Family Minecraft World

Corey’s mom sat quietly in the kitchen with a cup of tea growing cold on the table. In her hands was a small shoebox she had come to deliver. Her face still contained the somber wrinkles of grief.

“Grandpa Arthur wanted you to have these things,” she said solemnly.

Inside the box were a collection of old, yellowed photographs. It also contained a polished silver locket. Corey picked it up gingerly. It felt cool to the touch.

“The executor of his estate said that was his most prized asset. And he wanted you to have it.”

Corey dug his nails into the edge of the locket and pulled it open. Inside was a small data core, last generation. His old PC, which he had been meaning to rebuild, still had a port he could insert this into.

“What is it?” he turned the locket around. It was a small device, so it couldn’t hold more than a few dozen terabytes. That was hardly enough to hold a small holo-movie. Maybe it contained some financial records? More photographs?

“It’s the server key to access his world,” she answered with a reverence he did not share.

“You mean that Minecraft thing?”

“It was his legacy. He poured his entire life into it. Our entire family did. And before he passed he said that he wanted you to be the next admin.”

Minecraft? Corey almost let out an impolite scoff. A game from the 2010s. Generations ago. He spent his time in a more modern game, full-immersion haptic sims where you could actually feel the heat from a dragon’s fires and the searing pain of being cut by a sword. Minecraft was just a collection of low-res blocks, without any of the sensory feedback that made a game feel real.

“I appreciate that he thought of me, but I don’t know if I am the right person for it.”

“He left instructions. Your system should be able to run the game, even if in an emulation mode. Just... please, Corey, log in at least once. For him.”

Corey kept his head low. He didn’t want to look at her. It felt embarrassing to be playing something so childish. Yet he loved his grandpa.

“Okay, I’ll log in tonight. After my guild’s raid.”

Hours later, as the excitement of the raid fell into a lull of checking his inventory for duplicates and visiting the auctions, his guildmates logged off one-by-one. He found himself looking at the silver locket that he had sat at the edge of his desk.

With a sigh he opened it up and inserted the data core into a port in the back of his machine.

“Unknown device detected,” his neuro-link chimed as the system tried to handle the new hardware.

He double-tapped the error window and went into the settings. Then he went into the Advanced Settings. Then he went into the Deep Advanced Settings, which had a series of options and flags that were introduced decades ago and never removed because some large corporation or another depended on it for running their entire operation.

He found the protocol for running vintage emulators and flipped it to true.

Then the world grew smaller. The fluid datascape that flowed all around him just by controlling his thoughts shut down. The haptic motors clicked softly as they shut off. He could no longer feel the soft pressure from his sensory pads. Instead, there was just a small two-dimensional window floating in a black void.

This change was jarring. Everything felt muffled, like his ears and eyes were stuffed with cotton.

He saw a logo titled Mojang Studios in front of him. It was a historical symbol he had only seen in his cultural history classes.

A soft, simple piano started to play in the background without the same oomph of multi-dimensional stereo designed by AIs for infinitely sized orchestras. With a hesitation, he clicked the Play button and loaded into the default world, simply named The Perry’s.

There was a sudden jolt as he was placed in a room surrounded by cubes. The emulator was trying to be clever by making the game immersive from his perspective, but it wasn’t perfect. The textures of the blocks were still strangely low-quality and too bright, making his eyes hurt. And the sound effects still felt like they were coming from a single point far away.

The walls were a repeating texture of rough brown planks that vaguely, very vaguely, looked like wood. Torches cast a blocky light. In front of him, near the door, was a wooden sign with black monospaced letters spelling out:

Great-Grandma Rose’s Starter House - Est. 2016

He looked down at his hands. They were just rectangular prisms. He didn’t have any fingers, or an elbow. He was just made of blocks. Yet they moved up and down as he expected. He took a step forward and he moved closer towards the door. Each step caused a dull thump on the floor beneath him.

He pushed the door open and it suddenly rotated open, without any transition or sound. Corey took a hesitant step outside.

He let out a gasp.

The small cabin was sitting on top of a small hill. Below it was a sprawling metropolis that stretched out as far as the game’s renderer could allow. Each building seemed to be designed completely differently, creating a mishmash of time and aesthetics.

To his right he saw a sleek tower rising so high it pierced the pixelated clouds made of white quartz with blackened windows. He recognized it as the work of his Aunt Kayla, the tech CEO. On his left was a vast farm which used Redstone to automate handling the long rows of wheat and carrots, each which seemed to shake back and forth in response to some virtual wind passing through. His grandmother’s grand project still seemed to be working even after she logged out for the last time.

He began to climb down the wooden steps, hopping down each block until he reached the gray-block streets of the city. So much of it seemed to be built by his ancestors. The place was a living museum.

He followed a path lit by Glowstone lamps, feeling particularly drawn to it. He passed by a massive wall made of wool of different colors. If he leaned back enough, he could see it was a pixel art mural depicting a cartoonish squirrel wearing a tiara and tutu. It seemed like an inside joke that he knew nothing about.

Further down this path, he saw a helicopter sitting in an empty lot. The vehicle seemed to have been abandoned in the middle of its construction. Corey could immediately find a key flaw in the design which would make it impossible to fly. That was probably why the original builder had abandoned it.

The path soon left the city’s bounds up another hill. The hill was taller than the previous one. It transitioned into the rocky blocks depicting a rough mountain. Then, it transitioned into snowy peaks as he continued climbing.

Near the peak, the tall, haphazard stones of the mountain were cleared away for a flat plateau with an elegantly designed garden. Tiny pixelated flowers swung in the wind and were surrounded by tall weeping willows. Inside the garden were dozens of small signs, each hosting a tiny memorial.

Here is where Daddy taught me to fight a Creeper. He fell out of his chair laughing when I screamed out loud. - Abagail

Abagail was his mom’s name.

We came here the night before our wedding. We practiced our vows here, under a blocky arch. - Rob and Clara

His aunt and uncle.

In memory of Cocoa, the best dog we could’ve asked for. She loved chasing the squirrels. - Everyone

He passed by each one, learning a great deal about his family’s history. Each one told a different story. Every memory had its own place to sit here in perpetuity.

The climb to the peak was gentle, rising only a few blocks as the path wound up to the edge. It was the tallest location in the entire world. He looked out at the setting sun.

There a small wooden bench nearby. He took a seat and looked out at it, a world that had been started by Perry’s generations ago. Every person in his family had managed to make their mark here and their legacy would continue to the next generation.

Then he noticed one final sign sitting to the side. He could only read it from the perspective of the bench.

This is all yours now, Corey. Place your first block whenever you’re ready - Grandpa Arthur

The apathy he had been feigning finally crumbled away. He felt his vision blur with tears as the magnitude hit him, really hit him. His late grandfather had left a message just for him and gave him the responsibility of this world originally crafted by his great-grandmother’s hands. Countless Perry’s had been part of it. This place was a family tree built out of voxels.

He opened up his inventory, an archaic two-dimensional grid of squares. He only had a single, rough cube of gray cobblestone in there.

Corey turned to an empty patch of grass on the the opposite side of the sign. He aimed with the crosshairs and then placed the block.

With an instant, it appeared in the world with a soft thump.

It wasn’t much, but it would be the cornerstone of his family’s future.