The Heart of the Nether

George was sat at his desk at work, thinking about how bored he was. He started filling out a form for some government thing. His office job was perhaps the most boring job.

At the end of the day, he was first out of the office block, a gleeful smile playing on his lips. He went round to the car park and went over to his car. Before he unlocked it, however, he realised that it was not there. He glanced around the car park: he couldn't see the pink Cadillac. He reached into his pocket for his phone, to call the police, only to realise that his mobile had been stolen too. He checked for any nearby phone boxes, but there weren't any. He decided to walk to a police station.

About fifteen minutes later, he arrived at the police station. As he stepped into the threshold, he began to feel dizzy. George collapsed onto the floor.

When he got up, it was dark outside. He was somehow in his home. He went to the front door, but it was locked. The same went for the back door. He was trapped in his own house.

He went upstairs to his bed. He found himself in the kitchen. He tried to go upstairs again, but to no avail. He noticed that there was a laptop on the table. There hadn't been one before. He turned it on. The computer asked George for a password, quite politely. George entered a string of numbers that had just come into his head. The screen changed to a Word document: titled "Small".

"Hello George. I have been watching you for weeks now I think now it is time for me to intradice myself o am the hand and I contrl u but not easily I have trapped u in ur howse with no food or nuffin hahaha "

George could make no sense of the document. He clicked Delete. Instead of the actual document being deleted, only the text was deleted. However, more text appeared.

"ow that hurt u know"

George was surprised at this apparently coherent mind of a computer. He typed " are you alive"

"yes in a sense" was the response.

George took a step back, and fell off a small ledge into grass. His house was nowhere to be seen. After having a look around, he concluded that he was in a field. He started walking in a random direction.

After, according to his watch, six hours, he had not made much headway. He had only come a few metres. But as he looked back, the place where he started got further and further away. The grass that he was stood on started to change into hard stone. Trees sprouted from the ground around him, and leaves formed a canopy above his head.

Then everything changed again.

The trunks of the trees became a perfect square. The leaves became cubes, each one identical to all the others. George felt himself getting slightly shorter, his arms and legs became wider, shorter, and cubed. The sun started moving much faster. In an instant, he realised what had happened.

He had gone to hell.

He was wrong.

Although at first, the strange, cube place seemed very much like hell. Outside of the the tree canopy, lava flowed freely like streams or rivers, and there were seas of magma. Wherever George looked, he saw a strange red stone - also cubed. George named this blood red stone "Mark."

So George started to wander throughout the strange realm, and encountered an ugly zombie thing. It held a golden sword. The creature turned its repulsive, cubic face towards him, and made an odd sound: a combination of a grunt and a moan. George was also astonished that there were more of these pig-like things. As he started to walk away, he couldn't help but notice a crowd of them following him, which grew steadily larger as more and more pig things came out if hidden alcoves and caves.

What seemed like a few minutes later, they had come a surprisingly long way. They had passed a few giant white cubes by now, which shot fireballs at them, but nothing more. Eventually, George and his enormous crowd of pig things reached a black archway - the first non-red thing George had seen other than lava, pig things and giant floating white cubes. It seemed to be nothing other than an arch. George tried punching it, as he had discovered earlier that this caused cracks to appear in Mark. This, however, had no effect, other than causing pain.

Suddenly, George felt a pig-like hand grab his shoulder and pull down hard, causing him to bow. A fireball flew over his head and smashed into the arch, which instantly set on fire. George watched, amazed, as the fire became purple and spread to the four corners of the arch.

He realised it was a portal.

Without even thinking, George stepped into the portal, and felt its immense power flow over him. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation. He felt the air around him become more moist: he hadn't realised it was bone-dry before. He felt wind on his skin. He heard leaves rustling. He felt something soft-ish press into his leg. Opening his eyes, he saw himself surrounded by cows. He also noticed that the grass was pink. This however was not the most striking thing. The cows were red. It took George a moment to realise that they had mushrooms growing out of their backs, too. George tried to take a mushroom off the cow, but with his new cubic arms he only ended up punching it. The strange cow emitted a stranger sound that filled George with guilt, and ran away. George took a look around. It seemed he was on an island, with purple and pink grass everywhere, and enormous mushrooms growing out of the ground. These mushrooms were up to about ten metres high. He then felt a burst of heat; he turned around and saw that a few of the zombie pig things had been set on fire. George heroically started to punch the fire out.

