Quest for Justice, page 19
The three players resolved to spend the time until dark—when the Endermen came out—to hunt for food. All three players went in separate directions, but they stayed fairly close to the sinkhole. Stan went to the far side of the hole, and he saw a herd of cows wandering around the oasis where they had gotten the water for the obsidian, eating the grass and drinking the water. He walked up to them and started downing them with his axe, one after another. He was chasing one cow with an axe, ready to kill it, when he noticed something. About twenty blocks in front of him was a straight line of railroad tracks stretching in both directions as far as the eye could see, with one end headed toward the jungle and the other headed out into the desert.
Intrigued, Stan walked closer to examine the tracks, but he stopped when he heard a rumbling sound coming from the jungle-end of the railroad. He noticed something in the distance coming down the tracks. Fearing it to be the enemy, Stan dived into a shallow trench near the edge of the tracks that was deep enough to conceal him yet still allowed him to see.
The train passed Stan at high speed. It consisted of seven mine carts, four of which contained chests and two of which contained what appeared to be furnaces. In the remaining mine cart, which was situated in front of the two furnace cars and behind the chest cars, sat a player with pale skin in an army uniform. The train thundered past and into the distance. Stan was incredibly curious as to where this player was going. Resolving to be back before Kat and Charlie noticed he was gone, he ran down the railroad tracks after the train.
The train was much faster than he was, and before long it had disappeared from view, but Stan kept running, following the tracks. He was wondering how he was ever going to catch up to this player when he heard another rumbling behind him. A lone mine car with a furnace was chugging down the line, spewing black smoke as the two before it had. Stan supposed that this cart must have fallen off another train. He had noticed that on the previous train the carts hadn’t fastened to each other very well. Willing to accept the gift, Stan let the mine cart catch up to him and he jumped on, riding it at full speed toward the end of the line.
The sun was showing it was about noon by the time Stan saw the buildings in the distance. They were simple wooden huts, and they were the lone structures in the middle of the endless miles of desert. Wondering why in God’s name anybody would want to build their house in such a barren land, Stan jumped off the cart just before it entered what appeared to be a railroad station.
He snuck over behind two chests, and he noticed the train that he had seen before. The player that had been riding it stepped out, and he appeared to be talking with another player who was dressed like Abraham Lincoln and had a distressed and desperate look on his face. Eager to hear what was happening, Stan crawled underneath the station platform so that he was right below the two men and could hear every word they were saying.
“. . . is no excuse for you not producing your quota,” said the player in the army uniform in an angry tone.
“But, sir, please, as I’ve been trying to explain, our miners have run into problems,” responded another desperate voice. “We were mining out the areas that you had requested, and we hit a rather large lava spring. We are going to have to slow production until we can fix it. Otherwise the environment would not be safe . . .”
“Do you think the King cares about your safety?” barked the soldier. “He needs all the resources he can get his hands on, especially in these troubled times. As I’m sure you’re aware, there is an assassin on the loose.”
Stan gulped. He sincerely regretted coming this close to the soldier now.
The soldier continued: “And the King needs all available resources to put the assassin out of commission! It is my responsibility to make sure that the town of Blackstone, as Elementia’s primary coal producer, generates more than its share, not less! If there isn’t enough coal, the King gets angry with me, and therefore, I get angry with you! This is your last warning, Mayor. If you fail to produce your quota one more time . . . well, you can imagine . . .”
There was a clinking sound and the mayor cried out in terror. Stan jumped up to come to his aid, forgetting that he was under the wooden platform. He hit his head on the underside of the plank above him and he saw stars. When his vision came back into focus, he saw the soldier leaving on his train, and he realized in horror that the block of wood above him had been burned away. The clinking had been a steel ring against flint! And it was a wooden station . . .
The mayor was doing all he could to punch out the flames, but they were spreading too fast. Throwing caution to the wind, Stan stood up through the hole and helped the mayor put out the flames with his fists. The mayor’s eyes widened in surprise, but he did not question Stan’s sudden appearance. He was simply grateful for the help he had miraculously received, and within a minute all the flames were extinguished.
“Thank you, kind stranger,” said the mayor, bowing his head in respect. “Without your bravery, we might have lost one of the few respectable buildings we have left in this city.”
“No problem,” said Stan. “I’m glad to be of help. So what is this place, exactly?”
“This, my friend, is the humble town of Blackstone, population twenty-three, and Elementia’s chief producer of coal,” replied the mayor. “And may I ask where you come from, my good sir?”
So he doesn’t recognize me, thought Stan. That’s good. Generally attention doesn’t work too well in my favor. “I’ve lived in a lot of places,” Stan said.
“Well, if you are in need of a place to stay for a while, we would be happy to have you here,” said the mayor. “It is rare that anyone shows such kindness to the people of this town, and on the rare occasion that it happens, they deserve to be rewarded.”
“That is very kind of you, sir,” said Stan, “but I have to return to my friends by nighttime. Do you by any chance have anything to eat?” Stan had only had an apple since breakfast, and he was very hungry.
