Chapter 3
Our first discovery was that aliens come at night. Mostly. I saw the first one coming down the hill, growling. I ran towards John, screaming. He ran towards me.
“Monsters are coming!”
“There is no such thing…”
“Aliens are coming!”
There was more than one alien; we were surrounded. “In the tree, now,” John was saying even as he picked me up and shoved me towards the tree. “Climb!” I pulled myself up over the leaves and tried to see down. The aliens attacked my dad. I screamed. He disappeared. All that was left was the wood he had collected, some stone, a wood pickaxe, and the axe. I cried. I mean, what would you do? I am six. I am in a tree surrounded by aliens. I wanted to go home. I wanted to wake up. The next thing I knew was my dad was there. He jumped in the air and punched one of the aliens as he came down, using momentum, strategy, and fist. Monster went down. John dived on the axe, rolled, and came up chopping. Granite or stone, our tech converts things into energy and reduces it to its primary ingredients. Everything he had dropped at death went right back into his inventory. Most things converted results in excess energy to be stored. Residue energy, in the form of green lightening balls were collected. In this manner, John took out the aliens and climbed the tree.
I hit him and nearly knocked him out of the tree- that’s one reason kids are locked out of certain features in their tech. You could kill someone, or even yourself with tech.
“Ouch!” John said. “Why did you do that?”
“Because I love you,” I said.
“Well, don’t hit me!” John said. “You left me!” I snapped.
“I died saving you!” John said. “You didn’t die,” I said.
“I died,” John insisted.
“You don’t look dead,” I argued.
“I am not. I think we’re stuck in a teleporter loop. If you die, you get teleported back to the designated spawn point,” John said.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.
“None of this makes any sense!” John snapped. “Stop snapping at me!” I snapped.
An arrow hit John in the shoulder. He cursed, but instead of jumping around in pain, he immediately went to protect me. He laid me down in the leaves. An arrow came up and twang into a branch.
“I want to go home,” I cried.
“Yeah,” John agreed. “We can’t stay here, that’s for sure.” He spied the campfire. “You and I have to do something brave. I want you to run towards the campfire with me.”
“No!” I said.
“You see the hole I dug into the hillside to get the granite?” John asked. “We’ll be safe in there. But we have to run there. We can’t stay up here.”
“I am afraid,” I said. “I am, too,” John said.
“I thought you were an adult,” I said.
“Adults can be afraid. This is normal. It’s what we do when we’re afraid that changes that into courage. We’re going to run.”
“How is running courage?” I asked.
“It’s called discernment,” John said. “You’re going to run faster than me. You go directly to the opening in the hill. I will be right behind you,” John said.
“You promise?” I asked.
“I promise,” John said. “I am not leaving you. We do this together. Ready. Steady. Go.”
John and I clambered out of the tree. I landed on the earth and tripped. A skeleton turned menacingly towards me. John landed on the skeleton, chopping it with the axe. It went away. Another skeleton in the distance orientated on us and the ruckus we had made. “Run!” I heard in my ears and in my tech. I ran towards the opening in the hill. Arrows landed in the grass to either side of us. Aliens growled and came towards us. John threw his axe and knocked one back. I didn’t even see him there till he fell back. I ran harder, screaming. I stopped outside the hole. It was dark in there. John pushed me, following me in. The aliens were upon us. John dropped a stone, blocking the entrance. Our exit was blocked. It was pitch black. I clutched hold of my father.
“You’re choking me,” John squeaked. “I am afraid!”
“Let go!” John said. He gasped. “Thank you. Hand me some of that charcoal.”
I fished it out of my inventory and pushed it into his. Suddenly, he had a torch. The world was a little brighter, but confining.
“I need you to step back,” John said. When I didn’t retreat, he attached the torch to the wall. I don't know how he did that, but he did. He then positioned me, turned me around. “Are you injured?”
“No,” I said.
He nodded, pulled the arrow out of his shoulder. He cursed when he did it. It would have made Samuel Jackson proud.
“Are you going to die again?” I asked.