Suddenly, George was attacked by the rest of the pig things. They slashed their golden swords at him and threw them at him. Most of them were burning by now. He started to run away, and as he did so they started to lose interest in him, just milling about and waiting to burn. A few of the more intelligent ones went back through the portal. George carried on running, oblivious to this change in emotion behind him. Suddenly, the grass changed texture beneath his feet. He looked down and saw that it was green. He continued walking, looking at the grass, when he walked into a signpost. The sign read:

NOW ENTERING SPAWNPOINT

George wondered what this meant. He walked towards the city that he could see in the distance.

Meanwhile, many kilometres away, a machine was watching him through a system of security cameras arranged around the spawnpoint. The machine had known something was odd with this player. For a start, he had spawned in the nether. He also had no username above his head, and had not typed in the chat log yet. He also walked a bit differently to all the other players. The machine started up an error message that it had not yet used.

In London, England, a computer had a program running on it: Minecraft Server. There was an error message: WARNING:UNKNOWN ENTITY.

Back at the spawnpoint, George had met a lot of people. They just looked at him. There was no sound other than that which feet make when they go on cobblestone. No one spoke. Some people didn't even look like people at all. Some looked like various superheroes. Some looked like characters from films. At least two were walking scribbles. One had a burger instead of a head. And they all had names floating above their head: banjofred, Clean0nion, Xephos, Alpharita, OhLolz, redflameman0, Dreamare, Notch, Vinegar_Cupcake. The list was endless. Someone walked up to him. He looked like someone from a popular series of games, though George couldn't quite put his finger on it. He didn't even have fingers here. The person looked at him for a long time.

This is what other players saw in the chat log:

Admin LordSniffle: Hello?

Cheesy joined the game.

Admin LordSniffle: hello?

Admin LordSniffle: why aren't you responding

Admin LordSniffle: why is there not a name above your head

Builder Clean0nion: probably a hacker

Admin LordSniffle: yeah probably

Admin LordSniffle: if you don't respond I'll ban you

Guest Cheesy: how can i be builder

X was banned by LordSniffle!

Admin LordSniffle: x?

George was floating through nothing, in a world of emptiness...

Then he was on solid ground. He was in a forest, and he could see no people. He tried punching a tree, since he had no tools and he felt he should make some sort of shelter. His fist touched the tree, and a strong voice boomed in his head:

YOU DON'T HAVE PERMISSION FOR THIS AREA.

George couldn't touch the tree without getting a headache. Night was falling very fast. He started to run away, perhaps find a house that he could borrow.

He found a fence.

No matter how hard he tried, George couldn't get over the fence. Although it looked like he could jump over it easily, it was obviously taller than it looked. He started walking round the inside of the fence. After a while he was back where he started. He started to sit on the ground when he heard footsteps from behind. He turned around to see a man in a blue shirt. George smiled, hoping he had found a friend, when it let out a moan, quite similar to the moans that the pig things had made. In that instant, he knew it was a zombie. Before he had started to think about the best escape route, a skeleton archer riding on a giant spider shot him in the arm. George screamed as two zombies tore of his shirt and dug their fingers into his belly, ripping his skin apart and biting into his intestines, as blood flowed all over the grass and bits of gut littered the ground.

George started floating in nothing again, feeling terrified after that experience. He quickly respawned. An old man was sat on a cube of wool in front of him.

"Hello," he said. This, being the first speech George had heard in a long time, disorientated him and rendered him unable to reply. Instead he just gasped.

"Hello," repeated the man. "I hope you have had an inspiring adventure. I will send you home now. You will then have a week to prepare for your next journey into the heart of the Nether. Goodbye,"

George did not understand any of this in his disorientated state. When he got home, he slept for a whole day.

On Tuesday, he drove to work in an old rusty car he had found in his garage. At least, that is what he planned to do.

He couldn't open the front door. Nor the back. Checking the computer, he found a document titled "Large".

"No," muttered George. "Not again!"

On the 4th of October, 2013, millions of Java files vanished. Thousands of Minecraft servers crashed, their core data wiped out. Only one server remained, and eventually all players migrated there.

Everyone was there, even George.

