“Moo,” agreed the cow.
“I’ve gotta focus on covering the basics,” I continued. “Stockpiling food, building a secure shelter, crafting tools and weapons and whatever else I’ll need to make my life more comfortable.”
I began pacing back and forth, emphatically gesturing to the watching animal. “I’ve gotta turn this island into a comfort zone, a safe space where I can learn all I can about how this world works. And then, when I’ve got all the basics covered, I can start asking the really big questions, like how I got here, and how I get home.”
And just as I considered those big questions, an even bigger, scarier one came to mind. “Can I do it?” I asked. “All by myself, with no one to help me?”
I stared down at my painted shoes. “No one to protect or guide or”—I could barely get the words out—“take care of me?”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember something, anything, about who I was. “If I’m a kid,” I said, trembling, “then grown-ups must have done a lot for me. And if I’m a grown-up, then I still don’t remember doing much for myself.” Memories of that other world flashed before my anguished eyes, memories of machines and luxuries and clicking a screen to order anything I wanted. “I think my world did a lot for me, so many people doing so many different jobs that nobody had to worry about doing everything.”
I looked up into the cow’s face. “Can I do everything? Can I take care of me?”
The square animal gave a long, low “moo,” which I took for “What other choice is there?”
“Only one,” I answered. “To curl up and die.”
I sighed hard. “Which I won’t do.”
“I choose to take care of myself,” I proclaimed, as desperation morphed into determination. “I choose to believe in myself!”
“Moo,” said the cow, sounding to me like, “Now you’re talkin’!”
“I can do this!” I bellowed boldly. “I can and I WILL! I…I…” I noticed the sun had almost set. “I gotta get outta here!”
Confidence vanished as I raced out of the woods. How long did I have before the night terrors rose again? How long before they hunted me down?
By the time I reached the top of the hill, my mind was like quivering Jell-O.
Turning to the setting sun, I begged, “Not yet. Please don’t leave me alone with the monsters. Stay a little longer. Please don’t abandon me!”
“Moo!” cried the distant cow, as if to say, “Stop whimpering and move your butt!”
And I did. I rushed down the eastern slope to the beach, over to my shallow hole. I started banging at the stone cliff with my digging stick, and suddenly felt my heart sink. It was taking forever. If I’d only tested the stick earlier, if I hadn’t just assumed it’d work…
“Uuuhhh.” The soft moan floated through the night air. Another zombie was coming.
I jumped at the sound, dropped my stick, and looked frantically around. Just like the lesson about not assuming, I’d also completely lost the mantra about drowned thought. I was in full panic mode now, a trapped rat waiting for an undead cat.
“Guuuhhh,” came a louder, closer moan.
I looked down for my stick. It was gone, maybe hovering close by, but in the growing darkness, I couldn’t see it.
“Gahhh,” gargled the ghoul.
I looked up at the hilltop and saw my foe.
I reached into my belt for one of the other three sticks. My hand brushed the earthen cubes.
Build! The zombie was starting down the slope toward me. Something glinted in its grasp. A weapon?
I raced to create a hovel around myself, slamming dirt blocks down into walls. Yes, I suppose I could have, and should have, just blocked myself back up in the hole. It would have been the quicker, easier choice. But the thought of being buried alive again, passively pinned in an upright grave, was enough to squeeze the air from my chest
The zombie was only twenty steps away. I jammed the door into place.
Ten steps. I finished the walls and realized I didn’t have enough dirt for the roof.
Five steps.
I grabbed a wooden slab from my belt, throwing it up against the corner wall. It thudded with the impact of a rotted foot.
I slapped up slabs and wooden planks, just one step ahead of the slouching ghoul. I fitted the last corner plank, blotting out the stars, thinking I was safe. Then I heard the “oof” as the zombie hit the ground.
Reeking fists began pounding at my door. Heart thumping, I retreated against the far wall. Cold, hard stone pressed against my back. The door in front of me buckled. I could see dark, mini-cubed cracks spreading across its surface. Another few blows would send it crashing down.
