Generate World

By Hailey Y.

Chapter One

Amanda looked over the settings for her first minecraft world.
Survival world, On
Allow nonfriend Player joins, Off
Mob spawns, On
Bonus chest, On
Day cycle, On
Satisfied that she had done everything she needed to, she looked over her settings one last time, making sure everything was in place. She let her gaze wander away from her computer for a moment. Her eyes drifted over the walls of her bedroom, which had been hers ever since she could remember. Her gaze lingered at the large, 12inx18in offical minecraft poster that hung above the head of her bed.

Her gaze then wandered to all the drawings she had done and hung up, her other ‘posters’.

Almost all of the drawings that were hung up were of Alex and Steve in minecraft. One of them was of Alex and Steve, mining in a cave. Steve was mining coal while Alex fought off some zombies. Another poster showed Alex and Steve going for a swim, thanks to the new Aquatic Update. There was a dolphin in the background, and Alex was holding a trident.

Some others showed the famous blocky pair doing everyday things, such as going for a walk. Sitting in a boat. Fishing. Getting wood. Building a house. Starting a farm. Running from creepers. Chasing turtles. Going to the nether.

And finally, after all this time, it was Amanda’s turn to play.

She had waited years for this moment. To have this account. To play this game.

To click this button.

She was savoring every moment of this. Drinking in all the little details. As an artist, Amanda had always paid attention to the little details. But now, she was drinking them up in huge gulps, like she was drinking her grandma’s sweet, chilly honey lemonade, on a blazing hot summer’s day.

She gave the smallest sigh of contentment. It was finally time.

She gazed at the poster above her bed one last time, and then turned back to face her computer. It felt like time had slowed itself down, just for this moment.
She pressed the button.

The words she had always wanted to see appeared on her screen.

Generating terrain

It was happening. It was loading.
And then, her minecraft avatar appeared on the screen, the world expanding before her.

Oh! Oh, Amanda thought, oh what a wonderful feeling this is!!

“Knock knock.”, her sister, Hailey, said, and tapped on the doorframe to Amanda’s room with her knuckle, “can I come in?”

Amanda swiveled her chair around to face the doorway and her sister. “Sure!”, she said, grinning.
Hailey walked in and sat on the yellow patchwork quilt that sat on Amanda’s bed. A similar quilt was on Hailey’s bed, but it was orange.
“So…”, Hailey said, looking at her little sister at her monitor. “I was wondering-”

“AMANDAAAAAAAAAA”, Their mother called from the bottom step of the staircase leading up to the second floor, which the girls rooms were on.
Amanda sighed and called down, “YES MOTHER???”
“I HAVE DISHES FOR YOU TO WASH!!”, was the answering yell from mom.
Amanda heaved a huge sigh. mom has the worst-, Amanda thought, but before she could even finish her thought, Hailey spoke up.
“Mom has the worst timing.”, Hailey said, shooting her sister a sad smile, because she had been the victim of mom’s timing many times before.
“Ya.”, Amanda agreed, “I was just thinking the same thing” and she slowly got up out of her chair to head downstairs.
“Hey…”, Hailey said quietly, looking at Amanda’s screen and seeing the new world she had just spawned, ”can you add me?”
“Huh?”, Amanda asked.
“Can you add me.”, Hailey repeated, and then clarified, “on your minecraft friends?”
“Oh!”, Amanda said, understanding what her sister meant, “Sure. You have to send me a friend request, though.”
“I’m not sure how to do that.”, Hailey confessed, “can you do it?”
She finished her sentence, and Amanda was off like a shot, zooming out of her room, bolted down the hall, and leaped onto her sister’s orange patchwork quilt when she got in the room. It was pretty funny, and it occurred to Hailey it almost could have been a scene right out of a cartoon.
The first thing Amanda saw when she opened her eyes after flopping on the orange quilt after she had burst into her sister’s room was the laptop. Sitting on top of the quilt was one of Hailey’s most prized possessions. A sleek, white, chromebook 14 sat on the bed. It looked like a  white, glimmering rectangle on a sea of firey orange.
Amanda crawled over to the other side of the bed, so if she was to open the laptop, the screen would face her.

