Chapter 6

Chapter 6 It's Time for Some Theo- Rising. And, Uh, Harper-Rising. We're Thinking, Okay? W ith the skeleton contained, Theo and Harper needed to talk to Doc. Their science teacher was sorting through her experiments. The keep pile was already stacked high. The toss pile only had one thing in it: the who-knows-what that Theo had picked up before. It was still glowing blue. "How's it going, Doc?" Harper asked. "Fine." Doc set down a microwave with a big satellite dish on the top in the keep pile. "I'm thinking about what to do with these experiments. I hate to throw anything out."

"Why does Principal Ferris get to decide what's junk and what's not?" Theo grumbled. Doc smiled. "We're guests here. Still, I have a feeling we'll figure it out. Was there something you wanted to talk about?" Harper nodded. "We want to ask you about the server. Is there any way to put its contents on the computers at this school?" "One of us could take it home, but…" Theo frowned. "We want everybody to get to play. And

there's something on this server we really don't want to lose." Doc looked apologetic. "I've already tried. Something in the data won't let me copy or edit anything. Ash can use the internet to connect in, but the game won't connect out at all. The buttons to turn it off don't even work!" Their Minecraft world was hosted in a large cube-shaped server with wires running to each computer they were using to play. Doc pushed the power button a few times, but nothing happened. "I thought that was strange. But I knew the server was important to you, so I used a portable battery to keep it running on the trip here." "So we don't know what happens if it loses power," Harper said. "Which means it's dangerous to move around," Theo added. All three of them were quiet for a moment as they thought about the problem.

"Why do we think the server's acting so strange?" Harper asked. "The storm?" Doc offered as she returned to her sorting. "Or the Fault," Theo mumbled as his own mind tracked down possibilities. Or the Evoker King did it on purpose! Harper realized. She grabbed Theo and led him over to the other side of the computer lab. Theo listened as Harper explained her idea. "Why would he trap Eek in there forever?" "Maybe it isn't forever. Eek is new, right? He's learning." Harper thought hard. "What was it the Evoker King said?" "He said, 'I wish to experience Minecraft from a new perspective.' "And Eek is that new perspective." "So if the Evoker King is stopping Eek from leaving the game on purpose, whatever lets him leave must be hiding in Minecraft somewhere."

Theo tried to think about the game from the Evoker King's perspective. The Evoker King was a program, which meant Theo needed to think like a programmer. Minecraft was huge. There were so many things to do, and so many ways to play. You could spend years building or exploring. They only had a week. "In video games, when you want to have something happen at a certain time, you make a trigger," Theo thought out loud. "You can start a song whenever a character says a certain line or have an achievement unlock whenever you collect one hundred items."

Po pulled one side of his headset off and called to his friends. "Harper and Theo, you should come over here!" Theo nodded. "One second, Po. If the Evoker King left behind a way for Eek to leave the server, it's probably a trigger like that." "And it has to be something we wouldn't do right away." Harper tried to think. Mine down to bedrock? Visit the Nether? "Something that meant we'd seen everything. Something like—" "The End!" Theo exclaimed suddenly. "There's no end in Minecraft, though." Harper shook her head. "You can do things forever!" "No, not the end of Minecraft. The End! The dimension where you battle the Ender Dragon and see the credits. We've never been there before, at least not as a group."