“Fine!” I barked. “You wanna fight? C’mon, let’s do this!”
Stick in hand, I waited for the door to splinter. And I waited, and waited, and waited…and then saw that wood, just like stone, and just like me, could heal. I watched the zombie get within maybe a punch or two of breaking down the thin, buckling barrier, before having to restart the whole process again.
“Yeah,” I taunted, “that’s right. Now you know how I felt.”
Nodding like a proud rooster, I strutted over to the door. “You ain’t gettin’ in,” I sang, “you ain’t gettin’—”
Too close.
A moldy arm shot through one of the open squares and socked me right in the throat. “Point taken,” I coughed, staggering back. At least it hadn’t hit me with whatever was in its other hand.
From a safe distance, I tried to get a better look at the weapon. It wasn’t easy, especially in the darkness of my hut. I thought I could see a long, thin wooden handle, similar to my own sticks. Dim moonlight glinted off something at the end. It was flat, roundish, and tapered to a point.
“That’s a shovel!” I exclaimed. “How’d you get a shovel?” Then quickly added, “How come I didn’t get one?”
I’m not ashamed to say I was jealous. After all that crafting I’d done, I’d made everything but the kind of tools that’d got me crafting in the first place. And now the very thing I’d wanted was right outside my door.
“That’s not fair,” I pouted.
The zombie growled back, saying what I’m sure anyone would have said to me at that moment, “Life’s not fair, and whining won’t make it fair.”
“Yeah, well…” I said, cooling down and squinting hard at the shovel. “But how’d you get one anyway?”
The tool’s head didn’t look wooden. It was lighter, more reflective.
“Is that metal?” I asked.
The ghoul groaned.
“Even if it is, it doesn’t help me in here, does it? But…”
I squinted at the shovel again, studying it from a whole new angle.
“But if this world lets you combine a wooden handle with something else to make the head,” I asked the zombie, “then why can’t that head also be made out of wood?”
The zombie groaned again, and I’m 99 percent sure that groan sounded like “Duh!”
Whipping up another crafting table—my original was still outside—I placed a stick on the center square and a wood plank above it.
And got squat.
This time, the zombie moans sounded like laughter.
“What do you expect,” I shot back. “Instant success?” Even if I had, I wasn’t going to let my undead tormentor know that. “You almost never get something right the first time.”
I tried reversing the arrangement, stick above plank, and came up with another big helping of bubkes.
“I’ll get it,” I reassured the ghoul. “I’m not givin’ up.” I glanced again at the shovel, making sure I wasn’t missing some minor but important detail. I was. A closer look showed me that the shovel’s handle was twice as long as my sticks.
I moved the plank to the top center square and placed two sticks below it. “WHOO-HOO!” I howled at a near duplicate of the zombie’s shovel.
I snatched it from the air, whooped again, jumped into my victory dance, and
promptly banged my head on the low ceiling.
“Laugh it up,” I told the zombie, “nothing’s gonna spoil this moment.”
I pointed the shovel’s head at the dirt floor and scooped up a cube with a few quick swipes. “Don’t ignore the details,” I said. “Details make the difference.”
I walked over to the back wall and gave the stone a whack. The wooden blade bounced off harmlessly.
“Just wanted to be sure,” I said over my shoulder. “If this thing works for dirt then something else’ll work for rocks.”
I went to the crafting table and got out all my remaining planks. “You don’t have any helpful crafting tips, do you?” I asked the zombie. “How to make, I don’t know, a hammer and chisel or a steam drill?”
Dead eyes glared silently back.
“Never mind,” I said. “I got this.”
I made a couple more sticks and tried arranging them with two more planks into an upside-down L. What I got was a tool similar to a shovel but with a longer, thinner, right angled blade.
“What’s this?” I asked the zombie, showing it the strange implement. I thought I remembered seeing something like it back in my world, something to do with soil. I tried to use it like a shovel, digging up a block from the floor. It worked, but not as quickly.