Hailey got up off her sister’s bed and walked over to her room. She found Amanda sitting criss cross on her bed, staring at the closed laptop with such intensity in wanting to touch it, but at the same time a hesitant look, like she was afraid it would turn to dust if she touched it.
Amanda looked up and her sister, who was leaning in the doorway. She gave Hailey a look that asked, ‘may I?’.
Hailey gave the slightest nod of her head. It was so slight, you probably wouldn’t have noticed it unless you were looking for it.
But, with that little nod, Amanda was off. She whisked the chromebook up and into her lap, typing furiously away at the keys. She had experience on her sister’s chromebook before, when Hailey was in a very good mood, she would let Amanda play minecraft on the laptop.
She looked up at Hailey, and she got that feeling of drinking lemonade again, as she drank in what her sister looked like.
Hailey was wearing her jeans that she had worn when she went to her strawberry picking job, so there were several stains in the fabric and a couple rips near the knees. Hailey never bought her pants with rips unless they were from a garage sale, as it didn’t make any sense to her why people would do that and she always said, ‘you should earn the rips in your jeans, not buy them!’
She was wearing her favorite Tee shirt, the red one with the iron dude on the front, flying up and holding some dog tags in his hand.
Her hair was a little messy, but then again, when was it not? She had put in a black headband to keep her hair from getting in her face.

All of these Amanda saw, but none of them really caught her eyes. What caught her eye, was the look in her sister’s eyes.

As Amanda was typing away, Hailey had gotten this look in her eyes. It was not a look of disdain, it was not a look of pity.
It was, instead, a look of pride.
A look of pride that Amanda didn’t think she had ever seen in her sister’s eyes, and she watched Hailey gaze down at Amanda typing away. This was a look of complete pride and satisfaction.
She was proud of Amanda.
She… She’s proud of me!!, Amanda realized, and was sad when she looked down at the screen and saw she had down everything her sister had needed her to.
“Um…”, Amanda said, slowly putting the chromebook down on the quilt. “Done.”
Hailey nodded her head and walked over. She picked up the chromebook and typed a few keys with one hand as she balanced it on her other arm.
Amanda, suddenly feeling a mood shift, slowly got up off her sister’s bed.
Hailey then looked up at her, and when Amanda was about four feet from the door Hailey asked “Can I wait in your room?”.
“What?”, Amanda said, spinning on her heels to face Hailey.
“Can I wait in your room for you.”, Hailey repeated.
“Why would you?’, Amanda asked, confused.
“Because… I thought we could play on your new world you loaded up?”, Hailey said, and it came out almost like a question.
“Oh!”, Amanda said, understanding, “Ya! You.. you can wait on my bed, if you want.”
“Cool!”, Hailey said, and walked out of her room and headed over to Amanda’s.
As she sat down on the bed, the world finally completely loaded, and the chunks started rendering in for her avatar. She typed ‘ /tp @Sunwolf4life @Amanda101 ‘, and teleported her avatar to Amanda’s. She looked around, and saw a huge forest behind them.
As she was walking into the forest, she saw something. Something that made her gasp, very loudly.
Amanda was walking by her room to go down stairs for the dishes, and she heard her sister gasp. Nothing ever made her sister gasp, not that loud.
“What?”, Amanda said, poking her head into her room, “What is it?”
“It… Its nothing, Hailey said, already convincing herself she hadn’t seen anything. “I’m going to just get wood for a house for us.”
“Ok…”, Amanda said, and slowly pulled her head out of the doorway.
As she walked down the stairs to the first floor, she wondered what had made her sister gasp like that. It must have been something huge, because it made her sister’s emotional walls crumble around her.
Well, whatever it was, Amanda reasoned in her mind, I hope it doesn’t come back.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst  to Amanda and Hailey, about 300 blocks to the west of them, a meeting was taking place.

