Chapter 13
When the World Changes

"I have to change," I told Moo. "Now that I know mining includes monsters, I have to change the Planning and Preparing part of my Five P's."

"Moo," said the cow with what could be a sarcastic "ya think?"

"I need a new plan for fighting; maybe a lot of it down there," I continued, "which means preparing a lot more food for hyper-healing." I glanced around at the forest, imagining what it would look like after dark. "It also means getting back to my nighttime studies of the mobs just to make sure that I'm not missing any details about their behavior. Which also means"—my eyes fell to my sword—"experimenting with all the resources I have, just to make sure I'm not missing any other weapons."

Swapping my sword out for the skeleton bone in my belt, I said, "Who knows what I can get from this." What I ended up getting was a blast from my frustrating past. Even worse this time because I couldn't blame my failures on hunger or sleep deprivation.

"What's the point!?" I griped to Moo, holding up the worthless white pile. "If I can't eat it or burn it or make it into something useful, why would this world let me gather it?"

In a rage, I threw a pinch of it onto the ground, and jumped back in shock as the flat green surface beneath me suddenly blossomed into tall grass and flowers.

I looked down at the remaining two pinches.

"Baa," said Flint, finishing my thought.

"Plant food." I punched up the tall grass for their seeds. "That's what this stuff is used for!"

Who knew plants needed to eat?

"Cluckcluckcluck!" I turned to see that the two chickens had shown up. "Can I help you?" I asked with mock formality. "Splashing in the lagoon suddenly not as exciting as—"

"Cluckcluckcluck," they interrupted, their eyes focused on what was in my hand.

"The seeds?" I asked, suddenly remembering a similar encounter. Hadn't the other chickens, the one's that the creeper blew up, been staring at me the last time I'd had seeds in my hand? Hadn't I been wondering about that right before the explosion?

"This is what you want," I said, holding out my hand. "Isn't it?"

Two sharp pecks and two of the four seeds were gone. And if you've never seen this happen, trust me when I tell you that I did not make this next part up. Little red hearts, like the type you'd see in some old-timey cartoon, began rising from the two fowl. "You seeing this, too?" I asked Moo.

The lovestruck cluckers walked over to each other, stood eye to eye, then parted as a tiny white chick popped into existence between them.

"So that's where babies come from!" I exclaimed. "At least in this world."

I tried repeating the same process, but the parents ignored my offering. "Got it," I said, "You're full. And besides, I could use extra bread."

Running over to the garden, I planted the seeds in a new row opposite my irrigation trench. Then, reaching for the last two pinches of bone meal, I spread them out on a pair of nearly mature stalks. Instantly the target squares ripened. "This is getting better and better," I said, without realizing how much better that day was about to get.

Harvesting the wheat gave me four—that's right, four—packets of new seeds. "Awesome!" I cried, replanting them then rushing back to tell my friends.

"Guys!" I called, waving the golden grain. "Sometimes you get extra seeds! I can expand the garden without having to find more."

"Moo!" cried Moo, strangely matching my enthusiasm. Completely out of character, she and the sheep began stampeding toward me.

"Whoa, what's the matter?" I asked, looking over their heads to make sure nothing was chasing them. At the same time, I switched out the wheat in my hand for my sword.

The animals stopped. The sheep even looked away. Then I got it.

"You want this," I said, holding up the wheat and recapturing their undivided attention. "Just like the chickens, you can also…uh…well…you know."

Feeling suddenly awkward, and wondering if my square cheeks were blushing, I held out the bushels to Flint and Cloud. Hearts flew, eyes met, and then the island had another resident.

"Happy Birthday!" I said to the adorable, rainy day–colored lamb. "Welcome to our tiny, crazy island, little Rainy." Turning to Moo, I was about to make some joke about having more mouths to feed. I stopped, however, when I saw her turn away.

Maybe she'd just lost interest, now that the wheat was gone. I hoped that was it. I hoped she wasn't thinking about the cow partner she'd lost, or the baby calf she'd never have.

"I'll bring you some more tomorrow," I told her, noticing the darkening sky. "Promise."

You're the only one of your kind, I thought sadly, walking back to the hill, just like me. So if we're alone together, doesn't it mean we're not really alone?

