Rescue Island (5 page)

Slurp! I spin. It's coming from behind me to the left. Slashing, my sword strikes something. Hiss! It sounds angry now. I didn't kill it. I slash at the darkness again. My sword doesn't connect. Where is it?

"OUCH!" something bites me from behind. I see a flash of red. As I fall, I swing my sword, falling and twisting simultaneously. I don't know what's more surprising, the sharp pain from the bite or the speed of my sword. I feel it slice through an object. It cuts with such power and force. Not like the thud of previous battles.

Slurp, hiss, thud! Poof, it's dead, only one string appears, I hoped for two. Slurp! No time to think, as my body reacts instinctively. Slash! Thud. Poof, two strings appear.

Time to get out of here.

Climbing the staircase, my mind begins to relax. How did I do that? My body wasn't connected to my thoughts. It was working without waiting for me to think. My body acted as an exterminator; a very efficient spider killer. In a way I feel afraid of my own abilities. How can I move so quickly? My movements felt super human. Maybe I'm not super human, maybe I'm super digital!

I walk from the cavern entrance and turn to the northeast beach of Rescue Island. That is where I first saw chickens, and I need a bunch of them for my plan to work.

As I near the beach, I hear chickens. There are six or seven in the undergrowth near the beach. My sword makes quick work of them. No suffering. Each gives me raw meat, but more importantly most give me feathers.

Now I need a crafting table. I return home and craft weapons. Digging through storage chests, I find the remaining resources needed to execute my plan.

I walk to the highest place on Citadel Fort hill. This is where I will make my stand. This is the best place to defend against the onslaught I hope to attract. This is where I will build my tower!

It's simple, a tower of stone. I want it to be high enough to be above the bit bombers heads, but not so high that I'm out of sight.
 

I make a tower of single stone blocks stacked four high. I put a ladder on the side and climb to the top. Using glass, I build a platform on top. I'll stand on this platform and look down on the pixelators. I can stand on the edge to execute my attack. I finish the platform with a trap door above my ladder.

Now I wait.

I've been busy all day. The sun is nearing the western horizon. I carefully and deliberately select my pocket inventory; sword, axe, and food. I don't think I'll need the hand weapons. I don't plan to get that close to the bit busters. The truth is, I don't know much about them. I have vague memories of them, but as a human controlling my character, I always avoided anything that came out at night.

Now that I am a digital character for real, my personality seems to have changed completely. Now I want to confront these dangerous pixel rearrangers that come out in the night. Now I am preparing for an epic battle. I'm no longer on the defensive. No longer am I interested in protecting myself from unknown dangers. My strategy has changed. I am taking the offensive. I will use my body as bait, draw them in, and wipe them out. Completely!

The weapon I choose will keep me a safe distance from my attackers. Little do they know I am not their prey, they are mine. The sun sets. My eyes are peeled. I watch for movement.

How did I keep from being noticed that first night on Safety Cove? Silence. If silence is the secret to not being discovered, then noise must be what attracts trouble.

"Hey, bit bombers! Come get me!" I yell. It's strange, but yelling relaxes me. I yell more and more. I don't know if they understand anything I say, but I yell anyway. "Where are you guys! Are you afraid? Come out!"

Swoosh!

What was that? Something streaked past me. Swoosh! I see something in my periphery, to my right. I turn and see something completely unexpected—a skeleton. What is that? I don't remember anything like this? And it's holding a bow! Yikes! It's taking aim, at me!

I jump to the left just as the arrow flies. Thud, I fall from the tower and hit the ground. Glad I didn't build this any higher; that fall would have really hurt! I jump up. I did not expect to be in this situation. I expected to be battling from the safety of the tower. I planned to be launching arrows into my victims from above.

I feel a familiar tingle—the sense of impending doom. I quickly grab my sword and spin, slashing away. I wish I'd thought to make some armor.