Chapter Two

“Where is he?”, Gold steve asked as he paced around the small clearing with several other people, “he should have been here a while ago!”
About 50 or so people were gathered in a small clearing about 70 blocks wide at the longest point. The clearing was roughly the shape of a circle, and the ground was uneven, like people had walked over the ground there for many years.
All of these people in the meeting looked like the minecraft Steve in Amanda’s posters and in the trailers for minecraft, but they were all different colors. One of them looked completely golden, that was Gold steve. There was a steve the color of redstone blocks, his name was Red steve. Some were named after blocks, like the steve who had the pattern of bedrock all over him, his name was ‘bedrock steve’.
Rainbow steve, who was all the colors, the tip of his head red, going down to his face which was orange and at the bottom a little bit yellow, and the top of his shoulders, which were yellow. His torso was mainly green, as were his arms, but his hands and waist were light blue.  His legs went from the light blue at his waist and slowly shaded darker the lower you look on his legs, and his feet were dark purple.
“I’m sure he’s coming.”, Rainbow said, trying to keep his voice calm and even.
Everyone was on edge from the recent attacks, which had been caused by the shadow steves return. After being gone for generations, everyone had kinda forgotten about them, or decided they weren’t real. So when the first of the shadow portals had appeared, spilling shadow steves back into the realm, everyone was put in a frenzy. All the horrible stories that had been told about the havoc and destruction the shadow steves wrecked surfaced back to the front of everyone’s minds, and so the war had begun.
In the beginning, when the shadow steve’s had first showed up, and before they had been banned into the nightmare dimension, everyone thought they just caused accidents. But, more and more reports came in, all of them clarifying that the shadow steves were purposely setting fires and destroying homes and crops.
And now Green steve, who was always punctual, was extremely late to the meeting….
A loud snapping of twigs and rustling of leaves came from the east to their circle. Something was running towards them. No one could tell what is was, and everyone got ready for a shadow attack. Some Steves flew about three or four blocks up in the air, but everyone was standing ready.
Green steve burst into the clearing, panting heavily and looking panicked.
“Your here!”, Blue steve said, relieved to see his friend.
Green steve, who had his hands resting on his knees as he took huge, gulping breaths, held up a blocky pointer finger. ‘One minute’, the gesture meant.
After a minute had passed, all the Steves gathered around Green steve, who had moved to rest on a rock, and everyone was anxious to hear what he had to say.
He took a deep breath and began,
“ I was walking through the forest, taking my normal path, and I suddenly heard something.”, Green began, but was abruptly cut off.
“Its a forest.”, Red, who was pretty rude, interrupted, “there are always noises.”
“True..”, Green said and faced Red, “but this was very strange. It sounded like blocks breaking.”
“Creepers do that all the time. They blow them up.”, Diamond steve pointed out. “Not trying to interrupt or anything.”
“Well, this sounded like blocks being broken one by one.”, Green said, continuing with his story as his sign of forgiveness to both of them for interrupting,”so, thinking it was one of you guys, or maybe a shadow steve, I went over to investigate.”
Most of the listeners gasped. Although he was very punctual, Green steve was also very shy and withdrawn to most people besides the people in the clearing.
“I was very scared.”, Green admitted, as his gaze drifted from one listener’s face to the next, “but I thought to myself, ‘ If its a shadow steve, or a group of them, I might be able to spy and find out where their next attack was. Or a weakness.’ ”
He then stopped talking and stared at his knees, which he could see easier than his feet because he was sitting on the rock. He took a deep breath and let it out, as if embarrassed by this next part of his tale.
“Well?”, Yellow steve, who was very energetic asked, in an attempt to get Green to start talking again.
Green steve took another deep breath, but when he let it out, he let it out with the continuation of his story.
“I hid behind a tree and looked. You guys…”, he said, and looked up at them, with an almost guilty look on his face, “I still can’t believe what I saw.”
“Well?!”, Red demanded, exasperated with all this waiting.
“I saw a player.”, Green said quickly.
Audible gasps came from everyone of the Steves as their minds processed this.
“A player?” “a player!” “that… it’s impossible!” “there hasn’t been a player for generations!!”, were a few of the comments that the Steves then fired at green.
“Don’t you think I know that!?”, he exclaimed
Everyone stopped talking and had a shocked look on their faces. Green had seemed startled to hear his own voice come out so loud, and after he had yelled he kinda shrunk back, like he was trying to hide in himself.
“Look.”, Rainbow, who was always playing peacemaker, said, “Green. You… Now, your sure it was a player? Not a shadow steve or….”
“Im sure.”, Green said, staring Rainbow dead in the eye, with a serious tone in his voice that indicated no nonsense, “I know what I saw. I even got to read the username above their head.”
“What did it say?”, someone asked.
Green thought for a moment before speaking.”Sunwolf4life.”
“What?”, someone else questioned.
“Does anyone have a book and quill?”, Blue steve asked, turning to the crowd.
Someone tossed one up to him, and he handed it to Green steve. Green steve took it and wrote the username down, and handed it back to Blue. Blue handed it to Diamond, Diamond to Yellow, Yellow to Red. They kept passing the book around until everyone had seen the username in the book.
After everyone had looked at the book and read the username, Blue called out, “who ever’s book that was can have it back.”
Light steve, who was the color of an iron ingot, stepped forward. “Its mine.”, he said.
Blue tossed him the book, and then spoke aloud, but it sounded like he was addressing himself, “If there was a player on our side, we might be able to banish all the shadow steves back to the nightmare dimension.”
“Yes, but what if the player is a griefer?”, TNT steve, who was all red except for the white stripe that was almost the size of his torso, wrapped around him, and the letters T N T on the stripe on his front and back, pointed out.
“Do griefers play survival mode?”, frost steve, who was almost the same color as diamond steve, asked.
“Don’t know…” “it’s been so long…”, some murmured in response.
“We need to know more about this player.”, Rainbow said to the crowd, and then turned to green steve, “can you show us where they are?”
“Well, they might have moved…”, green said quietly
“Can you show us were you saw them, at least?”, Blue pressed gently
“Yes… but…”, Green said, “a group this size will be easyly spotted. We should send a small group to investigate.”
Rainbow nodded his head. “Good idea. That hadn’t occurred to me.”. He turned to the crowd and addressed to everyone, “Everyone who won’t be in the scout team, you should head to the nearby village and wait there. Just incase shadows…. Are around.”, he finished awcourdly.
“Now. do we have any volunteers?”, he asked the crowd.