I shouldn't have tried to study the monsters that night. Remembering Moo's loss, as well as the first chickens, had dredged up all the buried trauma of the creeper attack. I should have gone right to bed, cleared my head, and started fresh the following night. But then again, reliving the attack was what led me to my next discovery.

It happened halfway through the night. I couldn't stop replaying the nightmare. I tried to focus on the mobs spawning right in front of me, on the real creepers gliding silently past my window. They all faded behind the flashbacks. I couldn't shake the roar of the blast, the pain of my wounds, the grisly images of meat and cowhide and…

Suddenly I was fully present, blinking the memories away. I ran down the tunnel to the bunker, over to the storage chest. There it was: the feather. I'd forgotten all about it, along with the chip of flint.

Don't beat up on yourself, I thought, taking them back to the observation room. You found them at different times, and with so many different things to keep track of. I placed them on the crafting table, with a single stick in between. Now you're free to focus on fighting, and look at the deadly result.

"Look!" I hollered to the window, holding up four new arrows. "Ya see these!?" Whether the mobs did or didn't, they'd sure feel them soon enough. "Now you'll get what you've been giving," I said to a nearby skeleton, "along with all the rest of you!"

To punctuate the point, a spider skittered past my window. "You'll never get as close," I told it, "as your brother did when I only had one arrow." I waved the multiple missiles at it. "And more important, I now know how to make them! And as long as I can get sticks from trees and flint from gravel and feathers from…"

I paused, lost in a new idea. Seeds make more chickens, I thought, and the garden makes me extra seeds.

"Moo!" called the approaching cow, apparently sensing my scheme.

"That's right," I replied. "Breeding free chickens for their feathers!" Moo just looked at me blankly. "What I mean by 'free,' " I clarified, "is that everything I make, like tools and weapons, takes a lot of effort and time and gathered resources like wood and stone and iron. But this chicken farming idea, all it takes are bonus garden seeds I would have gotten anyway. That's why they're free. Free feathers and"—I moved past the knot in my stomach at the revelation—"free food! I'm gonna need a heck of a lot of extra food if I'm gonna be fighting my way through that cave. And besides," I said, my mouth now watering involuntarily, "roasted chicken tastes good!"

"Frrph," snorted Moo, dampening my euphoric mood.

"No, it's not the same as eating you," I replied defensively, "or them." I motioned at the sheep family behind her. "I know you guys. We're friends. But those birds, they're just…just…I can't even tell them apart. Can you?"

Moo tried the silent treatment.

"I need this!" I pressed, refusing to be cowed by a cow. "I need all the help I can get if I'm gonna get enough iron and coal." Arguing with Moo had brought up an idea from the lower recesses of my mind. It was a theory I'd been mulling over for some time, and now felt confident enough to express.

"See that," I asked, pointing to the torch tree. "Since lighting it up, not one monster, not one, has spawned anywhere near it, which means that mobs can't spawn in torchlight, which means that if I can get enough coal to make enough torches to light the entire island, my quest for security is done."

I took a lump of coal from my belt. "Which means that I'm gonna need tons of this stuff, which means a lot of mining in that monster-infested cave." I waved the lump at the distant chickens. "Which means I need tons of free feathers and food."

"Moo," condemned the superior mammal.

"How can you judge me," I quipped, turning back for the bunker, "when all you live on is free food!"

"Moo," she tried to answer as I slammed the tunnel door.

"Debbie Downer," I grumbled as I got into bed, trying to shove any second thoughts into the back of my mind. "Well, you're not gonna dampen my mining morning."

And she didn't, or the entire week that followed. Yep, I said week. Up till now, I've been giving you the play-by-play, day-by-day. Now we can pull back because something awesomely awesome happened: a routine!

For the first time since waking up in this unpredictable world, I had seven manageable, controllable, reasonably predictable days. I got up every morning, slapped on my armor, grabbed my tools and weapons, packed up some bread and fish, and sauntered jauntily underground.

Every day filled my pack with more mineral wealth: coal, iron, and even that arcane redstone. While the last substance still confounded me, the first two kept my furnace humming. I learned how to make both iron boots and pants to match. By the second day I looked like a proper, if battle-scarred, warrior, and by the fourth day I learned how to repair my battle scars.