“No,” John said, massaging the wound. He kept the bloody arrow in his inventory. “Just a flesh wound. Loxy tech is already healing it. We are going to need food, though. The tech needs a constant supply of energy to keep homeostasis.”
“Loxy eats real food?” I asked.
“All matter is energy. It takes a great deal of energy to store stuff in our inventory. It also keeps enough energy to restore items from the inventory. Some of that energy goes to maintaining the tech, but just eating food keeps us and the tech within normal operating parameters,” John explained. “The tech also recharges in sunlight.”
“Tech is hungry,” I said.
“Yep,” John agreed. He mused. “Maybe our tech needs more energy. The absence of certain features might mean it’s on emergency auxiliary power…”
John sighed. It would take time building up green energy balls to test his theory. Not everything dropped green energy balls. In the interim, he took out the wooden pickaxe and began widening the room. He put out more torches. In the process of widening room, his pickaxe broke. He was mad.
“You have wood,” I told him.
“Make another toolbox.”
“We have one outside. We’re going to have to go into resource management mode,” John said.
“You will need a pickaxe to get outside,” I pointed out.
John looked at me, cursed, but reluctantly acknowledge my assessment. He converted his wood to planks and then made a new tool box. He set it on the floor and made a stone pickaxe. He instructed me to go around the corner away from the hall that led out. He began to take away one of the stone he had blocked the entrance with.
“Are you crazy?!” I asked.
“I need to know what’s going on,” John said.
Outside, the moon and stars lit the terrain. Aliens roamed randomly.
“You work with these aliens in outer space?” I asked.
“There aren’t aliens,” John said.
“They’re monster.”
“You told me…”
“I am updating my paradigm to include monsters,” John said. “Specifically Zombies and Skeletons. I don’t know what that over there is…”
I came a little closer.
“It’s kind of creepy looking.”
“Creepers it is,” John agreed.
“I don’t like this place,” I said.
“I am with you on that,” John said.
John returned to working on our hole in the hill, cleaning up the rough edges and squaring it out. He advised me to try and get some sleep.
“I can’t sleep,” I said.
“Try,” John said.
“Maybe if I had a bed, then maybe I could sleep…”
John sat with me at the back of our cave. He could see outside well enough to know it was still dark. I sat with him. Monsters sounds were not pleasant. I leaned into him. I was afraid, but this was comforting.
“I wish your ghost was here,” I said.
“Me, too,” John said.
“Jetsy is quiet, too,” I said.
“I am sure he is okay,” John said.
“Our tech can’t work without the interface.” I began to cry.
“Hey,” John said. He hugged me closer. “I got you.” He wiped my eyes with his sleeve. “We’re safe.”
“No we’re not,” I argued.
“Tell me something you’re thankful for,” John said.
“I don’t want to play that right now,” I said.
“Eston. You have a choice here. You can focus on the good stuff, or the scary stuff. There is always a reason to be afraid. It takes effort to focus on the good stuff. Now, tell me one thing you’re thankful for. Just one.”
“Torches,” I said. “I am thankful for torches.”
“Oh, that’s a good one. Me, too,” John said.
“I am thankful for stone pickaxes.”
“I am thankful for you,” I said.
John kissed my forehead. “I am thankful for you, times a hundred.”
“I am thankful for you times a hundred million hundreds.”
“You win,” John said.
Outside the sky was brightening. The monsters were making strange noises. John got up and went to the opening. Dawn had come and monsters were dying in the sunlight. He said ‘thank you, sunlight.’ John pointed at me to stay put. As he began taking out the remaining stone block to the entrance, I protested.
“It’s not safe,” I said. “Yes, it is,” John said.
The stone popped out and he went outside. Zombie meat and bones littered the landscape.
He collected these things without touching them- Loxy just picked them up as he passed them. He went further out past the camp site. A creeper rushed him. I screamed. He looked at me, looking for the ‘why.’ The creeper rushing him remained out of his eye sight- it intelligently avoided staying out of his line of sight. John looked like he was mad at me- the creeper looked like it was mad at John. The creeper blew up. “Noo!” I said, running out to the spot where the smoke was clearing. My suit gathered clumps of dirt and rocks and the items John was carrying. There was a hole in the ground, but no creeper and no John. I scrambled up to go back to the hill. The next thing I knew was that John was materializing by the campfire. I ran up to him and hit him.