The player smiled. There were wrinkles in his blocky cheeks. “Of course, sir. Right this way. He walked out of the station, followed by Stan, and they began walking down the main street of the town.
Stan had never seen such a pathetic-looking excuse for a town in his life. The unpaved main street was the only road, and on either side of it were ten or so small houses, all patched together with sand, dirt, cobblestone, and sandstone so that it was impossible to tell what the original material was. Stan noticed that on the sides of a few of these houses were small wheat gardens, which were surrounded with fences. Players leaned against the front of these houses.
There was no way to describe the look of these players except as broken, defeated. Their heads hung, looking toward the ground, with the sun glinting off the metal helmets on their heads. Most of them had iron pickaxes dangling from their hands. They all wore leather armor everywhere except on their heads, which were obscured by the helmets, so it was impossible to tell them apart at a glance. When they sensed Stan walking into the town, a few of them glanced up. Stan could see pain reflected in their faces, which bore all variety of scars, and the players projected a defensive caution at this new player, young and whole, who had the audacity to waltz into their village unannounced.
“Just ignore them,” mumbled the mayor, sensing Stan’s unease. “They’re just tired and upset from all the extra work the soldiers have been forcing them to do lately. They’re looking for a fight. They need to take their anger out on someone. So don’t look anyone directly in the eye.”
Stan took the mayor’s advice and looked straight forward toward the end of the street, keeping his hand cautiously but subtly close to the wooden handle of the iron axe dangling at his side by his belt. Keen to avoid eye contact with the temperamental miners, Stan forced himself to focus on the building at the end of the street. It was the largest and by far the most well-kept building. It was a rectangular complex made of brick blocks, with no windows and two side-by-side metal doors on the front. Unlike the patchy houses that held the miners, this building seemed to be in a state of good repair. Stan asked the mayor about its purpose.
“That is the government’s storehouse. They come by rail to this village every other day to collect the coal quota, but all other materials, including cobblestone, iron, and even buckets of lava from the sources of springs that we encounter, go in there, along with any other ambiguous blocks we find.”
“Do you mean to say that the army controls the flow of materials leaving this village through that storehouse?” asked Stan.
“Yes. And we don’t get to keep any of what we bring up for ourselves. Even if some blocks of our houses are stolen, we have to smuggle cobblestone blocks up from the mines to repair them, an offense punishable by death. Our miners have actually gotten into fights and killed each other over accusations of stealing parts from one another’s houses.”
Stan sighed in disgust at this revelation as they arrived at the house directly adjacent to the warehouse. A sign next to the front door read “Mayor.” This house was a little larger than the other houses, though in an equal state of disrepair. The mayor pushed open the wooden door and they walked inside.
The inside of the house had a wooden floor, walls made of the same materials as the outside—suggesting the walls were one block thick—and windows, some of which still had glass panes. The entire house consisted of one room, which had a crafting table, a furnace, two double chests, two chairs, and two beds. The entire room had a defeated air to it, and at each step the floorboards creaked in despair.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Stan lied through his teeth, as the mayor grabbed two steaks from his chest and handed one to Stan. “I notice there are two beds here, and two chairs. Does somebody else live here with you?”
In response to his question, a burst of coughing issued from a hole in one corner of the room that Stan had not noticed before. From the hole emerged the most disheveled player that Stan had seen so far. He was dressed in a white lab coat with gray pants, and his gray hair stuck up in all directions. He would have looked like Albert Einstein if he didn’t look so beaten. His face was sallow and sunken in, he had an unearthly stench that Stan could smell from across the room, and he was completely covered in coal dust that was mixed with a shiny, red material that Stan identified as redstone dust. He held two bottles in his hands, one of which was empty and one of which held a liquid of a sickly blue-gray color. The player gave an almighty belch before addressing the mayor.
“Hey, Turkey, we’re running low on SloPo, when do you think the nomads’ll be back?” his voice was slurred and giddy, reminding Stan of a player who was deep in the stages of delirium. “Are the nomads gonna be back tomorrow? They’ll be back tomorrow, and then I’ll get my SloPo. I do love me my SloPo. But, wait, I’m gonna need money! Turkey, remind me to get some money later tonight, okay, old buddy, Turkey old friend?”
At that point, the player stopped his conversation with himself and noticed that he and “Turkey” (who Stan could only assume was the mayor) were not alone in the room. The player turned his dilated pupils to Stan and asked the mayor, “Who’s the new meat, Turkey? He another new miner to come from, from, from the Elementia prisons? Heh-heh, good luck, little buddy, you ain’t gonna last two days down in that ravine!” For some reason, the player seemed to find this extraordinarily funny, and he rolled around on the ground, banging his fist on the floor to the point where one of the wooden planks actually broke off.
The mayor simply walked over to the hysterical player on the floor and calmly said, “Mecha11, you are hereby sentenced to labor in the coal mines of Blackstone, in the Ender Desert, for as long as you should remain in this server.”
