I awoke to the sun’s rays shining through the holes in my hastily built doors. It was already fairly high in the sky. The light was warm and comforting, a nice change from the chilly night air that I had an unusually easy time sleeping with. Maybe it was the lack of energy that kept me out for the duration of the night. Maybe it was just the hopelessness of my situation.

I rose from my corner of the floor and kicked open one of the doors so that I could bathe my entire body in the warm light. It was a new day, but my predicament stayed the same. The Daisy Chain didn’t seem to have grown any food sources overnight, but one of my saplings did bloom into a full tree. I was a bit taken aback by the fact that it had actually worked. Just a few hours ago it was small enough to cram in my pocket, and now it had grown into a tree at least three times the size of myself. Why the other trees hadn’t grown as well was equally as puzzling.

I knocked down the tree and replanted a new sapling in its place. At the very least, I’d have a consistent supply of wood for building tools and other objects. Maybe if I ended up stuck here long enough, I thought, I could upgrade my dirt cave into a wooden shack. Ah, how luxurious that would seem in this land of nothing!

Grabbing anything I felt might be useful, I started over to Gemini, but noticed that there was a figure flailing around on the larger island. More notably, it was aflame! The creature expired and the flames were extinguished before I was able to swim over, which left me more than a little put out. At the very least, I would have liked to capture a little of that fire to heat my den. Then I started to wonder what exactly the being was. And where it had come from. Why was it on fire? How did that even happen?

Questions kept charging into my head. If the being were aquatic and had come ashore from below the waves, why didn’t it jump back in when it lit on fire? Even if it were a land creature, why wouldn’t it have jumped in to extinguish the flame? The islands of the Daisy Chain were creating far more questions than I felt like finding the answers to. Something about the complete randomness of everything around here was very unsettling.

When I made it to shore, I noticed that there was an arrow laying in the grass where the creature vanished. Nothing else remained, which was even more unsettling. The grass around the area wasn’t so much as singed. What was going on here?

I grabbed the arrow and made haste. I was starting to feel like maybe I was in some sort of dream world, or a marionette dancing in the fantasy world of someone else. My hunger pangs were more than enough to convince me that I was real and that I would have to find something to eat, lest the curtains close on the strange puppet show that now was my life.

When I reached the easternmost point of Gemini, I noticed something that I had failed to the prior day. The ocean was disturbingly calm, and more or less silent. If one tried really hard, it was possible to hear the water making tiny splashes on the rocks. But here, my ears picked up on what sounded like running water. Looking around, I saw that there was a small area of water flowing towards the land, but where on Earth was it going? I walked up closer to the rushing water, and to my surprise, it was flowing into a hole! It was barely wide enough for me to fit inside, but the depths of the cave were draped in darkness so I dared not venture into that pit. All I could see inside was a small landing covered in sand, and the stream of water which continued down into the void.

I knew better than to be interested in exploring such a place. I decided that if I could find nothing else on the distant, unnamed isle that I spied the day before, I would make a point of venturing into the mysterious hole. It wasn’t the best Plan B, but at least it was something.

Tree Island looked mostly the same as it did when I discovered it, besides the fact that the tree it was named for no longer existed on it. The peculiar thing here is that I found a few bones and a feather lying in pile towards the north shore. The remains of yet another mystery creature? What exactly was going on here? Why does it seem that any other living things (flora notwithstanding) appear only during the night and are killed at daybreak? Is this even what’s happening? I collected the remains and looked out to the faraway island.

Losing myself in my thoughts, I almost didn’t notice the violent hissing that was approaching me from behind. Luckily, my assailant had trouble containing its excitement at finding prey and continued to hiss loudly, giving me more than enough warning to spin around and face it.

What I saw was a massive spider. While it was a squat little monster, if it stood vertically, it would easily match the size of an average man. The black and brown hairs on its torso and legs stood out like millions of little spines, probably in excitation of locating a meal. The spider lunged at me, but I socked it right in the center of its collection of beady little eyes. They were surprisingly small for a beast if its size, but they were a chilling shade of blood red. I ran toward the beast, planting another fist deep into its head. The blow sent the beast flying back, over the edge of the island. It didn’t take long for the massive arachnid to climb back up (the highest edge was only about three meters above sea level, at best), but I prepared my rickety wooden pickaxe for combat.

