Chapter 10
The rain lingered. We had thunderstorms that were super loud and frightening. The depths of the mine became a quiet refuge. I took up mining alongside of John. I would frequently think I heard noises, but nothing every manifested. Slime monsters mostly manifested around water sources. My book of mobs was growing in content, with ideas- both speculative and fact. Phantoms, for instance, only seem to come when we haven’t slept in three days. We don’t know why. John really likes knowing the ‘why’ about things. We gathered produce from our gardens. John found the bees nest. He died getting some honey. He went back for more. He died three times before he got the camp fire just right, but now we have constant supply of honey. We worked. John counted on me to help keep things organized. I gave him a badge for filling a box with stone. I gave myself a diamond badge on finding my first diamonds.
I learned some things. I don’t like lava. I prefer being upstairs in the hill home. Sunlight and starlight is important. The compass seems to point to our origin spawn point. Sleeping for one night can adjust your spawn point to the bed, but doesn’t affect the compass. John is super curious about this fact. Bone meal works really good on plants. Never stare at an Enderman. John says some animals see that has threatening. Like Chimpanzees, never smile at a chimpanzee. Show your teeth, you die. Different types of wood and stone opened up new crafting items. Staring at the back of the Enderman is the same as staring in his eyes; they know when they’re being watched. I was good at taking care of plants and animals. I was getting good at target practice. I was getting good at disarming armor stands in mock battles. I was getting supper good at repairing weapons with our anvil. I learned how to chant items. Repair and enchantment take serious energy. And lapis lazuli.
“Why do we need lapis lazuli?” I asked; John went on this long, history lesson of traditions of magic and witchcraft, but then mixed in quantum physics and inherent energy matrixes, and how the universe is a field and everything in that field resonates, and some structures resonate stronger or differently than others. He tried to teach me about crystal radios. I couldn’t keep up with it all, so most of his lecture was muted out for my own inner music. I discovered some things gave off more extra energy than others. Digging coal over granite, for instance; coal has so much residual energy that it’s probably sheer luck we don’t spark underground fire. Lots of things that come out of the furnace come with extra energy. Collecting gravel can sometimes drop flint. Steel and flint makes for easier fire making. I learned to make simple machines. I had levers and buttons and secret, automatic doors. We built a simple rail system to move ore, with hoppers and chests, and a track for just riding around in a circle. Sometimes I would ride this for hours while John worked, going, ‘weeee’ every time I passed until he would yell, ‘stop doing that!’ He didn’t make me work as hard as he worked. He did repeat recommendations of organizing. If I put an item in the wrong box he would be so out of sorts and have to run around fixing it. We had the beginnings of modern industry, and yet it felt liked the stone age. Seriously, all this work and learning and battle practice, would make an excellent music montage. You should seriously make a video with your parents. You may have to teach them how to do it. Much of our work and learning and pretend battling felt more like play than work.
We moved our bedroom up one level, between first floor and the garden. We put some windows in and made a balcony which led all the way around our hill. We stacked the beds, making bunk beds. We made a library. The library was in serious need of books. We were making art books and story books. We took turns telling stories, new ones and old ones. Old ones included our favorite movies and we would start from beginning to end and make books. Our tech just filled in the words for us, and wa-la! Instant books. We wrote our own fan-fiction. John has some really good ideas for fan fiction. He made me a magic wand that even Harry Potter would envy. I made him a sonic screw driver. It sparkled and glowed, because I added an emerald and some red stone. John said it was the best present he ever got. We built a 1950’s telephone booth and put it in the front yard, and pretended it was bigger on the inside and we would run around trying to solve the mysteries of Minecraft.
John built a bridge across the river. It was big enough cross the canyon on horses, side by side. We gated the area on either side, and ran a fence from the bridge back to our home. We fenced bigger swaths to expand our wheat production. Lanterns lit the fields, giving it a spooky glow at night that scared away monster spawning. We had more cows. Tons of chicken ducks. John also tamed me a horse. We practice riding, even in the rain, going around the hill home in the ‘run’ that circled the property. We would race. He always made me wear my helmet. He didn’t he always wear his. He preferred this old, Indiana Jones, want to be facsimile hat. I told him it looked dorky. He thanked me. I told him a steel helmet would be better. He agreed. I told him he should learn to use a shield. He told me he didn’t want to carry a shield. I said they were safer. He agreed and told me I should carry a shield. I told him I made him a shield. I even put gold in it. I even enchanted it.
“Who needs a shield when I have this?” John said, pulling out his sonic screw driver. I laughed.
“Oh, yeah? Hit me.” He looked at me. I braced my shield.