The effect of these enigmatic words on the player on the floor was instantaneous. He immediately got up and got on his knees and started crying. Through his tears he said, “As you wish, my King.” Then, without warning, he stood up and shook his head, his face looking confused. Then he appeared as if something was dawning on him, and he looked at the mayor in disgust.
“Why do you have to do that?” he demanded.
“Well,” the mayor replied, “that’s the only way that I can get you out of your trance when you’re SloPoed without a golden apple, and there’s somebody I want you to meet.”
Stan, who was extremely confused as to what was going on, nodded politely and tried to keep the look of confusion and fear off his face as the player was introduced as Mecha11, head of Redstone Mining Pioneering. The name rang a bell in Stan’s memory.
“Wait, you’re Mecha11?” he asked, dumbfounded that this wreck of a player was once in the same tier of people as the Apothecary and the Nether Boys. “I’ve heard of you! My name is Stan2012, and I’ve met the Apothecary and Bill, Ben, and Bob!”
A flash of recognition crossed Mecha11’s face, but it soon returned to its uninterested state as he collapsed into one of the wooden chairs. “Well, I’m glad to hear that they’re still chugging. And speaking of chugging,” he said, and he made to drink more of the potion in his hand, but the mayor slapped his hand to the side.
“Mechanist, please, don’t be rude! This young man helped to stop the army from burning our train station to the ground. He deserves your respect.”
“Yeah, great job, kid,” the Mechanist sneered in a sarcastic drawl. “You made it so that we still have a gateway for the army to keep taking advantage of these people who’ve already wasted their lives slaving away in the Blackstone mines. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t thank you by offering you a free muffin.”
“Shut up, Mechanist!” whispered the mayor in urgent tones.
“What? You hate the army and the King, just the same as everybody else!”
“Yes, but there are those who you should not voice that opinion in front of!”
There was a moment of silence, and it lasted until Stan realized that they were referring to him.
“What, me? You think I’m a spy for the King?”
“He’s sent them in before,” said the mayor, still keeping a keen eye on Stan for any sudden movements.
“No, trust me, I am not with the King,” said Stan, and then, a thought occurring to him, he decided to take a huge gamble. “As a matter of fact, I intend to overthrow him myself.”
The Mechanist laughed. “That’s cute,” he said. “You really think that you’re capable of overthrowing the King, do you?”
Stan was taken aback. It was not the first time that his plot had been met with skepticism, but there was something in the Mechanist’s voice that made Stan want to hear what he had to say.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” he replied firmly. “I’ve already raised an army, and as soon as we gather the necessary supplies, which we have access to, we are going to march into Element City, kill the King and his officials, and reform Elementia into a better place.”
The mayor’s eyes had simply widened a little when Stan first mentioned his idea to overthrow the King, but at this latest description, he was actually running around the room from window to window, checking to see that there were no soldiers listening in. The Mechanist, completely unconcerned with being overheard, threw back his head and laughed again.
“You really do think that you can do it! That’s cute.” Stan found the condescension in his voice infuriating. “But let me give you a piece of sound advice, kid: give it up!” He shouted this with such power and volume that Stan actually jumped, and the mayor whipped around with an iron pickaxe drawn, ready for an impending attack. Though none came, the Mechanist continued to talk in an unnecessarily loud voice.
“The King’s forces are spread far and wide, all over this server. All of them are equally as cruel and brutal as he is, and there are hundreds of them. The King is not an operator anymore, but he still has an almost limitless cache of resources from the days when he was! Also—”
“Hey, I already know all that!” interjected Stan. “And let me just point out that I intend to tap into one of those caches in order to gain the supplies for my army!”
“Kid, you have no clue what you’re talking about, because it’s not just the King you have to worry about! You realize that about a third of the population is heavily aligned with the King? He has a double standard for the upper class! My point is, even if you do manage to take down the King, which is an impossible dream itself, you’ll never be able to completely destroy the King’s evil ideals.”
“You don’t understand!” cried Stan. “I’ve met people, I’ve talked to them. You don’t understand just how much people hate the King and want him dead.”
“Ha!” sneered the Mechanist, an ugly look taking over his face. “The irony of you lecturing me on how people hate the King! You think I don’t know that? Listen to me, kid, and I’ll give you the full story of what King Kev has done to me personally! I was the head of Redstone Experiments back in the old kingdom. It was me who designed Element City’s monorail system, me who wired King Kev’s entire castle, and me who designed all the weapon systems that guard the King’s castle from invaders like you. For the love of God, I invented the TNT Cannon for him!
“And how does the King repay me? He banishes me to spend my life in this desert wasteland, just because people who hated him copied my weapons systems and used them against him! If there is anybody who wants the King dead, it’s people like me, like the Apothecary, like the Chiefs of Exploration, who were close to the King, and who he banished from his kingdom!”
“And that doesn’t make you want to want to try to take control of Elementia from him?” asked Stan, his eyes flashing with passionate rage at the King and at the old inventor across from him who was being so difficult. “For the record, the Apothecary and the Chiefs of Exploration have both agreed to join my army.”