George led a silent life. He could not speak nor hear the voices of those around him, and he never heard the wind or the trees rustling. He only ever heard traumatic moans, terrifying hisses and and the twangs of bows. He didn't mind. He hardly ever spoke in his old life. He had once read a document called "Large" and it had told him his mission. But that was a long time ago, and it was forgotten. So, on the fourth day of the tenth month, he was petrified when the ringing started. He couldn't know that it was thousands of players all joining the server at the same time. The waves of intolerable sound crashed around his poor ears, and he was lost and confused. But he instinctively knew that he had to get away. Fleeing to the portal on the island where the giant mushrooms were, he climbed inside, and felt the heat of hell wash over him. The ringing instantly stopped. It was strange that he was completely cut off from the world here. He liked it.

He strolled back to where he had started his adventure, a small platform of stone under a canopy of leaves. Sitting down on the hot stone, he took the time to remember what life had been like before. He couldn't. Even simple things like his cars registration plate failed to rise out of the depths of his memory. He ended up thinking about buying a new minecart.

George punched down a tree and replanted it to ease the monotony of a life alone. It didn't help, so he did it again. Now he had a lot of saplings, and not enough dirt. He quickly made a chest and dumped all his stuff in there. Then he explored.

Away from George, a hole appeared in the ground, and someone climbed out. The new person had a look around, and quickly spotted Georges canopy. The person destroyed it and threw the remnants into the magma. She then heard a ghast and quickly went back down her hole, covering it up as she went down. She forgot to destroy some leaves.

George decided to come back from exploring. Trying to find his canopy, he unwittingly walked past the place where it had been. He was sure it was round here somewhere. He knew he hadn't gone this far away from the house… had he been going in a huge circle?

Utterly lost, George saw an expansive iron dome in the distance. For some stupid reason, he thought it could be his canopy. He ran as fast as he could towards it. His feet kept hitting nice solid blood-red ground, and then it didn't. He had run into a pit of magma.

He spent his final moments trying to scream in pure agony as the magma tore at his skin, trying to melt into his body.

Then he woke up.

George mumbled "Ahh. It was just a dream,"

Then he realised that it wasn't.

"Are you okay?" asked a calm voice coming from a blurry outline of something.

"Huh?" George had not heard another human for a long time. He had almost forgotten how to speak. Lights shone in his eyes, so he squinted. The blur condensed into a person, though still with a cube head and oblong-like body.

"How are you feeling?" asked the person, patiently.

"Yeah, I'm fine," George found himself replying. He was dizzy. The person began asking other questions that were completely irrelevant to what he was thinking, so he ignored them. His death had made him remember something about his heart and the Nether or something like that. He was unaware that someone had entered the room until he felt an enormous jolt of pain in his torso. "Aarrgh!" he screamed. He saw the silhouette of a person, undistinguishable because of the shape. The stranger had a bow in his hand and was putting another arrow into it. The person who had shone lights in his eyes seemed to be wrestling the bow away from him. The bow broke and splinters of wood fell to the floor. Both people stared at the remains for a second before the guy who had the bow pulled out a strange iron object which looked a bit like a bent ingot. Pointing it at George, he pulled a trigger and pain exploded everywhere.

The world went silent.

After what seemed like forever, sudden cracks of light shredded through the walls. Uncomfortable changes took place in Georges body. After a while, the sound of cars could be heard, along with an alarm ringing loudly. George hit the alarm clock and it stopped.

George had breakfast, got dressed and got into his car. Only then did he realise that he had gone home. He wondered if this was a dream, but decided that you didn't think about these things in a dream. He arrived at work. After work, he bought a burrito and ate it whilst watching the news. He went to bed. As he lay there, he thought about his day. He remembered waking up and turning off the alarm clock… but there was no memory between that and getting into his car. There was no memory between that and the burrito, either.

George woke up. It had been a dream after all, and the first time he had dreamt between deaths. He was stood in a 9x9 hole in the ground, one block deep. A couple of leaves still remained in the air. He had been griefed, but he just wanted to find the heart of the Nether. It seemed that every death brought a little more memory back. He had no idea where it was, so he needed help. There was no one in the Nether that could help him, so George set off towards he portal that he had found on his first day, but this time no zombie pigmen followed him. When he stepped into the portal, he knew he had made a mistake. The intolerable ringing was back, but not as powerful as it was last time. That meant that the guy had assassinated him in the Nether, since there was no sound there. George squelched around in the mycelium for a bit, and rode a cow. Eventually, he got down to business and set off for destination Spawn City.