“This world wouldn’t give me two digging tools, would it? And why would one work better than the other?”
I tried using the new whatchamacallit against the stone. It worked about as well as my fists. “What’s wrong with this thing?” I grumbled, remembering how it felt to punch up grass with my new, frustrating hands. Crazily enough, reconnecting with that feeling got me seriously thinking about how I used my body.
“It’s like…” I began, searching for the words. “Like I’m in two different minds when I’m doing things. There’s…I don’t know…like an aggressive punch mode, and a more passive use mode. Does that make sense?”
“Uhhh,” said the zombie.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, like something you’d hear from a mountaintop guru or a little green swamp alien who can lift a spaceship with his mind. But doesn’t it kinda make sense?”
Trying to focus my thoughts, I held the strange device against a square in the dirt floor. Restraining the urge to swing it like a shovel, I concentrated on careful thought. The tool swiped quickly but gently across the bare top of the square, taking the first layer of soil with it.
“Balance,” I declared. “Survival requires having both aggression and thoughtfulness, hot and cool, yin and…whatever the other one’s called. Point is to keep them in balance.”
“Gruhhh,” gurgled the cadaver.
“You should try it sometime,” I told it. “The thoughtful part, I mean.” And just allowing myself to joke with my would-be killer unlocked another memory of this tool.
“This thing’s called a hoe!”
I fished the seeds out of my belt, the ones I’d tried so hard to plant and almost thrown away. I held them out to the soft, moist earth I’d just hoed. The seeds vanished from my hand, filling the soil square with lots of little green shoots.
“Gardening!” I trumpeted. “That’s the missing piece! That’s why I couldn’t plant the seeds yesterday! And if they do grow into something edible, then I’ve got a renewable source of food!”
“Grehhh,” growled the zombie, bashing harmlessly at the door.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” I pretended to ask. “Oh yes, you’re right, this night is as sucky for you as it is awesome for me. ’Cause while you’re stuck out there, doing the same thing over and over again, I just learned tool-making and agriculture, which is, what, like a million years of human evolution in ten minutes?” I sauntered over to the crafting table. “And who knows, maybe by dawn I’ll crack the code for cold fusion!”
Three seconds later, I’d made something even better than a nuclear reactor. “A pickaxe!” I announced, holding up the T-shaped triumph. “And all it took was an extra plank!”
Turning from the zombie to the back wall, I tore into the stubborn stone. The pickaxe worked like a dream, plopping out the first block in no time.
“Finally,” I sighed, examining the freed rock. It wasn’t whole, not like the chunks of dirt. It looked more cobbled together, like all the pieces had reformed.
“And now,” I said, glancing back at the zombie’s shovel, “let’s see if I can improve my tools.”
Just as I thought, this world let me combine the block of cobblestone with a couple of sticks into a stone-tipped shovel.
“Figurin’ out the rules,” I crowed, and tried using it on the dirt floor. The stone tip worked even faster than the wooden version, which could only mean the same for all the others.
Picking out more cobblestone, I went right back to the crafting table.
“Getting an upgrade!” I grinned, gleefully grasping a cobblestone pickaxe.
Just as I thought, the new implement tore through the cliff wall like a shovel through soft earth.
I couldn’t really see where I was going; the deepening tunnel was too dark. But the constant flow of cobblestones into my backpack told me I was making serious progress. “Now we’re talkin’!” I said, burrowing deeper and deeper into the hill.
“How’s it feel, eh?” I asked over my shoulder. “Knowing you and all those other beasties are never gonna get in here!”
My answer came in a familiar sharp, high “gagh.”
“Here we go,” I said, stepping out of the pitch-black hole and into the growing light of the dirt hut.
Through the square holes in my door, I could see the rising sun and a now-burning zombie. “So you do die at dawn!” I said, almost a little sorry for the dying ghoul.
“Gagh-gagh-gagh,” it gasped, flashing pink beneath a sheet of flames.