I let the spider lunge at me again, dodging its attack at the last moment, and countered with a swing of my pick. Despite the frailty of the tool, the spider’s skull was pierced and it collapsed on the ground, letting out one final hiss before the corpse up and simply popped like the squid from the day before. These creatures didn’t exactly pop, per se; there was no sound, and no spray of beast bittles. But their physical bodies just ceased being. In the spider’s place were a few strands of what I assumed was webbing, thick enough to use as a string, and not nearly as sticky as this kind of thing is supposed to be. I grabbed the strings, and contemplated the fact that in my quest for anything useful, I’d become quite the packrat.

After sitting a while to catch my breath and clam down a little, I figured that it was time to start the swim to the northern island. My stomach was rumbling louder and louder. I wasn’t sure how much more I’d be able to push my body before I collapsed from malnutrition.

Halfway across the waters between islands, I could see that the new land was easily bigger than all of the Daisy Chain would be if they were picked up and stack on top of each other. This is where I would find some sort of salvation.

When I made it to shore, I decided to call the island Hope, because it’s the only thing that had brought me any real hope at all up to this point. I was summarily disappointed when I found that despite its size, Hope was jsut as barren as the Daisy Chain. Hope was essentially a big right angle. The southern part was close to the water and was characterized by a small beach, a handful of flowers, and plenty of tall, unkempt grass. As I moved along the island, it slowly rose farther out of the water. The eastern side featured more of the bright yellow flowers that seemed to bloom wherever they liked, and another single tree. I summarily knocked down the tree and gathered the usual spoils.

Looking out to the north, I saw a tiny speck of land off in the distance. This was considerably father than Hope had been from Home Base even, and I doubted that I’d be able to make it there without aid. The rest of the horizon was simply blue leading into more blue, with the exception of the Daisy Chain, which now looked so small and pathetic in the distance. Hope was a lie, a fruitless gamble, and I wasn’t sure that I had enough stamina to swim back to Home Base, nevermind survive another day in the middle of this wretched ocean.

I did make it back home, and I shambled into my den, falling to the ground under the weight of my considerably weakened body. Life was over. There was no hope left for me. I let my mind empty and passed out.

I opened my eyes and saw only a dim orange left in the sky. Maybe, I thought, once night fell I would be treated to a quick death at the hands of one of those mystery creatures out for a snack. But I wasn’t entirely ready to give up. I went outside and started plucking at the tall grass. If livestock can survive on grass, why couldn’t I? Oh, right: dysentery. I began furiously tearing at the grass with the last of my remaining energy, cursing whatever force put me in this forsaken place. I wanted to live, dammit! I dropped to my knees, wishing to the sky that something would come to save me in my last hours. Looking back down, I noticed that small seeds had scattered around, most likely produced by my destruction of the grass.

Logic would denote that seeds that come from grass should produce more grass. But this place is different. I took a chance, the only chance I had to save my life, and put together a hoe from a few lengths of wood. I tilled a bit of the ground on the southern edge of the island, and planted the seeds there. Deciding that calcium would make for great fertilizer, I mashed up the bones I was carrying around and spread the shards about my tiny farmland. I cannot fathom how it happened, but stalks of wheat grew right before my eyes.

I quickly gathered up the wheat and took it into my den. Through a process that I will refer to as “magic,” I transformed the wheat into delicious, edible bread. It wasn’t actually delicious, but given the fact that it was all I’d eaten in the last two days, I was incredibly satisfied. It also wasn’t actually magic that made the wheat become bread, but we all know how that happens, so I won’t bother to detail the process.

So that was that. On an eleventh-hour gamble, I somehow managed to harness the totally illogical nature of this place to create sustenance for myself and survive another day. At this point, I could easily call Home Base my new home, and just stay here for the rest of my days, but where’s the fun in that?

I laid in the corner of my cave, contented and full. It had been a rough day, but I was beginning to understand how things worked here. Maybe tomorrow I would be able to make some progress towards leaving. But for now, it was time to rest.

Turns out that the best way to get bored of Minecraft is to write fanfiction Let’s Play it. At least for me. I have screenshots for four more updates, and have written the second and most of the third, but the idea of playing more? Totally haunts me.

I mean, I want to play Minecraft. I really do, but the idea that if I play more I have to play whilst doing something that will keep the fanfic LP at least moderately interesting is super annoying, and makes me not want to play anymore. I really shouldn’t have made it work in a day-by-day format. Right now, I need to spend time in the game mindlessly working on finding anything resembling not-ocean, but instead I have to play it as if it were an actual man trying to do so. Bleh. I should have thought this through better.