By the time he arrived there was hardly any ringing, but if he concentrated it was still there. There was a lot of noise. Someone was selling cyan dye for, apparently, the cheapest price ever. A guy with a cape was boasting about his MineCon application. Two knights were chucking an assortment of stuff on the floor. Someone with elbows and a huge nose walked absently off a small cliff. George found that people were speaking, and he could speak to them! He gave a cry of delight, and a fellow with a salad bowl instead of a head turned to look at him. George plotted, and put a plan into action. He jumped up onto a stage. "OI!" he shouted. Most of the noise stopped. "Does anyone know anything about the heart of the Nether?"

"Yes!" shouted someone.

"What do you know?"

"Legend tells of a hero who will slay the dragon and become the heart of the Nether!"

A few more people contributed, but most were things like "It pumps blood around the place". So George continued on his way. Someone followed him and when they were out of earshot of the town, he whispered "Trust no one. Don't go to the End. They'll let you win. Don't go to the End unless you want to stay here for the rest of your life!"

George couldn't hear him. The wind whipped the words away.

After a long time of traveling, he was very hungry. He didn't know that that was possible here. He kept slogging on, and the monotony bored him, and it was dull, and he felt like it - CRACK! He had stepped on a trap! Before he could react, he was falling…

George landed in a good two metres deep pit of water. He seemed to be in some sort of library, and the room smelt of old books. There was a hole in the wall, so he peered through. A tall, thin man stood there, made of darkness. Terror exploded in George. The man had seen him! Suddenly, another block disappeared in the wall. The man was about nine feet tall with wide purple eyes, and a block of the wall in his hands. His mouth hung open as he stared hungrily at George. George was terrified. With a scream he turned and ran away, down a corridor, past torches on the wall, through a room with a fountain. He collapsed to the floor, panting.

But then the thing teleported to him.

George struck out with his fist in horror, and the things jaw clattered to the ground. It comically rotated ninety degrees and disappeared in a puff of smoke. George stared at the jaw. After a while, he heard clicking noises nearby. When he heard the twang of a bow, he remembered the creatures that had caused his first death. He started walking in the other direction, barely keeping his fear in check. After a while, he arrived in a room with a small fountain and a ladder. Because he was curious, he climbed the ladder. Upstairs, he found a chest which contained apples and a few ingots. George destroyed his hunger. He had a quick look around and saw some of the tall people in another room to the side. Did they live here? One of them turned around. George looked away, but kept them in the corner of his eye. They didn't seem to mind his presence. He decided to take a closer look at them.

As soon as he had focused on one, it attacked him. It lashed out with its long thin arms, clawing at Georges face, and its jaw hung open. But this time George knew what to do. He punched the jaw and it fell away from the thing. It died in the same way as the other, but a small navy crystal sat in its place. George picked it up. It was shiny. He slipped it in his pocket. Walking out of the room, he took a torch from the wall and put it in the room he had just come out of. Now he saw a chest. It contained nothing, except a strange orange rod. It was very hot. "Ow!" cried George as he picked it up. His hand released it, and as it hit the floor it smashed into powder. The remaining tall thing still ignored him. He took the pearl and the powder and rubbed them together. The pearl transformed! It was now lighter and more sinister-looking. George accidentally dropped it, and it floated about five feet towards a corridor before falling to the floor. He picked it up, and went through that corridor. He stopped suddenly. He had heard a voice.

"No! I just need one more!"

George crept forwards a little.

"If only I had another Ender Pearl… then I would have enough Eyes to go to the End!"

What? thought George. He looked into the room. There was a ring of blue glowing stone, and only one block in the ring wasn't glowing. There was a pit of magma beneath it. There was also a flaming cage on some stairs. Getting closer, he heard the quiet cursing of the other person, and saw that the glowing blocks had crystals in them like his own, except one. The person shouted "I'll go to Spawn City" and jumped into the magma. He saw George just before he died.

George was alone again. He saw a hole in the ceiling where the person had come down. The sun was directly over the hole. Torches were stuck all over the cage. George placed the final Eye of Ender in the block, and darkness spread inside the ring.

"Another portal…" muttered George. Without thinking, he jumped in.

For a moment, Georges world was nothing but pure darkness. Then his feet touched solid ground - perhaps too solid, and his mind whirled as awareness of the stamina of something blossomed in his mind. The platform he was now stood on was made of the same black stone as the portal on his first day. Around twenty metres away was the mainland, but George had no idea how to get there. The mainland appeared to be white with a slight yellow tint. George took as large a run-up as he could and threw himself off the edge, towards the mainland. He smashed onto a small ledge near the bottom and he felt like his legs were broken. George started shuddering uncontrollably. Tears crawled out of his eyes. He had not felt so much pain, even when he was being ripped apart. This dimension was causing this enhancement of pain. George almost wanted to plummet off the edge but his muscles did not obey. He saw movement in the corner of his eye. Someone had appeared on the platform, and was looking down at him.