Overcome by curiosity, I edged closer and closer toward the door. “Oops,” I said, as my feet accidentally uprooted the little shoots in the dirt floor. No matter, I thought as they jumped right back into my belt, I’ll just replant them outside once the zombie—
I didn’t even get to finish my thought. The burning beast suddenly vanished in a puff of smoke.
I threw open my door just in time to see the last of the smoke dissolve. At my feet was another pile of rotten flesh…and no shovel. Whether it had burned with its owner or vanished according to some rule of this world, I couldn’t say. I also couldn’t waste a minute mourning its loss. This was going to be an awesome day, I could feel it. Last night I’d turned the corner on shelter, and now I was ready to kiss hunger goodbye.
Wooden hoe in hand, I carried the seeds out to a patch of dirt near the shore. Just like before, they jumped right into the freshly tilled soil. How long would it take before they ripened? No way to know. But if they did turn out to be edible, it’d make sense to plant a whole lot more.
Punching the other grass clumps turned up zilch so I decided to spend the morning scrounging. I climbed quickly up the slope of Disappointment Hill and trotted casually down to the central meadow. I wasn’t worried about any more zombies this time. I knew the dawn had taken care of them. A good start to a good day, I thought, punching up the tall grass. It wasn’t long before I’d cleared the whole field, and had three handfuls of seeds to show for it.
“Moo,” came a call from the nearby woods, followed by a “baa” and two quick “cluckclucks.”
“Hey, g’morning!” I waved to the animals. “You guys would not believe the night I just had.”
Bounding happily over, I described my discovery of crafting, and gave a show-and-tell of my tools.
“Cool, eh?” I asked, expecting the usual disinterested glances. “No, I get it,” I said, “you can just eat grass as is, but I gotta try replanting these.”
I showed them the seeds. The cows and sheep shuffled away. The chickens didn’t, though; their heads shot up with rapt attention.
I asked, “What do you want?”
They answered with enthusiastic clucking. “These?” I asked, showing
them the seeds. “Are these what you—” I stopped just as a white, oval object popped out from behind one of the birds.
“An egg!” I shouted, switching out the seeds for the hand-sized ball. “Now this has to be real food, right?” I asked the chickens. “I mean, why else would this world let you lay an egg if I wasn’t allowed to…”
I noticed the birds were waddling away. Why had they suddenly lost interest? “Hey, where ya goin’?” I asked. “Something I said?”
I looked away from the birds just in time to see the silent creature gliding between us. It was armless and legless, with a green mottled trunk and short stubby feet.
It all happened so fast. The crackling hiss, the smell of fireworks, the flashing vibrations as the creeping monster swelled like a balloon.
The explosion knocked me backward, lifting me off my feet. Eyes burning, ears ringing, I flew through the air, splashing into the waist-deep water of the lagoon. Waves of pain crashed over me: seared skin, cracked bones, pulled muscles torn from mangled joints. I tried to scream, but collapsed into hacking coughs as one lung fought to overcome its punctured partner.
I struggled to breathe, to move. I could feel the lagoon’s waters pulling me forward, carrying me down. I blinked hard, clearing my vision, and stared at the blast crater I’d been washed into along with loose chunks of sand and earth. Something else swirled in the water around me: the gruesome evidence of death. A scrap of cowhide, a red slab of beef, two bright pink bird bodies, and a single white feather were all that was left of three poor animals.
As the wretched scraps flew into my pack, I clambered dizzily out of the crater. Dazed with shock, I stumbled back to the hill. Knees wobbled, thighs burned. I staggered over waves of pulsing pain. How could I outrun more of those creeping bombs? I glanced behind me, tripped, and crashed into the hard, bruising mass of a tree. The impact sent shock waves radiating through my injuries. Cracked lips opened for another scream, and this time they succeeded.
A long, deep, anguished howl exploded from both, not one, of my newly regenerating lungs. I was hyper-healing!
As walking became running, which became an all-out sprint, I could feel the bones fusing, the veins sealing. I could see my skin knitting together over rapidly rejuvenating tissue.