Somewhere, Someplace,
Nate honestly didn't know how long he had been falling.
The swirling green and purple light enveloping him felt endless, his limbs weightless against the pull of whatever mysterious force had yanked him from his computer. His mind reeled with a mix of panic and excitement.
One minute he had been testing a new Minecraft update for 1....Something the next, he was hurtling through a kaleidoscope of blocky patterns and then what seems to be visions that made him feel high on life™.
It went a little something like this:
The air around Nate shimmered with heat as he stepped back from his computer screen, rubbing his bleary eyes.
Another late-night gaming session, another day testing his new custom Minecraft mods.
His cobbled-together survival world had become a masterpiece, several mods he downloaded and 1.20 Minecraft update.
A chime sounded from his headphones, drawing his attention to the latest update message on-screen:
"WARNING: Experimental Mod Detected. Activate at your own risk."
Nate silently looked at it....before, he, without a care in the world, went with it anyway.
The screen erupted into a flash of green and purple pixels, swirling and expanding outward. Panic surged as the colors seemed to bleed from the monitor, surrounding him.
His body was pulled forward like water through a drain, and everything went black.
When Nate woke, the world around him was... strange. He was lying on a bed of lush grass, but it wasn't soft. It was... cubic. Blocky even, His fingers dug into the 'ground,' and he gasped.
'Grass blocks?' he muttered, sitting up and brushing the blocky dirt off his pants, that...was a strange sight to see, honestly.
His gaze swept the horizon. Instead of a sky, he saw pixelated clouds drifting lazily overhead....and also.. Not-Pixalated coulds?
The trees around him though were not blocky, their leaves swaying ever so slightly as the wind made them dance.
'This has gotta be a dream,' Nate said, standing up on shaky legs. His body felt lighter, and something on his wrist caught his attention.
A glowing band pulsated with familiar colors: the green and purple swirls from earlier.
He tapped the band, and an interface materialized in front of him was definitely a Minecraft inventory grid, complete with tools, weapons, and materials he hadn't remembered acquiring, like bro, he didn't even start! How did he get these??!.
'What the... no Fucking way.' He reached into the floating grid, and his hand came out gripping a wooden sword.
It was solid, real, but still bore the blocky texture of its digital counterpart.
Nate took a breath, trying to wrap his head around what was happening. "Okay... so either I'm dreaming, or I just got pulled into Minecraft one of which is better than the other"
He gave the wooden sword an experimental swing. It was light, as expected from something nade from wood.
"Well, at least it feels better than VR....wait actually, am I in VR-?"
A rustling in the bushes snapped him back to reality, if this was reality.
And with a totally manly scream
He turned just in time to see three... something crawling toward him. At first, he thought they were the regular hee hee mobs that one would find in a Minecraft world. But no, that was not what they were.