“I told you it’s not safe!” I snapped.
“Safe enough,” John said.
“We need to go collect a lot of wood.”
“It’s not safe,” I said.
“Wood first. Then we will make this place safe,” he said. He knelt down and beckoned me closer. He put an arm on my shoulder. “Eston, I need your help to collect supplies, like trees. Your tech will do lots of things for you on automatic, like collect stuff you walk by. That’s small stuff. Big stuff require focus and energy. You will have to learn gestures to bring down trees. This tech we wear is powerful. You have to use it wisely. We are visitors in this world. We only take what we need, and if we take something, like a tree, we need to replant it.”
“Take pictures, leave bubbles,” I said.
John nodded. “The scuba diving paradigm.”
“When are you going to take me diving?” I asked.
“When you’re twelve,” John said.
“Tamanna Balachandran was ten when he got certified,” I protested.
“Who?” John asked.
“A friend from school?”
“No, just a random fact I learned from youtube,” I explained.
“Less youtube, more books,” John said, standing up.
“I read books,” I said. “The Book of World Records, Aleix Segura Vendrell of Spain can hold his breath for like 25 minutes. But probably the best divers are the sea nomads, the Bajau Laut. They have bigger spleens, and reportedly can stay under water for like thirty minutes.”
“Interesting,” John said, deciding on his first tasks.
“What’s a spleen?” I asked.
“It’s an organ,” John said.
“What’s it do?” I asked.
“It does what spleens do, I guess,” John said.
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” John said.
“You’re not as smart without Loxy whispering in your ear, are you,” I said.
John looked at me. He didn’t seem mad but the look he gave was worrisome. He nodded. “Very astute. Practice your gathering skills on that tree. You have to do the gesture a certain amount of time to complete a gather, otherwise the tech will ignore the gesture and leave things as they were.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You don’t want accidental gathers,” John said.
“Can you live without a spleen?” I asked.
“Yeah, pretty sure,” John said.
“How sure?” I asked.
“Pretty darn,” John said. That’s actually funny. It’s a movie reference. ‘The Kid,’ a Disney film. If you haven’t seen it, you need to see it. It makes my dad cry.
“So, you don’t know,” I said.
“You can live without a spleen just fine. I am confident,” John said.
“Have you ever known anyone without a spleen?” I asked.
“I don’t know. People don’t wear their spleens on their sleeves,” John said.
I laughed.
“That’s funny. Where is the spleen?”
“Don’t you have an anatomy book in your library?” John asked.
“It’s in the cloud. No ether here,” I reminded him.
“Tree. Now. We’re burning daylight,” John said.
“And don’t leave trees floating.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Just the rule,” John said.
“Who makes up the rules?” I said.
“I don’t know,” John said.
“Why do you ask so many questions?”
“Because I love you,” I said.
♫♪►
“What do I do with these tree planters?” John looked at me. “What?”
I showed them what Jetsy had pulled into my inventory. It was actually nice knowing Jetsy walked with me, even if he didn’t speak to me like he used to. I missed seeing his avatar. I remember a time John and I used to draw our avatars together. It was funny watching them pose for us. Having a monster is like having an invisible friend.
“Seedlings,” John corrected. The tech takes seeds and advances them to seedlings to facilitate re-foresting. “Walk out there and plant them. We’ll need more wood at this rate.”
I planted the seedlings while John filled in the hole made by the exploding creeper. Planting trees feels nice. The next thing he did was put a fence around our ‘front yard,’ giving us a protected area that connected to the wall of the hill. He widened the entrance to our little Hobbit home, putting two doors. He shifted the toolbox from the center of the room to the wall, so we could access it from inside and outside. He took up the toolbox next to the campfire for a walking spare. He shifted the stove to the wall, facing it so the front of it was inside. I made more charcoal.
“Don’t turn all of that wood into charcoal, please,” John said. It was nice to know he was paying attention to me.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because we may need the wood to build other things. We have enough torches for now,” John said.