Chapter Three

“IM DONE!!”, Amanda yelled up to her sister as she jogged up the stairs, holding onto the banisher.
Amanda came into her room and plopped down at her desk, Hailey was sitting on the bed, just like when she’d left.
“Cool.”, Hailey said, not looking up from her screen, going into full gamer mode.“ I got us a house. Tp to me.”
Amanda ‘s avatar was facing a huge dark oak forest, and before she teleported to her sister, she wanted to look around. She turned her avatar around and took note of the beach biome she was standing in, with a beautiful ocean loading out in front of her and there were signs that had been placed in front of her, and the sunset….
Hold on, signs?, Amanda did a double take on the signs, and before she read them, she turned to her sister on her bed and said, “have you made any signs yet?”
“Signs?”, Hailey asked, looking up at Amanda confused, “no. why?”
“Uh…”, Amanda said quietly, turned back the signs and reading them.

You feel it, don’t you?, the sign started, this power you have.
I.. what? I don’t have any power? Amanda thought, confused. What am I, a superhero?, she giggled at that last thought.
To use this power is easy. All you must do is put your fingers up to the screen of your device, and press on it,
“Hey.”, Hailey said, “are you coming or what?”
That little comment snapped Amanda out of her foggy space of mind, and she typed the teleporting command into the chat.
Except, she didn’t teleport to Hailey. She teleported Hailey to her.
“Hey!”, Hailey said in protest, “what was that fo-”
“Signs”, Amanda said blankly, staring at her screen.
“What? Signs?”, Hailey said, and moved her character to look around, “what do you mean by sig….”, and she trailed off.
“Signs.”, Hailey murmured, looking at the sign in that was placed directly in front of Amanda’s avatar.
As Hailey slowly began reading the couple sentences on the sign, Amanda was thinking.
Alright, She decided in her mind, I don’t see the harm. Let’s see what this does.
Slowly, feeling like the world was in slow motion, she placed the fingertips of her left hand onto the screen and pushed gently.
Nothing., she thought, But then, I didn’t expect it to do anything.
Maybe I need to do it at the same time?
Slowly, she placed the fingertips of her right hand next to her left hands. She pressed gently, and then-
And she didn’t get to hear her sister’s warning.

“I dont think you shou-”, Hailey said, looking up and seeing a blinding white flash of light.
As the blinding flash died down, she looked at the empty chair which Amanda had just been occupying.
“AMANDA!?!?!?!”, Hailey screamed and leaped off the bed, and rushed over to where he sister had been not over a minute and a half ago.
She crouched down beside Amanda’s swivel chair, and looked under the desk. “AMANDA!?!?”, she called again, even thought she could clearly see that there was nothing or no one under the desk.

She belly flopped onto Amanda’s bed, and sobbed into the quilt. Not even raising her tear streaked face to see where the button was, she moved her hand over towards her chromebook, and turned the volume, which had been on mute, all the way up. She let the sad music of minecraft engulf her.
“D…dont cry….”, She heard Amanda say, in an almost pleading voice, her voice coming from the direction of the chromebook.
Hailey yanked her face out of the quilt, and looked around wildy for her sister.
“Where are you?!”, Hailey said, joy in her voice, as she looked around the room.
“Look down.”, Amanda instructed.
Hailey looked down and saw Amanda’s avatar staring right at her, but that didn’t make sense because Amanda had had her avatar staring at the sign before the white, blinding flash thing.
“Can you see me?”, Amanda’s avatar asked quietly, even though the volume was all the way up.

“A…Amanda?”, Hailey asked.