Thud, a spider falls. Slash, thud, another. Swoosh! Ouch! An arrow pierces me. I see a flash of red. That really hurt! I've got to get to high ground. I can't take the offensive if I'm running from flying arrows.

The tower, I've got to get to the ladder and climb the tower. It's not far, only a few steps. I quickly scan the battlefield. It's crawling with dangerous things. I see spiders, skeletons and zombies. But the strangest things are skinny, big-headed things, the color of dynamite, rolling toward me. Something doesn't seem right; these rolling creatures are not familiar at all. I feel anger grow inside me. One begins to hiss, sssssss! Pixelators! I yell, "I will annihilate you!"

I lunge for the ladder, climb in a split second, open the trap door, and I'm on the platform. My movements are mechanical, no thought, nothing to slow me. Now I can use the spoils of my earlier hunting. The string made a bow and feathers completed the arrows. My hand puts the sword away and grabs my bow. Automatically, I pull the bowstring, take aim, and the arrow sails. It strikes the skeleton that shot me. But I hit low, too low to kill it. I shoot again, this time hitting its skull. Poof. It disappears, a bone drops to the ground.

I don't have a moment to spare, arrow already notched and aimed. This time rolling anger is in my sights. It's moving toward me. It moves in a creepy, floating way. I let the arrow fly. It's injured, but not dead. Two arrows later, poof! It's gone. It drops a small bag of powder to the ground.

I did not expect to use so many arrows to take these guys down.

I keep attacking. Every so often something flies past me, and every so often I see a flash of red. I can no longer push away the pain. I need to restore my health. I can't eat and battle at the same time. I grab the last of the cooked fish from my pocket and eat. Much better. Pick up my bow again and resume my attack.

I feel like Hawkeye from
The Avengers
. Every arrow has a target. I'm getting better, sometimes killing an enemy with a single arrow. I'm also moving quickly, avoiding incoming arrows and moving from one side of the platform to another. I am wiping out everything that approaches.

My mind is exhausted. I've killed twenty bit busters, dozens of spiders, more zombies, and as many skeletons. And they are not stopping. How long have I been at this? Is there an end to the onslaught? Is it even possible to kill them all, or will they just keep respawning?

The anger that has been driving me is lessening. I begin to feel more rational. Maybe my plan to wipe out this enemy is just crazy. Anger made me overlook the rationality of my actions and now I'm in a real predicament.

I keep firing. I grab my last arrow, notch it, and take aim at the only explosive monster in sight. I'm surrounded by zombies and skeletons now. There are too many and they are encroaching on all sides of my glass platform. Swoosh, Swoosh, pain, pain. I see red. Not just flashes of red, everything I see is in a cloud of red. I have one opportunity before I must turn to my hand weapons which are no match for the huge number of enemies below. This is the last opportunity before I die.

SSSSS! I'm done for!

Thwap! Thud. It's not the deadly explosion I expected. My last arrow finds the head of my explosive nemesis. Gone. I'm surrounded by zombies and skeletons. Arrows are hitting my body one after another.

To the east, a sliver of light breaks over the mountain. Flames! The zombies below the platform burst into flame. More skeletons and zombies combust! It's the dawning sun! I've been saved by the morning!

Standing on the platform, no arrows remaining, I watch. It's the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen. The glow of the morning sun balances the glimmer of burning creatures.

I made it.

I'm safe at last.

One-by-one zombies and skeletons ignite and one-by-one they burn out. The land is scattered with a bounty of resources. I climb down from my platform and start collecting bones, gunpowder, weird pixelated pieces of flesh, arrows, and more. I find lots of string from the spiders I destroyed. "Well, I have plenty of resources to last a while," I say out loud. Sometimes I need to hear a human-sounding voice in this freaky, lonely world, even if the voice is my own.

I MAKE MY WAY TO MY SMALL HOME and unload my massive collection of resources in a storage crate. I've expanded the crate to contain my growing inventory of goods.