Yes, I could create a new map to play on (I can’t go back to old maps with the super-improved V1.8 map generation), but I love this map! I was getting bored of Minecraft, and then found this wonderful new thrill in being lost at sea thanks to the random world generator. I feel like I’m exploring a real place, rather than a bunch of blocks stacked together. If this had been the first map I ever rolled in Minecraft… well, I think I’d have probably had even more fun with it. Also, if I hadn’t read the crafting wiki before playing the game. That may have ruined it a little.

Mostly, I like 1.8’s addition of a hunger meter. I don’t know what happens when it’s empty, but the game sure feels more game-like when you have an objective (of sorts). Not to mention that on my island map, I haven’t seen even one animal mob. Maybe it’s just coincidence, maybe the rules about where pigs can spawn have changes. Either way, I like that I’m actually having to work to keep my Minecraft Man alive. And yeah, that’s how I feel about Minecraft today.

My head hurt.

Everything was blurry for the first little while. I laid on my back, basking in the warm sun, trying to process any kind of information at all. I tried to watch the clouds roll by. Tried to find recognizable shapes in them. The throbbing in my head denied me concentrating on even that though.

Time rolled on. I tilted my head to the side a little, just enough so that the blazing sun wasn’t directly in my eyes. The thing certainly wasn’t improving my headache. Tall shoots of grass quivered in the gentle breeze. Getting past the pain, it was all actually quite serene. The sensation of absolute peace was calming, a feeling that I haven’t had the luxury of since then, and eventually I was able to push the pain out of my immediate thoughts.

I closed my eyes and listened to the wind.

I don’t know how much time had passed when I finally found the strength the at least sit up. It didn’t change anything. Not really. Instead of the pale blue of the sky, I was then surrounded by the deep blue of ocean. Miles and miles of ocean. Off in the distance behind me I saw a small patch of green and tan jutting out of the endless navy. Suddenly I realized that something was amiss. The calm was quickly replaced by terror.

My heart began to race.

Where was I?

Who was I?

These are questions I still don’t really have the answers to. At this point, I don’t think they really matter. But I’m getting ahead of myself. If I’m going to tell this story, I’m going to tell the whole story. You might want to grab a snack, this is a long one.

As a million questions about what was going on raced through my mind, I frantically looked around me for anything at all that might give me a clue about anything. But there was nothing. I was sitting at the peak of a small island. It jutted maybe five meters high out of the ocean, at most. The whole thing was covered in unspoiled green grass. The only shoots that were bent at all were the ones that had been under my body. If someone had brought me here, it certainly wasn’t very recently.

Doing a thorough survey of the land didn’t take long. It was an amazingly featureless little patch of land. On the northwest side, some of the grass had grown out of control (I still don’t know how the rest of the island was so well-maintained). To the southwest was a small sandbar which was mostly underwater, and plunged into the depths before it stretched too far from the land. The east side was host to a wall of dirt, and looking out in that direction was all I had if I wanted to see more than blue leading into more blue.

The faraway island didn’t seem as far away as it did when I first noticed it. Perhaps that had something to do with my newfound feeling of necessity to escape this tiny landmass. The other island looked significantly bigger than the one I was standing on, too. It must have been at least three times the width. While it was the only ray of hope for me, I couldn’t help but despair, as despite its larger size, the other island appeared just as barren as mine. But if there was a larger piece of land that way, maybe there was an even bigger third island farther out! And more beyond that!

In any case, I had to come up with some sort of plan. I had to find something, anything that wasn’t grass or water or dirt. Despite the dire situation I was in, I started to get a little excited that I was going to be able to explore lands that appeared completely untouched by humanity. My body’s need for sustenance was becoming more noticeable too. At the very least, I would need to find something to eat. That would be my priority for now.

I waded into the water, eager to start my hunt. And suddenly I was submerged completely.

As it turns out, my island wasn’t your typical island, and wasn’t an underwater mountain, but rather a very tall spire pointing out of the earth. Aside from that one sandbar, the land basically all dropped straight off as soon as it went underwater. Everything I felt like I knew about geography was screaming out at me that this was a very unlikely way for land to form, but so it had.

And then I was attacked by an audience of squid.

“Attacked” might not be the best word to use though. It was more like I fell into the group of cephalopods as they were swimming by. I couldn’t remember if I liked calamari or not, but I figured that this was a pretty good opportunity to find something to fill my belly, so I grabbed the tentacle of one the the squid and punched it repeatedly. It tried to flounder away like a spineless coward (ha!), but it was no match for my furious fists. Much to my chagrin, the thing just popped into nothingness when its life expired. It did leave behind a trio of ink sacs, but they were decidedly not edible. Looks like squid were not the answer.