"Help…" he managed to squeeze out of his lips.

The person saw someone stranded down at the bottom of the End. He typed "/res local" to view the statistics of those around him. He saw "TESTIFICATE: Health 0.5 Town &e0 Clan &e0 Friends no friends"

He had been told that this would happen. He typed "/gamemode TESTIFICATE 1"

George felt the pain in his body diminish. He knew he was dying, and therefore hallucinating. The person faded. George prepared himself for his first silent death. It didn't come. After a while, the realisation struck him. He was immortal! He jumped up, and flew up into the air. Confidence and adrenaline surged through his body - until he saw what was happening on the mainland.

Millions of the tall black things stalked the land. Colossal towers of the black stone stabbed out of the ground. But what was most terrifying was the huge dragon swooping not only through things like a knife through a victim, but towards him. The colour of the dragon didn't help the image either - it was the colour of death. The dragon swooped down, apparently to attack George, but he felt no pain. A gleeful smile played on his lips. He punched it, and felt its stamina reduce by a tiny amount. This could take a while, he thought. Then the dragon turned round back towards the towers, and a white cube on one of them fired a beam at the dragon. Georges smile grew larger until he felt the stamina increase, and his smile dropped. He had to destroy those cubes. He flew up to one of them and punched it. George was thrown backwards as it exploded. Excellent, he thought, now I can kill the dragon. Then he saw another cube on another tower. And another. And another. And another. There were hundreds. George knew he couldn't disable all of them before the dragon started a proper attack on him. So he thought. He knew he wasn't a normal player. He could disobey the rules. A normal player would have to disable all of the cubes. But was there an alternative?

The dragon flew like an arrow towards him, and he jumped onto it. He was now sat back-to-front on the back of a giant dragon which had no idea about the laws of physics. George grabbed its wings. He found that if he pushed or pulled them, he could direct it. He smiled.

First he tried flying a very long way away, in the hope that there would be no more pillars. But they seemed to go on forever.

Next he tried flying it into the void beneath the platform. This did not seem to bother it, but it certainly bothered him, so he stopped that.

Finally he flew low and looked directly at some of the tall black things. They looked at him angrily. One of them teleported to him and tried to attack him, but ended io attacking the dragon. This was a good plan. The dragon recharged before George could stop it. He looked at as many of the things as he could. With hundreds attacking it, there was no way it could recharge quick enough. It was not long before he felt the stamina completely go.

He fell to the floor. This hurt a little, even in his immortal state. The dragon exploded in a spectacular show of purple light. All of the things lost interest in him and looked at the explosion. Another portal had appeared in the floor beneath the explosion. George escaped through it.

He had hoped that this would be like a final boss. He had hoped that he could go home now. He was right, but only on one of those. He woke up in a minecart, being pushed along by another one with an engine in it. He was handcuffed to it, and his legs were tied together. He was in the hell place, with the magma, and where the canopy used to be. "Help!" he cried uselessly. The tracks led to a huge dome made of iron. He was sent inside. He travelled past rooms filled with strange things like machines that created darkness; rooms of sad children, perhaps slaves; rooms of these slaves working, and dying. This was a miserable place. The track turned, into a room. This room had an ancient man fixed to a huge machine.

"George," he whispered.

"Yes?"

The man plummeted to the floor as the machine ejected him. He was taken away by someone who dragged him through a hatch in the wall. George, distracted, was grabbed by huge claws hanging from the ceiling. He was shoved into the socket on the machine where the old man had been before. Metal bars snapped over him to keep him in place. Blasts of electricity shot through him, and he screamed in torment and agony. His hands clenched and unclenched, his head nodded and shook like bolt of lightning, his legs kicked out and smashed into the other leg. All of these actions were not under Georges control. He had no authority over even his own body anymore. A woman stood at the bottom of the room.

"HEEELPP!" screamed George.

"Congratulations." said the woman calmly. "You've just become the new heart of the Nether. You will work here for the rest of your tiny life. I hope enjoy yourself."

The woman walked of with a sadistic smile, to the music of tormented screaming.

Millions of Java files regenerated. There was a fresh Heart. But was it really worth it?