My plan was to annihilate the entire species of pixelators. The thought seems foolish now. Digital creatures with no souls, no real intelligence, are programmed to respawn as fast as I can kill them. The act of even trying to wipe them all out is futile. I understand that now. It's clear to me that my anger, the anger I felt after Verve's death, is misplaced on pixelators.
 

How can I have anger toward something so clearly artificial? The danger is not artificial. No. The danger is very real. But the intention of angry creatures is innate to their very essence. They are killers. There is nothing personal about it. They live to kill characters, players; anyone who enters this game is their target. They can't differentiate between a character controlled by players in the real world and the digital me. We are all the same to these programmed killers.

These thoughts remind me of the pain from losing Verve. I still need a way to harness the pain into something positive. I need to channel the anger. I don't want to lose my head again. The more I think about it the more I realize how dumb it was to use my body as bait, to yell and make noise and attract every dangerous creature within earshot.

"I'm a new kind of crazy! What was I thinking?" I say aloud.

I can control my anger. I will channel this energy into something positive. I have a great idea!

I will find Verve's kitten!

I walk out of my small home and head toward the last place I saw the kitten. It feels so long ago now. It hid in the jungle, peeking out at its mother and me. Perhaps it will recognize me. That's wishful thinking. I do have something in my favor today. I have raw fish. If I can find the kitten (and if I don't spook it) I might be able to tame it. Old and young ocelots like fish.

As I walk down the hill toward the jungle I look around. Rescue Island is beautiful, in a retro digital sort of way. Lots of green makes the island feel alive. Beautiful rocky faces at the north end. The south end has a large forest and is the future home of Citadel Fort. If life would slow down, I could actually build the castle of my dreams. This is starting to feel like home.

I reach the western edge of the jungle. I say aloud, as if making an important speech, "This is where I met Verve, so this is now called Verve's Jungle." The sun peaks above me. It really is a beautiful scene.

Now if I were a kitten, where would I hide? I'd want to be near trees, so I could quickly disappear at the first sign of danger. But I'd also want to be near water to find food. I approach the entrance to the jungle cavern. I want to avoid that place and any dark, shaded hiding spots around it. I'm in no mood to battle spiders.

I walk to the tree where I first saw Verve's kitten and look around. The trees here are close together, casting shadows. A ray of light breaks through, between tree clusters. A path? Yes, it's open enough that I can make my way through. No axe needed. On the other side of the tree cluster is the beautiful pond I saw my first day on the island.
 

North of the pond is a steep, rocky hill with a waterfall flowing into the pond from above. The other side of the rocky hill is the north end of the island, Safety Cove. This is paradise! I stand silently for a time, imagining the young ocelot kitten growing up here, now waiting and wondering when its mother will return.
 

Purrrr, the sound is behind me. I don't want to alarm the kitten. In the game, they are hard to tame. But I've done it; well, my character has done it. I can do this. Slowly I reach into my pocket and grab raw fish. I hold the fish in front of me and slowly turn toward the sound.

Halfway around and I still don't see the kitten. Purrr, there must be an ocelot somewhere around here. I'm in the most open area near the water. This should make the cat feel safe. I look carefully into the trees. In the shadow I see small, round reflections, close enough together to be watchful eyes. I crouch, my hand outstretched, holding the fish. Slowly I move toward the eyes. They are low to the ground. Lower than a full-grown cat. I'm close enough now that it must smell the fish. I stop, perfectly still. I hope this works.

A dark nose peeks out from the shadow, followed by green eyes. Purrrrrrr, it is Verve's kitten. It seems nervous. It must be missing its mother. Slowly, nervously, it creeps toward the fish. It takes the fish from my hand. The fish disappears quickly, and it takes another. The craziest thing happens. It changes form! It's no longer a yellow ocelot with dark spots. It changes to a blue cat with yellow eyes, eyes that remind me of its mother. Maybe it's the eyes, but I'm sure this kitten is a girl.