Ever heard of an anvil? Just like the hearts, I'd only seen them in cartoons—you know, like when one was dropped on a character's head. Now, after learning how to combine ingots into iron cubes, and after combining a line of cubes with an upside-down T of ingots, I got a thick, heavy, ridiculously useful appliance. Imagine the two slots of a furnace, side-by-side instead of up and down. You place the item you want fixed in the left slot, some extra iron in the right one and bam, good as new.

I fixed my armor, my tools, even my worn-out bow by combining it with the other worn-out bow I'd gotten from a vanquished skeleton. And that bow would come in real handy, because all that iron and coal didn't come cheap.

The first mob I killed outright was a zombie, and it wasn't at a safe distance. Day one, I was picking away at a deposit of raw ore when I heard that all-too-familiar growl. "You ready?" I asked Protector. " 'Cause I sure am!"

As the green gurgler slouched into the torchlight, I stood ready with a sharp iron welcome. "Know what your problem is?" I asked, as Protector's first slash knocked the growler back on its rotting heels. "You're just too dumb to be afraid." Four slices, that's all it took. Four slices and the zombie was meat at my feet.

"And we're just getting started," I boasted to Protector.

I collected a lot of reeking flesh that week, as well as spider silk and skeleton bones. The last trophy fertilized the garden, which got more seeds, which…well, you get it.

Making more and more chickens, and having to chase them all over the island, brought home the need to corral them. Does the term chicken coop mean a fenced-in area, or an actual chicken house? For me, it was the former. I learned how to craft sections of wood fencing and placed them in a square in the meadow. Once I'd lured the birds in with seeds, I closed them up securely with double wooden gates.

I wasn't collecting any feathers yet. I figured I'd wait until I had more chickens than I knew what to do with. That's why I saved the few arrows I had for the only enemy I wouldn't touch with a half-mile pole.

The first time I saw a creeper was on my fifth morning in the cave. I came out of the small entrance tunnel, walked past the ever-expanding border of torchlight, and thought I spied something moving in the gloom. It must have seen me first because the armless, soundless bomb was already sweeping forward.

Fighting jitters, I backed up a few paces, drew my bow, and took aim. The arrow hit the creeper just as it was starting to sizzle. Flying back a few steps, it tried another charge. "I know how you feel," I said, loosing my next and final shaft.

As the smoke cleared, I saw something hovering in the creeper's place. It was a pile of little gray granules, and it didn't take a chemistry lab to deduce what they were.

Fire, tools, and iron—all my discoveries had mirrored the progress of my species. What else could be next but the mighty power of guns?

"This changes everything!"

It didn't. At least, not at that point.

Believe me when I say that I tried every experiment I could think of. I even tried setting the stuff on fire with a torch, which was not my brightest moment, to say the least. Fortunately for you, the reader, and especially for me, the moron, this world wouldn't let me blow myself up.

"Maybe it's part of a bigger process," I told Moo, collecting the hovering pile. "Maybe I need to make the gun first."

Setting the gunpowder aside, I tried combining wood and metal in every conceivable way. All I got was a rehash of everything I'd already built, and an exasperating reminder to be grateful for what you have.

Not like I really need it, I thought, finally calling it a night. I got plenty of armor and weapons and I'm getting pretty darn good with both.

So why didn't I stop, you ask? Why didn't I just gather up all the coal I'd mined to light the island to keep the monsters from spawning? The answer is I needed the coal to fuel the furnace to smelt the iron for all my armor, weapons, tools, and anvil to repair everything. But, you might say, I wouldn't need to smelt all that iron if I'd just saved the coal to light the island.

Well, for starters, there was the carrot.

Yes, carrot. For a while zombies had been dropping more than just their flesh. Sometimes one would leave me an ingot of iron, or a worn tool, but one time, I think around the end of the sixth day, my latest kill dropped a small, pointed, green-topped root I recognized instantly.

"Ahhhh," I said, picking it up. "What's up, Doc?"

What was up was a new source of food. Replanting it in the garden and sprinkling it with a little bone meal allowed me to soon have a whole new row of crops, which meant I could divert even more wheat seeds to chicken farming.

And then there was the bluestone—at least, that's what I'm calling it. It's this blue stone—hence the name—you get from rocks like coal or redstone, and as with the latter, I couldn't find a use for it. But the idea that there were even more minerals down there made me wonder what else might be waiting to be discovered.

