A Fault in the Code

Chapter 2

The rustling sound of leaves in the wind awaken me. I feel grass under my face and body, and I think, That's funny, maybe I got thrown off the road and into the grass in that crash. I ache from head to toe, but seem to have no scratches on my body. Considering what just happened, I would think I am in Heaven. But even as I squint my eyes open, I can already tell that this is definitely not Heaven.

My vision is blurry, but in the brief moment my eyes are open, I see something that makes my stomach drop.

A man's face. It's all I see. But it's not just any man's face. He has a blank look, but his eyes are the most disturbing of all. They are empty, white voids that seem to disappear into nothingness, and even though there are no pupils, I can feel his stare beating down on me. And his skin doesn't look human. It looks as if it's... pixelated.

After two seconds of looking at this face, I can no longer believe that I'm seeing it. It's a dream, I think, It must be a dream. I'm pretty sure I died in that car crash. I shut my eyes as tight as I can and stay there for who knows how long. And when I open them, the face is no longer there, but the scenery I saw behind him is.

The sky is its normal blue color, but the clouds are unlike anything I've ever seen. They look like oddly shaped boxes. And the trees, their trunks look like that man's face, pixelated and cubed. In fact, everything around me looks like cubes.

As I look around, I discover something I didn't see the last time I looked. I find animals, cows, pigs, sheep, that are also boxy. There are giant mountains made of the cubes, caves, and ponds, and each new thing I see makes me even more confused. Where am I? What happened to the car crash? Why aren't I injured? So many questions filled my mind, but the question that stuck in my head the most was, who was that man I saw?

I stand, my legs shaking a bit, and start to walk around and look at everything. I look down at my hands and feet, and they're also blocky, like everything else here. I feel the bark on the trees. It looks smooth, looking all pixelated, but the actual texture is rough, like real bark. It's probably gonna take me a while to get the swing of things in this strange place.

I experiment with picking up dirt and tree wood, and the only way I can manage to hold it is if I break the entire block. After punching it, it somehow gets really small and starts floating around until I pick it up, and I can then put it in this little backpack thing that I had woken up with. The strangest thing about the trees is that if I break a block from the middle, the top of the tree will stay suspended in the air. That would never happen where I lived. It makes me wonder even more where I am and how I got here.

I walk around some more, and my hunger starts to increase, so I compromise. I take the wood I got from the trees and make it into a workbench for myself. I tinker around with sticks and bark, and manage to make a wooden axe.

I hold the axe in my hand so tight that my knuckles turn white. I turn around and start to walk toward the herd of animals that are gathered around a small pond. The closest animal to me is a pig, and I raise my axe. I can't bare to see this happen, so I close my eyes and slam down the axe as hard as I can, my heart deeply hurting. The pig lets out a pathetic squeal and as I open my eyes, I see that it is lying on the ground, bleeding from its back. I just killed a living thing. Sure, I've squashed bugs in my house before, but nothing like this.

I put my axe in my backpack and use all my strength to pick up the dead pig. Boy, that thing is heavy. I carry it back to my workbench and decide that I need to do some dirty work. I set the pig in front of me, get my axe out of my backback, and start to dig into its flesh, looking for some meat that I can use for food. The blood smears all over my hands, my shoes, the ground, and on my blue and white striped shirt, which I don't remember wearing on the day of my driving test.

The work of getting guts out of a pig made me cringe each time I touched it. It made my tears well in the back of my eyes, and the smell made me gag. I really don't like this.

After about an hour of just wanting to get away from the pig's body, I got everything out of the pig that I thought was edible, though I couldn't be sure. I need to cook these soon, or they'll rot. Wait, I'm not in the regular world. Maybe it doesn't matter how long I keep them. I stuff the meat in my bag and pick up my workbench.

I look up at the sky. Almost sunset. Who knows what comes out at night here. I dig out a few blocks of dirt from the ground and build a temporary sheltler, then lie on the ground and try to sleep. Sleep doesn't come, of course, but what does come is the moaning sound of some strange creature. I peak out the window in the side of my shelter. A terrible sight awaits me. What looks like a man is to my right and is limping towards my house. His skin is a sickly green and he has cuts all over his body, and his arms are outstretched in front of him.

To my left, a skeleton with a bow and arrows aims at me, and I quickly get behind the wall before it shoots. The sounds of all these things I'm seeing are making it too hard to ever sleep, so I guess I'll wait until morning.

But things get worse.