Minecraft, Star Trek, Dad, and I

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Our first discovery was that aliens come at night. Mostly. I saw the first one coming down the hill, growling. I ran towards John, screaming. He ran towards me.

"Monsters are coming!"

"There is no such thing..."

"Aliens are coming!"

There was more than one alien; we were surrounded. "In the tree, now," John was saying even as he picked me up and shoved me towards the tree. "Climb!" I pulled myself up over the leaves and tried to see down. The aliens attacked my dad. I screamed. He disappeared. All that was left was the wood he had collected, some stone, a wood pickaxe, and the axe. I cried. I mean, what would you do? I am six. I am in a tree surrounded by aliens. I wanted to go home. I wanted to wake up. The next thing I knew was my dad was there. He jumped in the air and punched one of the aliens as he came down, using momentum, strategy, and fist. Monster went down. John dived on the axe, rolled, and came up chopping. Granite or stone, our tech converts things into energy and reduces it to its primary ingredients. Everything he had dropped at death went right back into his inventory. Most things converted results in excess energy to be stored. Residue energy, in the form of green lightening balls were collected. In this manner, John took out the aliens and climbed the tree.

I hit him and nearly knocked him out of the tree- that's one reason kids are locked out of certain features in their tech. You could kill someone, or even yourself with tech.

"Ouch!" John said. "Why did you do that?"

"Because I love you," I said.

"Well, don't hit me!" John said.

"You left me!" I snapped.

"I died saving you!" John said.

"You didn't die," I said.

"I died," John insisted.

"You don't look dead," I argued.

"I am not. I think we're stuck in a teleporter loop. If you die, you get teleported back to the designated spawn point," John said.

"That doesn't make any sense," I said.

"None of this makes any sense!" John snapped.

"Stop snapping at me!" I snapped.

An arrow hit John in the shoulder. He cursed, but instead of jumping around in pain, he immediately went to protect me. He laid me down in the leaves. An arrow came up and twang into a branch.

"I want to go home," I cried.

"Yeah," John agreed. "We can't stay here, that's for sure." He spied the campfire. "You and I have to do something brave. I want you to run towards the campfire with me."

"No!" I said.

"You see the hole I dug into the hillside to get the granite?" John asked. "We'll be safe in there. But we have to run there. We can't stay up here."

"I am afraid," I said.

"I am, too," John said.

"I thought you were an adult," I said.

"Adults can be afraid. This is normal. It's what we do when we're afraid that changes that into courage. We're going to run."

"How is running courage?" I asked.