So yes, there were practical reasons for going on, and that should be enough for anybody. But the real reason, the one I wouldn't even admit to myself back then, was that for the first time since landing in this crazy, scary world, I finally felt in control!

I knew what I was doing and I knew how to do it. Racking up win after win made me feel strong and powerful. You have to know what that feels like, especially after feeling so weak and powerless. Would you give all that up?

I might have never stopped if the world hadn't chosen to stop it for me.

I knew something was wrong the moment I opened my eyes and noticed that my left hand felt tingly. Had I slept on it wrong? No, that couldn't be the case. This world doesn't let me sleep on my side. Or does it? Could I roll over after falling asleep?

I tried shaking out my hand, walking around the room, dressing in iron, having breakfast, doing all the things I normally did, but the tingling wouldn't leave.

It wasn't a painful feeling like the kind of needles I had in the other world when my hand had gone to sleep. This felt slightly more sensitive, more alive. I didn't like the new feeling, though, for no other reason than that it was new.

I liked normal. Finally, normal was on my side. When everything was going my way, the last thing I needed was change.

I went down into the mines, just like I usually did, got out my pick, and started searching for another cache of minerals.

Mining went smoothly, and for a while I forgot about my left hand troubles. And then I heard the zombie moan.

"First of the day," I told Protector, as the ghoul slouched into the light. "Let's get this over with." I raised my blade to strike. And that's when I knew Mr. Normal had checked out. No more easy, four-strike kills. This meatbag took at least twice the punishment before going down, and not before giving me a few really painful punches in return.

I reeled back in surprise, shaking as the zombie turned to smoke. "Maybe it's just a one-off?" I asked Protector nervously. "Some kinda rare super-zombie?"

"Think again," answered the world, in the form of an arrow whistling past my face. I pivoted to see the arrow's owner, and since there was only one skeleton, I decided on a conventional charge. I took a few hits, winced at the healing wounds, and soon found that this new bonehead was just as durable as the zombie.

"What's happening!?" I blurted out, as my seventh or eighth strike finally turned my attacker to fertilizer.

Like a long-lost friend, panic arrived and drove my feet back onto the ground. "Something's up. The mobs are harder to kill. Everything's changed!"

Moo just looked at me calmly, and uttered her signature answer.

"Well, at least you're the same," I said, feeling a little relieved. Moo might not have been the most stimulating of conversationalists, but her steady, even demeanor was a tonic for my nerves.

"Okay," I breathed, "maybe I'm exaggerating just a little bit. But"—I looked down at my hand—"some things are definitely different."

Moo gave me a casual glance and ambled away. I followed her, talking all the while. "Do you think that can happen? That this world can literally change overnight?"

I looked around us, checking to see that everything else was the same. "If that's true," I began, starting to absorb more of Moo's serenity, "then what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Moo," she said matter-of-factly.

"What do you mean, 'change with it'?" I shot back. "What kind of lame blow-off statement is that?"

"Moo," she repeated, glancing in the general direction of my left hand.

I held up the tingling appendage, considering the weight of Moo's words. "Change with it," I said softly, then mused, "If this world's just made the monsters tougher to fight, maybe it's given me new ways to fight them!"

Gun! It was a pipe dream, I know, but hopefully one where the pipe was a gun barrel. "Thanks," I said, darting back to the hill. "You always know what to say!"

Once again I threw out all the previous day's wood-and-metal combos. Once again, I didn't get a gun. I did get something else, however; something that just the day before had been a losing combination.

"Shield!" I breathed, holding up the long, broad board. "Today I can make a shield!" And if that new invention didn't kill my fear of change, what happened next buried it for good.

Up until this point, my right hand had been for tools and weapons, while the left was for crafting. It had only opened to show me what I could make with materials. But now, did this new tingling sensation mean…?

I reached for the ghostly image of the shield, and gasped as my left hand suddenly opened.

"YES!" I crowed, dancing out to show my pals. "I made a shield, the mob's fate is sealed, my protection is realed, all thanks to my shield."

"Baa, moo, baa," replied my chorus of talent judges.

"Okay, so maybe I didn't write songs in my former life," I said with a chuckle, "but at least I got extra protection now, along with Moo's super-important new lesson."

"Baa," said little Rainy, now a full-size sheep. They grow up so fast.

"Glad you asked," I answered, and motioning to Moo, announced, "When the world changes, you've got to change with it."