Chapter Four

Amanda was laying on her side in the sand, and her eyes burst open to hear her sister screaming her name.
“AMANDA!?!?!?!”, she heard Hailey shriek in alarm.
“Here…”, Amanda said, groaning ans she pushed her blocky hands into the sand to push her body up.
Hold up…, Amanda thought as she looked at her block hands, her cubed fingers buried under the sand. She stared at the sand, and lifted her hand from under it. It was like the thousand times she had down that at the lake’s beach close to her house, but this time, instead of impossibly small round pebbles, what fall between her fingers were impossibly small square pebbles.
She stared at the square sand in shock and awe, and would have stayed like that except for her sister’s voice calling her name again. “AMANDA!?!?”, Hailey called again, but this time it sounded a little quieter, and a little closer to the ground, as if Hailey was stooping down for some reason.

“D…don’t cry…”, she pleaded to her sister’s avatar. She studied the face for only a couple seconds, but those were long enough.
It was very strange, because the blocky edges Amanda was used to seeing weren’t the reality she was standing in. The harsh edges had a bit of a curve, and it was only the very slightest of curves. Most people probably wouldn’t notice it if they stood where she stood.
Then again, her mind argued back, I doubt anyone has ever stood before where im standing right now.
“Amanda!?”, She heard Hailey’s voice come from her avatar, but there was no mouth so it was very strange to hear and see at the same time. “Where are you!?”, Hailey said fiercely, but Amandas could hear in her voice the relief that laced it.
Amanda took a swallow. Hailey’s voice sounded like it was going in different directions, but it sounded like she was in the same place in the room as she spoke.
“Look down”, Amanda said, staring into the blank eyes of Hailey’s avatar.
“Can you see me?”, Amanda whispered, almost scared of the answer.
“Amanda?”, Hailey said quietly in response.

Amanda slowly nodded her blocky head. ‘Yes’, it meant.

“Oh my g….” Hailey trailed off, in a state of shock, her hands covering her mouth and tip of her nose.

Chapter Five

“I’m hungry..”, Amanda said after several minutes of rapid fire questions from Hailey. “Can we get some food?”
“Uh…”, Hailey said, checking her inventory, “I don’t have anything.”. She sighed as she saw the message that popped up in the chat after she tried to go into creative mode, “and you didn’t give me permission to have creative.”
“Oh.”, She then said, seeing some cows in the distance, and she pulled out a wooden sword. “I got ya covered.”, and she sprinted off to the cows.
“Wait!!”, Amanda cried, rushing after her, “no don’t-”. She thought about what her gameknight book had said about the noises of the animals when Gameknight first went in as Hailey swung her sword.
Hailey didn’t hear the difference from her computer screen. To her, it sounded like it always did when you hit a cow, a moo, and then it kinda ran away, practically tripping over its own feet to get away from her crude blade.
When Hailey hit the cow, the sound was entirely different to Amanda. In the moo, she could hear the sorrow and pain from the animal as Hailey struck it with her blade. She was rooted in fear and empathy by the sound.
When the animal was down to its last HP, Amanda awoke from her terrified mind and snapped into action. She grabbed the blade of Hailey’s wooden sword, and with all her strength, tried to keep the sword from slicing through the cow.
“Huh?”, Hailey said, wondering why her sword wasn’t doing anything. (she couldn’t see amanda holding it back with everything she had)
“N…o…”, Amanda groaned, “stop…”
“Ok?…”, Hailey said, and stopped smashing the button to swing the sword.
Amanda let go of the sword and collapsed on her knees. She held her hands up to inspect them, and saw indents in the skin of her palms where she was gripping the sword.
“Im confused…”, Hailey said, turning her avatar to look at amanda, who was sitting on her knees looking at her hands, “I thought you were hungry?”
“I… am….”, Amanda said quietly, as she fell of her side and breathed heavily. “But you… you were hurting… the cow…”
“Um… Ya.”, Hailey said, having no idea what was wrong with Amanda’s brain in the moment “thats how you get food. You kill the animals. You know this. You… You know, like, everything about minecraft!
Amanda had to smile weakly at that last sentence. While she didnt know everything about the game, she was always happy to learn more, and loved sharing facts online with other players.
Maybe, if we’re lucky, there’s a village or something around here…. Amanda thought wistfully, as she took a fistful of grass from the ground and put it up next to the cow’s mouth. The cow happily took the peace offering, licking every blade of grass from Amanda’s hand with its course tongue, and then pressed into velocity muzzle into her palm to ask for more.