game, just water source and water flow," I responded.

"Water flow is just water here though," Julian said.

There was a beat of silence, then we both hurried to the windows to look outside, where to my horror, the torches aren't broken, but they're flickering. As the rain came down more heavily, the torches one by one, started to go out.

"DANG IT!" I cursed, leaping back and going for the door onto the balcony where the furnaces are. I quickly broke it and replaced it with stone blocks, then replaced the wooden blocks adjacent to the balcony with stone blocks. With that replaced, I looked to the roof in trepidation and muttered, "They can't spawn within a certain radius of the main character in the game… Let's hope that holds true here."

I then sank onto the couch with a sigh, feeling extremely frustrated. With the torches outside out, that means making the outside mob safe just got a lot harder, especially here in Florida. If a hurricane comes in, the rain and dark clouds can last for weeks, and we're already coming up on Hurricane season. And we have no early warning system to give us a heads up when storms are coming in anymore! Just the average rain storm can prove to be deadly.

"Is there anything else in the game that we can use for light?" Julian asked wearily.

"A few," I answered. There's the sea lantern, which requires harvesting certain materials from Sea Monuments and their Guardians, which may or may not be out in the ocean, and since they're usually found on the sea floor, getting to them will be a lot harder in real life than in the game."

"Definitely not those then." Julian said, shaking his head. "Anything else?"

"Glowstone," I responded. "It's also a key ingredient to making redstone lamps, which also require redstone. Unless Minecraft mobs showing up has changed more than I thought, I only know one way to get redstone and that's by setting up a mob farm and waiting for witches to drop it. Incidentally that's also the safest way to get glowstone dust, otherwise it's only found naturally in the Nether."

"Anything else?" Julian asked.

"Just two that I can think of," I answered, "Jack o' lanterns, and lanterns. One requires pumpkins, which is a bit obvious I know, the other requires iron and torches."

"So it all comes back to iron again." Julian sighed.

I nodded. "Another option is getting creative and putting a small cage of glass around a torch. That's not too difficult if we can get our hands on lots of sand, since we can smelt it into glass in the furnaces, but we're not exactly close to any beaches…"

"Well, you know what they say… if it were easy, it wouldn't be worth doing." Julian offered.

I snorted and grinned. "Honestly, the things people come up with to motivate themselves to do difficult things… You know what's also worth doing? Laying back in a hammock on the beach with a delicious fruity drink watching the sunset, and that's one of the easiest things to do."

"I get what you mean, but I feel I should point out that actually getting to a point where you can do that isn't easy. Time off of work, enough money to afford the vacation… Those aren't easy things." Julian pointed out, grabbing the backpack and unzipping it so he could reach inside.

He tossed me an MRE and grabbed one for himself, as I pulled out the juice bottle turned water bottle and took a drink, then passed him the bottle and started pulling my MRE open.

"Guess we're not going to be doing anything for the rest of the night," I commented, staring at the wall listening to the rain outside, just barely loud enough to drown out the sound of the mobs outside, but only just.

Julian made an agreeing noise and we lapsed into silence as we ate. After that, for lack of anything to do, we both ended up calling it an early night, and Julian drifted off to sleep, while I lay in bed awake for a time, before finally drifting off.