“Go on, hit me.”
John obliged, and even though he pulled his punch, contact with my shield sent him flying across the room, into the wall, and knocking over the table in the drama. Chess pieces went everywhere. He lay there on the floor. I peered over the shield.
“John?” I asked.
“I am hurt, but okay,” John said. “Laugh it off,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, getting up. “Straighten up this mess while I eat some fish.”
We built a music room. It had stairs for seats that went almost all the way around, as if we might one day play for an audience. It took a lot of work and supplies to build the piano, but he did it! It was even in tune. John used to play but has lost some skills. He taught me some basics. Sometimes, while when I draw, he tries to recover some skills, telling me if you don’t use your brain it goes away, but the more you use it, the more connections you make. Repeating a skill makes connections stronger. It’s his hope the connections are still there, he just needs to reactivate them. One day he was playing something so particular it drew me out of my school work. It was almost like Bach, but not quite. I heard math and rain and magic all at once. It felt peaceful, both sad and happy. It was hauntingly familiar, but strangely new.
“What is that?” I asked.
John shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I feel like I have heard it before?” I said.
“Yeah, over and over and over. It could be sunrise, it could be night fall,” John mused.
“We should name it,” I said.
“Labeling it might take away the magic of the moment,” John said. “I don’t want to lose it. I want to keep it forever,” I said.
“The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers,” John said.
“Oh! I am not that guy,” I protested.
“The philosophy is the same, good guy or bad guy,” John said. He kept playing. “Alright, how about we call it C418?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “You want to name it after a droid?”
“You may be right, I may be crazy, but I might just be the Star Wars Droid you’re looking for,” John said, parodying a Billy Joel song.
“Glass Houses,” I said. John gave me an energy point. That’s the game we have between us. “Come on, that’s worth at least three energy orbs.” John shook his head no. “Putting up with your humor, 10 energy points.”
“Seriously?” John asked. He played something dramatic. It meshed well with the lightening. The flash was nearby and the thunder was loud. I wondered if the lightening mutated anything. That can happen, you know.
“1.21 gigawatts,” John said.
I laughed. “Play something I can sing, too.”
John got up, went to a chest, and brought back a guitar.
“Happy birthday.”
“You don’t even remember my birthday?!” I said.
“Every day is a birthday, starting now,” John said. He looked like he was thinking something. “Hold on.” John went back to the chest designated music and brought out and set up a bunch of armor stands. He then supplied them all with instruments. Wind instruments. Percussion instruments. Lots of string instruments.
“How long you been planning this?” I asked.
“Everyone needs music in their lives,” John said, positioning an armor stand at the piano. He took the guitar from me and gave it to one of the armor stand in the string section. He placed his sonic screwdriver in a mic stand and adjusted it near him. He set up a podium. The podium had a series of analog nobs and levers, bits of glowing diamonds, emeralds, solid red stone chips, and colored glass. My first thought was ‘star trek, beam me up.’ He opened up a special box and took out a magic wand. He tapped the wand on the podium. The armor stands went to attention, standing and sitting poses, ready to play. I drew closer to John. It was cool, but somehow kind of spooky.
“How are you doing this?”
“Magic. Or Tech. Or magical tech,” John said. “I have been able to impose some music I know well, through the tech, and well, this is really the first try for full encore performance. Shall we give it a go?” He motioned to the strings and they jerked out a note.
“This is really strange,” I said.
“Oh, that’s worth ten points!” John said.
John pushed the beat with the string instruments. “ELO it is,” John said. “You're sailing softly through the sun, in a broken Stone Age dawn, you fly so high- you get a strange magic,” John sang. He motioned for an armor stand to take over the conducting and he and I sang magic into the sonic screw driver. It modulated our voice and made it more resonant. OMG we were singing and having fun. It was the absolute best day ever. I didn’t want it to end. Even when it was bed time, my heart held so much love and joy, I thought might cry. In bed, John hugged me, tucked me in, and reminded me of the song, “Oh, I'm never gonna be the same again, now I've seen the way it's got to end, sweet dream, sweet dream, strange magic…”
John wiped a tear. “What’s wrong?”
“I never want to go home. I just want to stay here with you forever,” I said. John nodded.
“I love you, too.”
“I miss you when you’re not with me,” I said. “I know,” John said.
“Why couldn’t you and mom just be happy together?” I asked.
John nodded. “People want what they want. Freedom is always more important than rules and regulations. Compassion, flexibility, and the ability to let go and let people live the way they chose is always the best gift we can give to others. Love is always better than contracts. No matter where you are on the map, we are always connected.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s just better in person.”
“I love you, too,” John said again.