I continued swimming over to the next island, and as I’d surmised, it was completely devoid of anything that I could use. The entire west half of the island was a flat square with little beaches capping its corners and a submerged shoal connecting it and the grassier east side. The island’s overall geography did seem a little less like a third grader’s doodle of an island than mine, with outcroppings of dirt here and there. There was a single, lonely flower growing on the north shore, which I thought odd. The flower’s bright yellow petals stood out brightly against everything else. Between it being the only real landmark thus far and being completely useless to me, I decided to leave it there.

Out to the east of this island, I was very excited to see that there was indeed a third island! Maybe I would find something there! From what I could see, it was even bigger than this one, and unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, it was even home to a small tree.

I was able to wade between island two and three, as the two were actually connected. More flowers bloomed on the stretch of land pointing at island three. The north sides dropped off into the black depths of the ocean like the entire circumference of my island, but the land stretched out quite a ways to the south, with a fairly gradual incline. This was more like how I imagined islands were supposed to be. Perhaps the first island was just a freak geographical accident.

The third island featured nothing that I hadn’t seen on the last two, with the major exception of that tree. It was considerably bigger than I’d estimated, and I saw potential for forging some incredibly primitive tools from its wood. I didn’t have an axe or anything, so I set about punching the trunk of the tree until it came down.

My knuckles were bleeding pretty bad (in hindsight, maybe kicking the tree down would have been a better idea) once the tree was felled. I had an armful of wood now, and to my surprise, tiny saplings erupted from inside the tree’s leaves when I felled it! Since it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d seen all day, I collected them and figured that at the very least, I could plant them so that they could grow and provide me more wood.

I was hoping that yet another island would become visible from island three, but things were not looking good. Indeed, I did spy another landmass, and it looked like a big one. The hitch was that it was at least twice as far between here and there as it was from island one to island three. I wasn’t sure I’d be up to that kind of swim, especially since I was already getting pretty exhausted from the day’s activities and lack of nutrition. Maybe I’d give it a shot the next day.

At this point, the sun wasn’t hanging quite as high in the sky, and I decided that I would have to create some sort of shelter. Unfortunately, the second and third islands were pretty flat, and I wasn’t about to live in a pit. The first island’s dome shape and relatively flat eastern facing made it the perfect candidate to turn into a cave that I could call home. So, with tree bits in tow, I began my return to the first island.

Because I’m sort of a sentimental guy, I figured I would name the trio of islands that I’d been adventuring on. If nothing else, trying to come up with clever names would help keep my mind of the more desperate nature of my situation. I settled on “Home Base” as the name for the first island. What else would I call it? Island two became “Gemini,” as it was separated into two halves, and island three was “Tree Island,” despite the fact that I’d removed the tree it was named for.

I also decided that it would be funny to refer to the collective islands as the “Daisy Chain” for all the little yellow flowers blooming on the larger two islands. It wasn’t long before I questioned my sense of humour.

When I made it back to Home Base, I immediately went to planting the saplings I’d collected, considering it was probably best to have more basic materials as soon as possible. Considering that entire saplings had spawned from the tree rather than just seeds, I was hoping that maybe they’d grow into whole trees at an accelerated rate too. In this land of mystery, I felt like anything could happen, no matter how ridiculous.

I then set about tunneling to the creamy candy center of the island. I would have liked if there had been candy there, or any kind of edible substance. What I got was dirt, dirt and a bit of rock.

Hollowing out the dome took the bulk of my night. It wasn’t much of a living space; the ceiling was just high enough that my head didn’t rub against the top of it when I stood upright. I broke down the wood, and used it to fashion a crude table. From there, I used some more wooden bits to make some rather ugly pickaxe-like tools. I tried using one to dig through the rock, but it was only marginally better than using my now very bloodied fists.

There wasn’t really much else I could do. The night had set in, and the hot sun had given way to cool ocean winds.

It was the least I could do to huddle in the corner of my cave. I put up some makeshift doors, created with the rest of my wood, in hopes of keeping the westerly wind out of my den.

I have no idea why, but fate really had it out for me. I mean, amnesia and being lost in the middle of nowhere I could deal with, but why couldn’t I be lost in a forest or on a mountain instead? You know, somewhere where I could easily forage for food and gather survival supplies. Out here on the ocean, with no trace of civilization, what hope did I have? The only life out here besides me were the flowers on Gemini and Tree Island. Squid too, I suppose, but a fat lot of good those would do me.

I laid down in the dirt and closed my eyes. If I didn’t find something edible tomorrow, that would be the end of me.