“How does the tech attach it to the wall?” I asked.
“It just does,” John said.
“How long will the torches burn?” I asked.
“Indefinitely,” John said.
“How does that work?” I asked. “Tech,” John said.
“It seems like magic,” I said.
“Magic and tech is indistinguishable once you’re type one civilization,” John said.
I didn’t understand that enough to question it.
“Why does the inventory block have a limit of 64?”
“I don’t know. Something from the old days, I suppose,” John said.
“It seems like everything is multiples of 8.” He mused.
“I remember having a Commodore 64…”
“OMG, I know I know, don’t time travel past my event horizon,” I said.
John laughed. He put torches on the fence, and three gates so we could come from any of the directions. I went behind him and added additional torches. He went back and took up my extras up.
“Please, not so many,” John said.
“I want more light,” I said.
“Sparingly. At a certain level of illumination, you can’t get more benefits,” John said.
He studied the hill and decided we need a fence up there to keep creepers from dropping in on us. He spent time moving dirt to square off the hill before making the upper fence. The entire fence top was now fenced in. He put torches on the top fence, too. He attempted to move the campfire but extinguished it in the process. He made a new one inside the perimeter of our fence.
When he was done, he sat on the fence and appraised his work. “We’ll be safe here.”
“No we won’t,” Eston said.
Sheep bleated in the back ground. John told me to stay put and headed towards the sheep.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“We need food. Wool. I am going to go make nice with Lalo and friends over there,” John said.
“You can’t kill them,” I protested.
“Yes I can,” John said.
“Haven’t you ever heard, be kind to animals?!” I asked.
“We need food,” John said.
“Then plant a garden,” I said. “With what?” John said.
“I found these seeds kicking through the grass,” I offered.
John took the seeds I offered. He was examining them when several chicken-ducks came at him. They looked up at him. He looked back, his hand going to his axe.
“Don’t kill them,” I said.
John frowned, but agreed. He added a fence and another gate and led the chicken-ducks into the pin. He fed them, but kept enough seeds for planting. They seemed happy. There were hearts flying and everything. I told them they were good little chicken-ducks, but they were more interested in the seed John was holding than me. John put the seed away and the chicken-ducks began ignoring him. He departed the chicken-duck pen and began skirting around the hill.
“I need a place to plant the seed. Hopefully, Loxy has tweaked the seeds genome so we can have wheat, not more weeds,” John said. “Either way, it will take time to grow.”
“Maybe we can go fishing?” I offered.
John said ‘yeah, sounds good,’ but was mostly considering where he would put a garden. He smiled looking at the top of the hill. He went up there and then dug down into the house. He then put a ladder going back up, came back down to make a hoe, went back up, toiled and planted seed. He came back down.
“Okay. We have a garden in process,” John said.
“We have a baby chick and eggs, too,” I said. “Seriously?” John asked.
He confirmed eggs and a baby chick.
“You never believe me when I say something,” I said.
“Eston, I believed you, it’s just… Well, that was faster than I expected and…” John didn’t finish. There was a baby chick but no evidence of it having hatched.
“Which means, you didn’t believe me,” I said.
“I am just confirming your observation. Science is about confirmation,” John said.
“It makes our world a little safer when there’s consensus.”
“I am giving you a farming award,” I said.
“Oh?” John said. “Give it to me when we gather wheat, and another award when I make bread without burning it.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I will give you a forestry badge. Good work today.”
“I am hungry,” I said.
“Me, too,” John said. “Lamb chops sounds really good…”
“No!” I said.
“There’s some cows over there…”
“No,” I said.
“Sir, we need to eat,” John said.
“Well, we have one egg,” I said. It was pretty big egg. Almost as big as the chicken-duck. John rubbed his eyes and said okay.
“Come on, scout, let’s scout.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not safe.”
“We need to explore. We need to identify resources,” John said.
“We’re going to be rescued, right? We stay here, and wait, like you said,” I said.
“I believe we will be rescued,” John said.
“Till then, we got to know stuff. Come on.” I was not happy about this, but I went with him to keep him safe.